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2019

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A Structure Based Approach For Defining Ligand Interaction Requirements With Atp-Binding Cassette Proteins, Christina A. Le Jan 2019

A Structure Based Approach For Defining Ligand Interaction Requirements With Atp-Binding Cassette Proteins, Christina A. Le

All ETDs from UAB

Membrane proteins belonging to the ATP-Binding Cassette (ABC) superfamily are responsible for transporting substrates into or out of cells. ABC transporters, such as P-glycoprotein (Pgp/ABCB1) defend cells by the active efflux of many chemically diverse cytotoxic compounds. The ABC protein, CFTR/ABCC7, is a passive chloride ion channel that provides fluid homeostasis. Pgp and CFTR of are high clinical interest since mutations in CFTR can result in Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and upregulation of Pgp in tumor cells can result in multidrug resistance (MDR). There has been a major effort to develop clinical drugs to treat CF by either repairing defects in …

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Work Engagement Of Hospital Nurses And Patients’ Ratings Of Nurse Communication, Overall Hospital Rating And Likelihood To Recommend The Hospital To Others, Apryl S. Lewis Jan 2019

Work Engagement Of Hospital Nurses And Patients’ Ratings Of Nurse Communication, Overall Hospital Rating And Likelihood To Recommend The Hospital To Others, Apryl S. Lewis

All ETDs from UAB

Significance/Background: Work engagement may play a key role in quality patient outcomes. The inpatient hospital experience is a U.S. healthcare system priority with one component of the patients’ hospital experience focused on hospital staff-to-patient communication. Nurses are the main communicators of vital information about inpatient care and recovery and, therefore, play a critical role in achieving high scores on patient experience measures. Past studies show a relationship between high levels of nurse work engagement and positive patient outcomes, such as quality of health services, but it is unknown if hospital nurses’ work engagement is associated with patients’ hospital experience ratings. …

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The Effects Of Saha And Egcg On Metastatic Potential In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells, Kayla Lewis Steed Jan 2019

The Effects Of Saha And Egcg On Metastatic Potential In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Cells, Kayla Lewis Steed

All ETDs from UAB

About 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some time in their lives, and more than 40,000 women will die due to breast cancer this year. Women do not die from localized breast cancer cases but from metastatic, or Stage IV, breast cancer (MBC). Over 150,000 women are currently living with MBC, and treatments focus on length and quality of life considering there is no cure. Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) do not respond to targeted therapies as they are lacking estrogen receptor alpha (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). They …

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Person Re-Identification By Deep Structured Prediction: A Generative Approach, Xinpeng Liao Jan 2019

Person Re-Identification By Deep Structured Prediction: A Generative Approach, Xinpeng Liao

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Visual appearance based person re-identification (re-ID) is the task of assigning the same identifier to all instances of a particular individual captured in images or videos, even after the occurrence of significant gaps over time or space. The state-of-the-art methods can be categorized into two main approaches: Given a set of gallery images with known IDs, the task is to infer either the ID label of a probe image individually (person re-ID via image retrieval) or the collective ID labeling of all probe images simultaneously (person re-ID via a highly-crafted re-ID structure). This dissertation is primarily focused on exploring the …

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Kinetics Of Thermal Decomposition And Polymerization During Continuous Cooling, Tatsiana Liavitskaya Jan 2019

Kinetics Of Thermal Decomposition And Polymerization During Continuous Cooling, Tatsiana Liavitskaya

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The processes that naturally occur on heating such as thermal decompositions and polymerizations can be made to proceed on cooling. Studying the resulting cooling kinetics is the major objective of this work. The kinetics of the reactions are explored by using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) in combination with isoconversional kinetic analysis. The kinetic parameters obtained on cooling are compared to the ones evaluated on heating and physical insights into the differences and similarities in the kinetics of the processes on heating and cooling are proposed. The study is driven by the hypothesis that the kinetics on …

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Effects Of Protein Timing And Energy Balance On Body Composition In Collegiate Athletes, Ashley Licata Jan 2019

