Digital Commons Network^™

Use Of Thermal Microhabitats By Herpetofauna In A Fragmented Rainforest Landscape In Colombia, Catalina Valderrama

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Taxonomic Revision Of The Soil Genus Trichocoleus (Trichocoleusaceae, Cyanobacteria), Including Four New Species From White Sands National Park, New Mexico, Amanda Szinte

Masters Theses

Cyanobacteria have never received molecular characterization in the gypsum soils at White Sands National Park. These gypsiferous soils support distinctive plant communities and considerable microbial taxonomic diversity in their biological soil crusts. Employing a polyphasic approach characterizing both morphology and sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene and associated 16S-23S ITS region, six strains of Trichocoleus isolated from White Sands biocrusts were fully characterized. Phylogenetic analyses including other as-yet-unnamed Trichocoleus strain sequences and the three previously described species, T. desertorum, T. caatingensis, and T. badius, led to a revision of the genus and identification of 17 unnamed species-level groups within Trichocoleus. …

Multi-Omics Integrative Analysis For Incomplete Data Using Weighted P-Value Adjustment Approaches, Wenda Zhang, Zichen Ma, Yen Yi Ho, Shuyi Yang, Joshua Habiger, Hsin Hsiung Huang, Yufei Huang

Faculty Publications

The advancements in high-throughput technologies provide exciting opportunities to obtain multi-omics data from the same individuals in a biomedical study, and joint analyses of data from multiple sources offer many benefits. However, the occurrence of missing values is an inevitable issue in multi-omics data because measurements such as mRNA gene expression levels often require invasive tissue sampling from patients. Common approaches for addressing missing measurements include analyses based on observations with complete data or multiple imputation methods. In this paper, we propose a novel integrative multi-omics analytical framework based on p-value weight adjustment in order to incorporate observations with incomplete …

Systems Check: A Qualitative Case Study Of Educators And Parent-Educators Supporting Adolescent Readers From An Ecological Systems Perspective, Kristi Nicole Grooms

Theses and Dissertations

In spite of decades of research and an abundance of well-intentioned intervention efforts, supporting adolescent readers, particularly at the middle level, remains a significant area of concern for educators in the United States. The struggles are present for educators working to help underperforming readers reach grade-level and keep advanced readers motivated and engaged. At home, parents and guardians experience similar challenges. Data on adolescent comprehension performance continues to be frustrating in terms of producing consistent positive results. This qualitative action research study investigated the ongoing challenge of supporting adolescent readers, specifically within the context of 7th grade, through a systems …

Identification And Characterization Of Auxiliary Factors In Innate Antiviral Immunity, Ruixue Wang

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Upon viral infections, RIG-I-like receptors (RLRs) sense cytosolic viral RNAs and initiate signaling pathways culminating in the activation of IRF3 and subsequent type I interferon (IFN) antiviral response. This intrinsic protective mechanism is orchestrated by a host of positive and negative regulators, which collectively govern the magnitude and duration of antiviral signaling. SRMS (Src-related kinase lacking C-terminal regulatory tyrosine and N-terminal myristylation sites) is an understudied non-receptor tyrosine kinase frequently overexpressed in breast cancers. SRMS restrains autophagy and promotes tumor growth, although its physiological function is unclear. We report that SRMS is critical for IRF3-dependent innate antiviral response in murine …

Environmental Justice As Environmental Human Rights, John H. Knox, Nicole Tronolone

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

For many years, the environmental justice movement in the United States and the evolution of international human rights law concerning the environment have pursued parallel but separate paths, only occasionally noting that they share common concerns. This Article seeks to build a stronger bridge between them, in three ways.

First, it presents the most detailed restatement of environmental human rights law yet published. International human rights bodies have developed a robust environmental jurisprudence setting out concrete obligations on States, including procedural obligations to provide public access to environmental information, decision-making, and remedies, substantive obligations to adopt and enforce effective environmental …

Genotypes Of Snps Of Key Genes Regulate Susceptibility And Drug Sensitivity To Neovascular Amd, Jinglin Cui

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD), particularly its neovascular form, stands as a leading cause of blindness globally, with its prevalence in our country on a steady rise. This underscores the critical impact of neovascular AMD (nAMD) management on patient quality of life and societal burden. Current optimal treatments hinge on anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) therapies, though their efficacy varies across different drugs and individuals, highlighting the importance of precise drug selection in clinical outcomes. Research suggests that factors such as baseline vision, age, disease duration, lesion size, central retina thickness, neovascularization type, and demographic differences influence nAMD prognosis. In addition, …

Cross-Layer Design Of Highly Scalable And Energy-Efficient Ai Accelerator Systems Using Photonic Integrated Circuits, Sairam Sri Vatsavai

