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Market Making In A Limit Order Book: Classical Optimal Control And Reinforcement Learning Approaches, Chuyi Yu

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Since the last decade, algorithmic trading has become one of the most significant developments in electronic security markets. Several types of problems and practices have been studied such as optimal execution, market making, statistical arbitrage, latency arbitrage, and so on. Among these, high-frequency market making plays a crucial role since it provides large liquidity to the market, which makes trading and investing cheaper for other market participants, and also creates sizable profits for high-frequency market makers (HFM) from the large quantity of round-trip executions involved in such practices. In this thesis, we discuss two approaches to solve the high-frequency market …

Concentrations Of Lead, Mercury, Arsenic, Cadmium, Manganese, And Aluminum In The Blood Of Pakistani Children With And Without Autism Spectrum Disorder And Their Associated Factors, Mohammad H. Rahbar, Shahnaz H. Ibrahim, Syed Iqbal Azam, Manouchehr Hessabi, Fatima Karim, Sori Kim, Jing Zhang, Nasreen Gulzar Ali, Katherine A. Loveland

Department of Paediatrics and Child Health

Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with early onset in utero or childhood. Environmental exposure to six metals (Pb, Hg, As, Cd, Mn, Al) is believed to be associated with ASD directly or interactively with genes. Objective: To assess the association of ASD among Pakistani children with the six metals and genotype frequencies of three GST genes (GSTP1, GSTM1, GSTT1).
Methods: We enrolled 30 ASD cases, age 2-12 years old, and 30 age- and sex-matched typically developing (TD) controls in Karachi, Pakistan. We assessed associations of ASD status with various factors using …

Exploring The Intrinsic And Extrinsic Factors That Regulate Breast Cancer Cell Dormancy, Qihao Ren

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer can recur in patients months to decades after initial diagnosis and treatment. There is mounting evidence that dormant breast disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) exist in distant organs, whose reactivation results in cancer recurrence. However, the mechanisms that control tumor cell dormancy remain poorly understood, making it difficult to predict which patients will recur and develop cancer recurrence. Unfortunately, the extreme rarity of dormant DTCs has been the major obstacle to their study. To overcome this challenge, we developed an efficient system to isolate and study rare dormant tumor cells from metastatic organs. Using this system and single cell …

Role Of 4r Tau In Astrocyte-Mediated Neuronal Toxicity And The Progression Of Neurodegenerative Disease, Lubov Alexandra Ezerskiy

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The microtubule-binding protein tau is associated with neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, and a subset of frontotemporal dementias. In these tauopathies, tau becomes hyperphosphorylated and forms intracellular neurofibrillary tau tangles, contributing to synaptic dysfunction, neuronal death, and severe astrogliosis. Tau can be classified as having a 3-repeat (3R) or 4-repeat (4R) structure, resulting from alternative splicing of exon 10 within the MAPT gene. While the higher deposition of 4R tau characterizes many primary tauopathies, the role of 4R tau in neurodegenerative disease pathogenesis remains unclear. To investigate the role of tau isoforms in disease, we created tau …

Vestibulospinal Circuit In The Larval Zebrafish, Zhikai Liu

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The vestibular system sense gravity and self-motion to help animals maintain body balance. Although vestibular signals inform the brain of the directions and speed of our body movements, it still remains unclear how these sensory information are processed and organized in the central nervous system. My thesis aims to illustrate neural computation underlying central vestibular tuning and the topographic organization of the vestibular circuits. First I established a novel approach to perform whole-cell recording of synaptic inputs in vivo during multi-axis movements in the central vestibular neurons. This technical advance allowed me to simultaneously measure presynaptic and postsynaptic tuning, along …

Metabolic Control And Immune Barriers Of Hematopoietic Stem Cells, Hannah Pizzato

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have the unique ability to self-renew for life, to differentiate into mature blood lineages, and to readily engraft upon intravenous transplantation. As such, they are the only types of stem cells in routine clinical use. Understanding HSCs and hematopoietic development can provide many lessons for other types of stem cells as they near clinical utility. Through bone marrow transplantation, it was discovered that cells exist with regenerative potential. This led to the search to purify these cells and to determine the function of other hematopoietic cells. By isolating and transplanting cells expressing different combinations of surface …

The Evolving Mammalian 3d Epigenome, Mayank Choudhary Nishikant Choudhary

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

One of life’s greatest mysteries is how a 6ft long-strand of DNA (our genome) fits inside the nucleus of a cell that’s less than a tenth of the width of a strand of hair. Adding to that, this genome has functioned faithfully with high fidelity over hundreds of millions of years of evolution is simply mind boggling. Moreover, within our genomes, we find millions of copies of strange genetic hitchhikers that were once thought to be purely self-seeking and parasitic. Critical advances in technology, assay development, sequencing, and computation have brought us today at an opportune moment in space and …

