Digital Commons Network^™

Metformin Arrests Growth And Induces Apoptosis Of Neuroblastoma Cells, Nadia Al-Sammarraie

Theses and Dissertations

Neuroblastoma is one of the most common solid neoplasms in children, which affects sympathetic neurons with a wide range of genetic abnormalities, especially MYCN amplification, a molecular marker of poor prognosis. Despite advance therapy, still the mortality rate for advance disease is high with frequent relapse and resistance to cytotoxic therapy with evidence of p53 mutation. Metformin, an oral hypoglycemic medication, is a relatively safe and cost effective drug with wide clinical applications, mainly for treatment of Type 2 diabetes. Recent studies have showed promising anticancer effect of metformin on various cancer types, especially on p53 mutant cells. In our …

A Soul Composed Of Harmonies: George Herbert's Life, Writings, And Choral Settings Of His English Poetry, Benjamin Todd Ebner

Theses and Dissertations

George Herbert’s poetry is among the greatest religious poetry written in the English language. His introspective and nuanced understanding of the human soul and his beautiful style of writing have earned him his place among the great poets. His catalogue is filled with poems ready to be set to music, and dozens of them have been. However, there is no document that seeks to gather an annotated list of these compositions in one place. Further, while a few of these compositions are performed often, there are dozens of other worthy compositions that should be heard on a more wide and …

Innovation Among Georgian Journalism Educators: A Network Analysis Perspective, Ana Keshelashvili

Theses and Dissertations

Rapid developments in technology in recent years have disrupted the media’s traditional role as a main informer for citizens. The changes have challenged journalism educators worldwide, pushing them to innovate and experiment. One purpose of this dissertation is to examine adoption of innovations by journalism educators in Georgia, a small post-Soviet country with partly free media and lack of professional outlets, that has been and still is a beneficiary of Western aid for media development. Employing innovation diffusion theory and the network analysis perspective, this dissertation uses a census of journalism educators and journalism program leaders in Georgia to understand …

Gestational Weight Gain, Pregnancy Outcomes, And Use Of Perinatal Health Services, Lujing Zhan

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three studies that were undertaken to better understand 1) the role of gestational weight gain (GWG) during early pregnancy on subsequent blood pressure changes and the risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH), 2) the causal effect of GWG in both early and mid-late pregnancy on the subtypes of preterm births, and 3) the impact of personal capital on the use of perinatal health services (i.e., prenatal care use and preconception care counseling). The first two studies were based on the data from the 1988 National Maternal and Infant Health Survey and the third study employed the data …

Toward A Theory Of Safe Passage: Agentic Practices Of Women Writers Who Teach, Lillian Gordon Reeves

Theses and Dissertations

Past studies show that narrative is an effective tool for guiding teachers to develop teacher identity, to recognize their practical knowledge, and to engage in teacher transformation, especially during initial teacher training and the early years of their career. Consequently, other researchers have identified how narrative studies inform what we know about teachers’ identities, their practical knowledge, and their transformations during initial training and early career teaching. However, we do not know how narrative functions in the experiences of teachers beyond initial teacher training and early career teaching. This study intends to fill this gap in the research. In this …

Determinants Of Cross-Country Differences In The Equity Risk Premium: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, William John Arant

Theses and Dissertations

The equity risk premium (ERP) is a critical factor in financial decision-making and allocating capital for the future. The ERP can indicate the aggregate risk in an economy and thereby the price agents attach to that risk. Understanding the factors that determine ERPs across countries is important for understanding investors’ actions in a globalized environment. This study will focus on long-run measures of the ERP across countries while applying four common measures. Variations in the size of the ERP across countries and across measures will be examined. Then, country-specific determinants of the long-run ERP will be investigated. These determinants include …

Essays On Battle Clusters In Internal Armed Conflicts And Insurgencies: Concept, Causes And Consequences, Chifeng Liu

Theses and Dissertations

With the purpose to re-conceptualize the intensity of internal armed conflicts, I argue that the characteristics such as location, scale and duration of “major battlefields,” i.e. the spatio-temporal clusters of combat events are important in the evaluation of impact of modern civil wars and insurgencies. I start with elaborating and constructing a new concept of conflict magnitude with battle clusters using up-to-date geo-referenced data and spatial statistic methods. In the second article, I first explain the location and duration of major battlefields. The findings indicate that an area with multiple non-state armed groups (NSAGs) is more likely to become main …

Living On The Moon: Women, Home Making, And The House After World War Ii In Shirley Jackson’S We Have Always Lived In The Castle, Leslie Dennis

