Digital Commons Network^™

The Effect Of Collaborative Writing On Individual Writing Performance, Sara Mostafa Kotb

Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigated the effectiveness of using collaborative writing (CW) on an individual’s writing performance. It involved a total of 61 participants who were adult ESL learners enrolled in a general English course at a language center in Cairo. All learners were assessed to be at a border-line A2/ B1 level on the CEFR scale , based on a placement exam conducted by the institute. The sample was divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group. For both groups a pre-test and a post-test were administered to track individuals’ progress. During the treatment stage, participants in …

In Silico Identification And In Vitro Assessment Of A Potential Anticancer Peptide Sequence Retrieved From The Red Sea Metagenomics Library, Mona Elradi Imam

Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is imposing a worldwide health concern with alarming morbidity and mortality rates. Its burden stems from its increasing incidence along with depletion of efficient therapeutic options. Current conventional anticancer therapies; surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are barely effective with deleterious side effects that ruin patients' quality of life. There is a paradigm shift in the interest of pharmaceutical industry towards a new class of peptide based drugs offering more selectivity, easier synthesis, wider safety profile and lower cost of manufacture. Anticancer peptides (ACPs) have gained interest in the last few decades due to their intrinsic properties such as cationicity and …

Environmental Education In Egypt: A Preliminary Assessment, Nouran Assyed Fadl Faragallah

Theses and Dissertations

Giving that Egypt is facing serious environmental issues, Egypt needs to raise the public environmental awareness. Effective environmental education is needed to provide students with what is needed for achieving sustainability. This study aims to assess environmental education in formal education in Egypt through two approaches. The first approach is by assessing students' knowledge and attitudes towards environmental concepts. The second approach is by assessing the contribution of environmental policies to implementing environmental education. The study samples were selected from three public schools located in three different cities and villages. The research used qualitative methodology as the investigation was conducted …

In Silico Screening, Analysis, And Modelling For A Novel Anticancer Peptide, Youssef Abdou

Theses and Dissertations

Cancer is currently one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Most anticancer therapies rely on small molecule drugs (<0.5 kDa). As with all small molecule drugs, chemotherapy is highly toxic and presents many off-target side effects. Peptide drugs offer improved specificity and are cheaper and more accessible to manufacture. In this study, we have developed a support vector machine (SVM) model in order to detect peptide sequences with potential anticancer activity through scanning the Red Sea Metagenomic library. Furthermore, we conducted an in silico study in order to analyze one of the peptides returned by the SVM pipeline and assessed its cytotoxicity and the mode of cell death by conducting MTT and Annexin V staining assays, respectively. We observed that the selected anticancer peptide contains the C-terminal portion of the homeodomain structure, of human Pax6, an antennapedia homeodomain region, and can bind DNA. Furthermore, we observed dose-response cytotoxicity of HepG2 cells with our peptide. No such cytotoxicity was observed in HeLa cells; a morphological change, however, was observed. We examined the cytotoxicity of our drug against 1BR-hTERT normal skin cells. Our peptide drug induced dose-dependent cytotoxicity that was markedly weaker than that of cancer treated cells. Together our data illustrates the isolation of one peptide drug candidate from the AUC Red Sea metagenomic library; furthermore, we were able to observe the selective dose-dependent reduction of HepG2 cell viability

Gadaboost: Accelerating Adaboost Feature Selection With Genetic Algorithms, Mai Tolba

Theses and Dissertations

Throughout recent years Machine Learning has acquired attention, due to the abundant data. Thus, devising techniques to reduce the dimensionality of data has been on going. Object detection is one of the Machine Learning techniques which suffer from this draw back. As an example, one of the most famous object detection frameworks is the Viola-Jones Rapid Object Detector, which suffers from a lengthy training process due to the vast search space, which can reach more than 160,000 features for a 24X24 image. The Viola-Jones Rapid Object Detector also uses Adaboost, which is a brute force method, and is required to …

Ethnic Inclusion, Education, Durable Assets And Occupational Opportunities, Nihad Aboud

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of access to durable economic assets,education and occupational opportunities on political inclusion. The study uses aggregated cross sectional data from the DHS surveys and combines it with data from the EPR dataset to obtain measures of economic, social and political inequalities at the group level. The study assumes that the more economic deprivation would lead to reduced political inclusion, whereas increased share of access to education and modern occupations increase the likelihood of political inclusion. The main findings of the study suggest a negative relation between relative economic deprivation and …