Investigating The Role Of Bladder Epithelial Stem Cells In Bladder Mucosal Remodeling And Defense Against Infection, Seongmi Kim Russell

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) can be highly recurrent, and the mechanism(s) governing recurrence susceptibility are mostly unknown. Here I demonstrate bladder epithelial (urothelial)-intrinsic trained immunity as part of a differential mucosal remodeling response to an initial UTI. I established urothelial stem cell (USC) lines from isogenic mice with different UTI histories (naïve, chronic, or self-resolving) and discovered 2880 differential genome-accessible regions, indicating differential epigenetic reprogramming dependent on infection history. Differentiation of USC lines in vitro resulted in polarized urothelial cultures that recapitulated distinct remodeling morphologies seen in vivo and exhibited altered gene expression, including genes involved in cell death pathways. …

Regulation Of Host-Microbe Interactions In Autoimmunity And Antiviral Immunity By Cytosolic Nucleic Acid Sensing And Interferon Signaling, Derek Jerome Platt

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Cytosolic nucleic acid sensing and interferon (IFN) signaling are central to the host immune response to microbial pathogens. However, dysregulation of immunological pathways such as these can result in devastating autoimmune disease. In order to provide a robust immune response to pathogen without causing harm to self, the host immune system must engage in a delicate balancing act, interacting with microbes and determining whether they are commensal or pathogenic. The cGAS-STING pathway is a key regulator of host-microbe interactions by cytosolic nucleic sensing and IFN signaling. Loss of function in the cGAS-STING pathway leads to increased susceptibility to pathogenic threats, …

Discovery Of Sex Differences In Response To P53 Loss And Gain-Of-Function In Glioblastoma, Nathan Cuyle Rockwell

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The tumor suppressor TP53 (p53) is the most frequently mutated gene in cancer and among the most mutated genes in brain cancer. Functionally, p53 is a transcription factor that, when activated by an array of stress stimuli, regulates a complex transcriptional program that contributes to a variety of antiproliferative pathways. The loss of p53 function (LOF), either through mutation, deletion, or inhibition by alterations in the proteins that regulate p53, removes an essential barrier to the unfettered proliferation and genomic instability that drive transformation. Unlike most tumor suppressors, many p53 mutations are missense mutations that lead to stable expression of …

Uncovering A Myc-Driven Tumor-Suppressive Program In Proliferating Lymphocytes, Elena Tonc

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Rapid cell proliferation is a hallmark feature of adaptive immune cells lymphocytes. It is essential for the establishment of diverse antigen receptor repertoires and amplification of antigen-specific immune responses. While such proliferation is beneficial for host protection from infections and cancers, it inevitably elevates the risk of oncogenic transformation. In developing and germinal center B lymphocytes, the risk is further increased by endogenous, genomic insults due to antigen receptor rearrangements and somatic mutations, with which expression of the proto-oncogene c-MYC is closely associated. Nonetheless, frequencies of cancers originated from B lymphocytes are relatively low, suggesting that they are protected from …

Modeling Hyperpolarized Nmr Phenomena In Optically Pumped Semiconductors, Michael Eric West

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a widely-used technique that measures the local environments of nuclei. It is able to detect small differences in energy, making it a highly-valued tool. However, the technique is challenged by inherently low sensitivities, requiring either large sample volumes or long periods of time to overcome this. In semiconductors, optical pumping (OP) can overcome this low sensitivity by creating incredibly large and dynamic nuclear spin polarizations (``hyperpolarization''), which is detectable as a large NMR signal. The combined technique of optically-pumped NMR (OPNMR) is a valuable tool that can explore electronic and nuclear phenomena within semiconductors. In …

Neural Representation In The Primary Visual Cortex Amid High Neural Variability, Ji Xia

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Animals process high-dimensional sensory information constantly. How does neural activityin sensory cortices represent this information? Recent advances in large-scale recordings allow us to monitor activity of hundreds or thousands of neurons simultaneously across a long period of time. Population recordings showed that cortical neuronal responses to repeated sensory stimulation is highly variable from trial to trial. However, how neurons in neocortex represent sensory information amid high neural variability is not well understood. To answer this question, we used two-photon calcium imaging to record from hundreds of excitatory neurons simultaneously from mouse primary visual cortex. We analyzed neural responses to repeated …

Peripheral Nerve Macrophages And Their Implications In Neuroimmunity, Peter Leon Wang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Macrophages are innate immune cells that protect against pathogens and maintain tissue integrity. In vertebrates, macrophages reside in every tissue where they perform specific functions from early development through adulthood. While macrophages provide important functions across all tissues, a major focus in recent years has been the role of resident brain macrophages, known as microglia, in neurodegeneration. As microglia have been shown to affect brain development, homeostasis, and disease, they demonstrate how immune cells critically mediate neurological health and point to the broader significance of neuroimmune interactions, or the coordinated actions of the nervous and immune systems for maintaining tissue …