Theses and Dissertations

In my thesis, I concentrate on Shirley Jackson, her novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and women’s place in post-World War II American society. To start, I introduce Jackson and her role in literary history, the housewife writer in the 1950s and 60s, and magazine culture. Then I move to a historical perspective of the 1950s and propaganda during the atomic war era. I focus my attention on how government literature worked to contain women in the home and control sexuality and gender roles. Following my discussion of domesticity, I concentrate on the history of the Gothic novel …

The Poetic Works Of Charlotte Smith: Philosophy, Sympathy, And Forging Community, Jessica Danielle Castillo

Theses and Dissertations

This work will focus on Charlotte Smith’s poetic works and how, over the course of her entire poetic career (the late eighteenth century/early nineteenth century), she exhibits a concrete sense of a poetic ethos regarding sympathy in her writing. I seek to account for the overwhelming focus on suffering subjects by illuminating her view of the relation between poetry and sympathy for others. I will also place her within a history of writers and philosophers who examined the epistemological and practical nature of feeling, sympathy, and emotional connection among human beings. Smith feels that poetry renders suffering visible to others, …

Science Fairs Before Sputnik: Adolescent Scientific Culture In Contemporary America, Sarah Michel Scripps

Theses and Dissertations

"Science Fairs before Sputnik: Adolescent Scientific Culture in Contemporary America" traces the formation and evolution of science fairs in America, focusing on the ways in which adolescents established communities of practice by engaging in these competitions. Over the course of the twentieth century, generations of American children conducted their first experiments by crafting science fair projects. The dissertation evaluates this understudied phenomenon against the backdrop of American fascinations and fears of science and evolving notions of adolescence. It argues that science fairs were central to shaping an adolescent scientific culture in the United States during the early to mid twentieth …

Piezotransistive Iii-V Nitride Microcantilever Based Mems/Nems Sensor For Photoacoustic Spectroscopy Of Chemicals, Abdul Hafiz Ibne Talukdar

Theses and Dissertations

Microcantilevers are highly attractive as transducers for detecting chemicals, explosives, and biological molecules due to their high sensitivity, micro-scale dimensions, and low power consumption. Though optical transduction of the mechanical movement of the microcantilevers into an electrical signal is widely practiced, there is a continuous thrust to develop alternative transduction methods that are more conducive to the development of compact miniaturized sensors. Piezoelectric and piezoresistive transduction methods are two of the most popular ones that have been utilized to develop miniaturized sensor systems. Piezoelectric cantilevers, which are commonly made of PZT film, have demonstrated very high sensitivity; however, they suffer …

Grand Prix: A Trainer's Guide To Show Ring Success, Lauren Rebecca Allen

Theses and Dissertations

This is a memoir of my experiences as a horse lover and professional horse trainer, and the startling parallels I discovered in the Los Angeles equestrian and entertainment industries. Both worlds revolve around commodifying something that is rooted in beauty but somehow gets bruised in the process of spinning art into business. I found that my taste for romance and adventure spurred me to new heights and simultaneously crashed against reality. In pursuit of the big prizes, I was willing to slowly sell off the things I cared about most to get what I wanted, until I woke up to …

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms In Dna Repair And Oxidative Stress Genes, And Their Interaction With Antioxidants On Prostate Cancer Aggressiveness, Samuel Antwi

Theses and Dissertations

Prostate cancer is the leading invasive malignancy and the second most common cause of cancer death among American men. Despite compelling evidence that oxidative stress, ineffective DNA damage repair, and habitually low antioxidants intake may act in tandem to influence prostate carcinogenesis, few studies have examined gene-diet interactions involving these risk factors. Even fewer studies have examined such interactions in relation to prostate cancer aggressiveness. This study investigated whether single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in DNA repair- and oxidative stress-related genes modulated associations between antioxidant intake and prostate cancer aggressiveness. We utilized data from the North Carolina-Louisiana Prostate Cancer Project (PCaP) …

A Three-Dimensional-Engineered Matrix To Study The Microenvironment Of Cancer Stem Cells, Samaneh Kamali Sarvestani

Theses and Dissertations

Maintenance of cancer stem cells (CSCs) is regulated by their microenvironment. As cancer cells are affected by many factors in their microenvironment, a major challenge is to isolate the effect of a specific factor on CSCs while keeping other factors unchanged. We developed a synthetic inert 3D Poly Ethylene Glycol Di-Acrylate (PEGDA) gel culture system as a unique tool to study the effect of microenvironmental factors on CSCs response. Synthetic hydrogels provide the flexibility to design three-dimensional (3D) matrices to isolate and study individual factors in the tumor microenvironment. The first objective of this work was to investigate the effect …

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder And Academic Performance: Student Engagement In The Classroom, Emily B. Mancil

