Digital Commons Network^™

Adrift In Paris: Marc Chagall And The Negotiation Of Identity Through Painting, 1911-1914, Aliya Reich

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

No abstract provided.

Shape Optimization Of Hydrofoils, William Cocke

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In this thesis, a genetic algorithm: GA) is employed for shape optimization of hydrofoils for application in a sailing craft. The hydrofoil for a sailing craft should have high lift at lower speeds and low drag at higher speeds. Computations are performed for a hydrofoil in deep water as well as one close to the free surface. The commercially available software FLUENT is used for calculation of the flow field, and the software GAMBIT is used for the geometry and mesh generation. Volume of Fluid: VOF) method in FLUENT is employed to define the air/water interface. Genetic algorithm is implemented …

Specializing Interfaces For Citizen Science Segmentation Of Volumetric Data, Michelle Vaughan, Cindy Grimm, Ruth Sowell, Robert Pless, Stephen Kobourov

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Segmentation of 3D and time-varying volumetric (4D) image data is considered a time and resource intensive bottleneck in scientific endeavors. Automatic methods are becoming more reliable, but many data sets still require manual intervention. This can mainly be attributed to the characteristics of the image data not being amenable to automated methods, the existence of variations in or poor image quality, or the need for an expert to review and edit results from an automatic technique. Manually segmenting volumetric data is a challenge even for those more experienced. Understanding the 3D nature of the data and navigating through the 3D …

An Integrated Data Mining Approach To Real-Time Clinical Monitoring And Deterioration Warning, Yi Mao, Wenlin Chen, Yixin Chen, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Clinical study found that early detection and intervention are essential for preventing clinical deterioration in patients, for patients both in intensive care units (ICU) as well as in general wards but under real-time data sensing (RDS). In this paper, we develop an integrated data mining approach to give early deterioration warnings for patients under real-time monitoring in ICU and RDS. Existing work on mining real-time clinical data often focus on certain single vital sign and specific disease. In this paper, we consider an integrated data mining approach for general sudden deterioration warning. We synthesize a large feature set that includes …

Modulation Of Ly49a+ Natural Killer Cell Licensing By Major Histocompatibility Complex Class I Alleles, Anna Jonsson

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Natural killer: NK) cells are innate immune lymphocytes that react to cells lacking self-MHC: major histocompatibility complex) class I molecules, such as transformed or virally infected host cells and allogeneic bone marrow. This reactivity is mediated by inhibitory receptors for MHC class I that block the ability of activation receptors to stimulate NK cells. Since many NK cells lack receptors that recognize self-MHC, the inhibitory receptors also mediate a second function, termed NK cell licensing, to protect against autoreactivity. To become licensed, i.e. functionally competent to be triggered through its activation receptors, an NK cell must engage host MHC class …

Allosteric Modulation Of Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 5 As A Treatment For Pain, Michael Montana

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Metabotropic glutamate receptor 5: mGlu5) has been suggested to play a role in the development and maintenance of chronic pain. mGlu5 is expressed at synapses throughout the pain neuraxis where it is believed to modulate the function of ion channels that underlie nociceptive transduction and transmission. Injections of mGlu5 agonists cause hypersensitivity or nocifensive behavior when administered peripherally, intrathecally, and centrally. In addition, pharmacological antagonism of mGlu5 has been suggested to be analgesic in a variety of animal pain models. Unfortunately, the selectivity of antagonists used in these studies has been called into question, suggesting that at least some of …

Molecular Dissection Of Ia Channels In Cortical Pyramidal Neurons, Aaron Norris

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The rapidly activating and inactivating voltage-gated K+: Kv) current, I _A, is broadly expressed in neurons and is a key regulator of action potential repolarization, repetitive firing, back propagation: into dendrites) of action potentials, and responses to synaptic inputs. Interestingly, results from previous studies on a number of neuronal cell types, including hippocampal, cortical and spinal neurons, suggest that macroscopic I _A is composed of multiple components and that each component is likely encoded by distinct Kv channel α-subunits. The goals of the experiments presented here were to test this hypothesis and to determine the molecular identities of the …

Novel Roles For A-Type Lamins In Maintaining Genomic Stability, Abena Redwood

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

A-type lamins, key structural components of the nucleus, have been implicated in the maintenance of nuclear architecture and chromatin organization. Mutations in A-type lamins have been associated with defects in a number of nuclear processes, including DNA replication and repair, and gene transcription and silencing. In support of an important role for nuclear organization in pathogenesis, mutations in A-type lamins are associated with a wide variety of degenerative diseases which range from muscular dystrophies and lipodystrophies to premature aging syndromes. In addition, alterations in the expression of A-type lamins are associated with different cancers such as small cell lung carcinoma …

