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Characterization Of Spontaneous Preeclampsia In The African Green Monkey (Chlorocebus Aethiops Sabaeus), Chelsea Christina Weaver

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Hypertensive pregnancy disorders are a major contribution to maternal and neonatal mortality worldwide. Two of these disorders, preeclampsia and chronic hypertension in pregnancy, affect up to 10% of all pregnancies. These hypertensive disorders of pregnancy are associated with long-term, postnatal risk factors for both mother and offspring. Despite numerous recent advances in preeclampsia research, the underlying mechanisms are still not understood. This could be due to lack of a spontaneous animal model. This dissertation presents the African Green Monkey (AGM; Chlorocebus aethiops sabaeus) as the first known spontaneous animal model of preeclampsia and a highly translational model of chronic …

Molecular Mechanisms Regulating Optic Fissure Fusion During Zebrafish Eye Development, Megan Weaver

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Vertebrate retinal development requires timely and precise fusion of the optic fissure. Failure of this event leads to congenital vision impairment in the form of coloboma. Recent studies have suggested hyaloid vasculature to be involved in OF fusion. In order to examine this link, we analyzed optic fissure fusion and hyaloid vasculogenesis in the zebrafish pax2a noi mutant line. We first determined that pax2a^-/- embryos fail to accumulate F-actin in the optic fissure prior to basement membrane (BM) degradation. Furthermore, using 3D and live imaging we observed reduced OF hyaloid vascularization in pax2a^-/- embryos. When examining the connection …

Spontaneous Postpartum Hypertension In The African Green Monkey, Patrick Rivera

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Postpartum hypertension (PPHT) is a hypertensive disorder of the puerperium that occurs in women at a rate between 0.8-28% although the exact incidence is unknown due primarily to its transient presentation during a time of reduced medical supervision. The etiology of PPHT is currently unknown with no present experimental animal model. We present the African green monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops sabaeus; AGM) as a potentially translational NHP model of PPHT in humans. AGMs were identified as PPHT using Doppler sphygmomanometry and American Heart Association standards of hypertension for systolic blood pressure (systolic blood pressure > 140 mmHg). Disease characteristics were …

The Social Behavior Of Pine Sawflies In The Genus Neodiprion, John W. Terbot Ii

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Group living is found across the animal kingdom ranging from temporary mating aggregations to complex, eusocial lifestyles. A particularly common form of group living found among insects are larval or nymphal herds. This lifestyle consists of immature insects living together and results in several proposed costs and benefits. Benefits of this lifestyle include improved ability to regulate a group’s microenvironment, more efficient use of their host, and the ability to engage in collective predator defenses. Offsetting these benefits are costs resulting from living in close proximity to conspecifics which include increased competition, greater visibility to predators, and heightened disease risks. …

Leveraging Transcriptomic Approaches To Identify Differences In Genetic Programming Driving Two Distinct Wound Healing Mechanisms, Regeneration And Fibrosis, In Acomys And Mus, Shishir K. Biswas

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Why can some animals and others cannot? This fundamental question has fueled scientists studying regeneration for hundreds of years since early observations in crayfish, salamanders and many other organisms. While most contemporary work in regeneration is done in a handful of species including salamanders, zebrafish and flatforms, these organisms lack a closely-related, non-regenerating sister species from which unique genetic differences can be identified. Additionally, while much has been learned from these organisms, they do not share fundamental biological traits with mammals (endothermy, metabolism and immune system) which limits the ability to translate this research for clinical medicine. To this end, …

Cellular Bioenergetics Regulates Cell Proliferation During Mammalian Regeneration, Sandeep Saxena

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Mammalian system consists of stress-sensing molecules that regulates their cellular response against damage, injury and oncogenic stress. During vertebrate regeneration, cells responding to injury re-enter the cell cycle and proliferate to form new tissue. Cell cycle re-entry or arrest is at least partly regulated by cellular senescence which negatively impacts the proliferative pool of cells during regeneration. What remains unclear is whether cells in regenerating systems possess an increased propensity to proliferate and are refractory to signals that induce senescence. My thesis work has focused on how fibroblasts from the ear pinna differentially regulate healing in highly regenerative mammals (e.g., …