Theses and Dissertations

Youth with Attention/Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have many obstacles to positive development (including difficulties in school settings) and are in need of support. However, few studies have focused on the ways in which positive factors, such as student engagement (SE), may be beneficial for this population to identify strategies for supporting their strengths. Although many studies have examined academic and behavioral aspects of SE, few studies have examined the psychological (i.e., teacher-student relationships, peer support for learning, family support for learning) and cognitive (i.e., control and relevance of school work, future aspirations and goals, extrinsic motivation) sub-components of engagement. The current …

Taxonomy, Host-Plant Associations And Phylogeny Of African Crotalaria-Feeding Seed Beetles (Coleoptera, Chrysomelidae, Bruchinae): The Conicobruchus Strangulatus (Fåhraeus) Species Group, Bruno P. Le Ru, Alex Delobel, Zoltán György, Gwenaëlle Genson, Gael J. Kergoat

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

A small group of six morphologically related seed beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Bruchinae) belonging to the Conicobruchus genus is reviewed. Species in this group for which host-plants are known feed on various species of Crotalaria (Fabaceae, Crotalarieae). Here we provide diagnoses and a dichotomous key for all six species. The following synonymies are proposed: Conicobruchus cicatricosus (Fåhraeus, 1839) (= Bruchus cicatricosus pallidioripennis Pic, 1941) syn. nov.; Conicobruchus strangulatus (Fåhraeus, 1839) (= Bruchus hargreavesi Pic, 1933) syn. nov. The corresponding Conicobruchus strangulatus species group is hereby designated. New host-plant data are also included, which correspond to the results of recent collections of …

The Influence Of Parent Portal Access On Student Efficacy And Parental Involvement, Shannon D. Dries

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

This study examined the influence of Parent Portal access on student achievement and parental involvement defined as home-to-school communication. The population was students in sixth grade in a suburban district in New Jersey. Academic achievement was defined through GPA at the end of sixth grade and performance on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK) in both Math and Language Arts Literacy in Grade 6. Attendance was measured using attendance rates. Parental involvement was measured by the number of parent logins to Parent Portal. Multiple regression analyses, backward entry method, were used to determine the influence of …

Ultrasound-Mediated Optical Imaging And Focusing In Scattering Media, Yuta Suzuki

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Because of its non-ionizing and molecular sensing nature, light has been an attractive tool in biomedicine. Scanning an optical focus allows not only high-resolution imaging but also manipulation and therapy. However, due to multiple photon scattering events, conventional optical focusing using an ordinary lens is limited to shallow depths of one transport mean free path (lt'), which corresponds to approximately 1 mm in human tissue.

To overcome this limitation, ultrasonic modulation (or encoding) of diffuse light inside scattering media has enabled us to develop both deep-tissue optical imaging and focusing techniques, namely, ultrasound-modulated optical tomography (UOT) and time-reversed ultrasonically encoded …

A Four-Dimensional Image Reconstruction Framework For Pet Under Arbitrary Geometries, Aswin John Mathews

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a functional imaging modality with applications ranging from the treatment of cancer, studying neurological diseases and disease models. Virtual-Pinhole PET technology improves the image quality in terms of resolution and contrast recovery. The technology calls for having a detector with smaller crystals placed near a region of interest in a conventional whole-body PET scanner. The improvement is from the higher spatial sampling of the imaging area near the detector. A prototype half-ring PET insert built to study head-and-neck cancer imaging was extended to breast cancer imaging. We have built a prototype half-ring PET insert for …

Metabolic Engineering Of Cyanobacteria For Photosynthetic Production Of Drop-In Liquid Fuels, Bertram Michael Berla

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Cyanobacteria are oxygenic phototrophs with great potential as hosts for renewable fuel and chemical production. They grow very quickly (compared with plants) and can use sunlight for energy and CO2 as a carbon source (unlike yeast or E. coli). While cyanobacteria have been engineered to make many chemicals that are native and non-native parts of their metabolism, this work is concerned with the production of heptadecane in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. Heptadecane is in a class of natural products produced by all cyanobacteria, but in quantities insufficient for industrialization. Towards this future goal, we have built enabling systems for the …

Origin Of Maternal Age Effect In Congenital Heart Disease Risk For Offspring, Claire Elaine Schulkey

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Increasing maternal age is widely acknowledged to lead to greater likelihood of pregnancy complications and congenital abnormalities, but the basis of this effect has not been well studied. Often dismissed as the product of oocyte ageing, the mechanistic basis of this maternal age effect is likely more complex.Congenital heart disease is a classic complex disease with multiple genetic and environmental modifiers, including maternal age. Maternal ageing is a known risk-factor in humans, and has been shown to exist in an Nkx2-5 haploinsufficient mouse model for the disease. This mouse model's maternal age risk is dependent upon strain background, with C57BL/6N …

