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Mitochondrial Network Expansion And Loss During Oligodendrocyte Life And Death, Xhoela Bame

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Oligodendrocytes are the myelinating cells of the central nervous system, known for modulating signal transmission, refining neural circuits, and providing metabolic support to axons. Oligodendrocytes are generated throughout life from oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) and are damaged or lost in demyelinating and neurodegenerative diseases and age-related pathologies. Thus, understanding the cellular checkpoints that occur during the generation and degeneration of oligodendrocytes is crucial for maintaining their population in health and recovering it in disease and aging.

Using high-resolution optical imaging, I have discovered a dynamic redistribution and subcellular partitioning of mitochondria during oligodendrogenesis. Mitochondria transiently expanded towards the differentiating OPC …

First-Principles Studies Of Electrical Polarization Effects In Ferroelectrics, Antiferroelectrics And Defects, Louis Alaerts

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Over the last few decades, density functional theory (DFT) has emerged as a formidable tool in the field of computational material science. Not only has it become a complementary method approach to experiments by rationalizing the many complex properties of materials but its formidable predictive power can also be used to identify the most promising candidates for specific applications. Point defects in semiconductors have become an important platform for the development of quantum networks due to their ability to act as spin-photon interfaces. Spectral diffusion, the broadening of the optical emission line, can significantly impact the performance of these defect-based …

Staff Education To Early Detection And Response To Patient Decline, Kein Gareth Rufino Pantaleon

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This doctoral project implemented a staff education program to enhance early recognition and escalation of patient deterioration. Conducted at a 343-bed acute care hospital, the initiative addressed the ongoing problem of delayed detection and response to clinical decline, which often results in rapid response team activations and code blue events. Delays in intervention increase patient morbidity and mortality, despite many of these events being preventable through timely action. The project evaluated whether an interactive targeted education program could improve nursing staff’s knowledge, confidence, and willingness to activate escalation protocols, including Condition H and Code Help. Pre- and post-education surveys were …

The Effectiveness Of Postincarceration Reentry Programming In Fostering Community Reintegration For Women, La Shawn B. Kelley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Identifying gaps in reentry programs for formerly incarcerated women is challenging due to the lack of evaluations that include the perspectives of the transitioning women on which components most effectively support their reintegration. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to explore the experiences and perceptions of transitioning women who received reentry services, in order to assess program effectiveness in community reintegration and inform future interventions. The research question for this study was, how do women served by Organization A’s reentry program describe the program’s effectiveness in preparing them for community reintegration after incarceration? To answer the practice-focused research …

Genome Announcement Of Four Parechovirus A3 Isolates From The United States Of America., Debarpan Dhar, Terry Fei Fan Ng, Christopher J. Harrison, Eric Rhoden, Bernardo A Mainou, Anjana Sasidharan, Katelyn E. Vandonge, Varun Chandra Boinpelly, Rangaraj Selvarangan

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

We report the complete genome sequences of four parechovirus-A3 (PeV-A3) isolates from Children's Mercy Kansas City (CMKC), United States of America (USA): PeV-A3-MO-12-CMKC/CSF/MO/USA/2012 (isolated in 2012 from cerebrospinal fluid), PeV-A3-8C-CMKC/CSF/MO/USA/2022/ (isolated in 2022 from cerebrospinal fluid), PeV-A3-9C-CMKC/CSF/MO/USA/2022 (isolated in 2022 from cerebrospinal fluid), and PeV-A3-11B-CMKC/Blood/MO/USA/2022 (isolated in 2022 from blood). Sequence analysis revealed multiple mutations throughout the genome of the PeV-A3 isolates in comparison to the prototypic PeV-A3 A308/99 reference sequence (AB084913). Several unique amino acid changes were observed in the PeV-A3 isolates from 2022 that were absent in the PeV-A3 isolate from 2012. Phylogenetic analysis comparison determined that the …

A Preliminary Study Of Hilbert–Kunz Functions: Coefficient Behavior In A Normal Affine Semigroup Ring, Jesus A. Mendiola Herrera

