Digital Commons Network^™

Anti-Cancer Effects Of Oleocanthal And Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Limor Goren

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Oleocanthal is a phenolic compound found in varying concentrations in extra virgin olive oil. Oleocanthal has been shown to be active physiologically, benefiting several diseased states by conferring anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective benefits. Recently, we and other groups have demonstrated its specific and selective toxicity toward cancer cells; however, the mechanism leading to cancer cell death is still disputed. The current study demonstrates that oleocanthal induced damage to cancer cells’ lysosomes leading to cellular toxicity in vitro. Non-cancer cells were significantly less affected. Lysosomal membrane permeabilization following oleocanthal treatment in various cell lines was assayed via three complementary methods. Additionally, …

Neurogenesis Is Altered Between And Across Brain Regions After Neurodegeneration And Injury, Alice Perez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Adult neurogenesis is the addition of new neurons in the adult brain. In mammals, neurogenesis is largely restricted to the hippocampus and olfactory bulb, which underlie learning, memory, and olfaction. In songbirds, new neurons are incorporated into telencephalic regions that subserve the production, perception, and maintenance of song. Studies of the regulation of neurogenesis have exclusively focused on a single brain region and within a single hemisphere. Interestingly, it has yet to be investigated whether there are correlations between numbers of new neurons across regions and hemispheres within the same animal. Here we examined these differences in a rat model …

Assessment Of Third Wave Therapy Assumptions About The Relation Between Emotional Schemas And Psychoemotional Functioning, Emily Rachel Edwards

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent advancements in emotion theory propose that emotional schemas – individualized conceptualizations and beliefs about emotions – serve a fundamental function in guiding psychoemotional processes. These advancements have progressed alongside the development of third-wave therapies, which presume emotional schemas to be deeply involved in perpetuating psychological distress and emotional dysfunction. To critically assess the validity of this presumption, the current research proposed and evaluated an integrative model of psychoemotional functioning.

Two studies were completed using a combination of behavioral, performance-based, and self-report measures of emotional schemas and psychoemotional functioning. Though further research is needed, results suggest the integrated model of …

Cyborgs For Environmental Justice: East Asian American Stories From The 1991 People Of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, Lisa Ng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this paper is threefold: to serve as an oral history archive of the East Asian American experience at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to analyze the role of East Asian Americans in the Environmental Justice Movement (EJM), and to fill an ideological and political vacuum that exists in East Asian American communities. This work analyses the experiences of East Asian Americans who were present at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit--an event scholars have attributed to igniting the EJM. The paper argues that East Asian Americans act as “Cyborgs”—both as their ascribed …

Memory-Guided Selective Attention: An Instance Theory Of Automatic Attentional Control, Nicholaus Paul Brosowsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cognitive control enables flexible goal-directed behavior via attention and action selection processes that prioritize goal-relevant over irrelevant information. These processes allow us to behave flexibly in the face of contradicting or ambiguous information and update behavior in response to the changing environment. Furthermore, they are thought to be in direct opposition to learned, automatic processing in that they enable us to disregard learned behaviors when they are inconsistent with our current goals. The strict dichotomy between stimulus-driven and goal-driven influences, however, has downplayed the role of memory in guiding attention. The position forwarded in this thesis is that a memory-based …

Clinical Characteristics And Neuroanatomical Predictors Of Acute Antidepressant Outcome For Patients With Comorbid Depression And Mild Cognitive Impairment, Jeffrey N. Motter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Older adults presenting with both a depressive disorder (DEP) and cognitive impairment (CI) represent a unique, understudied population. The classification of cognitive impairment severity continues to be debated though it has recently been subtyped into late (LMCI) versus early (EMCI) stages. Previous studies have found associations between treatment outcome and both cortical thickness and white matter hyperintensities (WMH), though report inconsistent directionality and affected regions. In this study, we examined baseline clinical characteristics and neuroanatomical features as prognostic indicators for older adults with comorbid DEP and CI participating in an open antidepressant trial. EMCI is hypothesized to have greater …

