Digital Commons Network^™

Incorporation And Measurement Of Uncertainty In Clustered And Spatial Data, Yuan Hong

Theses and Dissertations

Analyzing population representative datasets for local estimation and predictions over time is important for monitoring related public health issues, however, there are many statistical challenges associated with such analyses. Mixed effect models are one of the common options which can incorporate time and spatial effect in the model and related inference is well established.

In the first part of this dissertation, to estimate area-level prevalence using individuallevel data, small area estimation (SAE) with post-stratified mixed effect models were used where sampling weights were also incorporated into it. However, if poststratification which requires more computation effort can improve estimation accuracy is …

October 1, 2020, The Daily Mississippian

Daily Mississippian (all digitized issues)

No abstract provided.

Association Of Liver Tissue Optical Properties And Thermal Damage, Vivek K. Nagarajan, Jerrold M. Ward, Bing Yu

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Background and Objectives

Complete thermocoagulation of tumors is vital to minimize the risk of local tumor recurrence after a thermal ablation. Histological assessments are not real-time and require experienced pathologists to grade the thermal damage (histopathology) [Correction added on 21 January, 2020 after first online publication: After thermal damage in the preceding sentence, (histopathology) was added]. Real-time assessment of thermal tissue damage during an ablation is necessary to achieve optimal tumor ablation. In our previous studies, we found that continuous monitoring of the wavelength-averaged (435–630 nm) tissue absorption coefficient (µ_a) and the reduced scattering coefficient () during …

Redbird Scholar, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Fall 2020), Illinois State University, Office Of The Vice President For Research And Graduate Studies

Redbird Scholar

No abstract provided.

Prediction Of Fungal Proteins Secreted Through Non-Classical Pathways, Jasmine Hedayati, Roxanne K Leiter, Michael H. Perlin

Undergraduate Research Events

The Microbotryum genus of smut fungi is known to parasitize flowering plants by colonizing the plant host and ultimately replacing pollen with fungal spores, which continues the transmission process with the help of pollinators to disperse spores A hallmark of this genus of fungi is host specialization wherein one fungal species is only capable of infecting one species of plant host However, there are rare generalists that flout this pattern and one of those generalists, Microbotryum intermedium is the subject of this analysis.

The life cycle of Microbotryum intermedium begins when a pollinator transmits spores to an uninfected flower Meiosis …

Do Canine Companions Reduce College Stress?, Aaron Brooking, David M. Simpson, Mindy Hatchell, Adam Van Zant, Alexis Moore, Lindsey Connors, Julianna Clarke, Sandra E. Sephton

Undergraduate Research Events

Introduction Rates of mental health concerns among college students are rising. A recent World Health Organization Survey of ~14,000 students revealed clinically concerning scores on anxiety, depression and substance use disorder for 31% [2][3]. With these high levels of clinically concerning scores in college students, great amounts of stress are the result, which have been negatively correlated with greater feelings of loneliness and lower hedonic well-being (satisfaction in life), without proper social support [6][10]. We explored potential mental health benefits of canine companions in the college setting by collecting psychosocial measures from both dog-owners and non-dog-owners assessing their levels of …

3d Bioprinted Sustained-Release Platform For Intravaginal Delivery Of Probiotics, Priyadarshini Chandrashekhar, Jill M. Steinbach-Rankins

Undergraduate Research Events

• Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) is the most prevalent vaginal infection, affecting 30% of reproductive age women in the United States and worldwide.

• BV is characterized by a shift in the vaginal microbiome from a dominance of Lactobacilli to the overgrowth of vaginal pathogens (specifically Gardnerella vaginalis).

• Some common complications include adverse pregnancy outcomes and increased risk for sexually transmitted diseases.

• Current treatment primarily involves antibiotics, but this is ineffective due to high antibiotic resistance and BV recurrence rates of 50%. Thus, a more permanent cure is sought.

• Lactobacilli probiotics are a promising alternative to antibiotics. They …

Developing Policy And Practice For Marine Net Gain, Tara Hooper, Melanie Austen, Aisling Lannin

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

No abstract provided.

Assessment Of Surgical Procedural Time, Pedicle Screw Accuracy, And Clinician Radiation Exposure Of A Novel Robotic Navigation System Compared With Conventional Open And Percutaneous Freehand Techniques: A Cadaveric Investigation, Alex R. Vaccaro, Jonathan A Harris, Mir M Hussain, Rishi Wadhwa, Victor W Chang, Samuel R Schroerlucke, Walter P Samora, Peter G Passias, Rakesh D Patel, Ripul R Panchal, Sabino D'Agostino, Nathaniel L Whitney, Neil R Crawford, Brandon S Bucklen

Rothman Institute Papers

STUDY DESIGN: Cadaveric study.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate accuracy, radiation exposure, and surgical time of a new robotic-assisted navigation (RAN) platform compared with freehand techniques in conventional open and percutaneous procedures.

