Digital Commons Network^™

The Mediterranean Hybridity Project: Crossing The Boundaries Of Law And Culture, Seán Patrick Donlan

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Mare Nostrum As The Cauldron Of Western Legal Traditions: Stirring The Broth, Making Sense Of Legal Gumbo Whilst Understanding Contamination, Olivier Moréteau

Journal of Civil Law Studies

No abstract provided.

Genocide Studies: An Australian Perspective, Colin Tatz

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The burgeoning field of genocide studies is faced with several concerns. Foremost is the challenge of finding a space for encompassing and embracing the Holocaust with some comfort. The Judeocide is an ally, not an enemy, and not on the margins. Our maturing discipline needs to find a sense of collegiality, consensus on terminology, and yardsticks with which to measure scales, dimensions, and degrees of the crime. Several other themes also need attention: wider perspectives on the prerequisites of genocide, starvation as a genocidal weapon, a clear separa- tion between motive and intent, genocide by omission, the elusive concepts of …

Revisiting A Founding Assumption Of Genocide Studies, A Dirk Moses

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Genocide studies has come a long way over the past decade, having attained a level of intellectual sobriety, academic credibility, and public recognition virtually inconceivable forty years ago. At the same time, there have been signs of convergence between the fields of genocide studies and Holocaust historiography and studies. This development can be challenging for those in Holocaust studies and historio- graphy because the relationship betweem the two disciplines is complicated by genocide studies’ claim to incorporate the Holocaust into its object of inquiry, whereas the reverse does not hold. There is a potentially subordinate situation here, or at least …

Age-Associated Changes In Innate Immunity And Their Impacts On Inflammatory Disease., Mehmet Akif Eskan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Periodontal disease arises from excessive host inflammatory responses to the tooth-associated microbial biofilm, known as dental plaque. Severity ranges from superficial inflammation of the gingivae (gingivitis) to extensive destruction of connective tissue and bone (periodontitis) leading to tooth loss. In its severe form, periodontitis affects 10 - 15% of the total human population to the extent that they will lose half their teeth by age 50. Periodontitis, a prevalent chronic disease with an impact on systemic health, such as atherosclerosis and Alzheimer's disease, is critically dependent on neutrophils. Although conventional periodontal treatment may reverse destructive inflammation, a subset of patients …

Optimization Models For Patient Allocation During A Pandemic Influenza Outbreak., Li Sun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pandemic influenza has been an important public health concern. During the 20th century, three major pandemics of influenza occurred in 1918, 1957, and 1968. The pandemic of 1918 caused 40 to 50 million deaths worldwide and more than 500,000 deaths in the United States. The 1957 pandemic, during a time with much less globalization than now, spread to the U.S. within 4 to 5 months of its origination in China, causing more than 70,000 deaths in the U.S., and the 1968 pandemic spread to the U.S. from Hong Kong within 2 to 3 months, causing 34,000 deaths. Pandemic influenza is …

Effects Of Transforming Growth Factor Beta1 On Hantavirus Cardiopulmonary Syndrome, Stephanie Flynn James

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Confounding Identities: The Paradox Of Lgbt Children Under Asylum Law, Susan Hazeldean

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Autoimmune Consequences Of Histone Deimination During Neutrophil Activation, Nishant Dwivedi

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Tolerance blocks the expression of autoantibodies, whereas autoimmunity promotes it. How tolerance breaks and autoantibody production begins, thus, are crucial questions for the understanding and treatment of autoimmune diseases. Evidence implicates cell death and autoantigen modifications in the initiation of autoimmune reactions. One form of neutrophil cell death deserves attention because it occurs as a consequence of neutrophil activation, requires the post-translational modification of histones and results in the extracellular release of chromatin. The extracellular chromatin incorporates histones in which arginines have been converted to citrullines by peptidylarginine deiminase IV (PAD4) creating structures that capture or "trap" bacterial pathogens. Neutrophil …

Testing Whether Mrp4 (A Camp Efflux Pump) And The Beta 2 Andrenergic Receptor (An Upstream Regulator Of Camp Signaling Pathways, Praveen Kumar Potukuchi

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Background and Aim: MRP4/ABCC4 is an ABC transporter that can efflux the second-messenger, cAMP, from cells. MRP4 has a PDZ interacting motif at its carboxy terminal end through which it binds to scaffolding proteins NHERF1 and PDZK1. Previous studies have shown that PDZK1 serves as a scaffold physically coupling MRP4 with the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR). This protein complex functionally couples cAMP regulation of CFTR function with MRP4 cAMP transporter activity [Li, C., et al., Spatiotemporal coupling of cAMP transporter to CFTR chloride channel function in the gut epithelia. Cell, 2007. 131(5): p. 940-51]. We hypothesized that the …