Computational Fluid Dynamics (Cfd) Study Of Patients Suffering Coarctation Of The Aorta (Coa) For Pre And Post-Operative, Omar Abozaid

Theses and Dissertations

Coarctation of the aorta (CoA) is a widespread anomaly that occurs a lot in infants. CoA affects the human health. It causes hypertension, decrease in the amount of blood flow and heart failure. CoA is related to abnormal hemodynamics and certain blood flow patterns are noticed. Different surgical techniques are implemented in order to increase the amount of blood flow such resection end-to-end anastomosis, resection end-to-side anastomosis…etc. This research aims at identifying the effect of CoA on the flow pattern and quantification of the improvement after surgery through utilizing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to solve flow fields in the aorta. …

Resurrecting Eden: Inaugural British Narration And Policy Of Iraq, Timothy Kennett

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Britain's use of technology in developing Mesopotamia. British imaginations of Mesopotamia as Eden or El Dorado, reified by a multiplicity of travel literature,archaeological digs, and geographic societies, formed the first half of a violent dialectic that granted divine right and responsibility to the British. Instead, colonialists claimed that Mesopotamia's inhabitants squandered its primordial potential through neglect and mismanagement. These justifications fueled British attempts to develop Mesopotamia, irrigation engineers designing floodgates for the Tigris and Euphrates while agriculturalists created new strains of wheat that would flourish in its climate. But technology was more than development. It formed the …

Anxious Dwellers: Housing, Labor And The Potentiality Of Tanks In Nahda, Marwa Sabah

Theses and Dissertations

The neoliberal reconfiguration of the Egyptian metropolis of Cairo has rendered the lives of the working poor in informal and destitute urban neighborhoods precarious. Over the past thirty years many of these families and communities have been resettled to new neighborhoods in desert peripheries of the city. This thesis focuses on the everyday lives of women and their networks that have been relocated to Nahda, arguably one of the most targeted neighborhoods in Cairo for relocated and displaced communities. Resettlement is a costly process especially for the working poor who not only have to deal with the physical and emotional …

Enzymatic Hydrolysis And Ion Exchange Fractionation Of Sulfated Polysaccharides Extracted From Ulva Lactuca And Evaluation Of Their Biological Activity., Nihal Ali Moheib Abdelmoneim Abou El Azm

Theses and Dissertations

Sulfated polysaccharides (SPs) were extracted from the green algae, Ulva lacutca. High molecular weight SPs were enzymatically hydrolysed using viscozyme then fractionated into 8 different molecular weight fractions by means of diethyl amino ethyl (DEAE) anion exchange column chromatography. Crude SPs together with the hydrolysate and the 8 column effluent fractions were tested for their carbohydrate, protein and sulfate contents. In addition, their degree of polymerization (D.P.) was estimated and they were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). Their antioxidant and antitumor activities were also determined using 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging activity and 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide) (MTT) …

Living A Bare Life: Assembling The Everyday Of Migrant Domestic Work In Cairo, Sabrina Lilleby

Theses and Dissertations

This ethnographic study of work in Cairo argues that the laboring lives of migrant domestic workers in this locality are both similar and different to that of other spatial locations. Con- trary to the re-hashed representation in media, this text shows that migrant domestic workers in the Arabic speaking world are not what is often referred to as modern day slaves. Instead, I show how these workers shape and are shaped in accordance with a neoliberal govermentali- ty, through their techniques of managing their affects, bodies and actions. However, regard- less of the increasing focus on training subjects before entering …

Illinois State, February 2016, Illinois State University, University Marketing And Communications

State: The Magazine of Illinois State University (1999-present)

Illinois State University alumni magazine

Depression In Mexican Americans With Diagnosed And Undiagnosed Diabetes, Rene L. Olvera, Susan P. Fisher-Hoch, Douglas E. Williamson, Kristina Vatcheva, Joseph B. Mccormick

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Depression and diabetes commonly co-occur; however, the strength of the physiological effects of diabetes as mediating factors towards depression is uncertain.

