Digital Commons Network^™

Intergenerational Control: Why Genetic Modification Of Embryos Via Crispr-Cas9 Is Not A Fundamental Parental Right, Fernando Montoya

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

2019 Patent Law Decisions Of The Federal Circuit, Sanya Sukduang, Nicholas Doyle, Sydney Kestle, Yoonhee Kim, John Nappi

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (As A Rapid Method) Coupled With Machine Learning Approaches For Detection And Quantification Of Gluten Contaminations In Grain-Based Foods, Abuchi Godswill Okeke

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Cross-contamination between food grains during harvesting, transportation, and/or food processing is still a major issue in the food industry. Due to cross-contact with gluten-rich grains (wheat, barley, and rye grains), gluten can get into food that’s naturally free from gluten and thus may not be safe for consumption for people susceptible to gluten-related disorders such as celiac disease, wheat allergy, gluten intolerance or sensitivity. The conventional method of gluten detection is cumbersome, time-consuming, and requires well-trained personnel. Therefore, there is a need for a rapid and equally effective technique to authenticate gluten contamination in foods. This research work explored the …

Characterization And Enzyme Engineering Of Laccases Towards Lignin Valorization In Aqueous Ionic Liquids, Joseph Stevens

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Lignin is one of the most abundant polymers found in nature, making up 15 – 40% of the weight of terrestrial biomass. Due to the structural and monomeric heterogeneity of lignin, it is recalcitrant thermochemical and biological valorization methods. Converting lignin to value-added products via sustainable and cost-effective pathways will reduce waste and add value to future cellulosic biorefineries. Biological methods for lignin valorization (e.g. lignin degrading enzymes or microbes) is limited by low lignin solubility in biocompatible solvents, resulting in low product yield. Recent reports on biocatalysts for lignin valorization have focused on the lignolytic multicopper oxidase laccase, …

The Behavioral Ecology Of The Tibetan Macaque, Jin-Hua Li, Peter M. Kappeler, Lixing Sun

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

This open access book summarizes the multi-disciplinary results of one of China’s main primatological research projects on the endemic Tibetan macaque (Macaca thibetana), which had continued for over 30 years, but which had never been reported on systematically. Dedicated to this exceptional Old World monkey, this book makes the work of Chinese primatologists on the social behavior, cooperation, culture, cognition, group dynamics, and emerging technologies in primate research accessible to the international scientific community.

Black Bear, Jimmy D. Taylor, James P. Phillips

Wildlife Damage Management Technical Series

The American black bear (Ursus americanus, Figure 1) is a challenging species for wildlife agencies to manage due to its size, intelligence, extensive range, food habits, and adaptability, as well as societal views. In North America alone, agencies receive more than 40,000 complaints about black bear annually. Black bears are known as ‘food-driven’ animals, meaning most conflicts result from a bear’s drive to meet its nutritional needs. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming proportion of conflicts are related to their use of anthropogenic (human) food sources, such as garbage, bird food, and crops. Understanding what drives human-bear conflict is the first part …

Using Unmanned Aircraft Systems To Identify Invasive Species, Tithe Ahmed

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Invasive species serve as a threat to native biodiversity and ecosystem sustainability. Combatting the spread of invasive species requires long-term physical and monetary commitments. In Balule Nature Reserve of Greater Kruger National Park, South Africa, Opuntia ficus-inidica (the common prickly pear) has been a relentless invader, displacing the local flora and fauna. The goal of this project is to battle invasive species such as prickly pear using efficient and inexpensive technology: unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) and multispectral sensors.

Using a 4-bandwidth Parrot Sequoia multispectral sensor in tandem with the DJI Phantom Pro 3^TM UAV, images of land …

Geochemical Flux Analysis Of Glacial River Runoff For Sólheimajökull, Iceland, Jessica Garrison

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Geochemical fluxes in aqueous studies are an essential component of research to understand weathering and changes in a hydrologic system. These data can indicate any discrepancies, outliers, or gradual changes in a water environment to gain information on pollutants, carbon cycles, biological input, etc. Glacial melt is the majority of the surface water present throughout the country. The melting amount is increasing with the temperatures, which can be monitored by the changes in geochemical flux during increased discharge in glacial rivers. A high-resolution data set of Sόlheimajökull Glacier in Iceland was used to determine how changing climatic conditions for the …

Investigation Of The Phenotypic Effect Of Mutating A Highly-Conserved Cysteine Residue In The Rna Polymerase Beta Prime Subunit Of E. Coli Rna Polymerase, Meg Dillingham

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

All bacteria contain a multi-subunit RNA polymerase (RNAPs) that is essential for gene expression. Because of the centrality of these enzymes in cellular life, the structure and function of the various subunits is intensely studied. The primary sequence of the RNAP β’ subunit contains five cysteine residues that are highly conserved. Four of the cysteines coordinate a zinc atom and form the beta prime subunit zinc binding domain (ZBD). Mutation of any one of the ZBD cysteines is lethal to the cell. However, the role of the fifth residue (C58), which is located upstream of the ZBD cysteines, has not …

Attic Salt, 2020, Loyola Marymount University, The Honors Program

Attic Salt

No abstract provided.

