Digital Commons Network^™

An Investigation Of The Fisheries Ecosystem Dynamics In Rhode Island's Nearshore Waters, Anna Malek

Open Access Dissertations

This research was developed in response to recent interest in offshore wind energy development and the ongoing need for ecosystem-based spatial management planning in Rhode Island’s nearshore waters. Despite heavy use and close proximity to a number of marine science institutions, Rhode Island and Block Island Sounds have been neglected in terms of scientific research, resulting in a poor understanding of the fisheries ecosystem in this area. This research aimed to address this knowledge gap by assessing the biogeography, trophic dynamics and habitat associations of the fish and invertebrate communities in this region. Specifically, the goals of this research were …

Goal Representation Adaptive Dynamic Programming For Machine Intelligence, Zhen Ni

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation is focused on a general purpose new framework for machine intelligence based on adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) design. This research is significantly important for developing self-adaptive intelligent system that is highly robust and fault-tolerant to uncertain and unstructured environments. Generally, there are two key components toward building truly self-adaptive systems: fundamental understanding of brain intelligence and complex engineering designs. This dissertation will focus on general purpose computational intelligence methodologies from a biological inspired perspective, and develop a new self-learning machine intelligent system online over time. Furthermore, this new approach will also be explored on wide critical engineering applications. …

The Stigma Of Obesity: Examining The Relationship Between Bmi And The Treatment Of Pain In Surgery Patients, Dennis H. Sewchuk Jr.

Open Access Dissertations

There is a growing epidemic of obesity in the United States and a corresponding increase in the number of morbidly obese patients receiving healthcare. Despite the increasing focus and research on obesity over the years, the prevalence of obesity in the United States has continued to worsen. A stigma against obesity exists in the general public including among healthcare professionals. Attitudes and bias of healthcare professionals against obesity can negatively affect judgment and choices related to the enactment of care, affecting both the quality of healthcare delivered and patient outcomes. Studies have shown that stigmatization against groups of patients such …

Therapeutic Drug Monitoring Of Immunosuppresive, Mwlod A. Ghareeb

Open Access Dissertations

The immunosuppressive agents used to prevent rejection of transplanted organs include cyclosporine (CsA), everolimus (EVE), mycophenolic acid (MPA), prednisolone (PLN), sirolimus (SIR) and tacrolimus (TAC). Because of the narrow therapeutic index and high inter- and intra-subject variability of these agents, therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is an integral part of immunosuppressive therapy following organ transplantation. The immunosuppressants incidence and severity of side effects correlate with the degree of exposure while under-dosed patients can be at a greater risk for allograft rejection. Currently, whole blood or plasma samples that are obtained via venipuncture are used for routine immunosuppressive monitoring. The limitations of …

Reflections Of Undergraduate Business Education Alumnae: Shifting Perspectives On Gender And Work, Aimeé Duvall Phelps

Open Access Dissertations

Women are entering higher education at the greatest rate in history (NCES, 2012). They are succeeding and graduating with degrees relevant to leadership and business and are entering the workforce in record numbers (Catalyst, 2013; Eagly & Carli, 2007). But then women seemingly stall out (Barsh & Yee, 2011; Catalyst, 2013; Soares, Cobb, et al., 2011). The further up the ladder women climb - the fewer their numbers. Numerous literature streams document the potential causes and effects of this phenomenon. This qualitative study sought to augment the current literature that has ignored the impact of undergraduate business education on that …

Role Of Nuclear Factor E2 Related Factor 2 (Nrf2) In Environmental Chemical Induced Steatosis And Adipogenesis, Prajakta Shimpi

Open Access Dissertations

Prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and obesity both in the young and adult population is increasing at an alarming rate globally. Along with traditional risk factors, such as diet and sedentary life style, exposure of environmental chemicals is suspected to be a risk factor for metabolic disruption. Moreover, the ‘fetal basis of adult disease’ hypothesis implicates that early life exposure to environmental chemicals is more impactful in causing lipid homeostasis disturbances than exposure in maturity. Nuclear factor E2 related factor 2 (Nrf2) is a cytoprotective transcription factor known to combat oxidative stress. The contribution of Nrf2 to other …

Further Insights Into The Regulation Of The Fanconi Anemia Fancd2 Protein, Rebecca Anne Boisvert