Synthesis And Computational Studies On Hiv-1 Integrase Inhibitors, Horrick Sharma

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

HIV-1 integrase (IN) is essential for viral replication and offers a promising target for the development of anti-retroviral drugs. Two decades of extensive research has lead to the recent approval of raltegravir as the first IN inhibitor. Advancement of drug candidate elvitegravir, which is currently in Phase III clinical trial, has furthermore accelerated efforts against this potential target for combating HIV. However, the emergence of resistance against raltegravir and elvitegravir demands exploration of novel chemical scaffolds that could circumvent resistance against currently used HIV-1 IN inhibitors. With the goal of discovering new agents targeting HIV, a novel structural class of …

Spatial Distribution Of Obesity Among West Virginia 5th Grade Children: Analysis Of The Socioeconomic, Physical, And Personal Environment, Sherry Roper

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Childhood obesity defined as a body mass index (BMI) at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex, is considered an epidemic in the United States. Biology and lifestyle behaviors have been identified as important factors in the development of childhood obesity; however, researchers are beginning to place more emphasis upon the impact that continual environmental exposures have upon obesity development. Environmental risk factors associated with obesity are distributed continuously over space, yet evidence suggests that burden of risk may not be evenly dispersed across a community. West Virginia (WV), a rural Appalachian community has …

Characterization Of The Mechanism Of Pparγ-Mediated Neointima Formation In Rodents, Ryoko Tsukahara

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) and its ether analog alkyl glycerophosphate (AGP) elicit arterial wall remodeling when applied intralumenally into the uninjured carotid artery. LPA is the ligand of eight GPCRs and the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ). We pursued a gene knockout strategy to identify the LPA receptor subtypes necessary for the neointimal response in a non-injury model of carotid remodeling and also compared the effects of AGP and the PPARγ agonist rosiglitazone (ROSI) on balloon injury-elicited neointima development. In the balloon injury model AGP significantly increased neointima; however, rosiglitazone application attenuated it. AGP and ROSI were also applied intralumenally for …

The Association Between Reading Comprehension And Prerequisite Skills For Children In Poverty, Hyo Jin Yoon

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between reading comprehension and the prerequisite skills typically assessed by a school based speech pathologist with a focus on children raised in poverty. Based upon previous studies, three hypotheses were developed. First, children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds would not perform as well as children from the standardization sample on norm referenced language tests although the language tests would predict reading comprehension. Second, decoding would not be as good a predictor of reading comprehension for children from low SES backgrounds as it is in typically developing children from middle …

Development And Evaluation Of Nano‑Scale Systems For Targeted Delivery To Treat Liver Fibrosis, Ningning Yang

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Excessive deposition of ECM is the common characteristic of liver fibrosis. During hepatic fibrosis, various inflammatory cytokines are released and trigger the activation of quiescent HSCs. The activated HSCs play the major role in producing extra amount collagen. It becomes very crucial to focus on HSCs to find out therapeutics, such as inhibiting collagen synthesis, inhibiting activation to myofibroblasts, or controlling inflammation.

To control excessive collagen synthesis, one triplex forming oligonucleotides (TFO), was systemically administrated to prevent type I collagen mRNA transcription. To enhance circulation time and targeted delivery efficiency, TFO was conjugated to M6P‑HPMA and showed efficient targeted delivery …

Preclinical Pharmacology Of The Mdm2 Antagonist Nutlin-3a, Fan Zhang

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Nutlin-3a is an MDM2-p53 interaction antagonist that is under investigation in preclinical models for a variety of pediatric malignancies, including neuroblastoma, retinoblastoma, leukemia, and rhabdomyosarcoma. In the current research, we conducted preclinical pharmacology studies of nutlin-3a to evaluate the synergistic effect of the nutlin-3a and topotecan combination on neuroblastoma cell growth, to assess the effect of nutlin-3a on breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP), and to characterize the disposition of nutlin-3a in the mouse plasma and multiple tissues.