The Development Of Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-Inducingstrategies To Overcome Resistance To Cancer Therapy, Ravyn Marie Duncan

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Effectively treating therapeutic resistant malignancies remains one of the greatest challenges that cancer researchers and clinicians face today. Intra-tumoral heterogeneity contributes to intrinsic and acquired genetic alterations that render tumor cells nonresponsive to single agent therapies. Adaptations to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress are a critical driver of tumorigenesis and a source of therapeutic resistance in tumors, as many malignancies suppress this mechanism for survival. Therefore, combination strategies that induce ER stress offer an approach for combating therapeutic resistant cancer. The studies outlined in this dissertation offer two novel synergistic therapeutic strategies: (1) pairing glutaminase inhibitor CB-839 with proteasome inhibitors (PI) …

Legal Literacy And K-12 Public School Teachers, Kelly H. Summers, Chrstine Rienstra Kiracofe, Constantine James

Mid-Western Educational Researcher

Courts have long held that public school teachers are “state actors” when they carry out the duties of their job. Despite this, very few teacher preparation programs include an education law class. In order to understand teachers’ legal literacy, a survey was given to 300 public school teachers in Indiana. The survey assessed knowledge of constitutional law issues, statutory law issues, and case law relevant to public school settings (e.g., student free speech, search and seizure, special education law, etc.). Results indicate that very few teachers are legal literate, often mistaking what is within the realm of legal possibility in …

A Descriptive Multicultural Phenomenology For Culturally Responsive Leadership, Christopher J. Kazanjian, David Rutledge, Sandra M. Gandarilla

Journal of Educational Leadership in Action

As public schools in the United States continue to diversify in culture, educational leaders committed to multicultural education seek qualitative research methodologies for understanding phenomena in order to build culturally responsive leadership initiatives and interventions. This paper argues that a phenomenological research methodology is appropriate and relevant to understand cultural phenomena in the 21st century school. To serve this, the authors elaborate on a descriptive multicultural phenomenological research methodology for educational leaders. A phenomenological framework positions educational leaders to understand the nature and essence of personal experience. This approach will help educational leaders better understand the experiences of the diverse …

Pants, Not Petticoats: Transgressive Female Characters In Literature, Sarah Bott

Literary and Intercultural Studies | Senior Theses

Female character development in literature can be revolutionary, especially for protagonists that bend the rules and replace a socially-based image of classical femininity with their own gender non-conforming expressions. In Pants, Not Petticoats: Transgressive Female Characters in Literature, comparative analysis is used to study the non-conforming aspects of three gender rebels: Jo March from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1980 Illustrated Junior Library Edition), Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (2002 First Perennial Classic Edition), and Eliza Sommers from Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende (2006 First Harper Perennial Edition). Through a close reading …

Formation Of Escherichia Coli O157: H7 Persister Cells In The Lettuce Phyllosphere And Application Of Differential Equation Models To Predict Their Prevalence On Lettuce Plants In The Field, Daniel S. Munther, Michelle Q. Carter, Claude V. Aldric, Renata Ivanek, Maria T. Brandl

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

American Society for Microbiology. Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EcO157) infections have been recurrently associated with produce. The physiological state of EcO157 cells surviving the many stresses encountered on plants is poorly understood. EcO157 populations on plants in the field generally follow a biphasic decay in which small subpopulations survive over longer periods of time. We hypothesized that these subpopulations include persister cells, known as cells in a transient dormant state that arise through phenotypic variation in a clonal population. Using three experimental regimes (with growing, stationary at carrying capacity, and decaying populations), we measured the persister cell fractions in culturable EcO157 …

Role Of Hydrodynamic Interactions In Chemotaxis Of Bacterial Populations, Shawn D. Ryan

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

How bacteria sense local chemical gradients and decide to move has been a fascinating area of recent study. Chemotaxis of bacterial populations has been traditionally modeled using either individual-based models describing the motion of a single bacterium as a velocity jump process, or macroscopic PDE models that describe the evolution of the bacterial density. In these models, the hydrodynamic interaction between the bacteria is usually ignored. However, hydrodynamic interaction has been shown to induce collective bacterial motion and self-organization resulting in larger mesoscale structures. In this paper, the role of hydrodynamic interactions in bacterial chemotaxis is investigated by extending a …