Open Access Dissertations

Fanconi anemia (FA) is a rare autosomal and X-linked recessive disorder, characterized by congenital abnormalities, pediatric bone marrow failure and cancer susceptibility. FA is caused by biallelic mutations in any one of 16 genes. The FA proteins function cooperatively in the FA-BRCA pathway to repair DNA interstrand crosslinks (ICLs). The monoubiquitination of FANCD2 and FANCI is a central step in the activation of the FA-BRCA pathway and is required for targeting these proteins to chromatin. Despite their critical role in ICL repair, very little is known about the structure, function, and regulation of the FANCD2 and FANCI proteins, or how …

Expanded Stepparent And Grandparent Third-Party Childcare In Illinois, Jeffrey A. Parness

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

Recognizing the need for reforms involving, inter alia, parental and third-party childcare interests, the Illinois General Assembly created a study committee, resulting in several proposed amendments to the Illinois Parentage Act and to the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act. After several years of debate and amendment, parentage and marriage dissolution law reforms were enacted in 2015. Unfortunately, the recent changes, and the earlier proposals arising from the study, insufficiently address the inadequacies of the current regimes on third-party childcare, especially childcare opportunities for stepparents and grandparents. This is especially problematic since there are few, if any, opportunities for …

Campus Open Access Funds: Experiences Of The Ku “One University” Open Access Author Fund, Rachel Gyore, Allison C. Reeve, Crystal Cameron-Vedros, Deborah Ludwig, Ada Emmett

Library Faculty Publications

In the summer of 2012, librarians from the Lawrence and Kansas City campuses of the University of Kansas (KU) proposed the creation of a KU “One University” Open Access Fund (OA Author Fund) to support open access publishing for its faculty, students, and staff. KU is a major public research and teaching institution of 28,000 students and 2,600 faculty on five campuses (Lawrence, Kansas City, Overland Park, Wichita, and Salina) (http://ku.edu/about), and has been a leader in open access initiatives for many years. A working group of librarians came together to create and implement a pilot project to explore the …

Compiled Occurrence Data Of Migratory Hooded Cranes In Southeast Asia, T. Cai, Y. Guo, F. Huettmann, K. Lee

Faculty

This dataset represents the best available science-based ocurrences (presence only) of Hooded Cranes during fall and spring migration along the flyway in Asia. This dataset consists of 115 geo-referenced sightings with the source/observer in a comma delimited file format. The geo-referencing was done in decimal latitude and longitude with six decimals. Each record carries a source information and is derived from 21 sources. The biggest data sections come from field obervations of the local authors as well as GBIF, satellite telemetry, and Higuchi (1994) and Chang (1999). This data set has four columns and 115 rows with a size of …

Revoking Rights, Craig J. Konnoth

Publications

In important areas of law, such as the vested rights doctrine, and in several important cases--including those involving the continued validity of same-sex marriages and the Affordable Care Act--courts have scrutinized the revocation of rights once granted more closely than the failure to provide the rights in the first place. This project claims that in so doing, courts seek to preserve important constitutional interests. On the one hand, based on our understanding of rights possession, rights revocation implicates autonomy interests of the rights holder to a greater degree than a failure to afford rights at the outset. On the other …

Structuralist Legal Histories, Justin Deystone

Publications

This is a contribution to a symposium titled "Theorizing Contemporary Legal Thought." The central theme of the piece is the relation between legal structuralism and legal historiography.

The Risks We Are Willing To Eat: Food Imports And Safety, Alexia Brunet Marks

Publications

Recent efforts to regulate the safety of U.S. food imports have not kept up with the complexity of global trade and the risks that accompany globalization. Congress drafted the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 ("FSMA") in response to heightened food safety risks, surging imports, and an outdated food import safety system. While the FSMA provides the Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") additional authority to regulate food facilities, establish standards for safe produce, recall contaminated foods, and oversee imported foods, vulnerabilities still exist.

This article exposes problems with the old system of food import rules and significant challenges facing the …

"Greatest Good Of The Greatest Number In The Long Run": Tr, Pinchot, And The Origins Of Sustainability In America, Charles Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Conforming Effect: First Amendment Implications Of Surveillance, Beyond Chilling Speech, Margot Kaminski, Shane Witnov

Publications

No abstract provided.