Infinity Wars: Post 9/11 Superhero Films And American Empire, Peter J. Bruno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the last two decades, superhero films have accounted for some of the most popular and financially lucrative films of all time. This thesis analyzes some of the aesthetic and ideological dimensions of various superhero films following their post 9/11 boom. Beginning with America’s response to the events of 9/11 and a subsequent retreat into a Manichean world of good versus evil, I introduce the term “empirical reality” in order to account for the ways daily American life is shielded from the worst effects of U.S. foreign policy. On screen this manifests by perpetuating the myth of the “clean war” …

An Evolutionary Perspective On Foraging Strategies And Group Dynamics In Bio-Social Inspired Cognitive Radio Networks, Anna Wisniewska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Saturation of wireless channels is inevitable as the number of wireless devices grows exponentially in an environment of limited radio spectrum capacity. Cognitive radio technology has been proposed to relieve overcrowded spectrum resources by allowing licensed channels to be opportunistically accessed by unlicensed users (cognitive radio devices) during periods of time when the license holder (primary user) is absent from its channel. Uncoordinated competition over limited resources among cognitive radio devices poses complex co-existence challenges. We propose novel bio-social inspired behavioral models and map out plausible evolutionary trajectories of co-use strategies in the cognitive radio ecosystem. By drawing parallels between …

Cuny Will Be Free!: Black, Puerto Rican, And Women’S Compositions, Literatures, And Studies At The City College Of New York And In New York City, 1960–1980, Conor Tomás Reed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation, CUNY Will Be Free!: Black, Puerto Rican, and Women’s Compositions, Literatures, and Studies at the City College of New York and in New York City, 1960-1980, I argue that the writings, political actions, and relationships of City College students and teachers underwent a collective decolonial metamorphosis that transformed the landscapes of United States higher education, as public universities like the City University of New York and the University of Puerto Rico became key sites of counterinsurgency to suppress Third World coalitional projects. In doing so, I situate New York City as an epicenter of Black, Puerto …

Diet, Inflammation, Gut Microbiome, And Mental Health, Ashley R. Polokowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Omega-3 fatty acids (ω-3 FAs) are an essential fatty acid necessary for healthy development in mammals. They possess anti-inflammatory properties and have more recently been shown to impact gut microbiota, both factors hypothesized to be associated with depression and anxiety. Thus, empirical efforts have begun to examine the benefit of ω-3 FAs as a treatment option for various psychological disorders. Although there is evidence that ω-3 FAs have favorable outcomes on depressive symptoms, the relationship between ω-3 FAs and anxiety and the pathways by which ω-3 FAs produce beneficial health effects are poorly understood. Both inflammation and the gut microbiome …

Sedimenting Territory: A Political Geology Of Oil, Earth, And Spatial Politics In Turkey, Zeynep Oguz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Building on the recent turn to the material and earthly aspects of resources and political power in environmental anthropology and political geography, this work historically and ethnographically examines the kinds of territorial politics that oil’s materiality, geological qualities, and infrastructures have generated in Turkey. Despite being surrounded by oil-rich neighbors in the Middle East, Turkey’s domestic oil reserves supply only 7 percent of the country’s oil, all of which has been drilled in the Kurdish provinces of Batman, Diyarbakır, and Adıyaman in Turkey’s southeast, where the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) has been fighting the Turkish state since 1984 for cultural …

The Ethics Of Perception In Transatlantic Romantic Poetry, Charles W. Rowe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Ethics of Perception in Transatlantic Romantic Poetry is a report on the ethical significance of British and American Romantic poetry composed between 1785 and 1865. This study focuses on the poems of William Cowper, William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman. Its central claim is that these poets composed a body of work that sought to show readers how their sustained attention to everyday perceptual experience could lead them towards a more empathic way of being.