Activating the p53 pathway might offer a new therapy for neuroblastoma. In the first part of the study, we assessed the effect of …

Characterization Of The Key Mouse Cochlear Developmental Genes For Auditory Hair Cell Regeneration, Zhiyong Liu

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Mammalian inner ear cochlear auditory hair cells (HCs) and adjacent supporting cells (SCs) are believed to derive from the same progenitors during development. However, unlike SCs of nonmammalian vertebrates, mammalian cochlear SCs cannot be converted into functional hair cells (HCs) after damage, thus leading to permanent deafness. To entitle mammals with the ability to restore hearing capacity after HC damage, we first achieved proliferation of SCs by acute ablation of p27 or Sox2. Secondly, we overactivated Notch1 signaling in the mouse inner ear at different developmental stages, and found that the ability of Notch signaling in generating new HCs declines …

Using Geographical Information Systems To Investigate Spatial Patterns In Fossils Of Tapirus Polkenis From The Gray Fossil Site, Washington County, Tennessee, Winn Addison Ketchum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Discovered in 2000, the Gray Fossil Site provides a snapshot of the flora and fauna that lived during late Miocene to early Pliocene time in eastern Tennessee. These fossils occur in sediments consisting of fine-grained clays and sands of lacustrine origin, which were deposited after multiple sinkholes formed in the underlying Knox Group basement carbonates. Three-dimensional nearest neighbor analysis has been applied to fossils of Tapirus polkensis, characterizing the spatial patterns exhibited. These analyses determined the importance of taphonomic and depositional processes that occurred during the sites formation. Six characteristics were analyzed, four at the bone level including carnivore …

Effect Of Gender On The Association Of Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms With Bipolar Disorder, Jerald Eric Mullersman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bipolar disorder is a relatively common form of mental illness that depends strongly on genetic inheritance for expression. The author of this study has sought to evaluate whether the gender of subjects influences which genetic variants are associated with the disease. A portion of the cases from a previously published study were analyzed using PLINK software and the association of single-nucleotide polymorphisms was evaluated separately for all cases, for female subjects alone, and for male subjects alone. The results obtained for male subjects alone reached higher levels of statistical significance than when both genders were evaluated together or when female …

Homologous Recombination In Nannochloropsis: A Powerful Tool In An Industrially Relevant Alga, Donald P. Weeks

Department of Biochemistry: Faculty Publications

The availability of facile methods for targeted gene knockout and gene replacement based on homologous recombination in bacteria and yeast systems has driven rapid progress in understanding many of the complex metabolic and regulatory networks in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. The lack of such tools in other organisms is a major impediment to progress both in fundamental research and in research that is directed toward practical economic and societal outcomes. For example, the current goal to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources produced by plants and algae is hampered in both the short term and the long term by …

Morphine Potentiates Neuropathogenesis Of Siv Infection In Rhesus Macaques, Sirosh M. Bokhari, Ramakrishna Hedge, Shannon Callen, Honghong Yao, Istvan Adany, Qingsheng Li, Zhuang Li, David Pinson, Hung-Wen Yeh, Paul D. Cheney, Shilpa Buch

Qingsheng Li Publications

Despite the advent of antiretroviral therapy, complications of HIV-1 infection with concurrent drug abuse are an emerging problem. Opiates are well-known to modulate immune responses by preventing the development of cell-mediated immune responses. Their effect on the pathogenesis of HIV-1 infection however, remains controversial. Using the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus/ macaque model of HIV pathogenesis, we sought to explore the impact of morphine on disease progression and pathogenesis. Sixteen Rhesus macaques were divided into 2 groups; 4 were administered saline and twelve others morphine routinely. Both groups of animals were then inoculated with SIVmacR71/17E and followed longitudinally for disease pathogenesis. The …

Conversion Of English Characters Into Braille Using Neural Network, Mohammed Y., Ahmed G. Mohammed

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write. Braille generally consists of cells of raised dots arranged in a grid. The presence or absence of dots can be sensed by the blind people’s fingertips to give them the coding for the symbol. The electronic reVolution is changing the way Braille is produced, stored and retrieved, making it easier to use in the work place. All kinds of materials can be put into Braille, from bank statements, bus timetables, maps to music. But it is still difficult to produce an error-free Braille …

Design And Simulation Of Fuzzy Like Pd Controller For Autonomous Mobile Robot, Muna H., Mazin Z. Othman, Arif A. Al-Qassar

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Mobile robot is a mechanical device capable of moving in an environment with a certain degree of autonomy. The main goal of this work is to design, and simulate an intelligent controller for autonomous mobile robot named Fuzzy like PD Controller, as the test bed for future development of an intelligent vehicle. The fuzzy algorithm was implemented using a combination of three different units of fuzzy logic systems that controls two identical DC servo motors to implement the requirements of the safety navigation of the mobile robot. The paper implies computer simulations in MATLAB platform using a step input to …

Hardware Implementation Of An Ann Trained By Ga And Pso Based On Fpga, Hanan A. R., Sundus Dhamad Hasan