Same-Sex Cynicism And The Self-Defeating Pursuit Of Social Acceptance Through Litigation, James G. Dwyer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Americans Overestimate Social Class Mobility, Michael W. Kraus, Jacinth J. X. Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In this research we examine estimates of American social class mobility—the ability to move up or down in education and income status. Across studies, overestimates of class mobility were large and particularly likely among younger participants and those higher in subjective social class—both measured (Studies 1–3) and manipulated (Study 4). Class mobility overestimates were independent of general estimation errors (Study 3) and persisted after accounting for knowledge of class mobility assessed in terms of educational attainment and self-ratings. Experiments revealed that mobility overestimates were shaped by exposure to information about the genetic determinants of social class—a faux science article suggesting …

Human Consequences Of Climate Change, Climate Refugees: An Exploratory Essay, Frederick A. Snyder-Manetti

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

While planning my course schedule for the 2009 Spring Semester, I found myself desperately short of elective credits toward my Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography in order to graduate by the end of the 2010 Autumn Semester. From the limited course choices offered for the spring semester, only two worked with the other required courses I needed as well: Cultural & Global Competence and Global Hot Spots. Little did I know at the time, but the latter would prove to be the most stimulating course of my entire undergraduate geography program. Not only did this course forge within me …

The Thermodynamic Dissection And Design Of High-Affinity Antibodies, Sriram Jakkaraju

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Antibody fragments are attractive alternatives to conventional antibodies for both therapeutic and diagnostic applications. One example, single-domain VHH antibodies, which are derived from camelid heavy chain-only antibodies, display comparable binding affinity to conventional antibodies despite the significantly reduced binding interface. Here, an anti-RNase A VHH single-domain antibody and its antigen, RNase A, are used as a model antibody-antigen system for the three studies described in this dissertation.

The Workplace Hassles From Interruptions Measure (Whim), Stacy Wilkes

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The literature indicates that an interrupted work environment may act as a stressor on employees. Yet, systematic measurement and empirical testing of employees' perceptions of workplace interruptions are lacking. Here, I describe a set of studies in which I developed and tested a self-report measure of workplace interruptions: the Workplace Hassles from Interruptions Measure (WHIM). The WHIM is based on a theoretically proposed typology of interruptions that included intrusions, distractions, discrepancy detections, and breaks. I analyzed the resultant scale to determine it is factorially identifiable (N = 317) and confirmed the four-factor structure via confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, I tested …

Study Of Pico-Inversions Among Human Individuals, Gautham Jampala

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Pico-inversions are very small inversions that cannot be detected by local alignments directly. The study of these inversions has been very limited in the past due to the limitations of computational techniques. I performed a study to improve the accuracy of detecting small inversions among the genomes of human individuals, pico-inversions. My hypothesis is that inversion is rare, and the chance of multiple inversions occurring on the same genome site among multiple individuals is small. Therefore, the sequences of an inversion site can be divided into two clusters: one with the inversion and the other without the inversion. The sequences …

The Study And Analysis Of Stress Distribution Of Various Postures Of Athletes To Minimize The Risk Of Injury, Abdulsamad Mohammad

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

There has been a wide spread research in the field of sports biomechanics, providing useful information about the risk of injuries in various sports. This information is beneficial in educating athletes and professional trainers about the possible risk of injuries and providing them guidelines to prevent injuries. Most of the studies in literature have focused on individual parts of the body, like knee joints, limbs, skull bones. However, little attempts have been made to develop a biomechanical model of complete human body to obtain stress distribution in simple postures of standing and sitting. This model can be improvised and used …

Protein Function And Interactions In Gametophytic Self-Incompatibility : Collaborative Recognition Of S-Rnase In Vivo, Qinzhou Qi

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

My dissertation is based on studies of Gametophytic Self-Incompatibility (GSI), a system that allows plants to reject "self" pollen while accepting "non-self" pollen, thus preventing inbreeding and promoting genetic diversity in populations. In GSI, pollen grains deposited on the stigma of the floral pistil germinate and begin to grow through the transmitting tract tissue of the style. As the pollen tubes grow through the transmitting tract, they import recognition variants of a secreted protein known as the S-locus ribonuclease (S-RNase). If there is a match of recognition specificity between the pollen tube and the imported S-RNase, the S-RNase will degrade …

Delayed Neonatal Feeding And Growth In The Lake Erie Watersnake, Nerodia Sipedon Insularum, Elizabeth Whitney Mack

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Growth early in life can have lasting consequences on survival and reproduction in many animal species. For snakes, larger, faster growing neonates are more likely to survive their first hibernation, have higher foraging success, and may reach sexual maturity sooner (therefore increasing lifetime fecundity) than their smaller littermates. However, studies of the youngest age classes are rare for New World Natricine snakes (gartersnakes, watersnakes, and allied taxa). The purpose of this thesis is to better understand the life history characteristics of neonatal Lake Erie Watersnakes (Nerodia sipedon insularum), a New World Natricine snake with a long history of evolutionary and …