Effects Of Protein Timing And Energy Balance On Body Composition In Collegiate Athletes, Ashley Licata

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The current literature indicates that energy balance and protein consumption influence body composition. However, the effects of protein intake, timed protein supplementation, and energy balance on body composition have not yet been fully investigated in collegiate athletes. The purpose of this research was to assess collegiate athletes using hourly food and exercise data to examine how protein timing and energy balance relate to body composition. Aims 1 and 2 focus on collegiate female soccer athletes and further our understanding of the potential roles that protein amount and frequency and hourly energy balance play in optimizing fat mass and fat-free mass. …

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The Mechanism Of Glucose-Induced Trib3 Expression In Myoblasts And Myotubes, Xiaobing Liu Jan 2019

The Mechanism Of Glucose-Induced Trib3 Expression In Myoblasts And Myotubes, Xiaobing Liu

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Our previous data indicates that glucose-toxicity is dependent upon upregulation of TRIB3 expression in muscle. TRIB3 is a glucose-responsive gene and, as a pseudokinase, it blocks phosphorylation of AKT resulting in insulin resistance. The purpose of the current study was to identify the role of the differentiation process and the minimal functional sequence of TRIB3 promoter region in modulating glucose-induced TRIB3 gene expression in C2C12 myocytes. First, C2C12 myocytes were collected every 48 hours during the whole differentiation, totally 4 intervals. Before collection, cells were treated with either 5mmol glucose or 25mmol glucose for 24 hours. Under 5mmol glucose, the …

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Design, Develop And Manufacture A Low-Cost 32-Channel Biosignal Amplifier And D/A Converter Device For Multi- Electrode Neural Recording, Yen-Tze Liu Jan 2019

Design, Develop And Manufacture A Low-Cost 32-Channel Biosignal Amplifier And D/A Converter Device For Multi- Electrode Neural Recording, Yen-Tze Liu

All ETDs from UAB

In the current market, there are many multichannel neural recording devices are available. However, they are either very expensive or physically big so that it cannot be used too close to the specimen because of the space limitations due to experimental setting such as Faraday cage, microscope, and other stimuli apparatus. In addition to that, the large electronic devices in the cell recording area are susceptible to create electrical noise, especially if they are not battery operated. This thesis work will try to deliver solutions following three main problems. The first problem we address is the device cost per recording …

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Smile Outcome Comparison Of Orthodontic Cases Treated With Different Extraction Patterns, Gregory Long Jan 2019

Smile Outcome Comparison Of Orthodontic Cases Treated With Different Extraction Patterns, Gregory Long

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Extraction of premolar teeth for orthodontic purposes is a common treatment approach. The effects of premolar extraction on the occlusion and the face have been studied extensively in the past. To date, however, the effects of premolar extractions on the smile have not been comprehensively quantified in the literature. The purpose of this study was to compare the smile outcome of patients treated with premolar extractions. Methods: This retrospective case-control study established 4 groups of 33 patients each for comparison. Three groups of patients with the same malocclusion were treated with different premolar extraction patterns. The remaining group of patients …

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Early Life Stress And Immune Responses In Adult Rat Kidneys, Ijeoma E. Obi Jan 2019

Early Life Stress And Immune Responses In Adult Rat Kidneys, Ijeoma E. Obi

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Globally, human studies show overwhelming associations between adverse childhood experiences and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and CVD risks throughout adult life. As early as 6 years old, there are significant associations between childhood adversity and inflammation, and those association are observed throughout adult life as well. Over a decade ago, rodent models were used to establish the importance of the immune cells in hypertension, which is the major risk factor in developing CVD. Although these associations in humans are important, they pose several limitations that can be overcome by the use of animal models to study the molecular mechanisms that are …

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A Deep Learning Approach For Identifying Key Biomarkers In Medical Imaging Applications, David Odaibo Jan 2019