Theses and Dissertations

In 1890, David Hilbert published a set of notes on what now constitutes one of the bases of Commutative Algebra; his work would eventually influence the efforts of mathematicians like Ernst Kunz. In 1969, Ernst Kunz introduced a particular mapping regarding modules of regular local rings. His goal was to characterize Noetherian local rings of prime characteristic by computing the length of the composition series under Frobenius power transformations. In this thesis, the focus will be on stating the initial steps on finding the coefficients of the Hilbert-Kunz function of the normal affine semigroup ring of the form R = …

Cumulative Lifespan Stress And Inflammation Are Associated With Black-White Racial Disparities In Mortality Among Americans, Isaiah Spears

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Black Americans disproportionately experience higher rates of health challenges and mortality compared to White Americans, yet the mechanisms underlying these disparities remain inadequately understood. Prominent theoretical models highlight stress and resulting allostatic load as putative mechanisms through which these Black-White racial disparities emerge; however, empirical data supporting such models with regard to mortality remains sparse. The current study examined the potential role of cumulative stress exposure across the life span and elevated levels of C-Reactive Protein, a biomarker of inflammation, in contributing to the longstanding increased mortality risk among Black relative to White Americans. Data were drawn from the Saint …

Acquisition Algorithms For Protein Mass Spectrometry And Their Application To Clinical Proteomics, Nathan Wamsley

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Bottom-up protein mass spectrometry aims for the identification and quantification of protein species by proxy of their proteolytic peptides. This dissertation presents methodological advances in three areas of protein mass spectrometry: acquisition methods, clinical appli- cations, and data analysis algorithms. The second chapter presents an optimized internal standard-triggered parallel reaction monitoring (OIS-PRM) method and demonstrates its application to study prognostic biomarkers in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HN- SCC). OIS-PRM uses intelligent scan scheduling and real-time monitoring of peptide elution profiles to reduce cycle-times and improve quantitative precision and accuracy. The assay measured NRF2 activation in both cell lines …

Mechanisms Of Protective Humoral Immunity And Pathogenesis In Alphavirus Infection, Natasha Monir Kafai

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Alphaviruses are enveloped, mosquito-transmitted, positive-sense RNA viruses of the Togaviridae family classified into Old and New World groups based on endemic regions and human disease characteristics. Old World alphaviruses, including chikungunya virus preferentially cause arthritogenic disease, whereas New World viruses like Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV), Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV), and Western equine encephalitis virus (WEEV) can cause neurological disease. Since the 1920s, VEEV has been responsible for major periodic outbreaks affecting hundreds of thousands of humans and equines in South and Central America. Expansion of mosquito vectors raises concern for possible VEEV reemergence. In addition, VEEV is a …

Proteogenomic Analysis To Inform Causal Gene Prioritization For Human Disease, Daniel Western

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been key in expanding our understanding of the genetic contributions to common diseases. However, these genetic associations frequently fail to clarify causal disease mechanisms, as they often fall in non-coding regions and are difficult to interpret. One solution is to perform a GWAS for the levels of a cellular trait, known as quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping. Through methods such as colocalization, Mendelian Randomization, and transcriptome/proteome-wide association studies, the QTL variants can be compared to disease GWAS, identifying shared variation between cellular and disease traits. We can then prioritize cellular traits as potential causative, targetable …

Empowering Guideline Searching With Guidelines Resources, Evelyn Wang

HSLIC Faculty and Staff Instructional Resources

This workshop presentation, "Empowering Guideline Searching with Guidelines Resources," provides a comprehensive overview of major resources and effective strategies for locating clinical practice guidelines. The session introduces key platforms-including ECRI Guidelines Trust, Guideline Central, PubMed, and CINAHL-and demonstrates how to leverage professional society websites and Google search techniques to access authoritative, evidence-based guidelines. Attendees learn to compare resource features, apply advanced search filters, and ensure access to the most current recommendations for clinical decision-making. The presentation also highlights integration with HSLIC resources and support for point-of-care use.