Method: We analyzed extensive clinical, epidemiological and laboratory data from n = 2081 Mexican Americans aged 35-64 years, recruited from the community as part of the Cameron County Hispanic Cohort (CCHC) divided into three groups: Diagnosed (self-reported) diabetes (DD, n = 335), Undiagnosed diabetes (UD, n = 227) and No diabetes (ND, n = 1519). UD participants denied being diagnosed with diabetes, but on testing met the 2010 American Diabetes Association and World Health Organization definitions of diabetes. …

Scc Endoscope Disinfection: Summary, Children's Mercy Kansas City

Clinical Critically Appraised Topics

No abstract provided.

Calculated Vibrational States Of Ozone Up To Dissociation, Steve Alexandre Ndengué, Richard Dawes, Xiaogang Wang, Tucker Carrington Jr., Zhigang Sun, Hua Guo

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

A new accurate global potential energy surface for the ground electronic state of ozone [R. Dawes et al., J. Chem. Phys. 139, 201103 (2013)] was published fairly recently. The topography near dissociation differs significantly from previous surfaces, without spurious submerged reefs and corresponding van der Waals wells. This has enabled significantly improved descriptions of scattering processes, capturing the negative temperature dependence and large kinetic isotope effects in exchange reaction rates. The exchange reactivity was found to depend on the character of near-threshold resonances and their overlap with reactant and product wavefunctions, which in turn are sensitive to the potential. Here …

Evaluation Of A Pacap Peptide Analogue Labeled With (68)Ga Using Two Different Chelating Agents., Pardeep Kumar, Sushil Kumar Tripathi, Chang-Po Chen, Neil Mehta, Bishnuhari Paudyal, Eric Wickstrom, Mathew L. Thakur

Department of Radiology Faculty Papers

OBJECTIVE: The authors have conjugated chelating agents (DOTA and NODAGA) with a peptide (pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating peptide [PACAP] analogue) that has a high affinity for VPAC1 receptors expressed on cancer cells. To determine a suitable chelating agent for labeling with (68)Ga, they have compared the labeling kinetics and stability of these peptide conjugates.

METHODS: For labeling, (68)GaCl3 was eluted in 0.1 M HCl from a [(68)Ge-(68)Ga] generator. The influences of peptide concentration, pH, and temperature on the radiolabeling efficiency were studied. The stability was evaluated in saline, human serum, DTPA, transferrin, and metallic ions (FeCl3, CaCl2, and ZnCl2). Cell binding …

Characterization Of Silica-Based And Borate-Based, Titanium-Containing Bioactive Glasses For Coating Metallic Implants, Omar Rodriguez, Declan J. Curran, Marcello Papini, Lana M. Placek, Anthony W. Wren, Emil H. Schemitsch, Paul Zalzal, Mark R. Towler

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Bioactive glasses have found applications in diverse fields, including orthopedics and dentistry, where they have been utilized for the fixation of bone and teeth and as scaffolds for drug delivery. The present work outlines the characterization of two novel titanium-containing glass series, one silica-based and one borate-based. For the silica-based series, titanium is added at the expense of silicon dioxide whereas for the borate-based series, it is added at the expense of boron oxide as confirmed by Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy. Amorphous structures are obtained for silica-based glass at 15 mol% TiO₂ and for borate-based glasses at 0 mol% and …

Acoustic Sequences In Non-Human Animals: A Tutorial Review And Prospectus, Arik Kershenbaum, Daniel T. Blumstein, Marie A. Roch, Çağlar Akçay, Gregory Backus, Mark A. Bee, Kirsten Bohn, Yan Cao, Gerald Carter, Cristiane Cäsar, Michael Coen, Stacy L. Deruiter, Laurance Doyle, Shimon Edelman, Ramon Ferreri Cancho, Todd M. Freeberg, Ellen C. Garland, Morgan Gustison, Heidi E. Harley, Chloé Huetz, Melissa Hughes, Julia Hyland Bruno, Amiyaal Ilany, Dezhe Z. Jin, Michael T. Johnson, Chenghui Ju, Jeremy Karnowski, Bernard Lohr, Marta B. Manser, Brenda Mccowan, Eduardo Mercado Iii, Peter M. Narins, Alex Piel, Megan Rice, Roberta Salmi, Kazutoshi Sasahara, Laela Sayigh, Yu Shiu, Charles Taylor, Edgar E. Vallejo, Sara Waller, Veronica Zamora Gutierrez

