Digital Commons Network^™

Molecular Characterisation Of The Interaction Of Microbes With The Insulin Pathway, Raid Bahr Nisr

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Exposure to microorganisms is considered an environmental factor which can contribute to diabetes mellitus via cytotoxicity or autoimmune responses against pancreatic cells. Firstly, the effects on rat insulinoma pancreatic β-cell line of secondary metabolites pyrrolnitrin (Burkholderia spp), phenazine compounds (Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Burkholderia spp) were investigated. Both compounds separately showed significant cytotoxicity after 24 h and at concentrations of 10 & 100 ng/ml potentiated insulin gene transcription, Ca2+ content and glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS). Furthermore, the outward membrane current was inhibited by phenazine (100 ng/ml) or pyrrolnitrin (10 or 100 ng/ml). Secondly, the capacity of 45 microbial species to bind …

Behaviour Profiling For Mobile Devices, Fudong Li

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

With more than 5 billion users globally, mobile devices have become ubiquitous in our daily life. The modern mobile handheld device is capable of providing many multimedia services through a wide range of applications over multiple networks as well as on the handheld device itself. These services are predominantly driven by data, which is increasingly associated with sensitive information. Such a trend raises the security requirement for reliable and robust verification techniques of users.This thesis explores the end-user verification requirements of mobile devices and proposes a novel Behaviour Profiling security framework for mobile devices. The research starts with a critical …

Towards The Affect Of Intimacy, Juergen Moritz

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

Abstract This thesis explores the trajectory that the developing technological fields of Ambient Intelligence and Persuasive Technologies introduce new intricate relationships beyond fundamental use and availability because they change our abilities to act. Since its classic articulation by Hegel (1927) philosophical explication of the relationship between people and technology states that technology is a mediating factor between people and the world. Associated with this view, which has characterized the resulting phenomenology and philosophy of technology for nearly two decades, is an understanding of technology as a form of alienation. In this dissertation the author shows how this old interpretation of …

Life Expansion: Toward An Artistic, Design-Based Theory Of The Transhuman / Posthuman, Natasha Vita-More

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

The thesis’ study of life expansion proposes a framework for artistic, design-based approaches concerned with prolonging human life and sustaining personal identity. To delineate the topic: life expansion means increasing the length of time a person is alive and diversifying the matter in which a person exists. For human life, the length of time is bounded by a single century and its matter is tied to biology. Life expansion is located in the domain of human enhancement, distinctly linked to technological interfaces with biology. The thesis identifies human-computer interaction and the potential of emerging and speculative technologies as seeding the …

Ground: A Metaverse Learning Strategy For The Creative Fields, Elif Ayiter

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

In this thesis I cover the theoretical framework and the practice based implications of bringing the fundamental principles of a cybernetic art educational strategy, the Groundcourse, which was developed and taught during the 1960’s in England by Roy Ascott, into the virtual, three dimensional builder’s world of the metaverse; to be implemented there as a non-institutional, voluntary, self-directed, adult oriented learning system for avatars – one which is expected to be taught by avatar instructors who will formulate the specifics of their curriculum and their methods based upon the cardinal tenets of the Groundcourse, which have been summarized by Roy …

Image And Evidence: The Study Of Attention Through The Combined Lenses Of Neuroscience And Art, Ellen K. Levy

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

This study proposed that new insights about attention, including its phenomenon and pathology, would be provided by combining perspectives of the neurobiological discourse about attention with analyses of artworks that exploit the constraints of the attentional system. To advance the central argument that art offers a training ground for the attentional system, a wide range of contemporary art was analysed in light of specific tasks invoked. The kinds of cognitive tasks these works initiate with respect to the attentional system have been particularly critical to this research. Attention was explored within the context of transdisciplinary art practices, varied circumstances of …

New Game Physics - Added Value For Transdisciplinary Teams, Andreas Schiffler

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

This study focused on game physics, an area of computer game design where physics is applied in interactive computer software. The purpose of the research was a fresh analysis of game physics in order to prove that its current usage is limited and requires advancement. The investigations presented in this dissertation establish constructive principles to advance game physics design. The main premise was that transdisciplinary approaches provide significant value. The resulting designs reflected combined goals of game developers, artists and physicists and provide novel ways to incorporate physics into games. The applicability and user impact of such new game physics …

Designing Effective Forecasting Decision Support Systems: Aligning Task Complexity And Technology Support, Monica Adya, Edward J. Lusk

Management Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Not Just Ticking The Box: An Investigation Into Safeguarding Adults Training Transfer In Cornwall, Uk, Lindsey Anne Pike