The first chapter argues that the late-eighteenth century poet William Cowper is the initiator of the ethically-oriented poetry of perception that Wordsworth, …

Inference Of Language Functional Network In Healthy, Cancerous And Bilingual Brains By Fmri And Network Modeling, Qiongge Li

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We study the underlying mechanism by which language processing occurs in the human brain using inference methods on functional magnetic resonance imaging data. The data analyzed stems from several cohorts of subjects; a monolingual group, a bilingual group, a healthy control group and one diseased case. We applied a complex statistical inference pipeline to determine the network structure of brain components involved with language. This healthy network reveals a fully connected triangular relationship between the pre-Supplementary Motor Area (pre-SMA), the Broca's Area (BA), and the ventral Pre-Motor Area (PreMA) in the left hemisphere. This "triangle'' shows consistently in all the …

Some Non-Human Languages Of Thought, Nicolas J. Porot

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What might we learn if we take seriously the possibility of non-human Languages of Thought (LoT)? A LoT is a combinatorial set of mental representations. And, since mental representations and rules of combination vary in kind, there are many possible LoTs. Simple LoTs might lack familiar features of the putative human LoT, such as object representations, recursively defined rules of combination, sentential connectives, or predicate-argument structure. The most familiar arguments for the existence of LoTs, such as those from productivity, systematicity, concept learning, and perceptual computation, all fail when applied to non-human animals. But recent empirical evidence motivates attributing LoTs …

The Superstitious Heuristic In Strategic Decision-Making, Jing Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on an important but largely ignored phenomenon in the strategic decision literature which I refer to as the use of superstitious heuristics in strategic decision-making. I define the superstitious heuristic as a decision shortcut based on one’s beliefs in the existence of forces or essences that transcend the boundary between the mental/symbolic and physical/material realities in a way that is unsupported by contemporary science. The use ofsuperstitious heuristics in strategic decision-making is prevalent in major economies and influences firms’ strategic behaviors and performance. In this dissertation, I first explored the concept of the superstitious heuristic and …

Eugenics In The 21st Century, Jessica Linn Chin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eugenics is the science of enhancing the human population through the management of breeding and hereditary traits. This thesis explores the history of eugenics and shows how eugenic practices continue in the 21^st century with advancements in technology and positive eugenic goals that can result in adverse effects on the human body and society. When Sir Francis Galton coined the term eugenics in 1883, he intended to improve British society with the use of positive eugenics. Galton used positive eugenics to encourage people with good mental and physical qualities to produce more children. He avoided negative eugenics, which involved …

Unlearning Don Carlos: Historical And Fictional Elements Of Innovation In César Vichard De Saint-Réal’S 'Dom Carlos, Nouvelle Historique,' Friedrich Schiller’S 'Don Karlos, Infant Von Spanien,' And Giuseppe Verdi’S 'Don Carlos', Maria-Cristina Necula

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The story of the sixteenth-century Spanish prince, Don Carlos, has inspired numerous literary and musical adaptations that, despite the artistic limitations of historically-based content, reflect an astonishing scope of creative freedom. The myth created around Don Carlos originated in European consciousness as early as 1568. Various theories recorded in political reports and in historical works insinuated that the prince had been murdered while incarcerated by orders of his father, King Philip II. Simultaneously, hatred of Spain, intensified by Philip’s violent suppression of the revolt in the Netherlands, determined exiled Flemish nobles to launch an anti-Philip propaganda. The mystery of Don …

Structure And Function Of Dopamine In The Inner Ear And Auditory Efferent System Of A Vocal Fish, Jonathan T. Perelmuter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The neuromodulator dopamine is considered essential for coordinating the internal motivational state of an organism with appropriate behavioral responses to stimuli in the external environment. This could be accomplished by modifying the function of neural circuits involved in sensory processing such that they are “tuned in” and optimally sensitive to important stimuli during critical time windows. While dopamine modulation of auditory processing has been studied in the central nervous system, neuromodulation can also occur outside the brain, in the inner ear. The majority of investigations of dopamine in the ear are conducted using rodents and focus on its role in …

