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Assessment Of A Bdnf Mimetic To Improve Behavioral Deficits In Female Mecp2 Heterozygous Mice, A Model Of Rett Syndrome, Karen Nataly Ayala Baylon

All ETDs from UAB

Rett syndrome (RTT) is a neurodevelopmental disorder representing the second most common cause of intellectual disability in women. Most RTT cases are caused by mutations in the gene coding for the transcriptional regulator Methyl-CpG-binding Protein 2 (MeCP2). The neurotrophin BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) has therapeutic potential for RTT because BDNF levels are lower in RTT autopsy brains and in Mecp2 deficient mice, while conditional Bdnf deletion results in phenotypes similar to those of Mecp2 knockout (KO) mice. In addition, Bdnf overexpression in forebrain excitatory neurons in Mecp2 KO mice significantly improved their lifespan, locomotor function, and brain weight. However, BDNF …

Inhibition Of The Self-Assembly Of Aβ And Of Tau By Polyphenols: Mechanistic Studies, Qiuchen Zheng, Micheal T. Kebede, Merc M. Kemeh, Saadman Islam, Bethany Lee, Stuart D. Bleck, Liliana A. Wurfl, Noel D. Lazo

Chemistry

The amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide and tau protein are thought to play key neuropathogenic roles in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Both Aβ and tau self-assemble to form the two major pathological hallmarks of AD: amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, respectively. In this review, we show that naturally occurring polyphenols abundant in fruits, vegetables, red wine, and tea possess the ability to target pathways associated with the formation of assemblies of Aβ and tau. Polyphenols modulate the enzymatic processing of the amyloid-β precursor protein and inhibit toxic Aβ oligomerization by enhancing the clearance of Aβ42 monomer, modulating monomer–monomer interactions and remodeling oligomers to …

Attainment And Maintenance Of Pubertal Cyclicity May Predict High A4 Cows With Reduced Fertility, Sarah Nafziger

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Puberty attainment was investigated in heifers. Blood samples were collected from weaning until breeding during 6 years from heifers born in 2012-2017. Plasma progesterone concentrations ≥ 1 ng/ml were used to indicate cyclicity, and heifers were categorized into one of four puberty groups using SAS: 1) Early heifers reached puberty before March 12 and cycled continuously during the sampling period, 2) Typical heifers reached puberty on or after March 12 and cycled continuously, 3) Start-Stop heifers had at least one occurrence of progesterone ≥ 1 ng/ml but discontinued cycling during the sampling period, and 4) Non-Cycling heifers had no occurrence …

Attractive Or Aggressive? A Face Recognition And Machine Learning Approach For Estimating Returns To Visual Appearance, Guodong Guo, Brad R. Humphreys, Mohammad I. Nouyed, Yang Zhou

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

A growing literature documents the presence of appearance premia in labor markets. We analyze appearance premia in a high-profile, high-pay setting: head football coaches at bigtime college sports programs. These employees face job tasks involving repeated interpersonal interaction on multiple fronts and also act as the “face” of their program. We estimate the attractiveness of each employee using a neural network approach, a pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network fine tuned for this application. This approach can eliminate biases induced by volunteer evaluators and limited numbers of photos. We also use this approach to estimate the perceived aggressiveness of each employee based …

2019 Fall Commencement, Georgia Southern University

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Four Years Of Collegiate Sport Participation On Non-Contact, Contact, And Collision Athletes During Gait, Kristen L. Neitz

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

College athletes are often exposed to many training sessions, stresses, and injuries throughout their collegiate career. They often experience pain, stiffness, swelling, reduced range of motion and many other feelings following participation.. Much research has focused on the acute effects of collegiate athletics, but the long term effect has not been well studied. Sports are often divided into groups based on the nature of play; the three main groups are non-contact, contact, and collision sports. Differences have not been observed between the three sport groups and their ability to complete activities of daily living such as walking following four years …