Pre-Clinical Advancements In Biomarkers, Tools, And Therapeutics For A Metabolic Neurodegenerative Disease, Zoë Simmons

Theses and Dissertations--Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

Glycogen is the storage form of glucose and a highly important substrate for cellular metabolism. Characterization of the enzymes and mechanisms of glycogen metabolism began over 70 years ago and over the last 20 years, a previously unknown protein called laforin has emerged as an important contributor to glycogen metabolism homeostasis. Multiple labs demonstrated that laforin is a glycogen phosphatase and mutations in the gene encoding laforin cause the formation of aberrant glycogen-like aggregates called Lafora bodies (LBs). LBs are cytoplasmic, water-insoluble aggregates that drive neurodegeneration and early death in Lafora disease (LD) patients. The direct relationship between mutated laforin, …

Toward Uncharted Territory Of Cellular Heterogeneity: Advances And Applications Of Single-Cell Rna-Seq, Brandon Lieberman, Meena Kusi, Chia Nung Hung, Chih Wei Chou, Ning He, Yen Yi Ho, Josephine A. Taverna, Tim H.M. Huang, Chun Liang Chen

Faculty Publications

Among single-cell analysis technologies, single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) has been one of the front runners in technical inventions. Since its induction, scRNA-seq has been well received and undergone many fast-paced technical improvements in cDNA synthesis and amplification, processing and alignment of next generation sequencing reads, differentially expressed gene calling, cell clustering, subpopulation identification, and developmental trajectory prediction. scRNA-seq has been exponentially applied to study global transcriptional profiles in all cell types in humans and animal models, healthy or with diseases, including cancer. Accumulative novel subtypes and rare subpopulations have been discovered as potential underlying mechanisms of stochasticity, differentiation, proliferation, tumorigenesis, and …

Direct And Indirect Effects Of Altered Temperature Regimes And Phenological Mismatches On Insect Populations, Mariana Abarca, Ryan Spahn

Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Climate change is transforming ecosystems by altering species ranges, the composition of communities, and trophic interactions. Here, we synthesize recent reviews and subsequent developments to provide an overview of insect ecological and evolutionary responses to altered temperature regimes. We discuss both direct responses to thermal stress and indirect responses arising from phenological mismatches, altered host quality, and changes in natural enemy activity. Altered temperature regimes can increase exposure to both cold and heat stress and result in phenological and morphological mismatches with adjacent trophic levels. Host plant quality varies in a heterogenous way in response to altered temperatures with both …

The Art Of Fiction: Fact, Myth And New Knowledge On The North Australian Expedition, 1855 - 1857, Stevie Cole

Theses

This thesis determines the degree to which the North Australian Expedition, 1855–1857, contested established European fiction of the Australian frontier by systematically collecting new knowledge. It analyses the outcomes of one of the most forgotten expeditions in Australian history by interrogating the journals, charts and artworks of the explorers. In 1855, the Royal Geographical Society and the British Colonial Office sent an expedition into northern Australia under the command of Augustus Gregory. It was a region that Britain hoped would hold lucrative resources to support further economic and population development. The artist-explorer, Thomas Baines, was made second-in-command of the expedition. …

Netchoice V. Paxton, Western District Of Texas

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.

The Image Of European Union Law In Bilateral Relations, Sharon Pardo, Lior Zemer

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The impact of foreign law on the development of national laws has been analyzed and vindicated in numerous studies in comparative legal literature. These studies typically focus on the two most prominent legal systems--common law (the Anglo-American system) and civil law (the Continental system). The historical reasons for this are clear, emanating from the fact that the world's legal systems are based on these legal regimes and are amended in the spirit of changes made to them. Over the years, however, with the many effects of legal and economic globalization, legal systems have become a diverse mosaic which has appropriated …

China's Comparative Constitution, Bui Ngoc Son

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The academic field of comparative constitutional law has recently had greater engagements with China's constitution. This Article explains the modes, conditions, and factors of these engagements. The country-studies of China's constitution echo and complicate recent comparative debates on transnational constitution making and the varieties of constitutionalism. Comparative constitutional scholarship formulates new concepts, such as constitutional entrepreneurship and constitutional dissonance, to understand China's constitution. Additionally, it explains China's constitutional divergence from the most similar case, namely Vietnam, and its unexpected constitutional similarities with the most different cases, such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Finally, this scholarship discusses China's …

