Digital Commons Network^™

Eastern North Carolina Head Start Teachers’ Personal And Professional Experiences With Healthy Eating And Physical Activity: A Qualitative Exploration, Virginia C. Stage, Lorelei Jones, Jocelyn Bayles, Archana V. Hegde, Dipti Dev, L. Suzanne Goodell

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Objective: Explore the interrelationship between teachers’ personal and professional socio-ecological structures while examining Head Start (HS) teachers’ experiences with (1) trying to eat healthy and engage in physical activity (PA) and (2) promote healthy eating and PA in their classrooms.

Design: In-depth semi-structured interviews were collected from March through June 2017. Researchers designed the data collection and analysis methods using a phenomenological approach. All interviews were recorded using digital audio and transcribed verbatim.

Setting: Seven HS centers in two rural eastern North Carolina counties.

Participants: Teachers (n 15) who had recently participated in a healthy eating and physical activity …

Does Context Matter? A Multilevel Analysis Of Neighborhood Disadvantage And Children's Sleep Health, Carlyn Graham, Eric Reither, Gabriele Ciciurkaite, Dipti Dev, Jamison Fargo

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Objectives: To determine how demographic, socioeconomic, and neighborhood characteristics are associated with bedtimes among US kindergarteners.

Design: Parents reported bedtimes of their children as well as personal, household, and residential characteristics via interviews in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten (ECLS-K) Class of 1998–1999. The ECLS-K links individual households to US Census tracts.

Setting: A random selection of 1,280 schools and surrounding communities in the US.

Participants: A random selection of 16,936 kindergarteners and their parents.

Measurements: The 2 outcomes were regular and latest weekday bedtimes of kindergarteners. Through a series of nested multilevel regression models, these outcomes were regressed on …

Feminazis And Social Justice Warriors: Gender And Rhetoric Is Superhero Film Fan Culture, Shelby Miksch

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

Multitarget Stool Dna Testing For The Prevention Of Colon Cancer: Outcomes In A Large Integrated Healthcare System, Nimish Vakil, Kristin Ciezki, Nadia Huq, Maharaj Singh

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

Background and Aims

Multitarget stool DNA (MT-sDNA) testing is used in primary care as a screening test for colon cancer. Test effectiveness and patient compliance were examined in clinical practice.

Methods

We assessed outcomes of MT-sDNA testing in a cohort study conducted in a large integrated healthcare system comprising 15 hospitals and 150 outpatient clinics using advanced electronic data capture (Clarity2 [Epic, Verona, Wisc, USA] and REDCap [Encinitas, Calif, USA]) followed by manual chart review to confirm MT-sDNA test results and to monitor the outcomes of subsequent colonoscopy.

Results

A total of 6835 MT-sDNA tests were performed over 1 year …

Hydrogen Peroxide Preconditioning Promotes Protective Effects Of Umbilical Cord Vein Mesenchymal Stem Cells In Experimental Pulmonary Fibrosis, Tayebeh Mahmoudi, Kamal Abdolmohammadi, Hamed Bashiri, Mehdi Mohammadi, Mohammad Jafar Rezaie, Fardin Fathi, Shohreh Fakhari, Mohammad Ali Rezaee, Ali Jalili, Mohammad Reza Rahmani, Lobat Tayebi

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive lung disorder with few available treatments. Mesenchymal stem cell therapy (MSCT), an innovative approach, has high therapeutic potential when used to treat IPF. According to recent data, preconditioning of MSCs can improve their therapeutic effects. Our research focuses on investigating the anti-inflammatory and antifibrotic effects of H₂O₂-preconditioned MSCs (p-MSCs) on mice with bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis (PF).

Methods

Eight-week-old male C57BL/6 mice were induced with PF by intratracheal (IT) instillation of bleomycin (4 U/kg). Human umbilical cord vein-derived MSCs (hUCV-MSCs) were isolated and exposed to a sub-lethal concentration (15 …

Genetic Evidence, Maoa, And State V. Yepez, Nita A. Farahany, Roderick T. Kennedy, Brandon L. Garrett

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Transparency Of Jail Data, William E. Crozier, Brandon L. Garrett, Arvind Krishnamurthy