A Deep Learning Approach For Identifying Key Biomarkers In Medical Imaging Applications, David Odaibo

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Although Deep Leaning has achieved great success in many domains in recent years, research into its applicability and effectiveness in medical applications has been limited for various reasons. Some of these barriers are related to the historic impression that neural networks are black boxes, especially when applied to medical diagnosis and offer no in terpretation into prediction. In this dissertation, I demonstrated that deep learning can be an effective utility in medical diagnosis and biomarker detection. In particular, I have developed deep learning models that can identify biomarkers in brain hemorrhage, brain tumor, pneumonia, diabetic retinopathy and Parkinsons disease, with …

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Identification Of Bottleneck Locations From Analysis Of National Performance Management Research Data Set (Npmrds) Records, Xinyun Pan Jan 2019

Identification Of Bottleneck Locations From Analysis Of National Performance Management Research Data Set (Npmrds) Records, Xinyun Pan

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The traveling public is enduring traffic congestion on a regular basis which is a serious problem for the society. Congestion has negative impacts on transportation users’ convenience and satisfaction, results in lost productivity, increases stress and health related issues, has negative environmental impacts, increases fuel consumption, negatively affects travel reliability and increases travel time and delays. Traffic bottlenecks are often associated with traffic congestion. They represent a localized disruption of traffic flow due to a specific physical condition (such as insufficient roadway capacity or poor geometric design) or due to a temporary situation that restricts traffic flow such as a …

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A Study Of Approximation Error In Eulerian Hydrocodes, Parth Yogeshbhai Patel Jan 2019

A Study Of Approximation Error In Eulerian Hydrocodes, Parth Yogeshbhai Patel

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In this study, we examine a number of approximations in the formulation of hydrocodes. These approximations were borne out of an original requirement for the code to run as fast as possible i.e. with accuracy being secondary to speed. Many of these approximations originated from the 1970’s when computers were slow and memory was at a premium. Although speed and memory are not as much of an issue today, these approximations are still used to formulate the hydrocodes. In this study, the effect of these approximations is examined systematically. The lumped mass approximation is a simplification to the consistent mass …

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Framework For Validation Of Different Media Types Using A Model Based On Consensus, Adilahmed Patel Jan 2019

Framework For Validation Of Different Media Types Using A Model Based On Consensus, Adilahmed Patel

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Increasingly people of all ages consume news and entertainment through electronic media and social media [1]. As the internet in general and social media in particular are a recent phenomenon, the laws governing them and the technologies to monitor them are still evolving. There is a general consensus on the ubiquity and power of these media, hence the worry of how to handle these media. In this context, validating the online content becomes of paramount importance. Fighting fake content is not only relevant to news and current affairs but is very useful in other areas like technical content, legal content …

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The Real-Time Extractiion Of Neural Spikes For Brain-Machine Interface Application Using Deep Learning Algorithm, Patel Sahaj Anilbhai Jan 2019

The Real-Time Extractiion Of Neural Spikes For Brain-Machine Interface Application Using Deep Learning Algorithm, Patel Sahaj Anilbhai

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The detection of neural spikes in real-time and accurately has become the center of interest for the researchers in the field of brain-machine/computer interface (BMI/BCI). The primary challenge in the Brain-Machine interface is to translate raw neuronal response signals into the control of electrical actuators. Only accurate and rapid classification of neural response can help efficiently and conveniently to disable peoples, particularly those suffering from spinal cord injury, stocks, etc., Recording from neurons and analyzing them with many different methods are not new. However, the primary challenge here is the real-time recording and classifying the spikes with higher accuracy. In …

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Automating Personal Safety Among Different Age Groups, Jayun Patel Jan 2019

Automating Personal Safety Among Different Age Groups, Jayun Patel

All ETDs from UAB

Personal Safety has always been crucial to one’s life. Many different threats are faced by people in their day to day lives. These threats differ with different age groups that affect their health and well being. Different threats affect people, which include birth defects, falls, drowning, health problems, abuse, suicide, homicide, and sexual violence [39]. Many other threats occur every day but these threats are the common threats that are faced by most of the people at different ages. These threats can affect the victims in terms of the health of the person, and the physical and mental well being …