METHODS: Ten board-certified surgeons inserted 16 pedicle screws at T10-L5 (n = 40 per technique) in 10 human cadaveric torsos. Pedicle screws were inserted with (1) conventional MIS technique (L2-L5, patient left pedicles), (2) MIS RAN (L2-L5, patient right pedicles), (3) conventional open technique (T10-L1, patient left pedicles), and (4) open RAN (T10-L1, patient right pedicles). Output included (1) operative time, (2) number of fluoroscopic images, and (3) screw accuracy. …

Authorship And Collaboration Pattern Of Research Output Published By Researchers Of Tripura University During 2010-2019: A Scientometric Analysis, Manoj Kumar Verma Dr., Saumen Das

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The present paper is a scientometric enquiry of research publications of Tripura University for a period of 10 years (i.e. from 2010-2019) and based on the secondary data collected from Web of Science databases and found that the total 503 papers published during this study period which index in web of science database. The study endeavours to analyse the pattern of publications, annual growth in publications, authorship pattern, types of documents, collaboration patterns, collaborative index, collaboration coefficient, modified collaboration coefficient, prolific author etc. based on collected data and found that 2017 and 2019 were the most productive year for this …

Scientometrics Profile Of The Banasthali Vidyapith: A Deemed University Of Rajasthan, India, Md.Safiqur Rahaman, Shakil Ahmad, Khadeeja M.N Ansari, Isam Mohammed Abdel-Magid, Dr. Praveen Babel

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The current investigation work utilized bibliometric and visualization techniques. Scopus bibliographic database sources used to retrieve data. Two thousand seven hundred sixty-four (2764) papers retrieved by applying the 'Affiliation' in Scopus' simple search section. Biblioshiny (3.0), MS-Access, Excel, and VOS Viewer software used to analyze data and bibliometric indicator extraction employ to evaluate the research productivity of Banasthali University for a period of twenty-one years from 2000 to 2020. This data analysis leads to monitor the university's past and present status to maps its future perspectives. This study ventured to examine the overall performance of the faculties and researchers of …

Ucc Minutes, October 13, 2020, University Curriculum Council

UCC Agendas/Minutes

No abstract provided.

Betting On The Workforce: An Interview With The S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, Deborah Moroney, Jill Young

Journal of Youth Development

In this article, Deborah Moroney and Jill Young from the American Institutes for Research interview Rebecca Goldberg and Alex Hooker, senior program officers from the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation. Rebecca and Alex describe their experience as members of the youth development workforce and how that experience inspired them to support the youth development workforce on the grantmaking side, focusing on adult practice and youth character development. As the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation sunsets in 2020, Rebecca and Alex also share their hopes for the youth development workforce going forward.

Preventing Bullying: Consequences, Prevention, And Intervention, Suzanne Menestrel

Journal of Youth Development

Bullying is considered to be a significant public health problem with both short- and long-term physical and social-emotional consequences for youth. A large body of research indicates that youth who have been bullied are at increased risk of subsequent mental, emotional, health, and behavioral problems, especially internalizing problems, such as low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Given the growing awareness of bullying as a public health problem and the increasing evidence of short- and long- term physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral health and academic consequences of bullying behavior, there have been significant efforts at the practice, program, and policy levels …

4-H Stem Curriculum Challenges: A Delphi Study, Hannah Branscum, Jeff Sallee, Kevin Allen, Marshall Baker

Journal of Youth Development

Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills have become essential for today’s youth. STEM-literate individuals are a necessity to fill the ever-growing STEM employment pipeline. Employers are expecting applicants with STEM skills. 4-H programs across the nation have recognized the importance of educating STEM-minded youth. As STEM programs become more prevalent within 4-H, it is essential to address challenges Extension educators and 4-H volunteers face when teaching STEM curriculum. In this study the Delphi technique was utilized to collect the opinions of a geographically dispersed group of 4-H Extension educators and volunteers. Each group served on a separate panel and …

Smart Wearable Device For Reduction Of Parkinson’S Disease Hand-Tremor, Bruno Ribeiro, Leopoldo Medeiros, Rodrigo Aguiar, Juan Carlos

ICT

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects over 10 million people worldwide (Health Unlocked, 2017). People diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease can experience tremors, muscular rigidity and slowness of movement. Tremor is the most common symptom and external agents like stress and anxiety can make it worse, which may cause complications to complete simple day-to-day tasks.

