Digital Commons Network^™

Role Of Trib3 In Progression And Pathogenesis Of Diabetic Retinopathy, Priyamvada Milind Pitale

All ETDs from UAB

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is reported to be one of the leading causes of blindness in the United States by Center for Disease Prevention and Control. As the estimated prevalence of the disease will likely triple by 2020, the research in this area should focus on identifying novel targets and therapeutic approaches. One of the therapeutic approaches for DR is the reprograming of retinal metabolism to delay the progression of the disease. The unfolded protein response (UPR) is recognized as a cellular pathway activated in diabetic retina which interacts with key transcription factors to physiologically regulate glucose, lipid homeostasis, and angiogenic …

Novel Hiv Adaptation Strategy Against Host Cd8 T Cell Immunity, Kai Qin

All ETDs from UAB

Since the 1980s, HIV infection has caused millions of death and tremendous economic losses worldwide. Despite great scientific advances, the only effective therapy to date, antiretroviral therapy (ART), merely delays disease progression yet cannot eradicate viral infection. Therefore, an effective HIV vaccine that can prevent the acquisition of infection would be a desirable alternative. The critical role of CD8 T-cell immunity in HIV infection has been well documented and therefore not surprisingly a great deal of effort has been focused on developing an effective CD8 T-cell based HIV vaccine. However, by far, such CD8 T-cell based HIV vaccine trials have …

An Investigation Of Ion Bombardment From Microwave Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition During Bias Enhanced Nucleation Of Boron-Rich Materials, Bhavesh Ramkorun

All ETDs from UAB

This study involves an Ar/H2 plasma acting on a negatively DC-biased silicon sub-strate in a microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition. The flow rate of hydro-gen was constant at 500 sccm, and that of argon was varied between 0 sccm and 500 sccm. Bias current was recorded for several values of the applied bias voltage ranging from – 100V to – 340V. At 10 and 20 torr, a peak in the bias current was found as argon flow rate changed. A decrease in current with varied argon intensi-ty in glow discharge plasma has been reported in the literature. Our results sub-stantiate …

Novel Methods For Image Analysis To Evaluate Relationships Between Biomarkers In Alzheimer's Disease, Fabio Raman

All ETDs from UAB

Neuroimaging biomarkers, including pathological amyloid and tau measured with positron emission tomography (PET) and neurodegeneration measured with magnetic res-onance (MR), are part of the research framework for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Abnormal brain amyloid is currently the earliest established phenotypic marker of AD, and other imaging biomarkers such as tau-PET become abnormal later in the progression of AD pathophysiology. The ability to measure amyloid and predict both tau status and cogni-tion using a single amyloid-PET study through a method readily employed in both re-search and clinical settings would provide a valuable tool in assessing AD. The first goal of this dissertation …

Investigating Growth-Related Hormones And Their Roles In Metabolism In Fish Skeletal Muscle, Ross Michael Lee Reid

All ETDs from UAB

The endocrine system is essential for the maintenance and regulation of skeletal muscle growth and metabolic processes, as secretions of growth-related hormones directly regulate these systems. The roles of these growth-related hormones are well understood in mammals yet are not well defined in teleosts. Thus, the work outlined in these chapters provides novel insight for the actions of two growth-related hormones, Growth Hormone (GH) and Teneurin C-terminal Associated Peptide (TCAP), in fish skeletal muscle. First, Chapter 2 highlights the work expanding the application of resazurin as a novel method of in vivo metabolic assessment across fish life-stages, which was utilized …

Investigating The Roles Of The Renal Primary Cilium Through The Use Of Intravital Imaging, Dustin Zachary Revell

All ETDs from UAB

Primary cilia are small microtubule based appendages present on nearly every cell type in the mammalian body, and are highly conserved from organisms as simple as algae to humans. Cilia function as complex signaling centers integrating a variety of pathways and play critical roles throughout development and in maintaining homeostasis. Mutations to ciliary proteins in humans result in a wide array of diseases termed ciliopathies, which have a broad range of symptoms affecting nearly every organ in the body. Renal primary cilia are present on the apical side of tubular epithelium, where they project into the lumen and are thought …

[email protected]: Using The Tech Start-Up Concept To Train, Engage, And Inform Students, Stephanie J. Coopman, Ted Coopman

Faculty Publications

Undergraduate and graduate students were enrolled in an upper-division online experiential learning course organized as a technology company start up at a public university in the US. Students participated in an academic department’s social media team, publishing a weekly newsletter and producing and curating content for multiple social media outlets designed for public and university audiences, a website for the department’s students, and a career portal. Responses to survey questions provided support for Experiential Learning Theory’s cyclical learning model. In addition, students viewed the entrepreneurial approach to the team as both liberating and challenging as they engaged with each other …

Reduced Dataset Neural Network Model For Manuscript Character Recognition, Mohammad Anwarul Islam