Faculty Scholarship

Across the country, pretrial policies and practices concerning the use of cash bail are in flux, but it is not readily possible for members of the public to assess whether or how those changes in policy and practice are affecting outcomes. A range of actors affect the jail population, including: law enforcement who make arrest decisions, magistrates and judges who rule at hearings on pretrial conditions and may modify such conditions, prosecutors and defense lawyers who litigate at hearings, pretrial-service providers who assist in evaluation and supervision of persons detained pretrial, and the custodian of the jail who supervises facilities. …

Injustice And The Disappearance Of Discretionary Detention Under Trump: Detaining Low Risk Immigrants Without Bond, Robert Koulish, Kate Evans

Faculty Scholarship

This Report demonstrates that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violates legal requirements to provide immigrants with an individualized custody determination. Trump’s enforcement policies brought a surge of low-risk immigrants into ICE custody. The detention risk tool was supposed to train officers and strongly discourage them from detaining low-risk immigrants who posed no harm to society and were not a flight risk. Data received pursuant to FOIA show the opposite result. ICE has failed to perform the individualized assessment and restrict its use of civil detention to only those whose high levels of dangerousness and risk of flight justify their …

Firearms, Extreme Risk, And Legal Design: "Red Flag" Laws And Due Process, Joseph Blocher, Jacob D. Charles

Faculty Scholarship

The most prominent recent development in gun regulation has been the spread of extreme risk protection order (ERPO) laws—often called “red flag” laws—which permit the denial of firearms to individuals who a judge has determined present an imminent risk of harm to themselves or others. Following a wave of adoptions in the wake of the Parkland murders, such orders are now authorized by law in eighteen states and the District of Columbia, and under consideration in many others. Advocates argue that they provide a tailored, individualized way to deter homicide, suicide, and even mass shootings by providing a tool for …

Sandra Day O’Connor’S "First" Principles: A Constructive Vision For An Angry Nation, Lisa Kern Griffin

Faculty Scholarship

During her 25-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cast the decisive votes to resolve the most emotional debates, yet she maintained collegiality among the Justices and retained the public’s high regard. A recent biography by historian and journalist Evan Thomas chronicles her extraordinary personal qualities, remarkable professional journey, and constructive brand of patriotism. This book review essay describes a legacy in three parts: a lived example of how to thrive in the face of challenges, a jurisprudence driven by the courage to make compromises, and a theory about the long game of American democracy. First reintroduces …

The Role Of Notch1, Il-6 And Mir-146a In Inflammation And Infection In Crohn's Disease Non-Responders To Anti-Tnf-Alpha Therapy, Esra'a Keewan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Despite the extensive research on Notch signaling involvement in inflammation, its role in macrophage response in autoimmune diseases and defense mechanisms against bacterial infection such as Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis (MAP) remains unknown. In this study, we investigated the molecular role of Notch-1 signaling and its downstream modulation in the macrophage response during infection and disease treatment. We demonstrated that MAP infection significantly upregulated Notch-1 and IL-6, which hijacked myeloid cell leukemia sequence-1 (MCL)-1 dependent inhibition of apoptosis and caused chronic MAP persistence and significantly led to successive inflammation. Blocking Notch signaling with gamma-secretase inhibitor (DAPT) decreased MAP survival and burden, …

I Would Just Want To Leave This World: Women's Experiences Of Domestic Violence In Northern Namibia, Belinda L. Selebano, John D. Matthews

All Works

Background: Domestic violence (DV) is a traumatic experience that is influenced by a complex interplay of intrinsic and extrinsic factors and which exists worldwide. Namibia, located in Southwest Africa, is no exception to this as local media continuously report incidences of physical and sexual violence committed against women throughout the country. Materials and Methods: Using a qualitative design, twelve (N=12) female participants who experienced first-hand the effects of DV provided extensive insights into this phenomenon and its causal factors and offered suggestions as to what can be done to address this issue. Results: The results from this inquiry detail the …

Self-Assessment And Peer Assessment In Accounting Education: Students And Lecturers Perceptions, Anil Babu, Yasser Barghathi

All Works

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of self assessment (SA) and peer assessment (PA) in accounting and finance (A&F) education by gathering insights from students and professors in the same field of higher education. A qualitative approach was taken to gather insights, students were asked to perform SA and PA to do an online questionnaire to understand their perception about the same. The professors were interviewed to analyse their perception about SA and PA. Previous studies have suggested that the accounting graduates lack certain skills that are required by the employers and this has led to …