Probing The Gelation Phenomena In Molecular And Seed-Based Gels, Malick Samateh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The interest in molecular gels has been gaining momentum as evident from being developed for a broad spectrum of applications. This impetus stems from several reasons that include: (i) molecular gels are highly stimuli responsive as they easily respond to thermodynamic changes, disintegrating into well-defined chemicals/building blocks because of the purely physical (in contrast to chemically cross-linked) nature of the interactions holding their 3D networks together; (ii) the sheer abundance of simple small molecules to choose starting materials from and the vast potential of tunability of the low molecular weight gelators (LMWGs) make the LMWGs and the molecular gels highly …

Characterization Of Early Biofilm Formation And Physiology In Neisseria Gonorrhoeae, Kelly Eckenrode

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many bacteria rely on the dynamics of their extracellular appendages to perform important tasks, like motility and biofilm formation. Interestingly, these dynamics have been linked to physiological responses in some pathogenic bacteria; therefore, it is important to understand more about the role of physical forces in bacteria. I used the causative agent of the human disease gonorrhea, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, as a model system to study the role of physical force on early biofilm formation. The advantage of this system is that cell-cell interactions are controlled by extracellular filaments called type IV pili (tfp). Tfp is composed of monomers that give …

Developing A Dissociative Nanocontainer For Peptide Drug Delivery, Michael Patrick Kelly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The potency and specificity of bioactive peptides have propelled these agents to the forefront of pharmacological research. However, delivery of peptides to their molecular target in cells is a major obstacle to their widespread application. A Trojan Horse strategy of packaging a bioactive peptide within a modified protein cage to protect it during transport, and releasing it at the target site, is a promising delivery method. Recent work has demonstrated that the viral capsid of the P22 bacteriophage can be loaded with an arbitrary, genetically-encoded peptide, and externally decorated with a cell-penetrating peptide, such as HIV-Tat, to translocate across in …

Renal Specific Rnai Delivery By Fibrillar Nanoparticle Excipients, Sam Wong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful tool to manipulate the phenotype of an organism by silencing the expression of specific genes and is viewed as a highly promising platform for treating undruggable targets and disorders where small molecule drugs and antibodies would fail. However, development of RNAi based therapies has faced major barriers including cellular and tissue-specific uptake of the Small Interfering RNA (siRNA). Utilizing different nanoparticles as RNAi excipients, cellular uptake and gene silencing potency can be greatly improved. The research in Dr. McDevitt groups has fibrillar carbon nanotubes (CNT) as carriers for siRNA for gene silencing in vitro …

Analyzing Harmonic Polarities: A Tonal Narrative Approach, Stephen J. Whale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to develop an approach to analyzing common-practice repertoire based on the dynamic interplay of centripetal and centrifugal forces. It aims at interpreting various kinds of chromaticism and modulation in terms of the interaction of forces moving away from the tonic or principal key (centrifugal) and those returning to it (centripetal). Centripetal forces also correspond to the force of cadential substantiation of keys, not only the principal key, which I call temporal-centripetal force; temporal-centrifugal forces correspond to the phenomena of tonal instability, of motion through multiple regions.