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The automatic character recognition task has been of practical interest for a long time. Nowadays, there are well-established technologies and software to perform character recognition accurately from scanned documents. Although handwritten character recognition from the manuscript image is challenging, the advancement of modern machine learning techniques makes it astonishingly manageable. The problem of accurately recognizing handwritten character remains of high practical interest since a large number of manuscripts are currently not digitized, and hence inaccessible to the public. We create our repository of the datasets by cropping each letter image manually from the manuscript images. The availability of datasets is …

Perceptions Of Physical Activity Engagement Among African American Emerging Adults At Georgia Southern University - Statesboro Campus, Addison Mickens

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Introduction: Physical Activity (PA) is critical to the health and well-being of African American emerging adults, ages 18-25. Research suggests that African American (AA) college students engage in less PA than other racial/ethnic groups. Few studies have examined the relationship between the collegiate built environment (CBE) impact on PA in this population. The Social Ecological Model (SEM) and the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) were used to show how the environment facilitates influence on the behavior through physical and social factors affecting the behavior of engaging in PA. Methods: The purpose of this cross-sectional, concurrent multi-method study was to determine barriers …

2020 Fall Commencement, Georgia Southern University

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Closed Adoption: An Illusory Promise To Birth Parents And The Changing Landscape Of Sealed Adoption Records, Bryn Baffer

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Imagine spitting into a tube and mailing your DNA off only to discover that you had a sibling who had been adopted by another family or that a parent’s affair had resulted in a half-sibling. For many individuals, these family secrets have been exposed due to direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies, such as 23andMe.

By the 1950s, most states had enacted statutes that sealed adoption record files in order to preserve the privacy of the birth parents, adoptees, and adoptive families. While some states have moved toward granting adoptees access to their adoption records, most states still have some type of …

Common Data Set, 2019-2020, Planning, Research, And Policy Analysis

Common Data Set (2001-present)

Common Data Set 2019-2020 for Illinois State University

Predicting Complex System Behavior Using Hybrid Modeling And Computational Intelligence, Vinayaka Gude

Doctoral Dissertations

“Modeling and prediction of complex systems is a challenging problem due to the sub-system interactions and dependencies. This research examines combining various computational intelligence algorithms and modeling techniques to provide insights into these complex processes and allow for better decision making. This hybrid methodology provided additional capabilities to analyze and predict the overall system behavior where a single model cannot be used to understand the complex problem. The systems analyzed here are flooding events and fetal health care. The impact of floods on road infrastructure is investigated using graph theory, agent-based traffic simulation, and Long Short-Term Memory deep learning to …

Studies On The Stability Of Plasma Proteins And Their Fragments, Paul Praveen Nakka

Doctoral Dissertations

“The stability of a protein-based biological drug is an important concern during processing, storage or patient administration. There are various forces which contribute to the stabilizing of proteins. Both hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions play an important role in protein stability. Improper folding or misfolding of proteins leads to aggregation, which is a major problem found in the bioprocessing industry. The objectives of this research are: 1) to determine the effect of environmental factors such as pH, temperature, additives or salts, and cosolvents on the stability human serum albumin (HAS), which is the most abundant protein in plasma, 2) to …

Magnetic Control Of Transport Of Particles And Droplets In Low Reynolds Number Shear Flows, Jie Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

“Magnetic particles and droplets have been used in a wide range applications including biomedicine, biological analysis and chemical reaction. The manipulation of magnetic microparticles or microdroplets in microscale fluid environments is one of the most critical processes in the systems and platforms based on microfluidic technology. The conventional methods are based on magnetic forces to manipulate magnetic particles or droplets in a viscous fluid.

In contrast to conventional magnetic separation method, several recent experimental and theoretical studies have demonstrated a different way to manipulate magnetic non-spherical particles by using a uniform magnetic field in the microchannel. However, the fundamental mechanism …

Fuzzy Logistic Regression For Detecting Differential Dna Methylation Regions, Tarek M. Bubaker Bennaser

Doctoral Dissertations

“Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene activity or function that are not related to a change in the DNA sequence. DNA methylation is one of the main types of epigenetic modifications, that occur when a methyl chemical group attaches to a cytosine on the DNA sequence. Although the sequence does not change, the addition of a methyl group can change the way genes are expressed and produce different phenotypes. DNA methylation is involved in many biological processes and has important implications in the fields of biomedicine and agriculture.

Statistical methods have been developed to compare DNA methylation at …

Tools To Evaluate Nanodiamond-Mediated Delivery Of Tiopronin For Cataract Prevention, Justin Beltz

Doctoral Dissertations

”There is a growing demand for non-surgical means of cataract treatment. This dissertation presents three bodies of work that reflect the early-stage development of eye drop formulations aimed at delaying cataract progression. These formulations consist of the antioxidant 2-mercaptopropionylglycine (MPG) loaded onto nanodiamond particles.