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Animal acoustic communication often takes the form of complex sequences, made up of multiple distinct acoustic units. Apart from the well-known example of birdsong, other animals such as insects, amphibians, and mammals (including bats, rodents, primates, and cetaceans) also generate complex acoustic sequences. Occasionally, such as with birdsong, the adaptive role of these sequences seems clear (e.g. mate attraction and territorial defence). More often however, researchers have only begun to characterise – let alone understand – the significance and meaning of acoustic sequences. Hypotheses abound, but there is little agreement as to how sequences should be defined and analysed. Our …

Effects Of Intraframe Distortion On Measures Of Cone Mosaic Geometry From Adaptive Optics Scanning Light Ophthalmoscopy, Robert F. Cooper, Yusufu N. Sulai, Adam M. Dubis, Toco Y.P. Chui, Richard B. Rosen, Michel Michaelides, Alfredo Dubra, Joseph Carroll

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose: To characterize the effects of intraframe distortion due to involuntary eye motion on measures of cone mosaic geometry derived from adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscope (AOSLO) images.

Methods: We acquired AOSLO image sequences from 20 subjects at 1.0, 2.0, and 5.08 temporal from fixation. An expert grader manually selected 10 minimally distorted reference frames from each 150-frame sequence for subsequent registration. Cone mosaic geometry was measured in all registered images (n ¼ 600) using multiple metrics, and the repeatability of these metrics was used to assess the impact of the distortions from each reference frame. In nine additional subjects, …

Physical Activity: A Tool For Improving Health (Part 2—Mental Health Benefits), Patrick J. Gallaway, Nobuko Hongu

Journal of Extension

By promoting physical activities and incorporating them into their community-based programs, Extension professionals are improving the health of individuals, particularly those with limited resources. This article is the second in a three-part series describing the benefits of physical activity for human health: (1) biological health benefits of physical activity, (2) mental health benefits of physical activity, and (3) recommended amounts of physical activity for optimal health. Each part of the series is designed to help Extension professionals effectively integrate physical activity into community programs and motivate individuals to maintain an interest in being physically active during and after a program.

Eosinophilic Esophagitis In Children And Its Relationship With Parental Allergies: Texas Children's Hospital Experience, G Hiremath, D Byramji, A Pacheco, G Constantine, C Davis, R Shulman, A Olive

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is an allergen-mediated, clinicopathological condition affecting all ages. The characteristics of children with EoE in the southwestern USA have not been fully described. Furthermore, very little is known about the relationship between parental allergies and risk of EoE in their offspring in this patient population. AIMS: To characterize children with EoE and to examine the relationship between prevalence of parental allergies and occurrence of EoE in their offspring at a single referral pediatric center in the southwestern USA. METHODS: Demographic and clinical information of 126 children (=18 years of age) with EoE was abstracted in a …

The Microbiome Of The Egyptian Red Sea Proper And Gulf Of Aqaba, Ghada Alaa El-Din Mustafa

Theses and Dissertations

The Red Sea is one of the most unique environments worldwide. It possesses a unique geography, physical, chemical and biological characteristics. It encounters several ecosystems articulating with each other, these include, corals, mangroves, algae, fisheries, invertebrates and microbiota of each one of these along with microbiota of the Red Sea waters and sediments. Studying the collective microbial communities of the Egyptian Red Sea coastal sediments have not been reported before. In regards to the severe pollution impacting the different Red Sea ecosystems, sediments samples have been collected from different impacted sites. The selected sites included 1- four ports for shipping …

Screening Of Synthetic Chemical Agents “Chromenes” With Potent Anti-Breast Cancer Activity, Aysha Hamad Zaher Saeed Al Meqbali

Theses

Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide. Conventional therapies cause serious side effects and, at best, merely extend the patient’s lifespan by a few years. Cancer control may therefore benefit from the potential that resides in alternative therapies. There is thus an increasing demand to utilize alternative concepts or approaches to the prevention of cancer. The principal aim of this research is to screen and identify new synthetic compounds “chromenes”, with high efficiency, for breast cancer therapy. In this study, we have screened four newly designed and synthesized chromenes (C1, C15, C28 and C29) for their potential anticancer …

Perceptions And Predictors Of Questionable Research Practices In The Social Sciences, Anita M. Gordon, Helen C. Harton

Faculty Work

Conclusions

■ As expected, moral judgment, anticipated shame, and perceptions of harm were the strongest and most consistent predictors of the perceived likelihood of misconduct.

