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The Impact Of Crop Insurance On Indonesian Rice Production, Zaura Fadhliani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study builds a theoretical model of the yield-based MPCI crop insurance policy for a risk averse rice farmer in Indonesia and presents the comparative statics analysis of policy variables on yield through the coupling, wealth, and insurance effects. Moreover, Using yield data from 1979 to 2014 for the Tuban Regency, this study applies numerical optimization to the model and simulates the effects of different policies on input use, certainty equivalents, indemnity payment, and premiums. The theoretical analysis shows that no coupling effect exists for change in the coverage level, while a coupling effect exists for change in the subsidy …

Natural Disasters In Latin America: The Role Of Disaster Type And Productive Sector On The Urban-Rural Income Gap And Rural To Urban Migration, Madeline Alice Messick

Dissertations

This research provides insight into the impact of natural disasters as drivers of rural to urban migration in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Disasters of varying types are predicted to have differing impacts on the productive sectors of agriculture, industry, and services; which due to the concentration of the various productive sectors in either urban or rural areas, subsequently changes the urban-rural wage differential. Changes to the wage differential (as measured by the urban-rural income gap) are predicted to lead to movement between urban and rural areas until a new equilibrium wage is reached.

This dissertation first identifies a …

Emotion-Related Factors As Mediators In The Relation Between Family Stress And Adolescent Externalizing Problems, Kristy Marie Disabatino

Dissertations

Adaptive regulation of emotions, maternal depression, parenting stress, and environmental stress have all been related to adolescent psychosocial outcomes. Considering these established relations, the current study examined serial mediation models in which it was hypothesized that (1) maternal distress or community stress (examined in separate models) would positively relate to adolescent externalizing behaviors directly and (a) indirectly through maladaptive maternal emotion socialization (ES) practices (i.e., magnify, neglect, and punish), (b) indirectly through adolescent emotion regulation (ER) difficulties, and (c) indirectly through both maternal ES practices and adolescent ER difficulties; (2) maternal distress or community stress would positively relate to adolescent …

A Library Of Coumarin-Enaminone Chemodosimeters For The Detection Of Analytes, Aaron Berrell Davis

Dissertations

Many anions and metal ions are of biological and environmental importance. This work describes our attempts to synthesize molecular probes to specifically target cyanide, zinc, cadmium and mercury as these species can often result in negative effects to the environment and the human body.

The work in this dissertation, describes the synthesis of a family of coumarin-enamine chemodosimeters, in a straightforward synthetic procedure, the reaction between 7-(diethylamino)-4-hydroxycoumarin and a primary amine. The work presented in this dissertation demonstrates that these molecules can play dual roles and therefore the work is split into two distinct parts: Part 1 describes one role …

Novel Chemical Crosslinking To Stabilize Extracellular Matrix For Bioprosthetic Heart Valve Materials To Resist Calcification And Structural Degradation, Hobey Tam

All Dissertations

Over 350,000 artificial heart valves are implanted each year domestically in the US due to valvular stenosis, regurgitation, or congenital defects. However, worldwide, there is precipitous demand of artificial heart valves in emerging economies and this demand is in younger populations because the need for artificial valves in these regions are driven by disease states such as rheumatic fever. With the increasing demand on this life sustaining device, a more robust and durable biomaterial with higher implant life is necessary for increased patient patency and quality of life. Current heart valve replacements only last 10-15 years before implant failure occurs. …

Through The Lens Of Complex Systems Theory: Why Regulators Must Understand The Economy And Society As A Complex System, James M. Giudice

Law Student Publications

Effective regulation of the collective actions of free individuals requires an understanding of what complex systems are, how they work, how they can be studied, the impact internal and external stimuli have on the system as a whole, and how our regulatory agencies can be better suited to dealing with a complex world. There is a prolific body of legal scholarship discussing the substantive characteristics and purpose of government regulation; that is not the focus of this article. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the value complex systems theory could create if applied to the regulatory decision making …

The Synthesis Of Chemosensors For Toxic Analytes, Johnathan Hugh Broome

Dissertations

A number of chemosensors have been designed and synthesized to target cations (Zn²⁺ions), neutral molecules (cathinones), charged molecules (aminoindanes), and anions. The Zn²⁺ ion sensor featured bistriazole designed binding unit and ferrocene signaling units. Characterization of Zn²⁺ ion binding was carried out with electrochemical techniques (CV and DPV), ¹H-NMR, mass spectrometry, and molecular modelling. It exhibited a 1:1 binding stoichiometry with Zn²⁺ and had an affinity for ZnCl₂ (Log K_1:1 = 4.1 ± 0.02) over other Zn²⁺ salts.

