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Monitoring Ohio Bat Communities And Populations Using Mobile Acoustics, Molly C. Simonis

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The goal of my thesis is to: 1) provide baseline information of where Ohio bats are foraging in Wright State University's (WSU) campus woods in relation to forest age and habitat (Chapter 1), 2) determine potential roost availability for local bats (Chapter 1), and 3) examine changes in state-wide species composition following the introduction of White-nose Syndrome (WNS; Chapter 2). In Chapter 1, I created walking bat acoustic routes and used generalized linear models to determine what forest ages and habitats had the greatest bat activity in the WSU campus woods. I conducted habitat transects throughout all forest ages to …

Seabirds As Regional Biomonitors Of Legacy Toxicants On An Urbanized Coastline, Corey A. Clatterbuck, Rebecca L. Lewison, Nathan G. Dodder, Catherine Zeeman, Kenneth Schiff

United States Fish and Wildlife Service: Publications

Seabirds are often cited as sentinels of the marine environment, but are rarely used in traditional ocean and coastal contaminant monitoring. Four classes of persistent organic pollutants (POPs, n=68) and three trace elements (mercury, selenium, and arsenic) were measured in the eggs of California least terns (Sterna antillarum browni), caspian terns (Hydroprogne caspia), double-crested cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus), and western gulls (Larus occidentalis) that nest in the Southern California Bight. Building on a periodic five year regional monitoring program, we measured contaminant exposure and assessed the utility of seabirds as regional contaminant biomonitors. …

Modular Structure In Fish Co-Occurrence Networks: A Comparison Across Spatial Scales And Grouping Methodologies, Daniel Mcgarvey Dr., Joseph Veech

Environmental Studies Publications

Network modules are used for diverse purposes, ranging from delineation of biogeographical provinces to the study of biotic interactions. We assess spatial scaling effects on modular structure, using a multi-step process to compare fish co-occurrence networks at three nested scales. We first detect modules with simulated annealing and use spatial clustering tests (interspecific distances among species’ range centroids) to determine if modules consist of species with broadly overlapping ranges; strong spatial clustering may reflect environmental filtering, while absence of spatial clustering may reflect positive interspecific relationships (commensalism or mutualism). We then use non-hierarchical, multivariate cluster analysis as an alternative method …

Persistent Stress-Induced Neuroplastic Changes In The Locus Coeruleus/Norepinephrine System, Olga Borodovitsyna, Neal Joshi, Daniel Chandler

Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine Departmental Research

Neural plasticity plays a critical role in mediating short- and long-term brain responses to environmental stimuli. A major effector of plasticity throughout many regions of the brain is stress. Activation of the locus coeruleus (LC) is a critical step in mediating the neuroendocrine and behavioral limbs of the stress response. During stressor exposure, activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis promotes release of corticotropin-releasing factor in LC, where its signaling promotes a number of physiological and cellular changes. While the acute effects of stress on LC physiology have been described, its long-term effects are less clear. This review will describe how stress …

Pauline Noznick '68-Betty Bibbins '73, Pauline Noznick, Betty Bibbins

Alumni Oral History Project

No abstract provided.

Sexual Privacy, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Those who wish to control and expose the identities of women and people from marginalized communities routinely do so by invading their privacy. People are secretly recorded in bedrooms and public bathrooms, and “up their skirts.” They are coerced into sharing nude photographs and filming sex acts under the threat of public disclosure of their nude images. People’s nude images are posted online without permission. Machine-learning technology is used to create digitally manipulated “deep fake” sex videos that swap people’s faces into pornography.

At the heart of these abuses is an invasion of sexual privacy—the behaviors and expectations that manage …

New Ways Of Predicting Efficacy Of Antidepressants, Kayla Ternes

Physician Assistant Scholarly Project Posters

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a neuropsychiatric condition that is becoming increasingly prevalent in our country. According to Cai, Huang, and Hao (2015), MDD is “common and devastating” (p. 61) and has a very complex pathophysiology. Until recently, a definitive etiology had not been found, however, new evidence has suggested that Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and cognitive-emotional biomarkers may be a key into the mechanism of this disorder.

A literature review of articles found in PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, and PsychINFO within the last ten years focused on the hypotheses of the pathophysiology of MDD, cognitive-emotional biomarkers, and BDNF. The …

Army Rotc Annual Program Report, 2017-2018, University Of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Army Rotc

Army ROTC Annual Program Report

No abstract provided.

Development Of Low Frequency Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Methods And Instrumentation For Biological Applications, Laura A. Buchanan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

EPR is a powerful biophysical tool that can be used to measure tumor physiology. With the addition of magnetic field gradients, the spectral properties of paramagnetic species can be mapped. To facilitate EPR imaging, methods and instrumentation at frequencies between 250 MHz and 1 GHz were developed.