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Examining Teachers' Perceptions And Practices Of Family Engagement With Families Of Emergent Bilinguals In Pre-Kindergarten And Kindergarten Classrooms: A Mixed Methods And Multiple Case Study, Julie I. Paul Jan 2019

Examining Teachers' Perceptions And Practices Of Family Engagement With Families Of Emergent Bilinguals In Pre-Kindergarten And Kindergarten Classrooms: A Mixed Methods And Multiple Case Study, Julie I. Paul

All ETDs from UAB

This study addressed pre-K and kindergarten teachers’ perceptions and practices of family engagement with families of students who are Dual Language Learners/Emergent Bilinguals. The study employed an explanatory sequential mixed methods design (Quan --> QUAL) (Creswell & Plano-Clark, 2018). To address the purpose of the study, the overarching mixed methods question was: How do pre-K and kindergarten teachers engage families of all their students and families of students who are emergent bilinguals? Mixing of the strands occurred after the quantitative data was collected. Quantitative results helped develop the semi-structured interview protocol for the qualitative phase of the study. Qualitative results …

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Bayesian Hierarchical Negative Binomial And Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial Models For High-Dimensional Analyses With Applications To Human Microbiome Count Data, Amanda H. Pendegraft Jan 2019

Bayesian Hierarchical Negative Binomial And Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial Models For High-Dimensional Analyses With Applications To Human Microbiome Count Data, Amanda H. Pendegraft

All ETDs from UAB

The human microbiome was first described as an “ecological community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms that literally share our bodyspace”. These microorganisms, also known as microbes and bacteria, are known for participation in human health. For example, microbes extract energy from foods that are otherwise indigestible, synthesize vitamins and amino acids necessary for important bodily functions, and protect hosts against disease-carrying pathogens. Therefore, the pursuit of human microbiome research is important for understanding the influence of microorganisms throughout human systems. Human microbiome research is founded on advances in next-generation sequencing technology. Namely, the identification of microbes that constitute the …

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Enhanced Proangiogenic Activity Of Endothelial Cells In Response To Polyglutamate Domain-Modified Qk Peptides Delivered On Bone Grafting Materials, Nicholas Weldon Pensa Jan 2019

Enhanced Proangiogenic Activity Of Endothelial Cells In Response To Polyglutamate Domain-Modified Qk Peptides Delivered On Bone Grafting Materials, Nicholas Weldon Pensa

All ETDs from UAB

Over 2 million bone grafting procedures are performed annually. To meet the high demand for these surgeries, commercial grafting materials sourced from allograft, xenograft, and synthetic calcium phosphate have become widely popular clinically. One limitation of these grafts, however, is their lack of growth factors that drive angiogenesis during bone tissue regeneration. Insufficient revascularization of the injured bone tissue leads to poor fracture healing. However, reincorporating angiogenic factors on grafting materials has proven challenging due to limited surface interactions between the protein and mineral graft surface. To address this challenge, we have synthesized a polyglutamate domain to the VEGF mimetic …

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Genetic And Epigenetic Underpinnings Of End-Stage Human Heart Failure, Mark Emile Pepin Jan 2019

Genetic And Epigenetic Underpinnings Of End-Stage Human Heart Failure, Mark Emile Pepin

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Heart failure (HF) is the clinical endpoint of numerous diseases that negatively impact the heart’s capacity to pump and/or fill with blood. A variety of genetic and environmental factors have been identified as critical determinants of HF susceptibility; however, these factors cannot independently explain the phenotypic diversity of human HF. Instead, a complex interplay has been theorized to exist between genetics and the environment, although the molecular underpinnings of this synergy remain poorly understood. Of the possible mechanisms, epigenetic influences are uniquely capable of explaining how acute stressors of the cardiac microenvironment trigger the stable – yet reversible – reprogramming …