The European Union And The United Arab Emirates As Civilian And Soft Powers Engaged In Sustainable Development Goals, Adam Krzymowski

All Works

© Foundation of International Studies, 2020 and CSR, 2020. The article analyses the European Union (EU) – as European international organisation and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – the only federal state in the Arab World as civilian and soft powers, strongly active to reach the UN 2030 Agenda. The ambitious projects, as well as actions, strategies, and visions of this international entity for reaching Sustainable Development Goals, should be analysed due to its impact on the international environment and emerging new international relations architecture. The author carried out research using primarily descriptive and analytical methods. To this end, rich …

Machine Learning Techniques For Quantification Of Knee Segmentation From Mri, Sujeet More, Jimmy Singla, Ahed Abugabah, Ahmad Ali Alzubi

All Works

© 2020 Sujeet More et al. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is precise and efficient for interpreting the soft and hard tissues. Moreover, for the detailed diagnosis of varied diseases such as knee rheumatoid arthritis (RA), segmentation of the knee magnetic resonance image is a challenging and complex task that has been explored broadly. However, the accuracy and reproducibility of segmentation approaches may require prior extraction of tissues from MR images. The advances in computational methods for segmentation are reliant on several parameters such as the complexity of the tissue, quality, and acquisition process involved. This review paper focuses and briefly …

Menopause-Specific Quality Of Life Among Emirati Women, Linda Smail, Ghufran Jassim, Anam Shakil

All Works

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. To investigate the quality of life (QOL) of menopausal Emirati women aged 40–64 years and determine its relationship with their sociodemographic characteristics. A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 70 Emirati women using multistage stratified clustered random sampling. The participants were interviewed face-to-face using a structured questionnaire comprising sociodemographic variables, reproductive characteristics, and the Menopause-Specific Quality of Life (MENQOL) questionnaire. The most common symptom among the study participants was ‘aching in the muscles’. The participants had a moderate level of bothersome symptoms; in addition, vasomotor symptoms were reported by 61%, while …

Metacognitive Monitoring In Test-Taking Situations: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Of College Students, Mariana V.C. Coutinho, Elena Papanastasiou, Stylianou Agni, John M. Vasko, Justin J. Couchman

All Works

© 2020, Eskisehir Osmangazi University. In this study, we examined monitoring accuracy during in class-exams for Emirati, American and Cypriot college students. In experiment 1, 120 students made local, confidence-ratings for each multiple-choice question in a psychology exam and also estimated their performance at the end of the exam. In experiment 2, to investigate the effect of practice in monitoring accuracy, 69 students made confidence judgments in two consecutive exams. In Experiment 3, to evaluate whether rating one's confidence aids exam performance, 172 students completed the exam either with or without providing confidence judgments. In all three cultures, confidence judgments …

Numerical Analysis Of Carbon Nanotube-Based Nanofluid Unsteady Flow Amid Two Rotating Disks With Hall Current Coatings And Homogeneous-Heterogeneous Reactions, Muhammad Ramzan, Saima Riasat, Seifedine Kadry, Pin Kuntha, Yunyoung Nam, Fares Howari

All Works

© 2020 by the authors. In the present exploration, our objective is to investigate the importance of Hall current coatings in the establishment of Cattaneo-Christov (CC) heat flux model in an unsteady aqueous-based nanofluid flow comprising single (SWCNTs) and multi-walled (MWCNTs) carbon nanotubes (CNTs) amid two parallel rotating stretchable disks. The novelty of the presented model is strengthened with the presence of homogeneous-heterogeneous (HH) reactions and thermal stratification effects. The numerical solution of the system of coupled differential equations with high nonlinearity is obtained by applying the bvp4c function of MATLAB software. To corroborate the authenticity of the present envisioned …

Personalized Computer-Aided Diagnosis For Mild Cognitive Impairment In Alzheimer's Disease Based On Smri And C Pib-Pet Analysis, Fatma El Zahraa A. El-Gamal, Mohammed M. Elmogy, Ashraf Khalil, Mohammed Ghazal, Jawad Yousaf, Xiaolu Qiu, Hassan H. Soliman, Ahmed Atwan, Hermann B. Frieboes, Gregory Neal Barnes, Ayman S. El-Baz