The cathinone probe was designed to selectively bind mephedrone over common street drugs …

Als Mutant Sod1 Interacts With G3bp1 And Affects Stress Granule Dynamics, Jozsef Gal, Lisha Kuang, Kelly R. Barnett, Brian Z. Zhu, Susannah C. Shissler, Konstantin V. Korotkov, Lawrence J. Hayward, Edward J. Kasarskis, Haining Zhu

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease. Mutations in Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD1) are responsible for approximately 20 % of the familial ALS cases. ALS-causing SOD1 mutants display a gain-of-toxicity phenotype, but the nature of this toxicity is still not fully understood. The Ras GTPase-activating protein-binding protein G3BP1 plays a critical role in stress granule dynamics. Alterations in the dynamics of stress granules have been reported in several other forms of ALS unrelated to SOD1. To our surprise, the mutant G93A SOD1 transgenic mice exhibited pathological cytoplasmic inclusions that co-localized with G3BP1-positive granules in spinal cord motor neurons. …

Divergence Or Convergence Of Home And School Ethnic-Racial Socialization: Effects On Preschool Children's Self-Regulation, Kimberly Leah Davidson

Dissertations - ALL

As the population in the United States continues to become more diverse, early childhood programs serving our nation’s youngest citizens strive to meet the needs of families from different cultural backgrounds. Despite the established importance of ethnic-racial socialization in the early social and cognitive development of young children, parents and teachers seldom discuss issues related to race and ethnicity with preschool children. Using propositions within the bioecological and developmental niche models, critical race theory, and frameworks that focus on the socialization of children from diverse ethnic-racial backgrounds, the current study examined differences between parents’ and teachers’ use of ethnic-racial socialization …

Green Tea Polyphenols Inhibit The Growth Of The Dental Cavity Causing Bacteria Streptococcus Mutans, Amy Lynn Melok

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

An often overlooked disease, dental caries, or cavities, is one of the most prevalent infectious diseases across the globe. Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) is the main etiological bacteria present in the oral cavity that leads to dental caries. All of the S. mutans in the oral cavity try to pool together to form an intelligent biofilm that adheres to the surfaces of teeth. S. mutans thrive on the sugary foods we eat and release acid by products that aid in the wearing away of the teeth’s enamel. As this enamel begins to wear away, the decaying process begins and cavities …

An Extendable Visualization And User Interface Design For Time-Varying Multivariate Geoscience Data, Yanfu Zhou

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Geoscience data has unique and complex data structures, and its visualization has been challenging due to a lack of effective data models and visual representations to tackle the heterogeneity of geoscience data. In today’s big data era, the needs of visualizing geoscience data become urgent, especially driven by its potential value to human societies, such as environmental disaster prediction, urban growth simulation, and so on. In this thesis, I created a novel geoscience data visualization framework and applied interface automata theory to geoscience data visualization tasks. The framework can support heterogeneous geoscience data and facilitate data operations. The interface automata …

Exploring Dynamic Memory Allocations For Bioinformatics Applications, Nitya Kovur

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The progression of scientific data leads to an increase in the demand of powerful high performance computers (HPC) where data can be stored and analyzed. High performance computing is used in several research areas to solve large problems. However, efficient usage of supercomputing resources that are available is a major concern for most of the researchers. The user has to choose the amount of resources needed for execution before submitting the job. Over or under subscription of resources leads to low system utilization and/or low user satisfaction.

Bioinformatics is one such field that heavily relies on HPC. One of the …

Evaluating Mechanisms Of Rna Editing In Plants, Lexis Funk, Weishu Fan, Jeffrey P. Mower

UCARE: Research Products

RNA editing is one of several post-transcriptional RNA processes. This process generates RNA and protein diversity in eukaryotes and results in specific amino acid substitutions, deletions, and changes in gene expression levels. It occurs in both plastids and mitochondria and typically involves the changing of specific C to U (cytosine to uracil). Welwitschia belongs to the gymnosperms (a group of seed-producing plants that includes conifers, cycads, Ginkgo, and Gnetales). It has already been substantiated that Welwitschia mirabilis has a major loss of cis-spliced introns and unusual trans-splicing introns. Research in the Mower lab has already proven that ancestral gymnosperm has …

Regional Framework For Coastal Resilience In Southern Connecticut: Legal, Policy, And Regulatory Assessment, Marine Affairs Institute (Mai), Roger Williams University School Of Law

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

College Experiences And The Socially Responsible Leadership Skills Of Community College Students, Ann Marrott Hamann

Education Doctoral

Leadership development in higher education is increasingly emphasizing socially responsible leadership, a process that improves the human condition for everyone, not only those with power and privilege. College students’ experiences with other students through service, projects, and social interaction have been shown to cultivate socially responsible leadership, the type of leadership scholars are calling for to help communities adapt to geopolitical and socio-economic change continuing apace. Community colleges are typically omitted from college outcome studies, although they enroll almost half of all undergraduate students today and are serving an increasingly diverse population. This quantitative study used the Multi-Institutional Study of …