Disentangling Glial Diversity In Peripheral Nerves At Single Nuclei Resolution, Aldrin Kay Yuen Yim

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The ability to discern gene expression at single cell level is revolutionizing our understanding of both basic biology and human health. Peripheral nerves are essential communicators between the outside world and the CNS, as evidenced by the devastating effects of diseases that disrupt them, such as ALS, Charcot-Marie-Tooth Syndrome and diabetic neuropathy. Understanding peripheral nerve dysfunction at a mechanistic level is of considerable interest due to the increasing prevalence and associated patient care costs of these disorders. Although most research of the peripheral nerve has focused on glial-axonal interactions, the important contributions of other cell types besides Schwann cells, such …

Impact Of Care Practices On The Food Security And Nutritional Status Of Ethnic Minority Children With Work-Away Parents In Rural China, Yiqi Zhu

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Background and significance: Zero Hunger as the second Sustainable Development Goal builds crucial foundation to achieve other sustainable development goals and is a key approach to the Social Work Grand Challenges. In China, there is a huge gap between in nutritional well-being between urban and rural children. Among all the rural Children, ethnic minority children often live in the poverty-stricken regions have parents work away in urban regions. Their nutritional well-being is understudied. Improve the well-being of ethnic minorities children with work-away parents and closing the nutrition gaps of the rural and urban become the key for China to further …

Type I Interferon Regulation Of Chikungunya Virus Pathogenesis, Marissa Christine Locke

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is an arthritogenic alphavirus that acutely causes fever as well as severe joint and muscle pain. Chronic musculoskeletal pain persists in a substantial fraction of patients for months to years after the initial infection, yet we still have a poor understanding of the mechanisms responsible for chronic disease. While replicating virus has not been detected in joint-associated tissues of patients with persistent arthritis nor in various animal models at convalescent time points, viral RNA is detected months after acute infection. However, there has been a lack of tools to study the mechanisms of chronic CHIKV disease. To …

Linking Neuronal Protein Phosphatase 2a To The Dlk Stress Kinase Signaling Cascade, Margaret Hayne

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Neurons are constantly responding to internal and external cues as they adapt through signaling cascades and transcriptional programs. I have identified a role for the dual leucine zipper kinase (DLK) and the transcriptional program it controls in neuronal inhibition of the protein phosphatase PP2A. PP2A is an essential phosphatase, expressed in all cell types and required for survival. There is a reduction in PP2A activity in Alzheimer’s disease patient brains which is linked to increased phosphorylation of the microtubule associated protein Tau and ultimately cell death. Here, I have demonstrated that PP2A acts to restrain the DLK stress response and …

Personality Pathology And Cognitive Aging: The Role Of Interpersonal Stress, Patrick Joseph Cruitt

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Research on the relationship between normal-range personality and cognitive aging has demonstrated consistent, but modest, effects. The current investigation seeks to increase our understanding of unhealthy cognitive aging by examining the maladaptive extremes of personality. Borderline and avoidant personality disorder (PD), but not obsessive-compulsive PD, were hypothesized to show prospective associations with cognitive aging. Interpersonal stress was expected to mediate these relationships. The current investigation tested these hypotheses in two longitudinal studies of older adulthood: the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center cohort (ADRC, N = 434, Mage = 69.95, 56% women) and the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network study (SPAN, …

Dendritic Processing And Efficient Coding In The Retina, Jen-Chun Hsiang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In early sensory systems, a copious amount of information needs to be simultaneously processed to extract salient stimulus features and compress representations for efficient transmission. My thesis addresses how the retina processes visual information to detect specific motion patterns and efficiently encode our environment for perception. Around 40 retinal ganglion cell (RGC) types in mammals send specific feature representations through their axons from the retina to the brain. RGCs are the sole source of visual information to the brain. Recent studies suggest that amacrine cells (ACs) generate feature-selective responses of RGCs, but little is known about their neuronal computations. We …

Method Development For Enhancing Sensitivity Of Dynamic Nuclear Polarization Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy For Structural Studies Of Pkc-Drug Interactions, Patrick Terrence Judge

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

To perform the most relevant structural studies on biological systems, experiments need to be carried out when the target proteins are in their endogenous cellular environment. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is well-suited to probe the structure and dynamics of a wide variety of systems, including biologically relevant proteins. However, NMR suffers from an inherent lack of sensitivity. Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) NMR is a powerful technique that is used to enhance NMR sensitivity by transferring the greater polarization of exogenously doped electron spins to nuclear spins of interest though the use of a high-power microwave source. Solid effect radicals offer …