Therefore Bio Protech proposes the development of a smart wearable device for reduction of the hand-tremors based on medical evidence that by applying vibration to the wrist may result in a reduction of the involuntary tremor. The device imitates the shape of a wristwatch …

The Role Of Alongshore Flows On Inner Surf And Swash Zone Hydrodynamics On A Dissipative Beach, Jack A. Puleo, Demetra Cristaudo, Alec Torres-Freyermuth, Gerd Masselink, Fengyan Shi

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

No abstract provided.

Blocking C-Met/Erbb1 Axis Prevents Brain Metastasis In Erbb2+ Breast Cancer, Shailendra K. Gautam, Ranjana K. Kanchan, Jawed A. Siddiqui, Shailendra K. Maurya, Sanchita Rauth, Naveenkumar Perumal, Pranita Atri, Ramakanth C. Venkata, Kavita Mallya, Sameer Mirza, Moorthy P. Ponnusamy, Vimla Band, Sidharth Mahapatra, Maneesh Jain, Surinder K. Batra, Mohd W. Nasser

Journal Articles: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Brain metastasis (BrM) remains a significant cause of cancer-related mortality in epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive (ERBB2⁺) breast cancer (BC) patients. We proposed here that a combination treatment of irreversible tyrosine kinase inhibitor neratinib (NER) and the c-MET inhibitor cabozantinib (CBZ) could prevent brain metastasis. To address this, we first tested the combination treatment of NER and CBZ in the brain-seeking ERBB2⁺ cell lines SKBrM3 and JIMT-1-BR3, and in ERBB2⁺ organoids that expressed the c-MET/ERBB1 axis. Next, we developed and characterized an orthotopic mouse model of spontaneous BrM and evaluated the therapeutic effect of CBZ and …

Cathedrals Of The Mind: Theological Method And Speculative Renewal In Trinitarian Theology, Ryan Hemmer

Dissertations (1934 -)

The aim of this work is twofold. First, it labors to retrieve from the past a normative account of speculative theological method, in protest of the anti-speculative fashions and attitudes that have prevailed among theologians since the Second Vatican Council. Second, and in tension with the first aim, this study outlines the respects in which conciliar and post-conciliar developments in history, anthropology, philosophy, and cultural analysis—the same developments that led to speculative theology’s fall from favor—are the means by which speculative theology might be renewed and made useful in theology today. The second chapter squares up to speculative theology’s critics …

Pain Modulatory Effects Of Exercise In Chronic Pain, Giovanni Berardi

Dissertations (1934 -)

Exercise training is recommended as a first-line treatment in the management of fibromyalgia due to its ability to improve symptoms and function. However, many with fibromyalgia report limited tolerance to exercise due to exacerbation of pain and fatigue during and following participation of a single bout of exercise. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the influence of contraction type on local and systemic experimental pain sensitivity, performance fatigue, and perceived pain and fatigue during exercise and through recovery in people with and without fibromyalgia.Experimental and perceived pain were measured before and after a single bout of submaximal intermittent …

Overcoming Anaerobic Digestion Toxicity Of Aqueous Liquid From Wastewater ‎Solids Pyrolysis, Seyedehfatemeh Seyedi

Dissertations (1934 -)

Pyrolysis treats and potentially recovers energy from wastewater solids (WWS). ‎Aqueous pyrolysis liquid (APL), however, is produced and its management is a ‎bottleneck to pyrolysis full-scale application. To overcome this bottleneck, ‎anaerobic digestion (AD) may be a possible method to manage APL, but APL ‎digestion has not been conclusively demonstrated. In AD, a select group of ‎microorganisms convert organic chemicals to biogas containing methane that ‎can be used as a fuel. In this dissertation work, APL derived from WWS pyrolysis ‎was successfully converted into methane as the sole substrate and as a co-‎digestate with synthetic primary sludge in long-term, continuous …

The Role Of System Xc- In Cognition: The Importance Of Neuron-Astrocyte Signaling, Evan Michael Hess

Dissertations (1934 -)

The biological basis of human intelligence is largely a mystery, but likely required evolutionary adaptations to achieve the information processing capacity needed to expand the complexity of cognition among species. The link between evolutionary expansion of signaling complexity in the brain and cognition has largely focused on neuronal mechanisms, in part because information processing has historically been attributed to these cells. However, astrocytes are emerging as a second type of brain cell that is capable of processing information due to their capacity to release glutamate and, thereby, regulate neural circuits. Hence, a modern question is whether astrocytes contributed to the …

Chronic Variable Stress Induces Avolition And Disrupts Corticoaccumbens Encoding Of Approach Cues, Mitchell Spring

Dissertations (1934 -)

Disorders in the ability to process, evaluate, and interact with rewards are hallmarks of a range of mental illnesses. Such disorders are multi-faceted and arise from altered activity throughout diffuse brain regions. Chronic variable stress (CVS) is an oft-used tool for modeling reward-related disorders in preclinical research because it impairs the function of multiple brain regions and causes a range of severe hedonic and motivational deficits. While much research has focused on the former, the latter is poorly characterized. A panel of behavioral tests was used to characterize the effect of CVS exposure on different facets of reward related behaviors …