At low spin concentrations, the rapid scan background signal is often many times larger than the EPR signal of interest. To help remove the background contribution, a data acquisition procedure that takes advantage of a cross-loop resonator and bipolar power supplies was developed at 250 MHz. In this procedure, two scans are collected. …

Learning From Disorder And Noise In Physical Biology, Taylor Emil Firman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stochasticity, disorder, and noise play crucial roles in the functioning of many biological systems over many different length scales. On the molecular scale, most proteins are envisioned as pristinely folded structures, but intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) have no such folded state and still serve distinct purposes within the cell. At the scale of gene regulation, realistic in vivo conditions produce stochastic fluctuations in gene expression that can lead to advantageous bet-hedging strategies, but can be difficult to characterize using a deterministic framework. Even at the organismal scale, germband extension (GBE) in Drosophila melanogaster embryos systematically elongates the epithelial tissue using …

Tragic Creation: Hope For The Future—Moltmann's Creative (Mis)Reading Of Hegel's Philosophy, John Michael Bechtold

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Christian theology, in its many and varied forms, and to the detriment of both the church and the world, is often built upon a shaky epistemological foundation. In this dissertation, I describe this shaky foundation by the term 'insular universalism'. The oxymoronic nature of the term is both intentional and telling. A theology which strives for, or unwittingly arrives at, a position which is here being called 'insular universalism' achieves neither while rejecting or misunderstanding the complexity of both. When considered theologically, insular universalism could be simplistically described as the idea that "one cultural expression of the religion is exclusive …

Brønsted Acid Catalyzed Carbon-Carbon Bond Forming Reactions, Jiangyue Miao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this research project lies in the development of new methodology in the field of Brønsted acid catalysis enabling rapid synthesis of medicinally relevant compounds. It is foreseen that small molecule sulfonic acids evaluated in this research project will unveil new asymmetric carbon carbon bond forming reactions between substrates hitherto unexplored with Brønsted acid catalysis. It has been established that strong Brønsted acids, such as phosphoric acids, are capable of mediating highly selective transformations operating through unique mechanistic manifolds.

Specific focus for the sulfonic acid catalysts was geared towards asymmetric coupling reactions with synthetically useful precursors such as …

Diet Breadth Evolution And Diversification Of A Generalist Insect Herbivore, Mayra Cadorin Vidal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Insect herbivores are one of the most diverse groups of multicellular organisms, and the vast majority are specialists, which feed on only a few plant species. The factors that cause some herbivores to be specialists and others to be generalists are still unclear. It is known that the selective forces from natural enemies (top-down) and the host plants (bottom-up) influence an herbivore's diet breadth. In my meta-analysis evaluating the relative important of top-down and bottom-up forces on insect herbivore fitness, I found that herbivores usually have greater performance on better quality plants and in the absence or reduction of enemy …

Tau Aggregation, Conformational Selection, And Inhibition, Michael R. Holden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tau fibrils are a pathological hallmark of over 20 neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. There currently is no cure for these diseases and treatments are limited. Once Tau fibrils form in the brain, they propagate down neuronal networks, and this spreading is linked to disease progression. Studying the behavior and structure of Tau monomer and Tau aggregates therefore may give insight into methods by which the spread of Tau fibrils can be inhibited. The structures of the Tau fibrils from different diseases are thought to vary, partially giving rise to the different disease phenotypes. Tau natively binds to microtubules by …

Social Conflict On The Seas: Links Between Overfishing-Induced Marine Fish Stock Declines And Forced Labor Slavery, Jessica L. Sparks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite media attention detailing labor abuses in fisheries, social-ecological systems research has largely failed to consider whether fish stock declines could be contributing to increases in forced labor slavery. Empirical fisheries data suggests, though not a ubiquitous response to declining stocks, many vessels will fish longer, farther from shore, and deeper in waters to maintain yields. This effort intensification increases production costs, and Brashares et al. (2014), consistent with slavery theory, posited cheap and/or unpaid labor as an approach to offset increasing costs and continue harvesting fish species at a rate otherwise cost-prohibitive.