C. Elegans Response To Cadmium Toxicity, Brian James Earley

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Cadmium is an environmental pollutant and significant health hazard that is similar to the physiological metal zinc. Residing in the same group of the periodic table, cadmium and zinc share chemical characteristics that are important for their industrial uses in electroplating, batteries, pigments, and metal alloys. The similarities of ionic cadmium and zinc have significant repercussions on biological systems. While it has long been clear that cadmium is toxic to biological systems, the mechanisms of cadmium toxicity remain poorly understood. In contrast, mechanisms of zinc homeostasis have been elucidated in growing detail. In C. elegans high zinc homeostasis is regulated …

The Disunity Of Perception, Benjamin Austin Henke

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues for disunity in perceptual processing: rather than outputting to a single ‘centralized’ cognitive system, separate perceptual processing pathways produce different person-level representations for different purposes. I argue that this disunity has important implications for abstract theorizing in the philosophy and cognitive science of perception, for experimental methodology, and for our understanding of the normative role of perception itself. The first three chapters explore models in cognitive neuroscience which support perceptual disunity. In Chapter 1, I argue that a version of Milner and Goodale’s (2006) influential ‘two visual streams hypothesis’ survives its recent empirical challenges. In Chapter 2, …

Eng 5061b-600: Special Topics In Literature And Literary Theory, Suzie Park

Fall 2021

No abstract provided.

Concentrations Of Lead, Mercury, Arsenic, Cadmium, Manganese, And Aluminum In The Blood Of Pakistani Children With And Without Autism Spectrum Disorder And Their Associated Factors, Fatima Karim, Nasreen Gulzar Ali, Katherine A Loveland

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with early onset in utero or childhood. Environmental exposure to six metals (Pb, Hg, As, Cd, Mn, Al) is believed to be associated with ASD directly or interactively with genes.

METHODS: We enrolled 30 ASD cases, age 2-12 years old, and 30 age- and sex-matched typically developing (TD) controls in Karachi, Pakistan. We assessed associations of ASD status with various factors using Conditional Logistic Regression models. We also used General Linear Models to assess possible interaction of blood Mn and Pb concentrations with the three GST genes in relation to ASD …

Possibility Of The Applications Of Drone In Library Functions And Services In India, Patit Paban Santra, Anupam Bhowmick, Sibsankar Jana

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose: The study is emphasized on prospects of the applications of drones also known as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology in library services and related functions of different sections of the library. One of the major purposes of this study is to provide doorstep services to users without physical access to the library.

Design/methodology/approach: This study designed the whole drone library system through a block diagram (Figure-1), which properly explained the works related to different sections of a library as well as the factions related to the users’ perspective. It also stated different technical requirements for applying drones in library …

Prospects And Challenges Of Internet Of Things Application In Library Services, Echedom Anthonia Ukamaka, Inemotimi Flint Kakiri

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Abstract:

This paper aimed at examining the prospects and challenges of the application of internet of things technology in library services. The internet has become a norm of contemporary way of life as everyone wishes to be connected to the internet. Besides providing a veritable platform for effective and efficient promotion of workflow and services, the rapid growth of the internet globally lies in its ability to foster and shape human relationships and communication. The internet has taken a leap forward from “internet of communication “to internet of things”, Making it possible to connect objects and transfer data with or …

Developing Tropical Forage Technologies With Farmers In China, Kexian Yi, Jun Tang, Huaxuan He, Hanlin Zhou, Wangliang Xia

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

No abstract provided.

Farmers' Awareness, Reaction And Livlihood To The Policy Of Returning Cultivated Land And Grazing Land To Grasses In Ningxia, China, Aitao Zhao

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

No abstract provided.

Meat Tenderness: Advances In Biology, Biochemistry, Molecular Mechanisms And New Technologies, Robyn D. Warner, Tommy L. Wheeler, Minh Ha, Xin Li, Alaa El-Din Bekhit, James Morton, Rozita Vaskoska, Frank R. Dunshea, Rui Lui, Peter Purslow, Wangang Zhang

Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center: Reports

Meat tenderness is an important quality trait critical to consumer acceptance, and determines satisfaction, repeat purchase and willingness-to-pay premium prices. Recent advances in tenderness research from a variety of perspectives are presented. Our understanding of molecular factors influencing tenderization are discussed in relation to glycolysis, calcium release, protease activation, apoptosis and heat shock proteins, the use of proteomic analysis for monitoring changes, proteomic biomarkers and oxidative/nitrosative stress. Each of these structural, metabolic and molecular determinants of meat tenderness are then discussed in greater detail in relation to animal variation, postmortem influences, and changes during cooking, with a focus on recent …