Relationship Between College Students’ Knowledge Of The Risk Factors For Type 2 Diabetes And Health Behaviors, Elizabeth Keida

Education Doctoral

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide and its prevalence is growing across the United States in all populations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact knowledge regarding T2D has on health behaviors, specifically, behaviors related to physical activity and sugar and fat consumption. A questionnaire was distributed through email to 500 undergraduate students at one specific campus of the State University of New York college system. Fifty-one of these subjects met the eligibility criteria and were used as part of this study. The questionnaire instrument consisted of four self-report areas: …

Virulence Factors Of Aeromonas Hydrophila: In The Wake Of Reclassification, Cody R. Rasmussen-Ivey, Maria J. Figueras, Donald Mcgarey, Mark R. Liles

Faculty Articles

The ubiquitous “jack-of-all-trades,” Aeromonas hydrophila, is a freshwater, Gram-negative bacterial pathogen under revision in regard to its phylogenetic and functional affiliation with other aeromonads. While virulence factors are expectedly diverse across A. hydrophila strains and closely related species, our mechanistic knowledge of the vast majority of these factors is based on the molecular characterization of the strains A. hydrophila AH-3 and SSU, which were reclassified as A. piscicola AH-3 in 2009 and A. dhakensis SSU in 2013. Individually, these reclassifications raise important questions involving the applicability of previous research on A. hydrophila virulence mechanisms; however, this issue is exacerbated by …

Equitable Student Engagement: A Correlation Between Personalized Learning, Student Engagement, And Poverty Level, Andrea Yeager Neuzil

Student Work

The student population in classrooms across America is growing increasingly diverse in socio-economic background, schema, and learning styles; however, far too many academic programs are designed for a “one size fits all approach” that does not engage students. Educational leaders who promote new ways to personalize instruction in order to improve student engagement reap benefits far beyond what is expected. The researcher investigates the relationship of personalized learning and student engagement and socio-economic status. Previous studies have demonstrated the impact of student engagement as a means to improve academic achievement, school climate, and family and community involvement. The researcher includes …

A Study Of Norm Formation Dynamics In Online Crowds, Nargess Tahmasbi

Student Work

In extreme events such as the Egyptian 2011 uprising, online social media technology enables many people from heterogeneous backgrounds to interact in response to the crisis. This form of collectivity (an online crowd) is usually formed spontaneously with minimum constraints concerning the relationships among the members. Theories of collective behavior suggest that the patterns of behavior in a crowd are not just a set of random acts. Instead they evolve toward a normative stage. Because of the uncertainty of the situations people are more likely to search for norms.

Understanding the process of norm formation in online social media is …

Development Of Paper-Based Biosensor For Point-Of-Care- Nucleic Acid Testing / Choi Jane Ru, Jane Ru Choi

Student Works (2010-2019)

Nucleic acid testing (NAT), a molecular diagnostic technique that involves nucleic acid extraction, amplification and detection, conventionally relies on well-established laboratories, high-end instrumentation and highly trained operators, limiting its use in resource-poor settings, where most diseases exist. With advances in point-of-care testing (POCT), lateral flow assays (LFA) have been explored for nucleic acid detection. However, as biological samples are generally complex and contain low amounts of target nucleic acids, a substantial off-chip extraction and amplification process (e.g., tube-based extraction and polymerase chain reaction (PCR)) is normally required prior to lateral flow detection. Additionally, the applications of LFA have been currently …

The Dirt On The Collins Mounds Site, Carmelita Angeles

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Building monumental architecture has been one method used by humans to rise above an earthbound existence. In the United States, large earthen mounds were constructed from the Archaic period to the Mississippian period. The Collins Mound Site in Arkansas was recently dated to the Late Woodland period. For this study, soil samples were extracted from the northern section of the site for description and particle-size analysis. Erosion from plowing, wind, water, and gravity is the most likely process causing a decreased mound height and increased basal diameter. Mound fill likely originated near the river for two of the mounds and …

Essays On Optimization And Modeling Methods For Reliability And Reliability Growth, Thomas Paul Talafuse

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research proposes novel solution techniques in the realm of reliability and reliability growth. We first consider a redundancy allocation problem to design a system that maximizes the reliability of a complex series-parallel system comprised of components with deterministic reliability. We propose a new meta-heuristic, inspired by the behavior of bats hunting prey, to find component allocation and redundancy levels that provide optimal or near-optimal system reliability levels. Each component alternative has an associated cost and weight and the system is constrained by cost and weight factors. We allow for component mixing within a subsystem, with a pre-defined maximum level …

Assessing The Feasibility Of A One-Pot, Tandem Olefin Metathesis And Isomerization Sequence To Synthesize Conjugated Aromatic Olefins, Ajay D. Makwana