Cataractogenesis is linked to oxidative damage to lens proteins. To investigate the potential of MPG for protection against oxidative damage, A549 cells were incubated in 0.6 mM tert-butylhydroperoxide (tBHP). Cells exposed to tBHP without MPG exhibited elevated levels of reactive oxygen species, which led to the depletion of the vital antioxidant glutathione and, ultimately, apoptosis. Co-administration …

Strategies To Improve The Electrochemical Performance Of Lithium-Ion Batteries By Stabilizing The Interface Of Electrode/Electrolyte, Ye Jin

Doctoral Dissertations

”Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) provide great potential for electric vehicles, and smart grids as future energy-storage devices. However, there are many challenges in the development of the LIB industry, including low energy and power density of electrode materials, poor rate performance, short cycle life of electrode materials, and safety issues caused by the flammability of the conventional organic liquid electrolytes.

In this research, we were committed to using general approach to efficiently and economically synthesize or modify LIB materials by stabilizing the interface between electrode and electrolyte. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) method was used to coat metal oxide thin films on …

Continuous-Flow Synthesis Of Fine Chemicals And Pharmaceutical Compounds Over Intelligent Organocatalysts With Bifunctional Reactivity, Abdo-Alslam Alwakwak

Doctoral Dissertations

“Many biological systems that utilize organic active sites to catalyze reactions under mild conditions invoke cooperative catalytic pathways, whereby two or more active sites work together to activate the reactant(s). The use of cooperative (bifunctional) catalysts and continuous flow chemistry (a reaction within the narrow channels of a micro‐ or microfluidic reactor) are commonplace in sustainable chemical transformation and attract a great deal of interest with respect to economic and environmentally-sustainable production of fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and agrochemicals, water treatment, as well as upgrading of biomass feedstocks. Although, some methods have been developed for immobilization of bifunctional catalysts for cooperative …

Comprehensive Study Of Bio-Diesel Continuous Flow Synthesis, Aso A. Hassan

Doctoral Dissertations

“Energy has become an indispensable factor in preserving economic growth since the commencement of the industrial revolution. In recent years, biodiesel has gained acceptance as a notable alternative to the widely used petroleum-derived diesel fuel because it is biodegradable, non-toxic, and generates fewer exhaust pollutants. Recently, biodiesel studies have focused on the development of process intensification technologies to resolve some technical challenges facing biodiesel production, such as long residence times and catalyst sensitivity. These intensification technologies enhance process mass/heat transfer to achieve a continuous, scalable process that can be easily transported to utilize locally available feed stocks. Five phases have …

Pattern Selection Models: From Normal To Anomalous Diffusion, Hatim K. Khudhair

Doctoral Dissertations

“Pattern formation and selection is an important topic in many physical, chemical, and biological fields. In 1952, Alan Turing showed that a system of chemical substances could produce spatially stable patterns by the interplay of diffusion and reactions. Since then, pattern formations have been widely studied via the reaction-diffusion models. So far, patterns in the single-component system with normal diffusion have been well understood. Motivated by the experimental observations, more recent attention has been focused on the reaction-diffusion systems with anomalous diffusion as well as coupled multi-component systems. The objectives of this dissertation are to study the effects of superdiffusion …

Transition Metal Chalcogenide Hybrid Systems As Catalysts For Energy Conversion And Biosensing, Siddesh Umapathi

Doctoral Dissertations

"Generation of hydrogen and oxygen through catalyst-aided water splitting which has immense applications in metal air batteries, PEM fuel cells and solar to fuel energy production, has been one of the critical topics in recent times. The state of art oxygen evolution reaction (OER), oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalysts are mostly comprised of precious metals. The current challenge lies in replacing these precious metal-based catalysts with non-precious earth-abundant materials without compromising catalytic efficiency.

This research explores mixed metal selenides containing Fe-Ni, Fe-Co and RhSe which were hydrothermally synthesized and/or electrodeposited and tested for OER and ORR …

Fabrication And Characterization Of Multifunctional Composites, Aditya R. Thakur

Doctoral Dissertations

“This study details the research to facilitate fabrication and characterization of novel structural composites reinforced with carbon fibers. Across industries, materials with high performance-to-weight ratio are sought after. Using carbon fibers as secondary phases in these proposed composites, specific characteristics can be tailored in these materials to manufacture strong, lightweight, high performance structures. The first part of the research focused on the improvement in the mechanical properties of the composites using carbon fiber reinforcement. As a part of this study, toughened ceramic composites with predictable failure patterns were produced using carbon fiber inclusions. A closed-form analytical model was developed to …

Investigation Of Wide Bandgap Semiconductors For Room Temperature Spintronic, And Photovoltaic Applications, Vishal Saravade

Doctoral Dissertations

"Suitability of wide bandgap semiconductors for room temperature (RT) spintronic, and photovoltaic applications is investigated.