School of Health Professions Theses

Safeguarding adults is a priority in adult social care, and training is one of the main ways in which policy and guidance around it is implemented. Training transfer refers to the use of new learning on the job, and while the transfer literature is well developed, it does not extend to safeguarding adults training. This research aimed to identify, develop and refine a programme theory of safeguarding adults training transfer by identifying factors that facilitate or inhibit the use of safeguarding adults training in practice, and the impact that the training has. A cross sectional mixed methods realist synthesis approach …

Exploring Creative Tourism: Editors Introduction, Greg Richards, Lénia Marques

Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice

This paper provides an overview of the contributions to special issue of the Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice entitled "Exploring Creative Tourism‟. Creative tourism has grown rapidly in the past decade, reflecting the growing desire of consumers to develop their own creative potential and to attach themselves to creative networks, as well as the need for creative producers, cities and regions to profile themselves in an increasingly crowded global market. The case studies in the special issue examine creative tourism in a range of different contexts and present a range of models of creative tourism development in fields such …

Creative Tourism In Saint Petersburg: The State Of The Art, Valery Gordin, Marina Matetskaya

Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice

Tourism development in St. Petersburg, which is a major cultural centre, has improved in terms of tourist flows; both tourism demand and tourist products have become more diverse. These improvements give grounds for a fairly optimistic prognosis for the tourist industry in St. Petersburg. At the same time, there are a number of factors which may endanger sustainable development of tourism in St. Petersburg. The current situation calls for a more flexible and innovative approach to industry development. Among these factors are the pronounced seasonal character of tourism, the short-term visits of most of the tourists, and the rather conservative, …

Creating New Cultural Visitor Experiences On Islands: Challenges And Opportunities, John S. Hull, Ulrike Sassenberg

Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice

Cultural tourism is increasingly recognized as an important motivation for international travelers in search of experiencing the cultural heritage, arts, philosophy and institutions of another region or country. The UNWTO reports that 37% of all international trips include a cultural component and that cultural tourism is growing at 15% annually. Creative tourism, a subset of cultural tourism, is one of these new forms of tourism. While cultural tourism is considered a passive observation of things of the past such as artifacts, creative tourism is the transfer of the past into the present and the future via communication between locals and …

Conference Reports: Journal Of Tourism Consumption And Practice Volume 4 No.2 2012, Grahm Busby

Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice

Educational travel – Expanding Horizons, Tallinn 19-21 August 2011 The First BITCO – Belgrade International Tourism Conference – Belgrade, 22-24 March 2012 Dark Tourism Symposium – UCLAN Westleigh Conference Centre, Preston – 24 April 2012

The Effects Of Lactobacillus Plantarum Ncimb 41607 On Salmonella Infection And The Microbial Population In The Gastrointestinal Tract Of The Chicken, Nabil Ali Wali

Other Faculty of Science and Engineering Theses

Salmonellosis is a foodborne disease, poultry and poultry products are the main source of the disease. Many countries including Iraq still use antibiotics to control Salmonella. The increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria putatively caused by the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture has provided the incentive to look for alterna-tives to antibiotic to control diseases in livestock. Lactic acid bacteria with probiotic characteristics have the potential to beneficially affect the gut microflora of chick-ens and help reduce the incidence of Salmonella infection. In this study, Lactobacillus plantarum NCIMB 41607 was examined in vitro for in-hibitory effects against Salmonella and in vivo …

Emancipating The Many: A Practice Led Investigation Into Emergent Paradigms Of Immediate Political Action, Wolfgang Fiel

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

The immediate catalyst for having taken up this study was the violent outbreak of weeks of public unrest in the Paris banlieus in the wake of the shooting of young man on the run from the police on October 27 2005. The obvious inability of local municipalities and police forces to explain, let alone to anticipate the swelling discontent with a system which is generally assumed to work effectively and to benefit all has led me to the assumption that we have entered a stage where the concept of representational democracy is seriously compromised. The sheer scale or projected growth …

Spirited Measures And Victorian Hangovers: Public Attitudes To Alcohol, The Law And Moral Regulation., Henry Yeomans

Other Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business Theses

From alarm about the prospect of ‘twenty-four drinking’ to campaigns for a minimum price per unit, the last decade has shown that alcohol consumption is an inflammatory issue in this country. It has become commonplace to hear that drinking is ‘out of control’ and that it is a new and worsening problem largely unique to Britain. However, comparative research reveals that alcohol consumption in Britain is not unusually high and even a cursory glance at history shows that extreme bouts of alarm about drinking have been common on these shores since at least the eighteenth century. What is at the …

The Effect Of Glucose On Transcription At Cpxr- And Ompr-Regulated Promoters, Andrew Charles Cosgrove

Master's Theses

While reversible acetylation of proteins has been well studied in eukaryotes and is now recognized in bacteria, global protein acetylation in bacteria is a recently appreciated phenomenon. Protein acetylation is known to affect almost every aspect of cellular physiology in eukaryotes and there is proteomic evidence that this may also hold true in bacteria. In eukaryotes, lysines are acetylated by acetyltransferases that use acetyl-CoA as the acetyl group source, and de-acetylated by deacetylases. In bacteria, this reversible process uses enzymes homologous to those used by eukaryotes.