All Works

© 2013 IEEE. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative condition that affects the central nervous system and represents 60% to 70% of all dementia cases. Due to an increased aging population, the number of patients diagnosed with AD is expected to exceed 131 million worldwide by 2050. The disease is characterized by various clinical symptoms and pathological features that define three main sequential decline stages, namely, early/mild, intermediate/moderate and late/severe stages. Although it is considered irreversible, early diagnosis of AD is highly desirable to help preserve cognitive function. However, early diagnosis is difficult due to different factors, including the patient-specific …

Benzimidazole Containing Acetamide Derivatives Attenuate Neuroinflammation And Oxidative Stress In Ethanol-Induced Neurodegeneration, Muhammad Imran, Lina Tariq Al Kury, Humaira Nadeem, Fawad Ali Shah, Muzaffar Abbas, Shagufta Naz, Arif Ullah Khan, Shupeng Li

All Works

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Oxidative stress-induced neuroinflammation is the prominent feature of neurodegenerative disorders, and is characterized by a gradual decline of structure and function of neurons. Many biochemical events emerge thanks to the result of this neurodegeneration, and ultimately provoke neuroinflammation, activation of microglia, and oxidative stress, leading to neuronal death. This cascade not only explains the complexity of events taking place across different stages, but also depicts the need for more effective therapeutic agents. The present study was designed to investigate the neuroprotective effects of newly synthesized benzimidazole containing acetamide derivatives, 3a (2-(4-methoxyanilino)-N-[1-(4-methylbenzene-1-sulfonyl)-1H-benzimidazol-2-yl] …

Calcium Homeostasis In Ventricular Myocytes Of Diabetic Cardiomyopathy, Lina T. Al Kury

All Works

© 2020 Lina T. Al Kury. Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic metabolic disorder commonly characterized by high blood glucose levels, resulting from defects in insulin production or insulin resistance, or both. DM is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide, with diabetic cardiomyopathy as one of its main complications. It is well established that cardiovascular complications are common in both types of diabetes. Electrical and mechanical problems, resulting in cardiac contractile dysfunction, are considered as the major complications present in diabetic hearts. Inevitably, disturbances in the mechanism(s) of Ca2+ signaling in diabetes have implications for cardiac myocyte contraction. …

Calcium Signaling In Endocardial And Epicardial Ventricular Myocytes From Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats, Lina T. Al Kury, Vadym Sydorenko, Manal M.A. Smail, Muhammad A. Qureshi, Anatoly Shmygol, Dimitrios Papandreou, Jaipaul Singh, Frank Christopher Howarth

All Works

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Diabetes Investigation published by Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD) and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd Aims/Introduction: Abnormalities in Ca2+ signaling have a key role in hemodynamic dysfunction in diabetic heart. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes on Ca2+ signaling in epicardial (EPI) and endocardial (ENDO) cells of the left ventricle after 5–6 months of STZ injection. Materials and Methods: Whole-cell patch clamp was used to measure the L-type Ca2+ channel (LTCC) and Na+/Ca2+ exchanger currents. Fluorescence photometry techniques were used to measure …

Assessment Of Eating Habits And Lifestyle During Coronavirus Pandemic In The Mena Region: A Cross-Sectional Study, Leila Cheikh Ismail, Tareq M. Osaili, Maysm N. Mohamad, Amina Al Marzouqi, Amjad H. Jarrar, Antonis Zampelas, Carla Habib-Mourad, Dima Omar Abu Jamous, Habiba I. Ali, Haleama Al Sabbah, Hayder Hasan, Latifa Mohammed Rashid Almarzooqi, Lily Stojanovska, Mona Hashim, Reyad R.Shaker Obaid, Samar Elfeky, Sheima T. Saleh, Zahieh A.M. Shawar, Ayesha S. Al Dhaheri

All Works

© The Authors 2020. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has rapidly spread globally, forcing countries to apply lockdowns and strict social distancing measures. The aim of this study was to assess eating habits and lifestyle behaviors among residents of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region during the lockdown. A cross-sectional study among adult residents of the MENA region was conducted using an online questionnaire designed on Google Forms during April 2020. A total of 2970 participants from 18 countries participated in the current study. During the pandemic, over 30% reported weight gain, 6.2% consumed five or more meals per …