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has experienced remarkable success in recent years, solving complex computational problems across various domains, including computer vision, natural language processing, and pattern recognition. Much of this success can be attributed to the advancements in deep learning algorithms and models, particularly Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). In recent times, deep ANNs have achieved unprecedented levels of accuracy, surpassing human capabilities in some cases. However, these deep ANN models come at a significant computational cost, with billions to trillions of parameters. Recent trends indicate that the number of parameters per ANN model will continue to grow exponentially in the foreseeable …

Nonuniform Sampling-Based Breast Cancer Classification, Santiago Posso

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The emergence of deep learning models and their success in visual object recognition have fueled the medical imaging community's interest in integrating these algorithms to improve medical diagnosis. However, natural images, which have been the main focus of deep learning models and mammograms, exhibit fundamental differences. First, breast tissue abnormalities are often smaller than salient objects in natural images. Second, breast images have significantly higher resolutions but are generally heavily downsampled to fit these images to deep learning models. Models that handle high-resolution mammograms require many exams and complex architectures. Additionally, spatially resizing mammograms leads to losing discriminative details essential …

Msw Portfolio, Kandace Mcgee

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Msw Portfolio - 2024, Jocelyn E. Olsen

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Diverse Minds, Shared Planet: Designing, Assessing, And Adapting Curricula To Engage Diverse Learners With Their Environment And Inspire Positive Change, Mallory Rose Lampe

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

The pieces that compose this portfolio together explore how environmental education can connect diverse learners to their environment through the integration of accessible curricula to inspire stewardship and action to take care of the planet we share.

Pdgfra And B Copositive Fibroblasts Drive Fibrosis In Mouse Salivary Glands Through Tgfβ Signaling, Renae Williams Atkinson

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Fibrosis is of significant concern to the medical community as numerous disease processes are characterized by progressive fibrosis leading to organ damage. We begin the process of examining the mechanism of fibrosis to salivary gland hypofunction and briefly consider Sjögren’s Disease (SjD). Method: We employed single-cell RNA sequencing data from a reversible mouse salivary gland injury model and from NOD/ShiLtJ mice, a model of secondary SjD. We performed treatment comparisons with the help of Seurat dotplots and UMAPS. Using differential gene expression analysis and the publicly available R packages: clusterProfiler, WikiPathways and Cytoscape, we identified the processes and pathways …

Radiobiological Applications Of Vibrational Spectroscopy: A Review Of Analyses Of Ionising Radiation Effects In Biology And Medicine, Jade F. Monaghan, Hugh J. Byrne, Fiona M. Lyng, Aidan D. Meade

Articles

Vibrational spectroscopic techniques, such as Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) absorption and Raman spectroscopy (RS), offer unique and detailed biochemical fingerprints by detecting specific molecular vibrations within samples. These techniques provide profound insights into the molecular alterations induced by ionising radiation, which are both complex and multifaceted. This paper reviews the application of rapid and label-free vibrational spectroscopic methods for assessing biological radiation responses. These assessments span from early compartmentalised models such as DNA, lipid membranes, and vesicles to comprehensive evaluations in various living biological models, including tissues, cells, and organisms of diverse origins. The review also discusses future perspectives, highlighting …

Raman Spectroscopic Analysis Of Human Blood Serum Of Glaucoma Patients Supplemented With Macular Pigment Carotenoids, Joy Udensi, Ekaterina Loskutova, James Loughman, Hugh J. Byrne

Articles

As all major dietary carotenoids are contained in blood, it is a suitable substrate to evaluate their content, in vivo. Following 18-month supplementation of open-angle glaucoma patients with macula-pigment carotenoids (Lutein, Zeaxanthin and Meso-Zeaxanthin) in the European Nutrition in Glaucoma Management trial, Raman spectroscopic analysis of the carotenoid content of pre- and post-supplementation participant blood serum was carried out, to investigate the systemic impact of the supplementation regimen and explore a more direct way of quantifying this impact using routine blood tests. Using a 532 nm laser source for optimal response, a consistent increase in serum carotenoid concentration was observed …

Acute Postoperative Pain And Dorsal Root Ganglia Transcriptomic Signatures Following Total Knee Arthroplasty (Tka) In Rats: An Experimental Study, Justice Achonu, David E. Komatsu, Sardar Mz Uddin, Chris Gordob, Martha Kanjiya, Diane Bogdan, Adriana Dibua, Hira Iftikhar, Amanda Ackermann, Rohan J. Shah, Jason Shieh, Agnieszka B. Bialkowska, Martin Kaczocha

Stony Brook Orthopaedic and Musculoskeletal Journal

Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is the final treatment option for patients with advanced knee osteoarthritis (OA). Unfortunately, TKA surgery is accompanied by acute postoperative pain that is more severe than arthroplasty performed in other joints. Elucidating the molecular mechanisms specific to post-TKA pain necessitates an animal model that replicates clinical TKA procedures, induces acute postoperative pain, and leads to complete functional recovery. Here, we present a new preclinical TKA model in rats and report on functional and behavioral outcomes indicative of pain, analgesic efficacy, serum cytokine levels, and dorsal root ganglia (DRG) transcriptomes during the acute postoperative period. Following TKA, …