A Systems Approach To Graphic Design Practice, Parisa Farmoudehyamcheh

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Over the past few decades, design issues have gotten more complex, and designers got responsible for solving more significant problems, from object-level problems to system-level problems to societal-level problems. This thesis is an exploration of employing a systems approach for solving these complicated issues. The systems approach helps designers to look at matters as a whole and consider all connected pieces in a network all together. In this way, proposing solutions to those problems will address all those parts and will solve them at the same time. In this thesis, I will study and analyze case studies such as Canva, …

Player-Coach Perceptions Of Internal Load, Exertion, And Recovery In Collegiate Male Soccer Players, Michelle L. Eisenman

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Periodization of athlete training load to improve performance and maximize recovery, while reducing injuries and overtraining, is essential in team sports. Understanding internal load responses and monitoring athlete exertion and recovery can help coaches during a competitive season. Recovery Status (PRS) and Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) are two subjective scales used to help quantify training load and recovery. These scales are more useful if there is an agreement between coaches (C) and players (P) assessment of intensity and recovery. PURPOSE: To assess subjective measures (PRS and RPE scores) from P and C during a 13-week competitive soccer season. Furthermore, …

Common Data Set, 2018-2019, Planning, Research, And Policy Analysis

Common Data Set (2001-present)

Common Data Set 2018-2019 for Illinois State University

Assessment And Prediction Of Surface Water Vulnerability From Non-Point Source Pollution In Midwestern Watersheds, Fadhil K. Jabbar

Doctoral Dissertations

"Non-point source pollution is the leading cause of impairment in surface water in the Midwest. In this research, we seek to predict which watersheds are most vulnerable to point source pollution without field sampling using publically available GIS databases. Watersheds with higher vulnerability ratings can then be targeted for water quality monitoring, and funds used to improve watershed health can be distributed with greater efficacy. To better understand and target watershed vulnerability, we used three different approaches. In the first project, 35 sub-watersheds were sampled in the Lower Grand Watershed, which is a highly agricultural watershed in northern Missouri/southern Iowa. …

Investigating Blast Fume Propagation, Concentration And Clearance In Underground Mines Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (Cfd), Raymond Ninnang Tiile

Doctoral Dissertations

"Blasting activities using standard industry explosives is an essential component of underground hard rock mining operations. Blasting operations result in the release of noxious gases, presenting both safety and productivity threats. Overestimation of post-blast re-entry time results in production losses, while underestimation leads to injuries and fatalities. Research shows that most underground mines simply standardize post-blast re-entry times based on experiences and observations. Few underground mines use theoretical methods for calculating post-blast re-entry time. These theoretical methods, however, are unable to account for the variations in the blasting conditions. Literature review shows that: (i) there is currently no means of …

Nanomorphology Dependent Optical And Mechanical Properties Of Aerogels, Chandana Mandal

Doctoral Dissertations

"Aerogels are very low density, light weight open pore materials. A hypothesis that is under intense current investigation by the scientific community states that the mechanical properties of nanostructured polymers depend on their nanomorphology. Aerogels are nanostructured ultra-lightweight nanoporous materials with skeletal frameworks that can display a wide range of nanomorphologies. Thereby aerogels comprise a suitable platform for testing not only that hypothesis but also a wide range of other properties such as light scattering for applications, for example, in thermally insulating windows.

To study the mechanical properties of nanostructured matter as a function of nanomorphology, various shape-memory polyurethane aerogels …

Spatiotemporal Modeling And Model Restructuration Approaches In Studies Of Intracellular Signalling Pathways, Md Shahinuzzaman

Doctoral Dissertations

"The main focus of the research is to understand the complex phenomena of cell transduction pathways and cell biology in a single cell. Mathematical modeling and experimental evaluation are widely used approaches for this kind of research. Firstly, A multiscale framework for protein-protein interaction has been established using Brownian dynamics algorithm. Sit specific feature, steric collision, diffusion, co-localization and complex formation with time and space has been included in this spatial modeling framework. By implementation of the time adaptive feature in this framework, the computation time reduces in an order of magnitude compared with traditional modeling framework. This multiscale Brownian …