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Ventral Hippocampal Input To The Medial Prefrontal Cortex Regulates Social Memory, Mary Leann Phillips Jan 2019

Ventral Hippocampal Input To The Medial Prefrontal Cortex Regulates Social Memory, Mary Leann Phillips

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Both the ventral hippocampus (vHIP) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are active participants in the neural circuitry activated by social interaction, and are both necessary for certain aspects of social behavior. Additionally, synaptic projections from the ventral hippocampus (vHIP) to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are implicated in several neuropsychiatric disorders. Using the Mecp2 knockout (KO) mouse model of Rett syndrome, an autism-associated disorder with network level deficits in the vHIP and mPFC as well as aberrant social behavior, we strove to determine the role of vHIP-mPFC in social behavior. Here, we show that the vHIP-mPFC projection is hyperactive in …

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Organizational Characteristics And Environmental Factors Associated With Hospitals Identified As Consolidation Targets, Christi Pierce Jan 2019

Organizational Characteristics And Environmental Factors Associated With Hospitals Identified As Consolidation Targets, Christi Pierce

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In today’s dynamic healthcare landscape, hospitals face uncertainty and pressure from changing reimbursement schemas, intense government regulation, technological advances, consumer demand and workforce scarcity. These increased pressures have led to an acceleration of consolidation activities as hospitals position themselves to cope with a dynamic and complex external environment by maximizing resources, creating economies of scale and expanding access to care. Despite increased hospital consolidation activity, little is known about what makes a hospital attractive as a consolidation target to an acquiring hospital, particularly post-ACA. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the organizational characteristics and environmental factors associated with …

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Investigating The Relationship Between Nurse Burnout And Self-Reported Medication Administration Errors In Alabama Hospitals, Aoyjai Prapanjaroensin Jan 2019

Investigating The Relationship Between Nurse Burnout And Self-Reported Medication Administration Errors In Alabama Hospitals, Aoyjai Prapanjaroensin

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Background: Approximately 30% to 60% of nurses report high levels of burnout worldwide. Nurse burnout may impact vigilance and job performance. Nursing job performance may decrease due to lowered alertness if nurses have high levels of burnout, and this issue may be related to the act of committing a medication error. Of the very few studies exploring the relationship between nurse burnout and medication errors, the findings are conflicting. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between nurse work environment characteristics, burnout levels and self-reported medication administration errors as well as patient safety grades among nursing staff …

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Three Essays In Hospital Financial Distress: Prediction, Antecedents And Organizational Response, Neeraj Avinash Puro Jan 2019

Three Essays In Hospital Financial Distress: Prediction, Antecedents And Organizational Response, Neeraj Avinash Puro

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The following essays examine the financial distress in acute care hospitals in the United States. The first essay examines the accuracy of prediction models of financial distress, the second explores the factors associated with financial distress and the third essay examines organizational response to financial distress. The first essay compares the predictive ability of three financial distress prediction models: modified Altman Z score (1993), Ohlson O score (1980) and Zmijewski (1984) to more accurately predict financial distress in U.S acute care hospitals. Building on the first essay, the second essay uses the most accurate predictive model to examine acute care …

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The Reductive Stress Reducto-Mir: Emerging Insight Into Microrna-671, Justin Michael Quiles Jan 2019

The Reductive Stress Reducto-Mir: Emerging Insight Into Microrna-671, Justin Michael Quiles

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Excessive accumulation of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS/RNS) promotes cardiac pathophysiology. Although extreme oxidative burden is cytotoxic, ROS/RNS are continually generated within multiple domains of cardiac myocytes, and these species play fundamental roles in signal transduction through reversible thiol oxidation. Nuclear factor, erythroid 2 Like 2 (Nfe2l2/NRF2) is activated by ROS/RNS and binds cis regulatory antioxidant response elements (AREs) to induce the expression of a host of thiol oxidoreductases which regulate signaling events at the post-translational, transcriptional and epigenetic levels. Although oxidative stress has been linked to cardiac disease, adaptive processes in the heart require reduction-oxidation (redox) reactions as …

