Digital Commons Network^™

Tracking The Movement Of Pseudomonas Syringae Strains- On The Adaxial Leaf Surface Of Arabidopsis Thaliana, Vincent Nguyen

2014 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Detection of population density is a form of communication for certain phytobacteria that usually involves the association of small diffusible chemical signals, particularly N-acyl homoserine lactones. It is pondered whether or not this molecule and the phytotoxin, coronatine, play a significant role in the directional motility of the wild type (Pst DC3000) and mutant strains (Pst DC3118, Pst DB29, and Pst psy/IR-) of Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato on the adaxial surface of Arabidopsis thaliana leaves. A leaf assay and in vivo experimentation by spotting a set of leaves for each bacteria and making an imprint on an agar plate following …

Interactions Of Protist And Bacteria: A Mathematical Model, Matthew Le

2014 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Relationships between interacting organisms generally have several key variables that describe the dynamics of their specific relationship. And the results from those symbiotic relationships are important in that both species are affected in a significant, observable way. With this in mind, it is found that the characteristic actions of each of the two species affect the population size of both species. This effect, caused by the species' actions and interactions is qualitatively noted and is further interpreted and quantized. The complicated relationship between a predator and its prey is broken down and analyzed to give better insight to the projected …

Step Outside The Door: An Ethnography Of Homeschooling In North Texas, Hannah Keller

2014 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Homeschooling is now recognized as a rapidly growing and, for some, a preferred method of imparting grade-level education to American students. It is important to note that homeschooling impacts and shapes family and community, thus providing a unique perspective on anthropological considerations of modernity, education, and subculture. Despite this, few studies have explained the growth in this form of pedagogy. This paper attempts to fill this gap through an ethnographic study of homeschoolers in North Texas. In particular, this study focuses on the reasons behind homeschooling and the cultural perceptions of homeschoolers in North Texas. Research for this project is …

The Linguistic Mechanisms Of Knock-Knock Jokes, Jared Weide

2014 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

Humor analysts have not yet accounted for the longstanding popularity of knock-knock jokes, a common and recognizable joke format. A better understanding of the linguistic mechanisms behind these jokes can provide opportunities in fields such as education, technology, and, of course, entertainment. In order to analyze the processes involved, a corpus of jokes was compiled from seven online sources, with a total of 132 different knock-knock jokes collected. A taxonomy of the mechanisms that drive these jokes was created by identifying the linguistic features that generate humor in each. The study found that the pun or alternate meaning at the …

Suppression Of Invasion And Metastasis Of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Lines By Pharmacological Or Genetic Inhibition Of Slug Activity., Giovanna Ferrari-Amorotti, Claudia Chiodoni, Fei Shen, Sara Cattelani, Angela Rachele Soliera, Gloria Manzotti, Giulia Grisendi, Massimo Dominici, Francesco Rivasi, Mario Paolo Colombo, Alessandro Fatatis, Bruno Calabretta

Department of Cancer Biology Faculty Papers

Most triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) exhibit gene expression patterns associated with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a feature that correlates with a propensity for metastatic spread. Overexpression of the EMT regulator Slug is detected in basal and mesenchymal-type TNBCs and is associated with reduced E-cadherin expression and aggressive disease. The effects of Slug depend, in part, on the interaction of its N-terminal SNAG repressor domain with the chromatin-modifying protein lysine demethylase 1 (LSD1); thus, we investigated whether tranylcypromine [also known as trans-2-phenylcyclopropylamine hydrochloride (PCPA) or Parnate], an inhibitor of LSD1 that blocks its interaction with Slug, suppresses the migration, invasion, and metastatic …

“The Personal Has Become Political”: A Secondary Teacher’S Perceptions Of Her Body In The Classroom, Christine A. Mallozzi

Curriculum and Instruction Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a secondary English teacher considered her body a personal and political matter within her professional settings. Discourse analysis of the participant’s narrative evidences that women teachers are pressured to present certain feminine and heterosexual bodies and present a similar personal life within their pedagogy. The risk in not following suit is being pushed out of the profession, a matter that can be problematic especially when a teacher undergoes personal changes counter to professional expectations. Teacher education responsibility in preparing teacher candidates for a variable professional trajectory is noted.