Federal Enforcers Signal Heightened Scrutiny Of Algorithm Use To Inform Pricing Decisions, Lohr A. Beck, Carley H. Thompson

Emory Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Pyoderma Gangrenosum, The Great Wound Masquerader, Paul Morris, Rohan Pareek, Farrah Ibrahim

UAB Huntsville Research Day - All Presentations

2024 clinical vignette poster

Troubling Waters: Anthropocene Marine Gothic In The 19th-Century Anglo-American Fiction, Phoenix Guqing Wang

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

The 19th century witnessed intensifying marine ecological disruptions by colonial, industrial, and imperial activities. Meanwhile, current scholarship acknowledges the significance of the 19th century in tracing the emergence of the “Anthropocene” – a loose shorthand for ecological damages that are planetary in scale. This thesis aims to analyze how gothic imagination of the marine space unravels the linkages between the two temporally intersecting phenomena. Drawing on ocean studies, ecocriticism, new materialism, and gothic studies, I theorize what I call “Anthropocene marine Gothic discourse” to understand how 19th-century Anglo-American writers attend to the marine space to grapple with planetary ecological concerns …

Multiscale Characterization Of Splays Produced By A Historic, Rain-On-Snow Flood On A Large Braided Stream (Platte River, Central Usa), J. T. Korus, R. M. Joeckel, A. R. Mittelstet, N. Shrestha

Conservation and Survey Division: Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Wetlands In The Nebraska Sandhills, Nawaraj Shrestha

Conservation and Survey Division: Faculty and Staff Publications

Infographic titled “Status of Wetlands in the Nebraska Sandhills” showing multiple maps and charts. The top left features a color-coded wetland persistence map where blue indicates more consistent wetlands and red indicates intermittent wetlands. Additional inset maps show a regional zoom and a U.S. location map highlighting Nebraska. A large scatter plot displays wetland occurrence percentages over time using MODIS (green points) and Sentinel (blue points) satellite data from 2000 to 2024. Text explains how wetlands vary seasonally and annually and how satellite imagery tracks these changes. A smaller bottom chart shows long-term wetland trends, noting increasing occurrence since 1984. …

The Effectiveness Of Dental Pulp Stem Cells-Derived Exosomes For Direct Pulp Capping: In Vitro Study, Dina A. Hammouda, Alaa M. Mansour, Mohammed E. Grawish, Ahmed R. Zaher

Mansoura Journal of Dentistry

Objective: This in vitro investigation's goal was to ascertain how well dental pulp stem cell exosomes (DPSC-exo) modulate endogenous dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) and direct their navigation toward mineralized tissue regeneration, either alone or in conjunction with mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA). Materials and methods: For this investigation, DPSCs were harvested using rat incisors. To extract exosomes from DPSCs, an ultracentrifugation method was employed. Flow cytometry was used for the characterization of DPSCs-exo, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was used to measure their size. DPSCs were incubated in standard culture media and split up into three groups. The first one …

Biocompatibility Evaluation Of Edta And Chitosan Nanoparticles Gel Forms: In Vivo Histopathological Study, Alaa H. Youssef, Doaa A. Labah, Abeer A. Elgendy, Amany E. Badr

Mansoura Journal of Dentistry

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare biocompatibility of gel form chelating agents (EDTA and chitosan NPS) after implantation of polyethylene tubes in rats. Materials and methods: Twenty albino rats were included in this study. Three horizontal incisions were performed on dorsal surface of each rat to receive three polyethylene tubes as subcutaneous implants; two of them filled with tested materials and one empty tube served as control. After 2 and 4 weeks of subcutaneous implantation, 10 rats were sacrificed and implanted polyethylene tubes with surrounding tissues were dissected with 1 cm safety margin. The specimens …

Evaluation Of Double Crown Attachments Made Of Polyether –Ketoneketone Secondary Crowns Combined To Primary Crowns Of Two Different Materials For 2-Implant Retained Overdentures, Esraa Wefky Shawkat Elsaba, Noha Ahmed Mansour, Heba Nabil Awad, Radwa Mohsen Kamal Emera

Mansoura Journal of Dentistry

Objective: To assess the retention force using a digital forcemeter, the peri-implant soft tissue health, and the periimplant marginal bone loss of two implant-retained mandibular complete overdentures with double crown attachments made of polyetherketone- ketone (PEKK) secondary crowns combined to primary crowns of two different materials Methods Fourteen healthy male patients, ages 55 to 65 on average, who were entirely edentulous • group I: seven patients were given a mandibular overdenture that was held by two im plants and had telescopic attachments for a primary zirconiabased coping and a secondary PEKK-based coping against a maxillay full denture. • Group II: …

The Use Of Expanded Polytetrafluoroethylene Membrane (E-Ptfe) As A Barrier Membrane For Critical Size Defects Following Jaw Cyst Enucleation, Sara Salem, Ayman Ahmed Yaseen, Mohamed Abdel-Monem Tawfik

Mansoura Journal of Dentistry

Purpose: The use of bone graft following cyst enucleation could lead to infection so, this study was conducted to investigate impact of (e-PTFE) membrane alone without bone graft in promoting bone healing compared to the spontaneous bone regeneration after cyst enucleation.