Using fuzzy cognitive mapping - a participatory, …

Psychotropic Medications And Children: Perceptions Of Mental Health Professionals, Elinor Jane Brereton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project explores mental health professionals' perspectives on the prescription of psychotropic medications to children. It emphasizes the placement of biomedicine within its larger social, economic, and political context, and the influence these structures have on the way mental illness is conceptualized and treated in children. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted in Denver, Colorado with psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and a pharmaceutical board member to capture multiple perspectives from different positionalities within the field. Participants discussed factors that they believe influence prescribing practices including: professional role changes, issues of access, limited evidence, cost, and institutional pressures to practice within a …

Away From The End Of Motherhood: Sites Of Haunting In The Social Imaginary In Lemonade And The Handmaid's Tale, Julia Michele Fleming

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the television series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, specifically the episode "A Woman's Place," and Beyoncé's Lemonade: A Visual Album. I argue that these cultural texts leverage representations of women's lived experiences to scrutinize contemporary American anxieties about motherhood and reproductive justice. Lemonade, a celebration of Black womanhood, presents a counterpoint to The Handmaid's Tale's preoccupation with white motherhood in way that speculates on the utopian potentials of a woman-centered society.

Using bell hooks' film analysis, Avery Gordon's "haunting," and Luce Irigaray's "mimicry," I examine two interconnected themes: feminist aesthetics and generational haunting. …

Through The Yoruba Lens: A Postcolonial Discourse Of Female Circumcision, Jennifer Quichocho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite the Western media attention and the critique of female circumcision in sub-Saharan Africa, few studies consider the local populations' traditions, values, and ideologies. Through the Yoruba Lens: A Postcolonial Discourse of Female Circumcision investigates female circumcision practices from a philosophical, Yoruba traditionalist perspective. African philosophy and religion provides an ideological foundation and helps reveal the postcolonial and feminist theoretical framework that continues the academic debate. Framed by LeCompte and Schensul's notion that "ethnography emphasized discovery; it does not assume answers" (2010: 33), my research draws from literature reviews, quantitative data, and interviews. I will present and investigate three hypotheses …

Patient-Specific Quantification Of The Relationship Between The Left Atrium Pressure And The Ostial Diameter Of The Left Atrial Appendage, Sky Tianqi Gao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The left atrial appendage has been a historically understudied region of the heart until fairly recently with the new understanding of its role in the stroke pathway of patients with atrial fibrillation. The goal of this study is to take a look at the biomechanical behavior of the left atrium and left atrial appendage under normal physiological loading conditions using material properties taken from biaxial stretch tests. Several different options for material properties models were tested and biaxial stretch test data of cadaveric human tissue samples for the left atrium and appendage were fit to a Fung-type strain-energy function for …

Robust Distributed Stabilization Of Interconnected Multiagent Systems, Vahid Rezaei

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many large-scale systems can be modeled as groups of individual dynamics, e.g., multi-vehicle systems, as well as interconnected multiagent systems, power systems and biological networks as a few examples. Due to the high-dimension and complexity in configuration of these infrastructures, only a few internal variables of each agent might be measurable and the exact knowledge of the model might be unavailable for the control design purpose. The collective objectives may range from consensus to decoupling, stabilization, reference tracking, and global performance guarantees. Depending on the objectives, the designer may choose agent-level low-dimension or multiagent system-level high-dimension approaches to develop distributed …

Hidden In White(Ness)? Using Racial Logics To Interrogate The Instructional Arc Of A Crisis Intervention Team Training, Tara N. Meister

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Some scholars argue that communities of color have been historically considered criminal by law enforcement (Fanon, 1963/2004; Gordon, 1996; Sharpley-Whiting, 1999), and Parenti (2003) and Kendi (2016) traced the history of modern policing to slave patrols. Wynter (2003) illuminated the racial logics undergirding our society - including policing - to the overlay of monotheism and its fixity with racial constructions of human as historically rooted in slavery and colonization. Thus, policing, too, carries a racialized dimension (Gamal, 2016) that creates or amplifies trauma and mental illness (Westcott, 2015). To address mental health, an undergirding feature of use of force and …

Effects Of Anthropogenic Noise On Mating Behavior And Fitness, Gabrielle A. Gurule-Small

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When environments change rapidly, adaptive phenotypic plasticity can ameliorate negative effects of environmental change on survival and reproduction. Recent evidence, however, suggests that plastic responses to human induced environmental change are often maladaptive or insufficient to overcome novel selection pressures. Anthropogenic noise is a ubiquitous and expanding disturbance with demonstrated effects on fitness-related traits of animals like stress responses, foraging, vigilance, and pairing success. Elucidating the lifetime fitness effects of noise has been challenging because long-lived vertebrate systems are typically studied in this context. In both chapters described herein, I reared field crickets, Teleogryllus oceanicus, in masking traffic noise, …

2018 Commencement Program, Seattle University

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Assessing Assisted Reproductive Technology, Raymond C. O'Brien