Factors That Affect Attachment Between The Employed Mother And The Child, Infancy To Two Years, Naureen Kassamali, Salma Amin Rattani

School of Nursing & Midwifery

To explore a mother's feeling of attachment and the affects her working status on the attachment relationship with her child, upon ethical clearance from the institutional ethics committee, in-depth interviews of nine participants were conducted. Mothers enrolled were those who resumed the employment within the first year of post-delivery and were having a child up to two years of age. Results revealed that maternal employment itself does not enhance or deteriorate attachment with the child. It is combinations of factors that revolve around it impact on their bond. Overall, maternal integration or the balance of the dual roles of employment …

Gossypiboma: An Unrecognized And Under-Reported Problem In Pakistan, Abdul Rehman, Noor-Ul-Ain Baloch, Muhammad Awais

Department of Biological & Biomedical Sciences

No abstract provided.

Genealib Archive 2014-12, Genealib

GENEALIB Archive

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Underlying Factors And The Relationship Of Hiv/Aids Among African Americans In Shreveport, Louisiana And Surrounding Areas, Frederick T. Ellis Sr.

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The significance of this study was to evaluate multiple underlying factors among African Americans in Shreveport, Louisiana and the influence of those factors on their relationship with HIV/AIDS. This is extremely important for two very reasons. First, in the past 30 years since the initial presentation of HIV/AIDS into society, a shift in the demographic of the infected individuals has resulted in African Americans becoming the new face of HIV/AIDS in the United States. Secondly, African Americans are only 12 to 13% of the United States population, but they represent more than 45% of all new HIV/AIDS cases reported annually. …

Online Experiences Of Adolescents With Asperger’S Syndrome And High-Functioning Autism, Shin Ruu Ko

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the online experiences of 10 adolescents with Asperger's Disorder (AD). This study was exploratory in nature and employed a qualitative approach. Three research questions guided this study: (a) What are the positive and negative online experiences of youth with ASD?, (b) What are the perceptions of online interactions in comparison to offline interactions held by youth with ASD?, and (c) What experiences with social connectedness and cyberbullying do youth with ASD have as a result of Internet usage? Four themes and 14 subthemes emerged during the process of analyzing the data: (a) Benefits of Internet Usage (Social, …

Listening To Shells And Discovering A Lost World; Epiphanic Experiences At The Museum, Catherine M.C. Closet-Crane

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper aims to entertain the possibilities for analysis, interpretation, and learning offered by evocative autoethnographic texts for LAM and LIS user studies. The focus in this paper is on storytelling as autoethnographic writing. To illustrate facets of a particular cultural experience and start a conversation about the transformative power of museum objects as documents, the story told in this paper recounts a series of events and experiences from the life of two visitors after their museum encounter with an engraved shell artifact from the archeological site of Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma.

Ospreys (Pandion Haliaetus) In The 21st Century: Populations, Migration, Management, And Research Priorities, Richard O. Bierregaard, Alan F. Poole, Brian E. Washburn

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus) are remarkable raptors. Their choice of conspicuous nest sites and surprising tolerance for nesting in nearly intimate association with humans render them an iconic piece of aquatic ecosystems in both marine and freshwater habitats across the northern hemisphere and much of Australasia (Australia to Indonesia). Wintering in Central and South America and Africa as well, they are among the few truly cosmopolitan birds of prey. Ecologically, they might be termed generalized specialists. They are, with exceptions so rare that they can safely be ignored, obligate fish eaters. From their talons to the tip of their …

Does Health Insurance Have Influence On Obesity?, Wenyao Zhou

All Theses

Obesity in the United States has been continuing increasing and cited as a major health issue in recent decades. Many researchers have studied its socio-economic cause, but very few studies center on the potential influence that health insurance has on obesity. In our common sense, health insurance reduces the money that we pay for health care and makes many treatments' cost affordable which we may choose to give up originally due to our financial situation. However, everything has two sides. The benefits from insurance also can lead people to change their choices and behaviors. As an insured, people may take …

Relationship Between Peel Force, Opening Force, And Burst Force For A Semi-Rigid Cup And Lid, Pre- And Post-Retort, Raj Navalakha