Multiscale Spatio-Temporal Modeling Of Cell Population In Tissue Architecture And Drug Delivery Nanoparticles, Mohammad Aminul Islam

Doctoral Dissertations

"Multiscale nature of a biological system span at many order of magnitudes in time and space. Molecular interaction at lower scale is connected with the higher scale behavior of tissue or organism. Integrating the dynamics and information at different time and space can give a fundamental physiological understanding of the higher level phenomena. But complex features, functions, interconnectivity between different scales and lack of information on the fundamental physiological property make the model difficult and computationally challenging. The multiscale modeling approach can bridge the gap between different scale by a systemic integration of the complex dynamic behavior.

Here, the focus …

Predictive Analysis Of Real-Time Strategy Games Using Graph Mining, Isam Abdulmunem Alobaidi

Doctoral Dissertations

"Machine learning and computational intelligence have facilitated the development of recommendation systems for a broad range of domains. Such recommendations are based on contextual information that is explicitly provided or pervasively collected. Recommendation systems often improve decision-making or increase the efficacy of a task. Real-Time Strategy (RTS) video games are not only a popular entertainment medium, they also are an abstraction of many real-world applications where the aim is to increase your resources and decrease those of your opponent. Using predictive analytics, which examines past examples of success and failure, we can learn how to predict positive outcomes for such …

Investigating The Performance Of High Viscosity Friction Reducers Used For Proppant Transport During Hydraulic Fracturing, Mohammed Salem Ba Geri

Doctoral Dissertations

"Over the last few recent years, high viscosity friction reducers (HVFRs) have been successfully used in the oil and gas industry across all premier shale plays in North America including Permian, Bakken, and Eagle Ford. However, selecting the most suitable fracture fluid system plays an essential role in proppant transport and minimizing or eliminating formation damage.

This study investigates the influence of the use of produced water on the rheological behavior of HVFRs compared to a traditional linear guar gel. Experimental rheological characterization was studied to investigate the viscoelastic property of HVFRs on proppant transport. In addition, the successful implication …

Biofuel Supply Chain Restructuring -- An Economic Viability And Environmental Sustainability Investigation For Enhancing Second Generation Biofuel Adoption, Rajkamal Kesharwani

Doctoral Dissertations

"Biofuel is a promising clean alternative to fossil fuels. Currently, first generation biofuels are commercially produced by using corn grain as biomass feedstock. However, the use of edible matter of crops, may lead to a competition between food and fuel. Therefore, there is a significant push in both industry and academia to commercialize second generation biofuel manufacturing technology, which uses non-edible matter from crops. Most research focuses on individual manufacturing processes for producing second generation biofuel, but the economic and environmental impacts of a large-scale adoption of second generation biofuel manufacturing have been less widely reported.

This work investigates the …

Application Of Computational Intelligence To Explore And Analyze System Architecture And Design Alternatives, Gene Lesinski

Doctoral Dissertations

"Systems Engineering involves the development or improvement of a system or process from effective need to a final value-added solution. Rapid advances in technology have led to development of sophisticated and complex sensor-enabled, remote, and highly networked cyber-technical systems. These complex modern systems present several challenges for systems engineers including: increased complexity associated with integration and emergent behavior, multiple and competing design metrics, and an expansive design parameter solution space. This research extends the existing knowledge base on multi-objective system design through the creation of a framework to explore and analyze system design alternatives employing computational intelligence. The first research …

Design, Synthesis, Characterization And Anti-Cancer Effects Evaluation Of Interchain Cysteine Linked Antibody Drug Conjugates, Ke Li