Identification Of Viral Determinants Of Murine Norovirus Pathogenesis, David Strong

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Human noroviruses are responsible for the majority of cases of epidemic non-bacterial gastroenteritis. Despite their importance as human pathogens, knowledge of the viral life cycle and host pathogenesis is limited due to the lack of practical models to study. In contrast, murine norovirus: MNV) has been a critical surrogate for the study of human noroviruses as it is the only member of this genus that establishes infection in a small animal model, can be grown in cell culture, and has a reverse genetics system. Noroviruses are divided into genogroups which can contain many viral strains. These viral strains can display …

Type B Presentation From Hel Protein In The Context Of Inflammation, Beverly Strong

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Peptides from the model antigen hen egg white lysozyme: HEL) are capable of binding MHC II in multiple conformations. Resting antigen presenting cells: APC) load peptide in early endosomal compartments where multiple conformations of a given pMHC pair are allowed, generating both type A and B pMHC complexes. Protein traffics to the late endosomal compartment and is loaded onto nascent MHC II in the presence of the editor H2-DM where type A pMHC conformers are selectively formed, generating exclusively type A pMHC from protein. Previous work demonstrated that type B pMHC are also generated when HEL is administered in vivo …

Fast Neuronal Imaging Using Objective Coupled Planar Illumination Microscopy, Diwakar Turaga

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Complex computations performed by the brain are produced by activities of neuronal populations. There is a large diversity in the functions of each individual neuron, and neuronal activities occur in the time scale of milliseconds. In order to gain a fundamental understanding of the neuronal populations, one has to measure activity of each neuron at high temporal resolution, while investigating enough neurons to encapsulate the neuronal diversity. Traditional neurotechniques such as electrophysiology and optical imaging are constrained by the number of neurons whose activities can be simultaneously measured or the speed of measuring such activities. We have developed a novel …

Developing High-Density Diffuse Optical Tomography For Neuroimaging, Brian White

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Clinicians who care for brain-injured patients and premature infants desire a bedside monitor of brain function. A decade ago, there was hope that optical imaging would be able to fill this role, as it combined fMRI's ability to construct cortical maps with EEG's portable, cap-based systems. However, early optical systems had poor imaging performance, and the momentum for the technique slowed. In our lab, we develop diffuse optical tomography: DOT), which is a more advanced method of performing optical imaging. My research has been to pioneer the in vivo use of DOT for advanced neuroimaging by: 1) quantifying the advantages …

Services For Adults With An Autism Spectrum Disorder, Paul T. Shattuck, Anne M. Roux, Laura E. Hudson, Julie L. Taylor, Matthew J. Maenner, Jean-Francois Trani

Brown School Faculty Publications

Objective: The need for useful evidence about services is increasing as larger numbers of children identified with an autism spectrum disorder age toward adulthood. The objective of this review was to characterize the topical and methodological aspects of research on services for supporting success in work, education, and social participation among adults with an autism spectrum disorder and to propose recommendations for moving this area of research forward. Method: Review of literature published in English from 2000 to 2010.Results: We found that the evidence base about services for adults with an ASD is underdeveloped and can be considered a field …

About Abortion: The Complications Of The Category, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

My subject this afternoon is abortion, a subject that for the last 40 years has embedded itself in American consciousness, American politics, and American culture with remarkable durability and reach. Looking only at the first decade of this century – from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, to use two presidential landmarks – abortion has been central to how Americans conceptualize, debate, and sometimes resolve all sorts of things: foreign aid, health care reform, high school sex education, and judicial nominations to the Supreme Court. Abortion has been at the heart of disputes over what products Walmart keeps on its …

Medical Terminology, Steelman Library, Todd Schraw Dr.

Syllabus Repository

No abstract provided.