All Theses

This research determines if there is any relationship between the peel force, the opening force and the burst force for a semi-rigid cup and lid system, for pre- and post-retort conditions. It also compares the relationship (regression lines) between these forces pre- and post-retort. These seal results were studied by varying the sealing parameters of dwell time and temperature while keeping the pressure constant. Polypropylene cups and a peelable barrier retort lidding were used in this study. As compared to past research, a different peel testing technique was used to measure the peel and the opening force. The entire lid …

Full Issue, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Alumni Earning Doctorates, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

News From The Bioconductor Project, The Bioconductor Team

The R Journal

The Bioconductor project provides tools for the analysis and comprehension of high throughput genomic data. The 934 software packages available in Bioconductor can be viewed at http://bioconductor.org/packages/release/. Navigate packages using ‘biocViews’ terms and title search. Each package has an html page with a description, links to vignettes, reference manuals, and usage statistics. Start using Bioconductor and R version 3.1

Conference Report Polish Academic R User Meeting, Maciej Beręsewicz, Alicja Szabelska, Joanna Zyprych-Walczak, Łukasz Wawrowski

The R Journal

The first national conference “Polish Academic R User Meeting” (PAZUR) was held at the Poznan University of Economics from October 15–17, 2014. The organizers of the conference were the Department of Statistics at the Poznan University of Economics (PUE), the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Methods at the Poznan University of Life Sciences (PULS) and SKN Estymator, the students scientific association that resides at the Department of Statistics at the Poznan University of Economics. The honorary patronage of the conference took Professor Emil Panek, Dean of the Faculty of Informatics and Electronic Economy PUE and Professor Wiesław Koziara, Dean of …

Qmethod: A Package To Explore Human Perspectives Using Q Methodology, Aiora Zabala

The R Journal

Q is a methodology to explore the distinct subjective perspectives that exist within a group. It is used increasingly across disciplines. The methodology is semi-qualitative and the data are analysed using data reduction methods to discern the existing patterns of thought. This package is the first to perform Q analysis in R, and it provides many advantages to the existing software: namely, it is fully cross-platform, the algorithms can be transparently examined, it provides results in a clearly structured and tabulated form ready for further exploration and modelling, it produces a graphical summary of the results, and it generates a …

Sgof: An R Package For Multiple Testing Problems, Irene Castro-Conde, Jacob De Uña-Álvarez

The R Journal

In this paper we present a new R package called sgof for multiple hypothesis testing. The principal aim of this package is to implement SGoF-type multiple testing methods, known to be more powerful than the classical false discovery rate (FDR) and family-wise error rate (FWER) based methods in certain situations, particularly when the number of tests is large. This package includes Bi nomial and Conservative SGoF and the Bayesian and Beta-Binomial SGoF multiple testing procedures, which are adaptations of the original SGoF method to the Bayesian setting and to possibly correlated tests, respectively. The sgof package also implements the Benjamini-Hochberg …

Mvn: An R Package For Assessing Multivariate Normality, Selcuk Korkmaz, Dincer Goksuluk, Gokmen Zararsiz

The R Journal

Assessing the assumption of multivariate normality is required by many parametric multivariate statistical methods, such as MANOVA, linear discriminant analysis, principal component analysis, canonical correlation, etc. It is important to assess multivariate normality in order to proceed with such statistical methods. There are many analytical methods proposed for checking multivariate normality. However, deciding which method to use is a challenging process, since each method may give different results under certain conditions. Hence, we may say that there is no best method, which is valid under any condition, for normality checking. In addition to numerical results, it is very useful to …

Ngspatial: A Package For Fitting The Centered Autologistic And Sparse Spatial Generalized Linear Mixed Models For Areal Data, John Hughes

The R Journal

Two important recent advances in areal modeling are the centered autologistic model and the sparse spatial generalized linear mixed model (SGLMM), both of which are reparameterizations of traditional models. The reparameterizations improve regression inference by alleviating spatial confounding, and the sparse SGLMM also greatly speeds computing by reducing the dimension of the spatial random effects. Package ngspatial (’ng’ = non-Gaussian) provides routines for fitting these new models. The package supports composite likelihood and Bayesian inference for the centered autologistic model, and Bayesian inference for the sparse SGLMM.