Tweets Classification And Sentiment Analysis For Personalized Tweets Recommendation, Asad Masood Khattak, Rabia Batool, Fahad Ahmed Satti, Jamil Hussain, Wajahat Ali Khan, Adil Mehmood Khan, Bashir Hayat

All Works

© 2020 Asad Masood Khattak et al. Mining social network data and developing user profile from unstructured and informal data are a challenging task. The proposed research builds user profile using Twitter data which is later helpful to provide the user with personalized recommendations. Publicly available tweets are fetched and classified and sentiments expressed in tweets are extracted and normalized. This research uses domain-specific seed list to classify tweets. Semantic and syntactic analysis on tweets is performed to minimize information loss during the process of tweets classification. After precise classification and sentiment analysis, the system builds user interest-based profile by …

Explicit Determinantal Formula For A Class Of Banded Matrices, Yerlan Amanbek, Zhibin Du, Yogi Erlangga, Carlos M. Da Fonseca, Bakytzhan Kurmanbek, António Pereira

All Works

© 2020 Yerlan Amanbek et al., published by De Gruyter 2020. In this short note, we provide a brief proof for a recent determinantal formula involving a particular family of banded matrices.

Improving M-Learners' Performance Through Deep Learning Techniques By Leveraging Features Weights, Muhammad Adnan, Asad Habib, Jawad Ashraf, Babar Shah, Gohar Ali

All Works

© 2013 IEEE. Mobile learning (M-learning) has gained tremendous attention in the educational environment in the past decade. For effective M-learning, it is important to create an efficient M-learning model that can identify the exact requirements of mobile learners (M-learners). M-learning model is composed of features that are generated during M-learners' interaction with mobile devices. For an adaptive M-learning model, not only learning features are required, but it is also important to determine how they differ for various M-learners, their weights, and interrelationship. This study proposes a robust and adaptive M-learning model that is based on machine learning and deep …

A Geolocation-Aware Mobile Crowdsourcing Solution For The Emergency Supply Of Oxygen Cylinders, Faouzi Kamoun, May El Barachi, Abderrazak Hachani, Fatna Belqasmi, Amir Ben Said, Imed Amri

All Works

© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.All rights reserved. Emergency medical oxygen cylinders are commonly used as first aid kits to prevent strokes during chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) / asthma attacks. In this paper, we propose a geolocation-aware mobile crowdsourcing solution for the emergency supply of oxygen cylinders to patients suffering from sudden breathing difficulties. The proposed crowdsourcing solution leverages the proliferation of mobile devices to connect requestors of emergency oxygen cylinders with potential suppliers from the crowd during crises. We describe the design process of the system, its technical implementation details, key features. We also discuss some …

Ai Techniques For Covid-19, Adedoyin Ahmed Hussain, Ouns Bouachir, Fadi Al-Turjman, Moayad Aloqaily

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© 2013 IEEE. Artificial Intelligence (AI) intent is to facilitate human limits. It is getting a standpoint on human administrations, filled by the growing availability of restorative clinical data and quick progression of insightful strategies. Motivated by the need to highlight the need for employing AI in battling the COVID-19 Crisis, this survey summarizes the current state of AI applications in clinical administrations while battling COVID-19. Furthermore, we highlight the application of Big Data while understanding this virus. We also overview various intelligence techniques and methods that can be applied to various types of medical information-based pandemic. We classify the …

Arabic Version Of The Personality Inventory For The Dsm-5 (Pid-5) In A Community Sample Of United Arab Emirates Nationals, Olga Coelho, Rute Pires, Ana Sousa Ferreira, Bruno Gonçalves, Maryam Aljassmi, Joana Stocker

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© 2020 Coelho et al. Background: Section III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) proposes a model for conceptualizing personality disorders in which they are characterized by impairments in personality functioning and maladaptive personality traits. The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) is a self-report measure that assesses the presence and severity of these maladaptive personality traits. Objective: The current study examined the reliability and validity of the Arabic version of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) to measure maladaptive personality traits in the Emirati population of the United Arab Emirates. Methods: The Arabic version of the …

Arsenic Concentrations, Distributions And Bioaccessibilities At A Unesco World Heritage Site (Devon Great Consols, Cornwall And West Devon Mining Landscape), Charlotte Braungardt, Xiaqing Chen, Daniel Chester-Sterne, James G.A. Quinn, Andrew Turner

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

No abstract provided.