Maria Firmina Dos Reis: The Erasure Of An Author And The Recuperation Of A Legacy, Anderson Gomes Barbosa

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The very first woman to write a novel in Brazil was Afro-Brazilian: Maria Firmina dos Reis published Ursula in 1859. The novel, published with her own savings, was the first abolitionist piece ever written in the country in which Black enslaved characters were treated as equals to white ones. Tragically, the book disappeared from shelves in Brazil for almost a century. Maria Firmina was not only Afro-Brazilian and a woman, but also from Nordeste, a region that is discriminated against by other parts of Brazil. I believe her erasure in the Brazilian literary canon was not a mere …

Identifying Genetic Errors Of Immunity Due To Mosaicism, Elizabeth G Schmitz, Malachi Griffith, Obi L Griffith, Megan A Cooper

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Inborn errors of immunity are monogenic disorders of the immune system that lead to immune deficiency and/or dysregulation in patients. Identification of precise genetic causes of disease aids diagnosis and advances our understanding of the human immune system; however, a significant portion of patients lack a molecular diagnosis. Somatic mosaicism, genetic changes in a subset of cells, is emerging as an important mechanism of immune disease in both young and older patients. Here, we review the current landscape of somatic genetic errors of immunity and methods for the detection and validation of somatic variants.

Defining The Enemy Within: Examining The Case For A Federal Mechanism To Designate Domestic Terrorist Organizations In The United States, Evelyn Schneider

College Honors Program

Domestic terrorist incidents are on the rise within the United States. Activities of domestic terrorism increased by 357% between 2013 and 2021. While the United States has experienced a dramatic growth in domestic terrorism from violent organizations, other countries have faced this similar problem with a different approach as they have created mechanisms to officially designate domestic terrorist organizations. In this thesis, I will answer the question: Could and should the United States create a federal proscription mechanism for domestic terrorist organizations? Chapter 2 explores whether the Proud Boys, a domestic organization within the United States, could be considered a …

What Are The Effects Of Time-Restricted Eating Upon Metabolic Health Outcomes In Individuals With Metabolic Syndrome: A Scoping Review, Rory J Heath, Jessie Welbourne, Daniel Martin

Peninsula Medical School

The primary objective of this scoping review (ScR) was to assess the breadth and type of evidence related to time-restricted eating (TRE) as an intervention to modify metabolic health outcomes in individuals with diagnosed metabolic syndrome (MetS), a major health challenge due to increasing prevalence and association with other chronic diseases. MetS comprises three or more of hypertension, hypercholesterolaemia, dyslipidaemia, dysregulated glucose homeostasis, and abdominal obesity. TRE, also known as time-restricted feeding (TRF), restricts food intake to specific time windows within a day, for example, a 10-h eating period between 10:00 and 20:00. Via multiple mechanisms, TRE interventions may provide …

Gut Dysbiosis Patterns In Cvid Patients With Noninfectious Complications Observed In A Germ-Free Mouse Model Through Fecal Microbiota Transplantation, Joud Hajjar, Anita Y Voigt, Margaret E Conner, Alton G Swennes, Stephanie Fowler, Chadi Calarge, Danielle D Mendonca, Dominique Armstrong, Chen-Yen Chang, Jolan E Walter, Manish J Butte, Tor Savidge, Julia Oh, Farrah Kheradmand, Joseph F Petrosino

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Patients with common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) who develop noninfectious complications (NIC) have worse clinical outcomes than those with infections only (INF). While gut microbiome aberrations have been linked to NIC, reductionist animal models that accurately recapitulate CVID are lacking. Our aim in this study was to uncover potential microbiome roles in the development of NIC in CVID. We performed whole-genome shotgun sequencing on fecal samples from CVID patients with NIC, INF, and their household controls. We also performed fecal microbiota transplants from CVID patients to germ-free mice. We found potentially pathogenic microbes

Catecholaminergic Polymorphic Ventricular Tachycardia-Linked Ryanodine Receptor Variants Exhibit Domain-Specific Calcium Leak And Calmodulin Affinity Properties, Hitoshi Uchinoumi, Xiaoqiong Dong, Ivanita Stefanon, Yi Yang, Eduardo Hertel Ribeiro, Bengt Svensson, Xander H T Wehrens, Takeshi Yamamoto, Razvan L Cornea, Robyn T Rebbeck, Masafumi Yano, Donald M Bers