Doctoral Dissertations

"Antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) are emerging therapeutic products specially designed for the treatment of cancers. Potent cytotoxic agents are linked to antibodies via linkers. Antibody drug conjugates, which take advantage of both antibodies and cytotoxic agents, showed high selectivity towards cancer cells. Cytotoxic agents are delivered to the cancer cells selectively and kill them from inside while leaving low or non-toxicity towards normal cells. Antibody drug conjugates are actually heterogeneous mixtures. The major heterogeneities mainly lie in the drug to antibody ratio (DAR) and drug linking positions, both of which potentially affect the therapeutic index of ADCs. In this research, …

Exploring Transition Metal Chalcogenides For Bio Sensing And Environmental Remediation, Bahareh Golrokh Amin

Doctoral Dissertations

“Electrocatalysts play an inevitable role in many applications including energy storage, energy conversion, and biosensing. The state-of-the-art noble metal-based electrocatalysts have long been used in full water splitting, non-enzymatic glucose sensing, and supercapacitors. However, scarcity and high cost of noble metals restrict utilization of such electrocatalysts in large-scale implementations. Transition metal-based electrodes have been considered as a potential solution to address these drawbacks as well as to enhance the electrocatalytic performance. In this work, applicability of non-oxidic transition metal based electrocatalysts is evaluated. Transition metal chalcogenides are expected to have high catalytic performance owing to their facilitated electron cloud delocalization …

Designing Bifunctional Materials For In-Situ Capture And Conversion Of Volatile Organic Compounds, Anirudh Krishnamurthy

Doctoral Dissertations

”Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a class of organic liquid compounds with low vapor pressures, which enables them to vaporize at ambient conditions. VOCs are largely toxic, carcinogenic, and mutagenic, and have profound adverse effects on human health and the ecological environment. Many VOCs cause ruinous health effects even at very low concentrations (ppm) and therefore control of these organic compounds is essential for ensuring good air quality. A large portion of VOCs cause catastrophic health effects such as cancer or liver damage even at very low concentrations (ppm), and the control of these compounds is vital in ensuring good …

Novel Statistical Modeling Of Sleep Patterns In Drosophila Melanogaster, Luyang Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

”Sleep is one of the most important behaviors in animals, yet many aspects of sleep are not well understood. In humans, sleep has been shown to impact different aspects of health and cognitive performance. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, can be used as a model organism to investigate sleep patterns over an entire lifespan. The sleep-wake status can be recorded every minute over the life of individual flies, resulting in a wealth of data for identifying meaningful aspects of sleep. In this work, a framework based on statistical modeling methods is developed for sleep data collected on fruit flies …

Design And Characterization Of A Strong Positron Source At The Mstr Beam Port, Raed Atiah Alsulami

Doctoral Dissertations

“For many years, slow positron sources have found uses in diverse fields including medical physics, nuclear physics, biology, surface science, exotic atom research and space science. The purpose of this work is to design and optimize a reactor-based positron source at the Missouri University of Science and Technology Reactor (MSTR) beam port and quantify its intensity. Monte Carlo simulations using the MCNP6 code were used to model the positron production and moderation processes at the MSTR beam port. The thermal neutron flux at the beam port was determined experimentally and used in the source definition of the radiation transport simulations. …

The Benefit Of Precise Chemical Shift And Concentration Referencing In Nmr Applications, Ming Huang

Doctoral Dissertations

“In Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, the chemical shift and intensity of NMR signals provide critical information about a sample's molecular structure, reaction conditions, and material properties. For the precise determination of structures and properties, it is critical to know sample or reaction conditions such as temperature, pH, concentration, or absolute amount of material. Chemical-shift and signal-intensity calibrations play a key role for extracting the maximum amount of information from NMR experiments. In this dissertation, internal and external reference standards are used to calibrate NMR spectra with respect to chemical shift and signal intensity. Sealed capillary tubes filled with specific …

Critical Physicochemical Properties For Nanoparticle Toxicity: Impact Of Surface Coating And Size On Particle-Induced Cell Transformation And Inflammatory Response, Tiffany Kornberg