Pornography-Based Sex Trafficking: A Palermo Protocol Fit For The Internet Age, Hope Watson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The United Nations Palermo Protocol provides an international framework for regulating human trafficking with aims of increasing perpetrator prosecution and victim rehabilitation. Signatory nations implement this resolution through domestic legislation. Discrepancies across these statutes result in dangerous jurisdictional gaps and chaotically varied law enforcement approaches. Though legal scholarship rarely addresses the topic, pornography-based sex trafficking provides a clear example of this trend. The unique digital features of the internet compound these challenges. This Note seeks to close procedural gaps and alleviate policing frustrations through a proprietary examination of the Protocol’s “exploitation” definition and suggests an amendment to the Protocol that …

Toward Intelligent Welding By Building Its Digital Twin, Qiyue Wang

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

To meet the increasing requirements for production on individualization, efficiency and quality, traditional manufacturing processes are evolving to smart manufacturing with the support from the information technology advancements including cyber-physical systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT), big industrial data, and artificial intelligence (AI). The pre-requirement for integrating with these advanced information technologies is to digitalize manufacturing processes such that they can be analyzed, controlled, and interacted with other digitalized components. Digital twin is developed as a general framework to do that by building the digital replicas for the physical entities. This work takes welding manufacturing as the case study to …

Machine Learning Approach For Vigilance State Classification In Mice, Anik Muhury

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Sleep has a significant impact on cognitive abilities such as memory, reaction time, productivity, and creative thinking; however, there are many aspects of this important activity that are not clearly understood. Over the last century, researchers have developed technology and animal models to assist in the study of sleep. Manual sleep scoring is time consuming, reduces productivity, and is impacted by human scorer subjectivity. On the other hand, automatic sleep stage categorization can enhance consistency and reliability, aiding professionals in identifying sleep related health problems.

In recent times various studies reported significant achievements for automatic vigilance detection and overcome the …

Accelerometer-Based Vigilance State Classification In Dairy Cows, Evan King

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Globally, dairy farming is a $700 billion industry, with more than 9 million dairy cows in the United States alone. Depriving cows of required activities such as sleep has been shown to negatively impact reproductive efficiency, decrease the volume of milk produced, and increase the risk of culling. Overcrowded herds can decrease individual animal health, demanding the need for automatic behavior detection that would provide insight into their state of health.

Using electroencephalography (EEG), electrooculography (EOG), and electromyography (EMG) to characterize the phases of sleep is a technique which has been used for decades. While these techniques are considered the …

Peta V. Collins, District Of District Of Columbia

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.

Netchoice V. Moody, 11th Circuit Court Of Appeals

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

REPLY BRIEF OF DEFENDANTS-APPELLANTS

Managed: Examining The Relationship Between Montana's State Government And Its Natural Resources, Peter Dempsey Zimmerman

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

The three stories in this portfolio examine the relationship between Montana's government and its natural resources. Chapter one is a narrative outlining the stories, my reporting and publication. Chapter two: New Governor Greg Gianforte makes his picks for the heads of state environmental regulatory agencies, surprising everyone in the process. Chapter three: The state legislature proposes bills to protect the future of Colstrip as the coal industry declines. Chapter four: Data raises questions over the true impact of a new wolf management program.