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Technological innovation possesses both opportunity and challenge. Because assisted reproductive technology (ART) involves sexual intimacy, parenthood, personhood, gender identity, privacy, legacy, and a plethora of religious, historical, sociological, and ethical underpinnings, the challenges presented in such technological innovation are substantial. Nonetheless, the opportunities are significant and progressive. Because of in vitro fertilization, gestational and genetic surrogacy, posthumous conception, and mitochondrial replacement therapy, humans now have the opportunity to overcome infertility, gender obstacles to parentage, dynastic limitations, and diseases that have long plagued mothers and infants. However, challenges include the exploitation of surrogates, unequal access to ART services, possibilities of cloning …

The Effect Of Movement Variability On Putting Proficiency During The Golf Putting Stroke, Ashley K. Richardson, Andrew C.S. Mitchell, Gerwyn Hughes

Kinesiology (Formerly Exercise and Sport Science)

Movement variability has been considered important to execute golf swing yet is comparatively unexplored regarding the golf putt. Movement variability could potentially be important considering the small margins of error between successful and a missed putt. The aim of this study was to assess whether variability of body segment rotations influence putting performance (ball kinematic measures). Eight golfers (handicap range 0-10) performed a 3.2 metre level putt wearing retro-reflective markers which were tracked using a three-dimensional motion analysis system sampling at 120 Hz. Ball roll kinematics were recorded using Quintic Ball Roll launch monitor. Movement (segment) variability was calculated based …

'At Least You're Not Neurotypical': Social Barriers To Mental Health At Oberlin College, Charis Justine Stanek

Honors Papers

Previous research shows that mental health issues often manifest in the late teens and early twenties, the age of many college students (Kessler et al., 2007). This report is a case study about mental illness at Oberlin College. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that the subculture of Oberlin may incentivize students to maintain their identity with mental illness. Three hundred and eighty-four Oberlin students were surveyed about their perception of conversations around mental illness and behaviors of mentally ill students at Oberlin. In fifty semi-structured interviews, students were asked to elaborate on how they came …

Minimally Invasive Accelerated Orthodontic Techniques: A Clinical, Radiological, And Histological Comparison On A Rat Model, Sausha Toghranegar

Student Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Background: Accelerated orthodontics encompasses a group of techniques designed to facilitate the faster movement of teeth. Many techniques developed are designed to cause a controlled injury to the cortex of the bone resulting in a transient osteopenia, also known as the regional acceleratory phenomena (RAP). Little research has been done to compare these techniques and describe their effects on the periodontium. Objective: To clinically, histologically, and radiographically compare several minimally invasive techniques for inducing accelerated orthodontics. Methods: Sixty 8-9-week-old male Sprague Dawley rats were used for this investigation. An orthodontic device consisting of a 50g NiTi closed coil spring was …

Flexural Strength And Optical Characteristics Of High Translucency Zirconia, Golsa Akbarian

Student Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Objective: High translucency zirconia has been developed for esthetically demanding dental cases with the objective of improving light transmittance. The purpose of this in vitro study is to compare the translucency and flexural strength of high translucency zirconia with conventional zirconia and lithium disilicate ceramics, all of which are options for indirect dental restorative applications. Methods: Three dental ceramic materials were selected: Group 1: conventional zirconia; group 2: high translucent zirconia; and group 3: lithium disilicate glass-ceramic. Fifteen disk-shaped specimens (10mm in diameter) of each material were fabricated at 0.5mm, 0.75mm, and 1 mm thicknesses as subgroups A, B, and …

Effect Of Tooth Angulation, Archwire Material And Vibration On Resistance To Sliding In Conventional Twin Brackets, Liliam Hernandez

Student Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of bracket angulation, archwire material, and vibration on the resistance to sliding of orthodontic brackets to slide along an archwire. Background: In Orthodontics, resistance to sliding generated at the wire-bracket interface has a bearing on the force transmitted to the teeth. Resistance to tooth movement in orthodontics can occur in one of two ways. One, is when a practitioner closes a space at an extraction site and the brackets slide along the archwire. The other is when teeth tip, and the angulation between the bracket and archwire produces binding …

The Value Of Phenotypes In Knee Osteoarthritis Research., Fred Nelson

Orthopedics Articles

Background: Over the past decade, phenotypes have been used to help categorize knee osteoarthritis patients relative to being subject to disease, disease progression, and treatment response. A review of potential phenotype selection is now appropriate. The appeal of using phenotypes is that they most rely on simple physical examination, clinically routine imaging, and demographics. The purpose of this review is to describe the panoply of phenotypes that can be potentially used in osteoarthritis research.

Methods: A search of PubMed was used singularly to review the literature on knee osteoarthritis phenotypes.

Results: Four phenotype assembly groups were based on physical features …