In Vivo Evaluation Of Microfibrous Bioactive Borate Glasses For Use In Wound Healing, Yinan Lin

Masters Theses

"This project consisted of two parts focused on in vivo evaluation of microfibrous bioactive borate glasses for use in wound healing. Part one of the project involved subcutaneous implantation of two types of borate glass microfibers and 45S5 glass micro fibers in the dorsum of rats and histologically evaluating the soft tissues at the implant sites at 2 to 4 weeks post surgery. The primary objective was to assess the angiogenic response to the implanted materials. The 13-93B3 and 13-93B3Cu glass microfibers were found to significantly increase the microvascular density in soft tissue, an outcome that suggests these simple and …

African American Grandparents Raising Their Grandchildren In Rural Areas: A Phenomenological Investigation In South Georgia, Emmanuel Nii Okai Clottey

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Grandparents are increasingly raising their grandchildren in the United States of America. Those grandparents who live in rural areas face limited resources to help them raise their grandchildren. This phenomenological study is an investigation of the phenomenon of African American grandparents raising their grandchildren in Southeastern rural Georgia and the resources available to them. It looked at what it will take to start a faith-based or community-based support group for these Africa American grandparents raising their grandchildren in a rural setting. The concept of phenomenology served as the theoretical foundation for the study with social ecological model and social support …

Spiking Neural Networks Encoding And Decoding Algorithms For Time Series Estimation And System Identification, Sinchan Roychowdhury

Masters Theses

"Artificial Neural networks (ANNs) have increasingly been applied to different system identification, pattern recognition and function approximation problems. The predominantly used neural network architectures are the feedforward and feedback networks. Multilayer perceptrons and radial basis function networks are among the most commonly used feed-forward architecture neural networks and the Elman and Jordan networks are the most widely used recurrent neural networks. These networks are also called as second generation ANNs.

This thesis focuses on the third generation ANNs which are biologically inspired and operate on the same principles as the living neurons. These are also known as biologically inspired artificial …

The Colonization And Conservation Genetics Of The Rainbow Darter, Etheostoma Caeruleum, In Northeast Iowa, Dane Jonathan Davis

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The aim of this project was to study the population genetic structure of the rainbow darter, Etheostorna caeruleum, distributed in northeastern Iowa rivers. Overall, Iowa sustains a wide array of physical habitats and varying fish assemblage conditions that are influenced by climate and the geology of the landscape. The chief objective of the research was to increase knowledge of nongame species movement that can aid managers in conservation. This project addresses the question: What is the population genetic structure, amount of gene flow, and level of connectivity between populations of Etheostorna caeruleum distributed in northeast Iowa. Specimens were collected from …

Epistemic Vigilance: The Error Management Of Source Memory And Belief, Brian Bergstrom

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The studies reported here explore some of the cognitive contours of epistemic vigilance--that is, how the mind adaptively tracks and monitors information. These studies ask how the mind considers the source of new information when making epistemic judgments. Four experiments investigate the role of source information in modulating the "truth bias": an automatic tendency to presume new information is true). An evolutionary hypothesis is advanced: that a "support bias" exists for sources with special coalitional relevance: e.g., a best friend) that interacts with the truth bias to produce supportive patterns of recall that are unique to that source. Results partially …

Cell Signaling Components Of The Drosophila Circadian Pacemaker, Laura B. Duvall

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Daily rhythms in physiology are conserved throughout evolution. The molecular oscillations that underlie rhythms have been well characterized and are required in a specific set of pacemaker cells in the Drosophila brain for locomotor rhythms. These cells are divided into distinct subgroups and evidence suggests that subgroups of pacemaker cells may control distinct components of circadian behavior although these assignments are not rigid, and depend critically upon environmental conditions. Plasticity in the neural circuits controlling circadian behavior allow the animal flexibility in responding to fluctuations in environmental inputs, for example changing day length over seasons.

Intercellular communication between diverse clock …

Applying Neural Network Models To Predict Recurrent Maltreatment In Child Welfare Cases With Static And Dynamic Risk Factors, Jennifer Marie Jolley

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Risk assessment in child welfare has a long tradition of being based on models that assume the likelihood of recurrent maltreatment is a linear function of its various predictors: Gambrill & Shlonsky, 2000). Despite repeated testing of many child, parent, family, maltreatment incident, and service delivery variables, no consistent set of findings have emerged to describe the set of risk and protective factors that best account for increases and decreases in the likelihood of recurrent maltreatment. Shifts in predictors' statistical significance, strength, and direction of effects coupled with evidence of risk assessment models' poor predictive accuracy have led to questions …

The Establishment And Regulation Of Melanocyte Stem Cells In Zebrafish, Thomas O'Reilly-Pol

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Stem cells are the cells that regulate the growth and repair of tissues in adult organisms. In this thesis, I sought to develop methodologies to dissect the function and regulation of stem cells during zebrafish melanocyte regeneration.

In the first part of this thesis, I develop a drug based method of ablating melanocytes in the adult zebrafish body. The drug is a copper chelator, neocuproine: NCP) that I show causes death specifically of melanocytes in adult, which allows for regeneration from melanocyte stem cells: MSCs).