Adapting Sustenance: Indigenous People Preserve Traditional Food Sources, Mary Katherine Auld

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

Traditional foodways of Indigenous people around the world are being changed by human-caused climate change, environmental policy, and land management. For Indigenous people in interior Alaska and Montana, culture and survival are tied tightly to hunted and gathered food. The average American gets their food from a grocery store and thus is somewhat insulated from the impact of climate change on their diet. But climate change has its hand directly in the pantries, dinner plates, and seasonal practices of Indigenous people. I believe food is a central way people are tied to the earth, and thus creating narratives about impacts …

Norfolk Scope Community Plan, Michael D. Nixon-Garrison

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

The purpose of the Norfolk Scope Community Plan is to provide the client, the City of Norfolk’s Department of City Planning, with a plan for revitalization of the community surrounding the Norfolk Scope Complex. The plan includes three potential redevelopment scenarios, along with general recommendations for areawide enhancements, both of which the client could potentially use to guide small area planning for the community in the future. The Scope is a multi-functioning entertainment complex located in the heart of Downtown Norfolk, Virginia and includes the Scope Arena, an 11,000-seat venue for concert and sporting events, Chrysler Hall, a performing arts …

Appleton Area Ohv Park Master Plan, Chad M. Kingstrom

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

This master plan for the Appleton Area OHV Park, located in Swift County in west-central Minnesota, is intended to capture user feedback and to inform future park development. This master plan will be used to show that the park is of regional significance and will therefore gain access to Minnesota’s Legacy Funds administered by the Greater Minnesota Regional Parks and Trails Commission. Because most of the public OHV resources are in the northeastern part of the state, and access to private land is extremely limited, the park is a critical regional amenity for OHV users. The park serves all four …

Bone V. Wyde, Northern District Of Texas

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.

Everything We Name Is Precious, Chelsea Campbell

Dissertations and Theses

EVERYTHING WE NAME IS PRECIOUS is a collage of poetry exploring the challenges of reshaping a disembodied being into a new whole after trauma. The collection critiques a phallocentric America entrenched in toxic masculinity and violent gun culture, calling for individual and cultural healing. Drawing inspiration from Hélène Cixous, Maggie Nelson and the Book of Genesis, the manuscript’s speakers seek agency and restoration by exploring what it means to write through the body and reimagine the feminine.

Cat Got Your Catheter?, Azim Merchant, Katherine E. Glosemeyer, Roger Smalligan

UAB Huntsville Research Day - All Presentations

2021 clinical vignette poster

Chronic Salmonella Prosthetic Joint Infection Complicated By Atrial Fibrillation, James A. Stewart, Ali Ahmed, Ali Hassoun

UAB Huntsville Research Day - All Presentations

2021 clinical vignette poster

Banal/Queer/Spectacular: Reframing Blue Is The Warmest Color, Sophie Frank

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

In this essay, I interrogate visual representations of a lesbian love story in Jul’ Maroh’s graphic novel Le bleu est une couleur chaude and its film adaptation by director Abdellatif Kechiche, La vie d’Adèle : Chapitres 1 et 2. By studying the diegesis of each work’s opening scene, I reveal that the graphic novel embodies Barthes’s concept of a writerly text, or one that requires its reader to produce its meaning, while the film, as a readerly work, constructs a passive viewing experience for its audience. I argue that each author’s narratological approach exemplifies the particular manner in which they …

Global Distribution, Host Range And Prevalence Of Trypanosoma Vivax: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Eyerusalem Fetene, Samson Leta, Fikru Regassa, Philippe Büscher

Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology: Library Materials

Background

Trypanosomosis caused by Trypanosoma vivax is one of the diseases threatening the health and productivity of livestock in Africa and Latin America. Trypanosoma vivax is mainly transmitted by tsetse fies; however, the parasite has also acquired the ability to be transmitted mechanically by hematophagous dipterans. Understanding its distribution, host range and prevalence is a key step in local and global efforts to control the disease.

Methods

The study was conducted according to the methodological recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist. A systematic literature search was conducted on three search engines, namely PubMed, …

Visual Growth Tracking For Automated Leaf Stage Monitoring Based On Image Sequence Analysis, Srinidhi Bashyam, Sruti Das Choudhury, Ashok Samal, Tala Awada

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

In this paper, we define a new problem domain, called visual growth tracking, to track different parts of an object that grow non-uniformly over space and time for application in image- based plant phenotyping. The paper introduces a novel method to reliably detect and track individual leaves of a maize plant based on a graph theoretic approach for automated leaf stage monitoring. The method has four phases: optimal view selection, plant architecture determination, leaf tracking, and generation of a leaf status report. The method accepts an image sequence of a plant as the input and automatically generates a leaf status …