Materials and methods: Sixteen intra-bony cysts in 16 patients (6 males, 10 females) were included. In study group (e-PTFE) barrier membrane was used alone after enucleation while, in control group the conventional technique was used. The follow up Period was 6 and 12 months postoperatively. Clinically, pain, soft tissue healing, and membrane exposure were assessed. Radiographically, CBCT scans were …

Osteocalcin As A Gingival Crevicular Fluid Biomarker For Periodontitis Among Egyptian Population Sample- Controlled Clinical Trial, Mohamed Al Bahrawy, Sahar Abdel Rauf, Eman M. Abdulhady

Mansoura Journal of Dentistry

Objectives This clinical trial aimed to evaluate osteocalcin levels in healthy and diseased periodontium and to correlate the changes in its levels with the changes in the clinical and radiographic parameters before and after treatment. Subject & Methods Double blind clinical trial, 40 patients divided into 3 groups; 15 patients diagnosed as periodontitis stage III grade B, 15 patients diagnosed as periodontitis stage III grade C, 10 healthy cases as control. Clinical parameters namely plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), periodontal pocket depth (PPD), clinical attachment loss (CAL), radiographic examination, beside gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) samples collection for osteocalcin (OC) …

Mechanical And Optical Behavior Of Two Lithium Silicate-Based Glass Ceramics After Aging In Intra-Oral Simulating Condition, Sherief Mowafy, Salwa Abdel Raouf Elnegoly, Hagag Abdelkader Mohammed

Mansoura Journal of Dentistry

Aim This study evaluated the mechanical and optical properties of Zirconia-reinforced lithium disilicate (ZLS) and lithium disilicate (LS) glass ceramics after immersion in artificial saliva solutions with varying pH. Methods A total of 104 samples were fabricated from Vita Suprinity (ZLS) and IPS E.max CAD (LS). Samples were divided into test and control groups, with the test group further divided into neutral (7.2), acidic (5.8), and basic (8.3) pH subgroups. Samples were immersed for 24 hours at 37°C and evaluated for microhardness, fracture toughness, and color stability. Results Significant differences were found in the properties of both materials across the …

A Comparison Between Three Conservative Treatment Modalities For Anterior Disc Displacement Of The Temporomandibular Joint, Mirna A. Anis, Mohamed Shady, Manar Mansour, Ashraf A. Gebreel

Mansoura Journal of Dentistry

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of three types of conservative treatment modalities (maxillary anterior repositioning splint, low-level laser therapy and infra-red led on the temporomandibular joint and masticatory muscles) for temporomandibular disorder. Materials and methods: A total of 30 patients diagnosed with anterior disk displacement with Reduction, underwent examination using magnetic resonance imaging. The participants were randomly assigned according to treatment modalities into three groups (n=10): maxillary anterior repositioning splint, low-level laser therapy and infra-red led. Clinical evaluation was performed at the baseline and after a six-month follow-up period utilizing the Helkimo Clinical Dysfunction …

Inaugural Future Of Bse Days: Workshop Report, Mark Stone

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Presentations and White Papers

The inaugural Future of BSE Days (FBD) event, held on May 2-3, 2024, brought together the Biological Systems Engineering (BSE) community to discuss and shape the future of work and learning within the field. The event was designed to foster collaboration between faculty, students, industry leaders, and alumni, with the goal of reimagining the department’s educational approach, enhancing industry partnerships, and preparing students for the challenges of tomorrow. Over the course of two days, participants engaged in insightful discussions, workshops, and presentations that highlighted both the strengths of the department and opportunities for growth.

The workshop resulted in several key …

Hop Cone Drying For The Small Grower: Temperature And Airflow Considerations, Stacy A. Adams, David M. Mabie, Michael F. Kocher, David Jones

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Small hop growers without nearby processors for cone stripping and drying must attempt to do so on their own farm. Challenges exist for self-built drying systems, including drying capacity, processing speed, airflow direction, and maintaining quality during drying. Research-based recommendations are given for optimal temperature, sizing of drying vessel, maximum cone depth, and influences associated with airflow on processing uniformity and cone quality are presented.