In the next part of the thesis, I employ clonal lineage statistical analyses to study …

The Physiological Effects Of Phycobilisome Antenna Modification On The Cyanobacterium Synechocystis Sp. Pcc 6803, Lawrence Edward Page

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Phycobilisomes are the large, membrane extrinsic light harvesting antenna of cyanobacteria. They function to absorb light energy and deliver it efficiently to the photosystems, thereby increasing photosynthetic light absorption. Wild type phycobilisomes in the model organism Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803: Synechocystis 6803) consist of a tricylindrical core from which six rods radiate. The colored phycobiliproteins are held together by colorless linker polypeptides.

Several phycobilisome truncation mutants have been generated in Synechocystis 6803. The first, CB, has truncated phycobilisome rods; the second, CK, has only the phycobilisome core; and the third, PAL, has no phycobilisomes at all. Together, these mutants construct …

Improving Thermodynamic Models Of Transcription By Combining Chip And Expression Measurements Of Synthetic Promoters, Robert D. Zeigler

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Regulation of gene expression is a fundamental process in biology. Accurate mathematical models of the relationship between regulatory sequence and observed expression would advance our understanding of biology.

I developed ReLoS, a regulatory logic simulator, to explore mathematical frameworks for describing the relationship between regulatory sequence and observed expression and to explore methods of learning combinatorial regulatory rules from expression data. ReLoS is a flexible simulator allowing a variety of formalisms to be applied. ReLoS was used to explore the question of how complex rules of combinatorial transcriptional regulation must be to explain the complexity of transcriptional regulation observed in …

The Human Cytomegalovirus Protein Pul21a Binds To And Degrades Cyclin A Via The Proteasome, Nicolas Caffarelli

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Intestinal Microbiota In Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Seth Bloom

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Inflammatory bowel disease: IBD) arises from complex interactions of genetic, environmental, and microbial factors. The intestinal microbiota is crucial for IBD induction and complex shifts in microbiota composition occur in IBD, but disease has not been consistently associated with presence or absence of a specific microbe. It is thus controversial whether fulfilling Koch's postulates for individual bacterial species is relevant to IBD and whether disease-associated alterations in microbial colonization are predictive of underlying etiology. Resolving these controversies has been challenging due to paucity of animal models with rapid disease onset, experimental reliance on gnotobiotic animals, and difficulty specifically isolating many …

From Bacteria To Human: Biophysical Studies Of Inward Rectifying Potassium Channels, Wayland Cheng

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Inward rectifying potassium: Kir) channels are important in regulating cellular excitability in organs such as the heart, brain and pancreas. Prokaryotic KirBac channels are structurally similar to eukaryotic Kir channels, but distantly related and of unknown function. The goal of this thesis has been to investigate the functional properties of KirBac1.1 and to relate these findings to eukaryotic Kir channels. The approach was to use recombinantly-expressed, purified K+ channels--KirBac1.1, KcsA, Kir2.1 and Kir2.2--in order to integrate findings from functional studies, using liposomal flux assays and patch-clamping, with high-resolution crystal structures. By reconstituting KirBac1.1 into giant liposomes for patch-clamping, I show …

Investigation Of The Structure Of Alkyne Self-Assembled Monolayers On Gold And The Development Of Matrix-Enhanced Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Methods, Jennifer Dertinger

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Characterization of thin films is critical to the understanding of many technological and biological processes. The focus of this dissertation is to develop methods to characterize very low concentration species present on surfaces. A reflection adsorption infrared spectroscopy: RAIRS) system was constructed and tested. The instrument comprises an Fourier transform infrared: FTIR) spectrometer, an optical pathway and a vacuum chamber. The RAIRS system is designed to investigate in situ the interaction of vapor-deposited metals and gases, such as CVD precursors, with organic thin films, and so a vacuum chamber is required. To accommodate the vacuum chamber, an external IR optical …

Joint Functions Of Mett-10 And Dynein In The Caenorhabditis Elegans Germ Line, Maia Dorsett

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

During normal development as well as in diseased states such as cancer, extracellular "niches" often provide cues to proximal cells and activate intracellular pathways. Activation of such signaling pathways in turn instructs cellular proliferation and differentiation. In the C.elegans gonad, GLP-1/Notch signaling instructs germ line stem cells to self renew through mitotic cell division. As germ cells progressively move out of the niche, they differentiate by entering meiosis and eventually form gametes. Using this model system, I uncovered a cooperative role for the METT-10 putative methyltransferase and the dynein motor complex in regulating the balance between germ cell proliferation and …