Pulsatile Flow Through Idealized Renal Tubules: Fluid-Structure Interaction And Dynamic Pathologies, Niksa Praljak, Shawn D. Ryan, Andrew Resnick

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

Kidney tubules are lined with flow-sensing structures, yet information about the flow itself is not easily obtained. We aim to generate a multiscale biomechanical model for analyzing fluid flow and fluid-structure interactions within an elastic kidney tubule when the driving pressure is pulsatile. We developed a two-dimensional macroscopic mathematical model of a single fluid-filled tubule corresponding to a distal nephron segment and determined both flow dynamics and wall strains over a range of driving frequencies and wall compliances using finite-element analysis. The results presented here demonstrate good agreement with available analytical solutions and form a foundation for future inclusion of …

Learning Wakanda: Assessing The Responses Of African-American Children And Their Caregivers Toward Concordant Educational Media, Cameron L. Coleman

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Screen-based educational media, as an extension of the schooling process whose history has mirrored brick and mortar institutions, have traditionally espoused narratives of Eurocentricity, shifting relatively recently to multicultural yet simultaneously raceless narratives. While many viewers have learned from and been inspired by these media, the enthusiastic response to the film Black Panther (2018), as demonstrated by financial earnings and sustained social media energy, revealed an intense yearning in the Black community for media positively centering the strengths and successes of Black lives. Launched from the sociocultural fervor for Black concordance in media, and extending concordance into the educational media …

The Association Of Maternal Sociodemographic Factors With Stress In Pregnancy, Maheshwari Andhavarapu

Master of Medicine in Obstetrics and Gynecology

Introduction: Antenatal stress has been linked to maternal morbidity and preterm birth (PTB). One of the pathophysiological processes leading to PTB is thought to be via activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis resulting in cortisol production. Hair cortisol has recently been shown to be a stress marker in the pregnant and non-pregnant population. Some determinants of hair cortisol have also been studied but more research is needed in this area, especially in pregnancy. Understanding the risk factors of antenatal stress may guide institution of preventative or screening measures to reduce the risk of adverse birth outcomes. As the effect of stress …

Toward A Comprehensive Pea Aphid Saliva Proteome With Insights From Transcripts From The Whitefly Bemisia Tabaci, James Balthazor Ph.D., Gerald Reeck, Raman Chandrasekar, Matthew Askamit, Doina Caragea, Xiao-Wei Wang, Shu-Sheng Liu, Le Kang, Feng Cui

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Unfolded protein response evaluation of saliva proteome.

The aim of this research project is to compile and analyze numerous sources of transcriptomic and proteomic published works into an initial attempt at a comprehensive salivary transcriptome with considerations into various insect species. Published transcriptomic and proteomic results with RNA-Seq analysis of pea aphid salivary gland RNAs were used to create a comprehensive catalog of pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) salivary proteins. Duplications of transcripts within the approximately 15 referenced transcriptomics-based papers were eliminated, as were duplications within the approximately 10 referenced proteomics-based papers and duplications between transcriptomic and proteomic work. For studies …

Acoustic Microfluidic Separation Techniques And Bioapplications: A Review, Yuan Gao, Mengren Wu, Yang Lin, Jie Xu

Mechanical, Industrial & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Microfluidic separation technology has garnered significant attention over the past decade where particles are being separated at a micro/nanoscale in a rapid, low-cost, and simple manner. Amongst a myriad of separation technologies that have emerged thus far, acoustic microfluidic separation techniques are extremely apt to applications involving biological samples attributed to various advantages, including high controllability, biocompatibility, and non-invasive, label-free features. With that being said, downsides such as low throughput and dependence on external equipment still impede successful commercialization from laboratory-based prototypes. Here, we present a comprehensive review of recent advances in acoustic microfluidic separation techniques, along with exemplary applications. …

2020 Georgia Southern University Football Roster, Georgia Southern University

Men's Football Records

• Georgia Southern University Athletics 2020 Football Roster

Dchs1 Regulated Mirna Processing And Its Effects On Valve Endocardium Stabilization, Mary Kathleen Rumph

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Mitral valve prolapse (MVP) is one of the most common forms of cardiac valve disease and affects 1 in 40 individuals worldwide. MVP can lead to arrhythmias, heart failure, and sudden cardiac death and 1 in 10 patients will require valve surgery. Surgery for MVP is now the fastest growing cardiovascular intervention in the Western world. As such, MVP carries a significant burden of morbidity and mortality. Our lab was the first to identify a cause for non-syndromic MVP using a combination of linkage analyses, as well as capture sequence of the linkage interval, to identify loss of function mutations …