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) is an inherited stress-induced arrhythmogenic disease often caused by point variants in the cardiac ryanodine receptor (RyR2) that enhance diastolic sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca2+ leak. These RyR2 variants cluster in three hot-spots (N-terminal, central and C-terminal domains). We previously demonstrated a pathologic diastolic RyR2 conformation in heart failure, oxidative stress and CaMKII phosphorylation exhibiting a trilogy of effects: (1) reduced calmodulin (CaM)-RyR2 affinity, (2) enhanced unzipping peptide (DPc10) binding and (3) elevated diastolic SR Ca2+ leak that are dantrolene-sensitive. Here we test whether this pathological trilogy occurs in CPVT knock-in (KI) mice bearing N-terminal (R176Q/+), …

“We All Have Our Boulders To Pass, And This Was One Of Mine”: Ethnoculturally Diverse High-School-Aged Youth And Their Reclamation Of Nature, Andrew T. Turchon

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative, ethnographic, youth-centered study explored how ethnoculturally diverse urban high-school-aged youth express their relationships to nature. Participatory and youth-centered methodologies and data sources, including Photovoice, photo-elicitation interviews, and classroom artifacts, centered the voices of a diverse group of urban youth and their experiences in local forest reservations. Diverse urban youth are typically marginalized from environmental education, place-based learning, and representation in outdoor-related research. Therefore, it is critical that educational researchers include the voices of these students in conversations about nature to broaden the sociocultural framework around what “nature” is, how it is experienced, and by whom. This theoretical framework …

Protocol For A Randomized Controlled Trial To Determine If Biomarkers Predict Response To A Pediatric Chronic Pain Symptom Management Program, Rona L Levy, Tasha B Murphy, Margaret M Heitkemper, Miranda A L Van Tilburg, Ann R Mcmeans, Jocelyn Chang, Cynthia Boutte, Katherine Lamparyk, Bruno P Chumpitazi, Robert J Shulman

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background/Objectives: Disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBI), characterized by chronic abdominal pain and significant disability, affect 15-20% of children and adults and continue into adulthood in ~60% of cases. Costs for adults reach USD 30 billion per year, yet effective management strategies are elusive. Studies support using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), but abdominal pain only improves in ~40% of patients. Dietary management (low FODMAP diet; LFD) has also shown promise but it is effective in only a similar percentage of patients. Studies suggest that biologic factors (biomarkers) contribute to CBT response. Similarly, gut microbiome composition appears to influence abdominal pain …

The Rising Returns To R&D: Ideas Are Not Getting Harder To Find, Yoshiki Ando, James Bessen, Xiupeng Wang

Faculty Scholarship

R&D investment has grown robustly, yet aggregate productivity growth has stagnated. Is this because “ideas are getting harder to find”? This paper uses micro-data from the US Census Bureau to explore the relationship between R&D and productivity in the manufacturing sector from 1976 to 2018. We find that both the elasticity of output (TFP) with respect to R&D and the marginal returns to R&D have risen sharply. Exploring factors affecting returns, we conclude that R&D obsolescence rates must have risen. Using a novel estimation approach, we find consistent evidence of sharply rising technological rivalry. These findings suggest that R&D has …

Remote Cryptographic Device Verification For Theft Deterrence, Siddarth Pandit, Max Bires

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes techniques that leverage remotely provisioned attestation certificates (RPAC) to actively deter device theft. Devices that are reported as lost are identified, and a robust access restriction mechanism is activated that denies both device-local and backend services to the device. To deny service, a bipartite mechanism is deployed that includes enabling a user to declare that their device is stolen and conveying to various services that the device is stolen.