Deep Learning For Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping Reconstruction, Juan Liu

Dissertations (1934 -)

Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that estimates tissue magnetic susceptibility from Larmor frequency offset measurements. The generation of QSM requires solving ill-posed background field removal (BFR) and field-to-source inversion problems. Incorrect BFR often introduces erroneous local field outputs and subsequently affects susceptibility quantification accuracy. Inaccurate field-to-source inversion often causes large susceptibility estimation errors that appear as streaking artifacts in the QSM, especially in massive hemorrhagic regions. Because current QSM techniques struggle to generate reliable QSM, the clinical translation of QSM is greatly hindered. Recently, deep learning (DL) has achieved state-of-the-art performance in many computer …

Validation And Application Of A Novel Target-Based Whole-Cell Screen To Identify Antifungal Compounds, Christian Alexander Dejarnette

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Traditional approaches to drug discovery are inefficient and have several key limitations that constrain our capacity to rapidly identify and develop novel experimental therapeutics. To address this, we have devised a second-generation target-based whole-cell screening assay based on the principles of competitive fitness, which can rapidly identify target-specific and physiologically-active compounds. Briefly, strains expressing high, intermediate, and low levels of a preselected target protein were constructed, tagged with spectrally distinct fluorescent proteins (FPs), and mixed together. The pooled strains were then grown in the presence of various small molecules, and the relative growth of each strain within the mixed culture …

Diverse Community Of Arsenic Resistant Bacteria Display Arsenate Reducing Capabilities, Stephanie Maeda

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Naturally found in soil and water environments arsenic is toxic to many organisms, carcinogenic to humans, and poses a significant public health risk. Yet communities of bacteria found thriving in arsenic ridden environments have evolved mechanisms to tolerate and exploit both oxidation states of this heavy metal (arsenite and arsenate). As the site of an old arsenic mine, Black Mountain Open Space Park in San Diego, California has yielded concentrations of arsenic in the soil between 111-14,800 ppm. Exceeding average arsenic soil concentrations and levels considered safe in the environment by the World Health Organization, we sought to characterize the …

Does Early Access To Pension Wealth Improve Health?, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

We examine the health impacts of early access to public pension wealth by exploiting a unique policy in Singapore allowing individuals to withdraw a proportion of their pension savings after their 55th birthday. For the identification, we employ a regression discontinuity design by comparing individuals before and after their 55th birthday. To address anticipated and lagged health impacts, we adopt the donut regression discontinuity approach. Using nationally representative monthly panel data, we find that early access to pension wealth improves self‐reported overall health.

Evidence For Physiological Niche Expansion Of An Intertidal Flatworm: Evolutionary Rescue In The Wild, Katharine A. Clayton, John I. Spicer

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Microevolution may enable populations to adapt physiologically to rapid climate change. Where it exists, historical data could provide a rare opportunity to document such adaptation. The intertidal flatworm Procerodes littoralis experiences large changes in salinity throughout the tidal cycle. We investigated whether regeneration performance of P. littoralis has changed over the last century. We repeated identical experiments to those published in 1914 on the same species and from the same location. In the modern experiment, when tested across a range of different salinities (S = 3, 6, 28, 44 and 53), P. littoralis could regenerate at lower salinities (S = …

The Attractiveness Advantage At Work: A Cross-Disciplinary Integrative Review, Kelly A Nault, Marko Pitesa, Stefan Thau

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Compared with people of average attractiveness, the highly attractive earn roughly 20 percent more and are recommended for promotion more frequently. The dominant view of this “attractiveness advantage” is one of taste-based discrimination, whereby attractive individuals are preferred without justification in economic productivity. We conduct a comprehensive review of research on attractiveness discrimination, finding relatively more evidence that this phenomenon constitutes, to some extent, statistical (as opposed to solely taste-based) discrimination, in which decision makers assume that attractive people are more competent and discriminate based on instrumental motives. We then review research that speaks to whether decision makers might be …

Postmodern Violent Conditions In Loher's Innocence, Peter Yang

Faculty Scholarship

Despite its theatrical success, Dea Loher's Innocence faces a heated debate among German theatre and literary critics. Some regard it as a neorealist drama that has reached the highest level of the theatre, but others denounce it as a diffuse, kitschy portrayal of violence. The goal of this paper is to explore themes of the play to negotiate—against the claims of its existing theatre and literary criticism—more accurate critical guidelines of evaluating this theatrical work. The results of this study are expected to contribute to a better understanding of postmodernism and postdramatic theatre in general and of this postdramatic writing …