Targeting Transcription Factors Xbp-1 And Fli-1 As Novel Translational Strategies To Control Graft-Versus-Host Disease, Steven Douglas Schutt

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HCT) is a curative procedure for hematological malignancies, but chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) remains a major complication after allogeneic HCT. Because donor B cells are essential for chronic GVHD (cGVHD) development and B cells are sensitive to endoplasmic reticulum stress, we hypothesized that the IRE-1α/XBP-1 pathway is required for B-cell activation and function in cGVHD. Here, we used mice deficient of XBP-1 specifically in B cells, and recipients transplanted with grafts containing XBP-1–deficient B cells displayed reduced cGVHD compared with controls that was associated with reduced B-cell activation and production of alloreactive antibodies. Prophylactic administration of B-I09 …

Altered Circadian Rhythm And Neuroinflammation In Models Of Als: A Role For Nr1d1 And Fabp7, Kelby Killoy

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Most physiological processes in mammals are subjected to daily oscillations governed by a circadian system. Circadian rhythm orchestrates metabolic pathways in a time-dependent manner and loss of circadian timekeeping has been associated with cellular and system-wide alterations in metabolism, redox homeostasis, and inflammation. Nuclear Receptor subfamily 1 group D member 1 (NR1D1) is a transcription factor that participates in the molecular clock that encodes circadian rhythms and links metabolism and inflammation to circadian cycles. Fatty acid binding protein 7 (FABP7), an NR1D1 target, is a regulator of lipid metabolism, energy homeostasis, and inflammation. FABP7 can regulate fatty acid uptake, transport, …

Structural And Lexical Methods For Auditing Biomedical Terminologies, Rashmie Abeysinghe

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Biomedical terminologies serve as knowledge sources for a wide variety of biomedical applications including information extraction and retrieval, data integration and management, and decision support. Quality issues of biomedical terminologies, if not addressed, could affect all downstream applications that use them as knowledge sources. Therefore, Terminology Quality Assurance (TQA) has become an integral part of the terminology management lifecycle. However, identification of potential quality issues is challenging due to the ever-growing size and complexity of biomedical terminologies. It is time-consuming and labor-intensive to manually audit them and hence, automated TQA methods are highly desirable. In this dissertation, systematic and scalable …

Metadata Management For Clinical Data Integration, Ningzhou Zeng

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Clinical data have been continuously collected and growing with the wide adoption of electronic health records (EHR). Clinical data have provided the foundation to facilitate state-of-art researches such as artificial intelligence in medicine. At the same time, it has become a challenge to integrate, access, and explore study-level patient data from large volumes of data from heterogeneous databases. Effective, fine-grained, cross-cohort data exploration, and semantically enabled approaches and systems are needed. To build semantically enabled systems, we need to leverage existing terminology systems and ontologies. Numerous ontologies have been developed recently and they play an important role in semantically enabled …

Deep Neural Architectures For End-To-End Relation Extraction, Tung Tran

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

The rapid pace of scientific and technological advancements has led to a meteoric growth in knowledge, as evidenced by a sharp increase in the number of scholarly publications in recent years. PubMed, for example, archives more than 30 million biomedical articles across various domains and covers a wide range of topics including medicine, pharmacy, biology, and healthcare. Social media and digital journalism have similarly experienced their own accelerated growth in the age of big data. Hence, there is a compelling need for ways to organize and distill the vast, fragmented body of information (often unstructured in the form of natural …

Temporal Data Extraction And Query System For Epilepsy Signal Analysis, Yan Huang

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

The 2016 Epilepsy Innovation Institute (Ei2) community survey reported that unpredictability is the most challenging aspect of seizure management. Effective and precise detection, prediction, and localization of epileptic seizures is a fundamental computational challenge. Utilizing epilepsy data from multiple epilepsy monitoring units can enhance the quantity and diversity of datasets, which can lead to more robust epilepsy data analysis tools. The contributions of this dissertation are two-fold. One is the implementation of a temporal query for epilepsy data; the other is the machine learning approach for seizure detection, seizure prediction, and seizure localization. The three key components of our temporal …

Effects Of Violent And Nonviolent Life Stressors Among Urban Early Adolescents: Testing Competing Models Of Comorbid Distress And Externalizing Symptoms, Erin Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The strong association between stressful life events and the wide-ranging spectrum of psychopathology has led some to advocate for the reconceptualization of traumatic stress. There has been a longstanding debate on whether these symptoms are best represented by using dimensional versus categorical approaches. Moreover, further understanding of the risk factors associated with various dimensions or patterns of comorbid emotional and behavioral problems could inform future research and intervention efforts. The current study tested competing variable- and person-centered approaches and examined how stressful life events are associated with different patterns of distress and externalizing symptoms among a predominantly African American and …