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Determination Of The Role Of Smu_833 In The Fitness And Virulence Of Cariogenic Streptococcus Mutans, Katherine Lynn Rainey Jan 2019

Determination Of The Role Of Smu_833 In The Fitness And Virulence Of Cariogenic Streptococcus Mutans, Katherine Lynn Rainey

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Dental caries, commonly known as tooth decay, is the most common infectious disease worldwide. The main etiological agent of dental caries is Streptococcus mutans which can readily form a biofilm on the surface of teeth and produce acids through the metabolism of dietary sugars, which is largely responsible for the demineralization and subsequent destruction of tooth enamel. In addition, S. mutans synthesizes extracellular glucosyltransferases (Gtfs) capable of breaking apart dietary sucrose and polymerizing the glucose subunits into the sticky glucan matrix of the biofilm, imperative for the formation of robust, three-dimensional biofilms. Currently used caries therapies are not species-specific and …

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Quantifications Of Theranostic Polymer-Based Particles For Image-Guided Drug Delivery, Sithira Ratnayaka Jan 2019

Quantifications Of Theranostic Polymer-Based Particles For Image-Guided Drug Delivery, Sithira Ratnayaka

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Modern medicine employs many drugs in its disease treatment methods. This is because they provide the best permanent solutions to complicated ailments. However the usefulness of these drugs is mitigated by several factors, namely that of specific release. Common drug delivery mechanisms lack the specificity needed to ensure that release is limited to the diseased area, which can lead to unnecessary side effects. By utilizing medical imaging, both drug delivery devices and physiology can be observed by physicians, which can greatly increase the specificity of drug delivery. Specifically, utilizing a very inert medical imaging modality, such as ultrasound, guarantees minimum …

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Impact Of Environmental Exposures On Respiratory Health, Lawrence Rasmussen Jan 2019

Impact Of Environmental Exposures On Respiratory Health, Lawrence Rasmussen

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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality around the world. Cigarette smoking is a leading cause of COPD; similarly, individuals exposed to secondhand smoke (SHS) are also vulnerable to COPD and other airway diseases; however, distinct molecular mechanisms involved in SHS-induced lung effects that result in COPD are poorly understood. Mucociliary clearance (MCC) is a primary lung defense against inhaled particulate matter and pathogens. Thus, understanding how inhaled irritants such as SHS disrupt MCC will promote improved scientific understanding and better public health initiatives to prevent respiratory illnesses. Using a variety of in vitro …

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Increasing Living Kidney Donation Through Advocacy And Patient Navigation, Rhiannon Deierhoi Reed Jan 2019

Increasing Living Kidney Donation Through Advocacy And Patient Navigation, Rhiannon Deierhoi Reed

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As the prevalence of kidney disease continues to increase in the United States, the gap between the need for organs and available kidney donors is growing as well. Deceased donor organs alone are insufficient to meet this need, and transplant centers have turned their focus to living donation to address the shortage. However, the frequency of living kidney donation has been declining in the US since 2004. Changes in the health of the US population have been suggested as one possible explanation for the decline, but currently these assertions remain anecdotal. A second theory with more published evidence attributes the …

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Development And Validation Of A Recumbent Patient Weighing Scale, Kayla Rettig Jan 2019

Development And Validation Of A Recumbent Patient Weighing Scale, Kayla Rettig

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Today, most medications are administered according to a standard amount or based on the patient’s weight (weight-based). For emergency departments and emergency medical services, weight-based medications are difficult to administer as medical personnel do not have a means to obtain accurate patient weights. Paramedics generally rely on visual estimation for adults and height- or age-based estimation tools for children in order to obtain weight. Over the past year, a team of biomedical engineering students, including the present author, worked to design and fabricate a weighing device for in-ambulance use. This device consists of three separate scales, wired together as one, …

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