Our lab has recently found that acetylation of RNA polymerase (RNAP) can activate transcription …

Characterization Of The Clostridium Difficile Biofilm, Michelle Laning

Master's Theses

Clostridium difficile is a Gram-positive, spore forming bacterium and an opportunistic gastrointestinal pathogen. Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a common nosocomial infection. Upon antibiotic treatment, patients can be colonized with C. difficile from ingestion of spores. After colonization, cells produce toxins creating symptoms from diarrhea to pseudomembranous colitis, and many patients develop recurrent infections. Interactions between host epithelium and the bacteria is a critical step in infection, yet the interaction is not well understood. It is not known how C. difficile evades host immune responses. These are important mechanisms to answer in advancing CDI treatment. A biofilm could contribute to …

(Women's) Archival Spaces And Trans Voices? A (Re)Search And Proposal, Jeremy Curtis Main

Master's Theses

Transgender has been silenced, exiled, forgotten, erased, ignored, maltreated, killed, and ultimately, in a major theme of this research project, excluded from histories. Yet, like women, African-Americans, and gay men and lesbians before them, transgender and their allies are working toward inclusion and independence. History, it seems, can no longer ignore them. One of the surest ways to "prove" a history is to have the original items of that history in an archives. So, what representation do we find among various United States' archives concerning transgender people? Unfortunately, like with many other marginalized groups, much work has to be investigated …

An Analysis Of Barriers To And Strategies For Improving Parent Engagement, Candice Renee Shakur

Master's Theses

Research shows that parent engagement can be a useful tool for improving student achievement. But, in many low-income urban schools, encouraging schools and parents to invest in parent engagement is a struggle. This paper explores some of the barriers that exist in low-income urban communities that work to limit parent engagement; it also identifies some of the strategies available to increase the frequency and quality of parent engagement in low-income urban communities.

Resveratrol + Ethanol Preconditioning And Neuroprotection, Nastaran Khodaie

Master's Theses

Our lab established that moderate ethanol preconditioning (MEP) for 6 days blocked the Aâ25-35 toxicity in cerebellar mixed cell cultures and It has been shown that MEP cause the up regulation of the pre-survival enzymes such as proxiredoxin2 (PRX2), which suggests MEP can activate the cell survival pathways against upcoming toxins.

This study was performed to verify the possible combinatory effect of ethanol and resveratrol against Aâ25-35 toxicity. Both ethanol and resveratrol sub-protective concentrations were detected against Aâ25-35 in cerebellar mixed cell cultures. The combination of sub-protective levels of ethanol and resveratrol showed the significantly reduction in number of Aâ25-35 …

Determination Of An Interaction Between Nipped B-Like Protein And Mll, Adam Robert Marek

Master's Theses

The Mixed Lineage Leukemia (MLL) protein serves as a positive transcriptional regulator during hematopoietic and embryonic development. The MLL gene can undergo chromosomal translocations producing leukemia-causing fusions that retain the MLL amino-terminus, including the repression domain. A recent yeast two-hybrid screening used the MLL repression domain as bait and yielded nine positive clones of Nipped B-like (NIPBL).

NIPBL is a crucial member of the cohesin complex, which functions in the segregation of sister chromatids during cell division. However, recent evidence suggests the cohesin complex can also function as a transcriptional regulator.