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

In this paper, Particle Swarm Optimization-feedforward Neural Network (PSONN) and Genetic Algorithm-Neural Network (GANN) are proposed to enhance the learning process of ANN in term of convergence rate and classification accuracy. They have been tested and compared and the results applied in pattern classification. The experiments show that both algorithms produce feasible results in terms of convergence time and classification percentage. At the end of the eVolutionary process of GANN for optimal structure, not only the best network structure for a particular application but also the trained network with few numbers of epochs is provided. A Hardware Design of ANN …

Cancer Stem Cells. From Characterization To Therapeutic Implications., Nehad M. Alajez

Saudi Medical Journal

The cancer stem cell (CSC), or alternatively referred to as the tumor initiating cell (TIC) model, proposes that human cancers are organized in a hierarchical structure with the CSC at the apex. Cancer stem cells are functionally defined by their ability to self-renew, and to recapitulate the hierarchy of the original tumor from which they were derived. Emerging data from the literature suggest that CSCs might be the fraction within the tumor that resists conventional therapies; hence, the CSC paradigm provides new insight into tumor progression and relapse. Herein, we provide literature review of the CSC model, with emphasis on …

Expression Of Alkaline Phosphatase In Immortalized Murine Cementoblasts In Response To Compression-Force., Ye Tian, Lan Huang, Yong-Wen Guo, Li Cao, Ya-Ting Wang, Hui Xu, Ding Bai

Saudi Medical Journal

OBJECTIVES: To determine the effect of compression-force on the expression of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), and ALP activity in cementoblasts. METHODS: We performed this study in the State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases, West China Stomatology Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China from October to December 2010. We exposed murine immortalized cementoblasts (OCCM-30) to 2000-ustrain compression-force at a frequency of 0.5 Hz for 1, 3, 6, 12, and 24 hours. We assayed the cellular ALP activity after the treatments. We used real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and western blot to examine the gene and protein expression of ALP in the OCCM-30 …

Plasma Total Antioxidant Capacity And Its Related Factors In Iranian Pregnant Women., Zatollah Asemi, Shima Jazayeri, Mohammad Najafi, Mansoreh Samimi, Zohreh Tabasi, Farzad Shidfar, Abbas Rahimi-Foroushani, Vahid Mofid

Saudi Medical Journal

OBJECTIVES: To determine the plasma total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and its related factors in pregnant Iranian women attending maternity clinics. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study carried out in Naghavi Maternity Clinic, Shaheed Beheshti Specialty and Subspecialty Polyclinic and 10 antenatal centers, affiliated to Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran, we determined the plasma TAC and its related factors including maternal age, weight, and body mass index (BMI) at the beginning, thirteenth, and twenty-first to twenty-fourth weeks of pregnancy, and gestational age at the twenty-first to twenty-fourth weeks of pregnancy in 137 primigravid pregnant women, 18-30 years old from October …

Drug Susceptibility Pattern Of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Isolates Against Conventional Anti-Tuberculosis Drugs In Dhaka, Bangladesh., Mahmood D. Al-Mendalawi, Murad Hossain

Saudi Medical Journal

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Flow-Based Ultrafast Immunoextraction And Reverse Displacement Immunoassay: Analysis Of Free Drug Fractions, John E. Schiel, Zenghan Tong, Chainarong Sakulthaew, David S. Hage

David Hage Publications

A flow-based method employing a reverse displacement immunoassay was combined with ultrafast immunoextraction and near-infrared fluorescence detection for the analysis of free drug fractions, using phenytoin as a model analyte. Factors considered in the design of this method included the sample application conditions, the design of the immobilized drug analog column, the utilization of antibodies or F_ab fragments as labeled binding agents, and the label application and column regeneration conditions. In the final method, sample injections led to the displacement of labeled binding agents from an immobilized phenytoin analog column. This displacement peak appeared within 20–30 s of sample …

Alumni Journal - Volume 82, Number 4, Loma Linda University School Of Medicine

Alumni Journal, School of Medicine

Features:
10 | A Life Well Lived - A look at the work of Dr. Heath Rowsell '54
16 | Todd Westra Takes Charge - Dr. Todd Westra '96 manages operations at the new Ontario Vineyard Medical Center
18 | Scheer Memorial Hospital - Celebrating 50 years of service in Nepal

News:
5 | New Executive Director
7 | School of Medicine News
28 | Alumni Activities
30 | In Memoriam

Regulars:
4 | Editorial
6 | The President's Page
9 | The Dean's Page
32 | They Walked These Halls
36 | Placement Ads