The dynamic interplay and counterbalancing of these forces is a core …

Systematics Of Carex Section Laxiflorae (Cyperaceae), Jenna Dorey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Carex, with more than 2100 species, is the most species-rich genus of flowering plants in temperate regions of the world. Members of the family Cyperaceae are colloquially known as sedges, and members of the genus Carex are called “true sedges.” Carex occur on every continent except for Antarctica, they thrive in a panoply of habitats, and are ecologically important as a forage source for wildlife, carbon sequestration, prevention of soil erosion, and providing habitat for fresh water invertebrates. Despite their importance many sedges are still poorly known, such as the woodland sedges in Carex section Laxiflorae, which is …

The Effects Of Language Background And Foreign Accent On Listening Comprehension, Sita Carraturo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The act of listening to a linguistic signal is an involved process, and, rarely occurs in absolute silence. A person trying to listen and comprehend speech is likely in an environment that has some sort of additional noise: white noise from a fan, passing traffic, construction, or just other talkers. Each of these additional auditory signals creates an unfavorable environment for the listener who is trying to capture the target signal. Research has been able to quantify and describe the effects of noise on the comprehension of linguistic signals, and has also shown that that bilinguals and monolinguals — though …

Getting The Benefit Of The Doubt: The Effect Of Randomization Ratio On The Placebo Response, Taiki Matsuura

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Placebos are commonly employed in clinical trials as inactive treatments to which experimental treatments are compared against in order to control for psychological “noise.” Randomized double-blind placebo control studies are considered the “gold standard” in epidemiologic research because they can provide the strongest possible evidence of causation if designed correctly (Hulley, Cummings, Browner, & Grady, 2007). One phenomenon that poses a threat to the integrity of this evidence is the placebo response (PR), or referred to as the “placebo effect.” Expectancy is considered a central PR mechanism and boasts the most empirical support among all proposed mechanisms. Expectancy is not …

Integrating Temperature-Dependent Life Table Data Into Insect Life Cycle Model For Predicting The Potential Distribution Of Scapsipedus Icipe Hugel & Tanga, Magara H.J. Otieno, Monica A. Ayieko, Saliou Niassy, Daisy Salifu, Azrag G.A. Abdelmutalab, Khamis M. Fathiya, Sevgan Subramanian, Komi K.M. Fiaboe, Nana Roos, Sunday Ekesi, Chrysantus M. Tanga

All Peer-Reviewed Publications

Scapsipedus icipe Hugel and Tanga (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) is a newly described edible cricket species. Although, there is substantial interest in mass production of S. icipe for human food and animal feed, no information exists on the impact of temperature on their bionomics. Temperature-dependent development, survival, reproductive and life table parameters of S. icipe was generated and integrated into advanced Insect Life Cycle Modeling software to describe relative S. icipe population increase and spatial spread based on nine constant temperature conditions. We examined model predictions and implications for S. icipe potential distribution in Africa under current and future climate. These regions …

Anthropology's Science Wars : Insights From A New Survey, Mark Horowitz, William Yaworsky, Kenneth Kickham

Anthropology Faculty Publications

In recent decades the field of anthropology has been characterized as sharply divided between proscience and antiscience factions. The aim of this study is to empirically evaluate that characterization. We survey anthropologists in graduate programs in the United States regarding their views of science and advocacy, moral and epistemic relativism, and the merits of evolutionary biological explanations. We examine anthropologists’ views in concert with their varying appraisals of major controversies in the discipline (Chagnon/Tierney, Mead/Freeman, and Menchú/Stoll). We find that disciplinary specialization and especially gender and political orientation are significant predictors of anthropologists’ views. We interpret our findings through the …

Predicting The Hardness Of Turf Surfaces From A Soil Moisture Sensor Using Iot Technologies, Ann Marie Mckeon

Other

In horseracing, “the going” is a term to describe the racetrack ground conditions. In Ireland presently, a groundskeeper or course clerk walks the racecourse poking it with a blackthorn stick, assesses conditions, and declares the going – it is a subjective measurement.

This thesis will propose using remote low-cost soil moisture sensors to gather high frequency data about the soil water content in the ground and to enable informed decisions to be made. This will remove the subjective element from the ground hardness, and look at the data in an objective way.

The soil moisture sensor will systematically collect high …

University Honors Program Honors Thesis/ Capstone Handbook 2019-2020, University Honors Program, Georgia Southern University

Honors College: Thesis Handbook (2018-2023)

No abstract provided.