Coordinate-Based Meta-Analysis Of Fmri Studies With R, Andrea Stocco

The R Journal

This paper outlines how to conduct a simple meta-analysis of neuroimaging foci of activation in R. In particular, the first part of this paper reviews the nature of fMRI data, and presents a brief overview of the existing packages that can be used to analyze fMRI data in R. The second part illustrates how to handle fMRI data by showing how to visualize the results of different neuroimaging studies in a so-called orthographic view, where the spatial distribution of the foci of activation from different fMRI studies can be inspected visually.

Functional MRI (fMRI) is one of the most important …

Bshazard: A Flexible Tool For Nonparametric Smoothing Of The Hazard Function, Paola Rebora, Agus Salim, Marie Reilly

The R Journal

The hazard function is a key component in the inferential process in survival analysis and relevant for describing the pattern of failures. However, it is rarely shown in research papers due to the difficulties in nonparametric estimation. We developed the bshazard package to facilitate the computation of a nonparametric estimate of the hazard function, with data-driven smoothing. The method accounts for left truncation, right censoring and possible covariates. B-splines are used to estimate the shape of the hazard within the generalized linear mixed models frame work. Smoothness is controlled by imposing an autoregressive structure on the baseline hazard coefficients. This …

Prinsimp, Jonathan Zhang, Nancy Heckman, Davor Cubranic, Joel G. Kingsolver, Travis Gaydos, J.S. Marron

The R Journal

Principal Components Analysis (PCA) is a common way to study the sources of variation in a high-dimensional data set. Typically, the leading principal components are used to understand the variation in the data or to reduce the dimension of the data for subsequent analysis. The remaining principal components are ignored since they explain little of the variation in the data. However, the space spanned by the low variation principal components may contain interesting structure, structure that PCA cannot find. Prinsimp is an R package that looks for interesting structure of low variability. “Interesting” is defined in terms of a simplicity …

Phaser: An R Package For Phase Plane Analysis Of Autonomous Ode Systems, Michael J. Grayling

The R Journal

When modelling physical systems, analysts will frequently be confronted by differential equations which cannot be solved analytically. In this instance, numerical integration will usually be the only way forward. However, for autonomous systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) in one or two dimensions, it is possible to employ an instructive qualitative analysis foregoing this requirement, using so-called phase plane methods. Moreover, this qualitative analysis can even prove to be highly useful for systems that can be solved analytically, or will be solved numerically anyway. The package phaseR allows the user to perform such phase plane analyses: determining the stability of …

Applying Spartan To Understand Parameter Uncertainty In Simulations, Kieran Alden, Mark Read, Paul S. Andrews, Jon Timmis, Mark Coles

The R Journal

In attempts to further understand the dynamics of complex systems, the application of computer simulation is becoming increasingly prevalent. Whereas a great deal of focus has been placed in the development of software tools that aid researchers develop simulations, similar focus has not been applied in the creation of tools that perform a rigorous statistical analysis of results generated through simulation: vital in understanding how these results offer an insight into the captured system. This encouraged us to develop spartan, a package of statistical techniques designed to assist researchers in understanding the relationship between their simulation and the real system. …

The Role Of Ceramides In Mediating Endotoxin-Induced Mitochondrial Disruption, Melissa Ellen Hansen

Theses and Dissertations

Ceramides are sphingolipids that serve as important second messengers in an increasing number of stress-induced pathways. Ceramide has long been known to affect the mitochondria, altering both morphology and physiology. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is a prevalent circulating inflammatory agent in obesity, potentially mediating some of the pathologies associated with weight gain. Given previous findings of TLR4-mediated ceramide accrual and ceramide-mediated mitochondrial disruption, we questioned whether ceramide is necessary for LPS-induced mitochondrial disruption. We found that LPS treatment increased gene transcript levels of ceramide synthesis enzymes and mitochondrial fission proteins and increased ceramide content in cultured myotubes and in mouse tissue. Mitochondrial …

Replication And Knowledge Production In Empirical Software Engineering Research, Jonathan L. Krein

Theses and Dissertations

Although replication is considered an indispensable part of the scientific method in software engineering, few replication studies are published each year. The rate of replication, however, is not surprising given that replication theory in software engineering is immature. Not only are replication taxonomies varied and difficult to reconcile, but opinions on the role of replication contradict. In general, we have no clear sense of how to build knowledge via replication, particularly given the practical realities of our research field. Consequently, most replications in software engineering yield little useful information. In particular, the vast majority of external replications (i.e., replications performed …