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Nanoparticles, which measure 100 nm in at least one dimension, have surged in development, production, and use for a wide range of applications. However, the rapid pace of development for these emerging materials with unclear/unknown toxicity profiles makes it difficult to adequately assess health risk associated with exposure. One critical obstacle which limits scientific research to fill these critical knowledge gaps is the lack of accurate and predictive models for nanotoxicology studies, particularly those which involve occupationally relevant exposure scenarios (pulmonary exposure to low dose of particles in the circulating air). Typically, animal models are used to assess potential systemic …

Older Adult Caregivers’ Lived Experiences With Debilitated Chronically Ill Relatives In A Rural Southern County, Nancy J. Dameron

Theses and Dissertations

By 2030, the last of the baby boomer generation will reach the age of 65, which will expand the older adult population to more than 70 million in the United States. Based on the inflated numbers of the older adult population and the noted decreased birth rate in the younger population, fewer health-care providers will be available to teach, prepare, train, and assist caregivers in the ongoing care of their ill relatives.

The problem investigated in the study involved the present upsurge of the older adult population living longer and contributing to a shortage of health-care providers for older adults. …

Best Practices In Patellar Tendinopathy Management: An Evidence To Practice Review, Christopher J. Burcal, Adam B. Rosen, Tony Taylor, Mike Nicola

Clinical Practice in Athletic Training

Patellar tendinopathy (PT) is a degenerative condition that is common in sporting populations due to the loads placed on the tendon during dynamic activity. PT often occurs in overtraining situations; however, it may also occur in conjunction with and/or worsen through poor biomechanics, persistent inflammation, and altered movement patterns. Although sports medicine practitioners have evidence to support the prevalence of this injury, we do not have a strong base of evidence surrounding the contributing factors and pathophysiology that lead the pain and disability reported in patients with PT. The purpose of this evidence to practice review was to summarize a …

Quantification Of Aqp11 Paralog Expression In The Osmoregulatory Organs Of Anguilla Rostrata, Keith C. Kurt

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Osmoregulation is facilitated by using an assortment of ion and water channels to assist acclimation to changing conditions and to maintain cellular homeostasis. Euryhaline fish can be found in both seawater and freshwater (SW and FW) environments. Expression of ion and water channels have been experimentally demonstrated to change as a fish acclimates to different environmental conditions. Relatively recently, a new group of water channels has been discovered that are primarily intracellular and includes aquaporin 11 (AQP11). Typically, AQPs are located on the cell plasma membrane to allow water to flow in and out of the cell by osmosis to …

The Mediation Of Affect On Imagery Use And Self-Efficacy In Collegiate Athletes, Michelle Wirbiezcas

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In the sports domain, research has become an essential part of how we understand the psychological factors that play a key role in maximizing performance. Previous research has suggested that an individual’s performance can be highly influenced by the psychological variable of self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura, 1997; Calmels & Fournier, 2001). Self-efficacy has been used to describe individuals’ perceived capability of achieving a certain level of performance in the domain of sport (Feltz, 1998). Previous research has also demonstrated that the tendency of athletes to interpret their imagery as either facilitative or debilitative affects specific constructs known to enhance or impede …

Mental Toughness As A Predictor For Pre-Season Depression And Anxiety Symptoms, And Changes Over The Course Of An Athletic Season, Colleen J. Bohannan

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Background: Mental toughness (MT) has been considered necessary for individuals to be successful in the athletic setting. A connection has been theorized between MT and mental health. Purpose: ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­The purpose was to investigate if MT could be utilized as a predictor of the presence of depression and/or anxiety symptoms. This study also explored if MT, and depression/anxiety symptoms change over the course of a competitive season. Methods: 43 individuals (19.42 ± 1.26 years) participating in a fall team sport from the same Division I University participated in the study. Data was captured during pre-season, high stakes, and end of season, …