Spin properties of metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) – grown gadolinium-doped gallium nitride (GaGdN) are studied and underlying mechanism is identified. GaGdN exhibits Anomalous Hall Effect at room temperature if it contains oxygen or carbon atoms but shows Ordinary Hall Effect in their absence. The mechanism for spin and ferromagnetism in GaGdN is a combination of intrinsic, metallic conduction, and carrier-hopping mechanisms, and is activated by oxygen or carbon centers at interstitial or similar sites. A carrier-related mechanism in MOCVD-grown GaGdN at room temperature makes …

Obesity And Obstructive Airways Disease: Clinical Correlates And Therapeutic Considerations, John Magagna, Cali Loblundo, Raymond B. Penn, Deepak A. Deshpande, Ajay P. Nayak

Student Papers, Posters & Projects

Obese patients are more likely to suffer from severe asthma symptoms and less likely to be able to control them. In obese patients, there is evidence that shows decreased efficacy of inhaled corticosteroids and beta-2 adrenergic agonists, the core treatment options for achieving and maintaining asthma control. This may be due to mechanical reasons like decreased ventilation and medication delivery, but there are many more pathologies of obesity that interact with pathways of both asthma pathology and asthma control. This review explores the epidemiological significance of obesity, many physiological changes in patients with obesity, the physiological interactions of asthma and …

An Examination Of The Impacts Of The Wvu Research Apprenticeship Program (Rap), Mostafa Hashemi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Finding solutions to the problem of high attrition rates among students has been widely discussed by policymakers. Many intervention programs have been introduced to address this issue. The current study uses the tripartite integration model of social influence (TIMSI), (Kelman 1958, 1961; Estrada et al., 2011) to investigate and evaluate the effects of the research apprenticeship program (RAP), an intervention program aimed at supporting student performance and persistence through research and mentorship implemented at West Virginia University. The mediation analysis revealed research identity as a significant mediator in the relationship between RAP status and STEM persistence. Furthermore, RAP participants were …

Structural Characterization Of Emerging Synthetic Drugs, Jay Tyler Davidson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The identification of well-characterized seized drugs is performed thousands of times a day in the United States; however, the expanding use of emerging synthetic drugs is creating a growing problem for both toxicological and seized drug analyses. Two of the most rapidly growing areas of emerging synthetic drugs are synthetic cathinones and fentanyl-related compounds (FRCs). In this work we demonstrate the combination of multi-stage mass spectrometry (MSⁿ), accurate mass measurements with high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), and isotopic labeling for the structural characterization of synthetic cathinones and fentanyl analogs. The deliverables of this research include the identification of conserved …

Root Coverage Predictability In The Treatment Of Gingival Recessions On Mandibular And Anterior Teeth, Michele Agusto

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Introduction. Mandibular anterior teeth are most frequently affected by gingival recessions. However, data regarding mucogingival treatment aimed at root coverage in this specific location is limited.

Aim. To systematically review the literature addressing the focused question: “What is the effectiveness, efficacy and efficiency of different surgical approaches on clinical and patient-related outcomes in the treatment of buccal gingival recessions on mandibular anterior teeth?”

Material methods. Electronic (Medline, Scopus, and Cochrane databases) and hand literature searches were performed for studies including at least one arm involving the use of pedicle flaps and/or free soft tissue grafts in the …

Catholicism And Politics In A Fallen World: Understanding Human Imperfection As Relates To Political Institutions, George J. Doyle

CSB and SJU Distinguished Thesis

This thesis is composed of two primary parts, each involving discussion of Catholicism and political life. Part I critiques Thomas Aquinas’ theory of government in light of his theory of nature, with an emphasis on original sin as a defining attribute of the human person. The section concludes with an argument in favor of democracy rooted in Aquinas’s theory of human nature, as well as an understanding of the role of the Catholic Church in light of the claims made in this part of the thesis. Part II contains a political science study assessing factors that contribute to party identification …

Modulation Of Parasympathetic Reactivation Post-Exercise Via Slow Breathing, Brent Burg

CSB and SJU Distinguished Thesis

During exercise sympathetic nervous activity increases and parasympathetic nervous activity decreases to fuel energy demands. Heart rate variability (HRV) indicates activity of the autonomic nervous system and the balance of its two branches. Slow breathing (SB) (6 breaths/minute) increases parasympathetic activity both spontaneously during practice and at rest after long-term practice. Thus, SB may increase parasympathetic activity after exercise. PURPOSE: This study aimed to determine whether post-exercise SB increases parasympathetic activity as measured by HRV. METHODS: Ten recreationally active college aged males (21 +/-1 years old) completed the study. A VO2max test was used to determine 70% of VO2max for …