Honors Theses

The synthesis of substituted phenylpropene dimers using a one-pot, tandem olefin metathesis and isomerization sequence has been studied. This sequence relies on the facilitated, in-situ conversion of a ruthenium carbene species (Ru=C) to a ruthenium hydride species (Ru-H) upon addition of an inorganic hydride source. Three separate reactions occur within one reaction flask: 1) olefin metathesis of the starting phenylpropene to yield phenylpropene dimer via Ru=C catalyst, 2) conversion of Ru=C to Ru-H via addition of an inorganic hydride source, 3) isomerization of phenylpropene dimer via insertion and β-hydride elimination to yield conjugated product. The focus of the study has …

Putting Christians On The Map : Topographic Mosaics From Late Antique Jordan As Representations Of Authority And Status., Tracey Elizabeth Eckersley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I examine nine ecclesiastic floor mosaics from Late Antique Palaestina and Arabia that contain topographic motifs ­­˗ images of cities set in realistic or stylized landscapes. Previous interpretations of the pavements have been limited by two assumptions: that artists or bishops were solely responsible for determining the compositions, and that only religious interpretations were intended for church pavements. Inscriptions indicating that patrons were generally lay people and iconography that encourages secular interpretations complicates both assumptions. This study investigates the mosaics in light of Late Antique euergetism in order to determine why donors included architectonic elements in the …

Murakami-Ego : Collective Culpability And Selective Retention., Yun Kweon Jeong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to argue that Murakami’s art expresses the Japanese’s psychological suffering by showing their struggle between remembering themselves as victims but forgetting themselves as aggressors. I apply the Mitscherlichs’ psychoanalisys of the Germans’s psyche to the Japanese because their people have had similar experiences. The first section examines the history of Japan surrounding WWII in order to demonstrate its effects on the Japanese people’s psyche. The second section introduces Otaku to better understand Murakami’s art. The third section examines how selective retention works on the Japanese’s psyche. The fourth section analyzes how Murakami’s art represents …

When The Silver Screen Fades To Black : An Analysis Of Black Faces In Film., Travesheia Rashel Bass

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Black Film Industry emerged with the goal of challenging the misrepresented images of African Americans that were promoted in early American Films. The Black Film making process promoted a centrality of stories told from an Afrocentric point of view. This thesis analyzes how Black Film has been defined over the last sixteen years and how it has impacted American society. Films that were made by or in collaboration with African American writers, directors, and producers with a focus on the African American community (its values, cultural aesthetics, and practices) and featuring an all or primarily Black cast were found …

Effects Of Glyceollin On Mrna Expression In The Female Mouse Brain., Sanaya Firdaus Bamji

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Glyceollins (Glys), produced by soy plants in response to stress, have anti-estrogenic activity in breast and ovarian cancer cell lines in vitro and in vivo. In addition to known anti-estrogenic effects, Glys exhibit mechanisms of action not involving estrogen receptor (ER) signaling. To date, effects of Glys on brain physiology and function are unknown. The purpose of the experiments summarized in this dissertation was to gain an understanding of the effects of Gly on brain-related functions in the female mouse brain through the observation of changes in gene expression. For our initial studies, we treated ovariectomized Swiss Webster (CFW) …

Effect Of Migration, Carrying Capacity, And Fecundity On The Formation Of Clinal Patterns During Range Expansions., Neha J. Angal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Range expansions, empirically and in simulations, lead to clinal patterns of genetic diversity. Clines are often used as spatial markers of past migrations. This study investigated the effects of migration, growth, and carrying capacities on clinal patterns during range expansions, using forward-time simulations in Nemo. Initial results show, in the absence of prior population structure, range expansions result in a loss of diversity strongly affected by migration, growth, and carrying capacity. This loss of diversity did not persist to the final generation, corresponding to 10,000 years, indicating clinal patterns are less durable than previously assumed—challenging the utility of clinal patterns …

Mechanistic And Functional Characterization Of B And T Lymphocyte Attenuator (Btla) In Cd8 Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes, Krit Ritthipichai

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

This dissertation project focused on understanding the functional role of BTLA on CD8⁺ Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TIL) from metastatic melanoma patients. Clinical trials of adoptive T-cell therapy (ACT) using autologous ex vivo expanded TIL have demonstrated the great potential of this immunotherapy with an overall clinical response rate 40-50% for stage IV metastatic melanoma patients. We have investigated a number of biomarkers in both the infused TIL and the tumor microenvironment for their association with clinical response. Surprisingly, a subset of CD8⁺ TIL expressing the co-inhibitory molecule BTLA (B-and-T lymphocyte attenuator) was highly associated with clinical response, while …

A Colossal Bird’S Nest: The Backlash Surrounding Themanagement Of The Gulf Of Mexico Red Snapperfishery, Etienne René

LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources

No abstract provided.