Kinetic Analysis And Inhibition Studies Of Iron-Dependent Histone Demethylases, Barbara Gordon Cascella

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The research presented herein focuses on the kinetics and inhibition of the KDM4 subfamily of Jumonji C (JmjC) domain-containing histone demethylases (HDMs). Belonging to the larger class of alpha-ketoglutarate (alpha-KG)-dependent, non-heme iron monooxygenases, the JmjC-HDMs remove methyl groups from mono-, di-, and tri-methylated histone lysine residues through an Fe(IV)-oxo-catalyzed hydroxylation reaction. JmjC-HDMs have been found to play integral roles in the maintenance of genomic integrity as well as in the regulation of transcription. Three KDM4 members were studied: the mixed H3K9/H3K36 demethylases KDM4A and KDM4C, and the pure H3K9 demethylase KDM4E. KDM4C is a hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1) target gene …

Childhood Poverty And Psychological Health Of Youths In Hong Kong: Mentoring As A Social Capital Intervention, Hor Yan Lai

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Considering that one out of five youths live in poverty in Hong Kong, and poverty is found to have a negative impact on youths' psychological well-being, this dissertation proposes mentoring as a social capital intervention to improve the psychological health of these young people, both who are locally born and who immigrated from Mainland China. In this dissertation, mentoring is defined as a social capital intervention that changes the social resources available to youths living in poverty, and such changes enhance young people's positive psychological outcomes. Based on the social capital theory, poverty-related and psychological theories, three aims were formulated. …

The Impacts Of Climate Change On The World’S Economic, Political, And Demographic Structures, Dino Kanlic

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Climate change will have negative impacts on the political, economic, and demographic structures of society. These include a rise in ethnic tensions in the Indian Sub Continent, massive immigration to Europe, regional economic collapse and political destabilization in Africa, the inundation of island nations and economic losses in the Americas among many other changes which will combine to destabilize humanity for generations. International affairs has failed to come up with a solution because global warming is a universal prevention focused problem that trades short term gains for long term losses. Global warming will be solved by the onset of grid …

Infant Mortality: Cross Section Study Of The United State, With Emphasis On Education, Daniel C. Sheets-Poling

Student Research – Stevenson Center

On the surface infant mortality is usually thought of as just a unfortunate part of life in what can happen to an individual family, but infant mortality is part of the factors that affect social capital, which can lead back to overall trust in a community. When that trust starts to wither within a community, economic activity will be affected as community members will not behave as they usually do within their given economic boundaries. While social capital is not solely affected by infant mortality, it does show what type of health status an area has. As a community, state, …

Coral Spawning In The Gulf Of Oman And Relationship To Latitudinal Variation In Spawning Season In The Northwest Indian Ocean, E. J. Howells, D. Abrego, G. O. Vaughan, J. A. Burt

All Works

Despite a wealth of information on sexual reproduction in scleractinian corals, there are regional gaps in reproductive records. In the Gulf of the Oman in the Arabian Sea, reproductive timing was assessed in four common species of broadcast spawning corals using field surveys of gamete maturity and aquarium observations of spawning activity. The appearance of mature gametes within the same month for Acropora downingi, A. hemprichii, Cyphastrea microphthalma and Platygyra daedalea (≥ 75% of colonies, n = 848) indicated a synchronous and multi-specific spawning season. Based on gamete disappearance and direct observations, spawning predominantly occurred during April in 2013 (75- …

The Impact Of Documentation Status On The Educational Attainment Experiences Of Undocumented Hispanic/Latino Students, Brittanie Alexandria Roberts

Dissertations and Theses

The issue of undocumented immigration has recently taken center-stage in the media and national politics in the United States. A large population of undocumented youth grows up with legal access to public education through high school, following the Supreme Court decision of Plyler vs. Doe, but faces legal and economic barriers to post-secondary education. Following high school, undocumented Hispanic/Latino youth legal protections end, greatly limiting chances for upward mobility through traditional post-secondary education pipelines. In some cases, knowledge of future barriers to post-secondary education leads to a decline in educational motivation.

The current political atmosphere makes this study a bit …

Continued Disparities In School Facilities: Analyzing Brown V. Board Of Education’S Singular Approach To Quality Education, Corsica D. Smith

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

An Appeal For Change: Eliminating The Second Bite At The Apple In Tennessee Juvenile Cases, April Meldrum, Laura Hash

Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, & Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Medical School Watercooler Newsletter - December 14, 2014, Lindsey Lyle

Watercooler Newsletter

This is the December 14, 2014 edition of the Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine's newsletter - Watercooler.

Contents Include

• Internal Medicine Residents Participate in Toy Drive
• Holiday Greetings from USA Physicians Group
• Retirement Reception Honors Judy Burnham
• Dr. Gupta Presents at Radiologic Society of America