■ Perceived likelihood of detection only predicted for one scenario, and sanctions had no overall effect (sanctions did affect how strongly moral judgment affected likelihoods).

■ There were no differences in perceived likelihood of misconduct by type of university.

■ Early career faculty reported higher likelihoods.

■ Organizational justice was not related to likelihoods.

Species-Specific Adaptations Of Trypanosome Morphology And Motility To The Mammalian Host, Joel L. Bargul, Jamin Jung, Francis A. Mcodimba, Collins O. Omogo, Vincent O. Adung’A, Timothy Krüger, Daniel K. Masiga, Markus Engstler

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

African trypanosomes thrive in the bloodstream and tissue spaces of a wide range of mammalian hosts. Infections of cattle cause an enormous socio-economic burden in sub-Saharan Africa. A hallmark of the trypanosome lifestyle is the flagellate’s incessant motion. This work details the cell motility behavior of the four livestock-parasites Trypanosoma vivax, T. brucei, T. evansi and T. congolense. The trypanosomes feature distinct swimming patterns, speeds and flagellar wave frequencies, although the basic mechanism of flagellar propulsion is conserved, as is shown by extended single flagellar beat analyses. Three-dimensional analyses of the trypanosomes expose a high degree of dynamic pleomorphism, typified …

Identification Of Aphid (Hemiptera: Aphididae) Species Of Economic Importance In Kenya Using Dna Barcodes And Pcr-Rflp-Based Approach, G. Kinyanjui, F. M. Khamis, S. Mohamed, L. O. Ombura, M. Warigia, S. Ekesi

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Aphids are among pests of economic importance throughout the world. Together with transmitting plant viruses, aphids are capable of inflicting severe crop production losses. They also excrete honeydew that favours the growth of sooty mold which reduces the quality of vegetables and fruits and hence their market values. Rapid and accurate identification of aphids to the species level is a critical component in effective pest management and plant quarantine systems. Even though morphological taxonomy has made a tremendous impact on species-level identifications, polymorphism, morphological plasticity and immature stages are among the many challenges to accurate identification. In addition, their small …

Shortest Path Based Decision Making Using Probabilistic Inference, Akshat Kumar

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We present a new perspective on the classical shortest path routing (SPR) problem in graphs. We show that the SPR problem can be recast to that of probabilistic inference in a mixture of simple Bayesian networks. Maximizing the likelihood in this mixture becomes equivalent to solving the SPR problem. We develop the well known Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm for the SPR problem that maximizes the likelihood, and show that it does not get stuck in a locally optimal solution. Using the same probabilistic framework, we then address an NP-Hard network design problem where the goal is to repair a network of …

Philosophy Discipline To Host 40th Annual Midwest Philosophy Colloquium, University Relations

Campus News Archive

This year’s colloquium will explore the “Philosophy of Biology” and feature five of the most notable philosophers of biology working in the field today.

The Lived Experience Of Aging Black Women With Diabetes Nurse-Person Relationships, Deidra G. Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The lived experience of the nurse-person relationship may have meaning for Black women with diabetes as they grow older. However, insufficient nursing research has been conducted in this area. This hermeneutic phenomenological study was designed to provide insight into the experiences of older Black women with diabetes as they transition through the aging process and to elucidate their perceptions of the nurse-person relationship. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the lived experience and perceptions of these women, and data was collected for developing a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. The method used to conduct this research was Max van …

Can People Successfully Return To Nature?, Nicholas A. Sollogub

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout the course of human history, people have not only survived but thrived through their intimate knowledge of the land that they occupy. This not only includes the ability to procure food and the materials to build a shelter or tools, but it also contains the information that kept them safe from predators and other natural elements that surrounded them. The Industrial Revolution brought about many changes. People began to leave their rural lifestyles and migrate to cities in large numbers. With technologies and urbanization increasing, people became more and more distant from food production activities. Basic necessities, such as …