Design Of Nanocoatings By In Situ Phosphatizing Reagent Catalyzed Polysilsesquioxane For Corrosion Inhibition And Adhesion Promotion On Metal Alloys, Kimberly B. Henderson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

When a metal reacts with oxygen and water, a redox reaction happens, which will cause corrosion. Current surface pretreatment for inhibiting corrosion on metal alloys is a phosphate conversion bath. The phosphate conversion bath will generate a phosphate-chromate layer to adhere strongly to a metal substrate. However, it is toxic and unfriendly to the environment. Our group proposed an innovative coating that contains a phosphate component (ISPR-In-situ Phosphatizing Reagent) within a protective coating. The ISPR coating will form a bound phosphate layer on the metal surface acting as the corrosion barrier and enhancing adhesion into the metal surface; moreover, it …

Design, Synthesis, And Evaluation Of Inhibitors Of Ispd And Ispe As Potential Antibacterial, Antimalarial, And Herbicidal Agents, Michael Philip Thompson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The 2-C-methyl-D-erythritol-4-phosphate pathway, or MEP pathway, has recently gained attention as being a prime target for inhibition of many pathogenic species due to the lack of analogous enzymes in humans and many higher eukaryotes that use the mevalonic acid pathway. Either the MEP pathway or mevalonic acid pathway are utilized by all living organisms to generate the molecules isopentenyl diphosphate, IPP, and dimethyallyl diphosphate, DMAPP, which in turn can be used to create a wide variety of necessary cellular components called isoprenoids, such as cholesterol, some vitamins, pigments, etc. The MEP pathway involves seven different enzymes, which are unique in …

Professional Learning Networks, Teacher Beliefs And Practices, Brent J. Anderson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Helping teachers develop the habits of mind and pedagogical skills to improve student achievement has been a challenge for schools and school leaders. Online professional learning networks (PLNs) are a means of allaying the barriers to collaboration. This study utilized social constructivist learning theory and self-efficacy theory to explore the relationship among frequency of teacher collaboration via PLN and teachers' sense of efficacy and adoption of best instructional practices. Study participants were teachers from throughout the United States who participated in education-related Twitter chats. The participants completed an online survey that was embedded in a tweet. The survey instrument included …

Social Bonds, Cardiovascular Function, And Serotonin : Insights From An Animal Model, Neal Daniel Mcneal

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Social relationships positively influence psychological and biological function in humans and other mammals. The disruption of an individual's social environment through separation or death often results in social isolation, which can adversely impact mental and cardiovascular health (Frasure-Smith, Lesperance, & Talajic, 1993; Gore, 1978). The general purpose of this experiment is to further investigate neurobiological mechanisms mediating the adverse effects of social stress and focused on the role of serotonin in that relationship. An animal model was used to simulate social stress in humans. Specifically, the goal of this study is to explore the effects of sertraline hydrochloride (Zoloft) on …

Development Of An Extraction Method For The Mass Spectral Analysis Of Organic Gunshot Residue From Clothing, Brent Casper

Theses and Dissertations--Chemistry

This dissertation will focus on the extraction of volatile organic compounds associated with gunshot residue from articles of clothing, followed by analysis with mass spectrometry. During the discharge of a weapon, a cloud of volatile organic gunshot residue (OGSR) is dispersed around a firearm. This will create a high probability of transfer between the OGSR and the clothing of individuals who are near a discharged weapon.

The first part of this dissertation will be the development of a method for removal of volatile OGSR from articles of clothing. Extraction of OGSR will be completed by solid phase microextraction (SPME), followed …

Nanoparticle Behavior In Biological Gels And Biofluids: The Impact Of Interactions With Charged Biogels And The Formation Of Protein Coronas On Nanoparticles, Xiaolu Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Chemistry

With the rapid growth of nanotechnology, situations where nanomaterials will interact with biological systems will unquestionably grow. Therefore, it is increasingly understood that interactions between nanomaterials and biological environments will play an essential role in nanomedicine. Biological polymer networks, including mucus and the extracellular matrix, serve as a filter for the exchange of molecules and nanoparticles. Such polymer networks are complex and heterogeneous hydrogel environments that regulate transport processes through finely tuned particle-network interactions. In chapters 3 and 4, we investigate the role of electrostatics on the basic mechanisms governing the diffusion of charged molecules inside model polymer networks by …