Heterophily-Aware Personalized Graph Masked Autoencoder

Defensive Publications Series

Graph Masked AutoEncoder (GMAE) has recently attracted vast interest in handling graph-related tasks by adopting the 'masking-reconstruction' learning paradigm. Most existing GMAE-based methods adhere to the homophily assumption, i.e., connected nodes share the same attributes or labels. However, this assumption is not always right because most graphs from real-world applications are mixed by both homophilic and heterophilic edges. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish them to improve the representative ability of GMAE. In this paper, we propose a heterophily-aware personalized graph masked autoencoder (HAP-GMAE). Specifically, we design a teacher-guided edge discriminator that distinguishes homophilic and heterophilic edges by leveraging the …

Adaptive Node-Subgraph Contrastive Learning For Heterophilic Graph Fraud Detection

Defensive Publications Series

Fraud detection that aims to discern frauds from the majority of benigns has become an increasingly prominent research field. Recently, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have been widely applied in graph-based fraud detection due to their outstanding data analysis and mining capabilities. However, owing to the inherent homophily-heterophily mixture and class imbalance of fraud graphs, most GNNs with homophily assumption inevitably suffer from local abnormal signal loss during information propagation, posing significant challenges in situations where frauds are rare and valuable. To address the aforementioned issues, we present a novel adaptive node-subgraph contrastive learning approach for graph-based fraud detection, dubbed ANS-GFD. …

Consistent And Homophily-Aware Representation Learning For Multiplex Graphs

Defensive Publications Series

Although unsupervised multiplex graph representation learning (UMGRL) has been a hot research topic, existing UMGRL methods still has limitations to be addressed. For example, previous works either preserve structural information by ignoring the impact of heterophily in the graph structure or only focus on node-level consistency by ignoring class-level consistency. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose a new UMGRL method, CH-MGRL (Consistency and Homophily-Aware Multiplex Graph Representation Learning), to explore both homophily and consistency in the multiplex graph. Specifically, we propose to restructure the multi-order relationships of every graph between every node and its multi-order neighbors to …

Halo: Heterophily-Aware Label-Free Ordering For Unsupervised Graph Fraud Detection

Defensive Publications Series

Graph fraud detection (GFD) has rapidly advanced in protecting online services by identifying malicious fraudsters. Recent supervised GFD research highlights that heterophilic connections between fraudsters and users can greatly impact detection performance, since fraudsters tend to camouflage themselves by building more connections to benign users. Despite the promising performance of supervised GFD methods, the reliance on labels limits their applications to unsupervised scenarios; Additionally, accurately capturing complex and diverse heterophily patterns without labels poses a further challenge. To fill the gap, we propose a Heterophily-guided Unsupervised Graph fraud dEtection approach (HUGE) for unsupervised GFD, which contains two essential components: a …

Index The Geographical Bulletin, James W. Gallagher

The Geographical Bulletin

INDEX THE GEOGRAPHICAL BULLETIN

Volume 7 Complete Issue, James W. Gallagher

The Geographical Bulletin

Volume 7 Complete Issue

Spatial Variations In Women's Share Of The Manufacturing Labor Force In Tennessee: A Statistical Analysis, Ted Klimasewski

The Geographical Bulletin

A neglected facet of the geographic literature is the role of women employed in the labor force. Women make up a significant share of the labor force, and comprise approximately a third of the manufacturing employment in the United States during 1970. But the relative magnitude of female employment in manufacturing varies throughout the United States, and in some areas of the South, women make up more than half of the manufacturing employment. The purpose of this study is to introduce the manufactural aspect of women's role in the labor force by (1) examining the spatial variation in women's share …

Spatial Ordering In Social Area Typology, Larry B. Bubacz

The Geographical Bulletin

The primary purpose of this paper is to provide tentative evaluation of the general applicability of two statistics, the weighted mean areal center and standard distance, to the question of spatial ordering in social area analysis. More specifically, does the use of these statistics identify whether social phenomena tends to conform to either a concentric (doughnut) ring or a sector (pie-shaped) pattern? The weighted mean areal center is defined as the "balancing point" or "center of gravity" for a population distributed in twodimensions (x-y coordinates) which is comparable to the arithmetic mean of the conventional linear frequency distribution.' The descriptive …

Systems Approach In Physical Geography, Hubert B. Stroud

The Geographical Bulletin

The concept of a system is not new and the emergence of systems analysis in academia has caused controversy over the significance of this approach as a viable means of scientific analysis. Some geography scholars feel that the use of systems analysis would definitely put us on the research frontier,1 while others view the term " systems" as nothing more than jargon. Nevertheless, the simplest definition for system is " a set of interrelated elements." The demand for the systems approach arose because scholars in a number of disciplines recognized in their own research that individual components of a problem …