In this study, we wanted to confirm this interaction …

Invisible Margin: Marginalization And Activism Of Adivasi Women In Researches In Bangladesh, Aanmona Priyadarshini

Master's Theses

In the context of historical marginalization of indigenous people from diverse ethnic communities in Bangladesh, this study will investigate how mainstream researches and writings, in books, research reports, newspapers, and blogs on indigenous issues have ignored women's relegation by homogenizing women's distinctive problems with communities' marginalization. The research will explore indigenous women's subordinations in diverse sphere of lives and activism against the power structure that mainstream researches have overlooked. The study will also investigate the possible pathways of solidarity to challenge the systems of power that create control over indigenous people's lives. Thus this research will explore following research questions: …

Gender Inequality And Countries' Responsiveness To Enforcing Human Trafficking Laws: A Cross National Study, Christina Rose Fiorito

Master's Theses

In recent years, government agencies, advocacy groups, and academics have made attempts to address and understand the problem of human trafficking through raising awareness, conducting research and implementing prevention and intervention programs. This study tested whether gender inequality measures, which capture aspects of a country's social and political operations, are related to less governmental efforts to enforce laws against human trafficking, after controlling for other possible explanations for lax enforcement such as poverty, government corruption, political instability and increase of general violence, educational achievement, net migration, and the percent of the country's population living in urban areas.

The data were …

Self-Control As A Determining Factor In Aftercare Compliance And Recidivism Of Sheridan Correctional Center Releasees, Jana R. Krepel

Master's Theses

This study looked to Self–Control Theory to explore relationships between self–control and aftercare completion and recidivism in a cohort of Sheridan Correctional Center releases (N=604). The data set was obtained by Dr. David Olson (Olson & Rozhon, 2011) of Loyola University Chicago. Utilizing an existing inmate evaluation tool, the Client Evaluation of Self and Treatment, a new index of self–control was created, and the scales of this index became the predictor variables. After logistic regression, it was determined that none of the self–control scales were significant predictors of either aftercare compliance or recidivism. In fact, when all variables were considered, …

Muppets Abroad: Globalization Of Multiculturalism And The International Co-Productions Of Sesame Street, Julianna Carlson Palm

Master's Theses

In recent years globalization has been cited as the cause or force changing our world, making it more interdependent and "smaller" through new means of technology and communication. As such a force, globalization is seen as pervasive in all aspects of contemporary life. Sesame Street has been used as an educational tool in the United States since 1969 and since that time, the producers of the program have created a presence in various countries throughout the world, using the technology of television to communicate with preschool audiences. In particular in the last decade, new productions have begun and been funded …

Understanding The Regulation Of Metabolic Enzyme Acetylation In E. Coli, Arti Walker-Peddakotla

Master's Theses

Global protein acetylation is a newly discovered phenomenon in bacteria. Of the more than 250 acetylations reported in E. coli, many are of metabolic enzymes. Thus, acetylation could represent a novel posttranslational mechanism of metabolic control. Yet, almost nothing is known about the regulation of these acetylations or of their metabolic outcomes. Here, we report that the cAMP receptor protein (CRP) regulates protein acetylation in E. coli and provide evidence that protein acetylation modulates the flux of carbon through central metabolism. When we grew cells in mixed amino acids supplemented with glucose and cAMP, global protein acetylation increased in a …

Characterization Of The Coca Chemokine Receptor Four Agonist Activity Of Ubiquitin, Daniel M. Staren

Master's Theses

Ubiquitin has previously been identified as another natural agonist of CXC chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4). In addition, recent evidence suggests that ubiquitin may activate CXCR4 through a binding site on the receptor, which is distinct from the binding site for the cognate ligand stromal cell-derived factor (SDF)-1α. The cellular consequences of ubiquitin induced CXCR4 activation, however, are still poorly defined and a side-by-side comparison of CXCR4 mediated functions after activation with SDF-1α and ubiquitin is lacking. Such information will be instrumental to better understand the physiological function of CXCR4 and to further define its role as a therapeutic target in …

The Influence Of Adult- Versus Child-Directed Television Programs On Distractibility In Preschoolers, Kathryn Joyce O'Toole

Master's Theses

Research in the field on children's attention to television has suggested that discerning between two different types of programming is crucial for understanding how children attend to TV. Child-directed television consists of programs designed with the purpose that children are the intended viewers. In contrast, adult-directed television is not designed for children; these programs are directed toward an older audience. The current study investigated how children divided their attention between cognitive tasks and a distractor. The distractor was either an adult-directed TV program, a child-directed TV program, or there was no distractor. The results revealed that the both distractors reduced …

When Theory Meets Practice: Challenging Racial Inequality In A Post-Civil Rights Era, Victoria Brockett

Master's Theses

Knowledge about racial inequality is important because it can inform racially just practices. To this end, multiple scholars have shown how racial inequality operates and how it can be challenged in various facets of social life. However, what does challenging racism look like when theory meets practice? Building on racial formation theory, this thesis examines a racial justice organization's (RJO) training and consulting services through the lens of a political project that is rearticulating the meaning of race and thus, the role of race in the social structure. Evidenced by observations and interviews with RJO staff and their clients, this …