Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of Bioaffinity Based Assays For Forensic Applications, Juliana Maria Agudelo Cano

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In the field of forensic science, body fluids are a major contributor of evidence in investigations. However, body fluids are usually used only for their genetic content, overlooking its unique composition of proteins and low-molecular-weight compounds that often serve as biomarkers in clinical diagnostics. This investigation aimed to develop simple, effective, and economical models that can be used to identify different attributes of the originator. The focus of this research was to develop biocatalytic cascades that could analyze body fluids by using UV-Vis spectroscopy. These models could be implemented in forensic settings, as well as in biometric authentications. The central …

The Assemblage Of The Dead : Speech, Subjectivity, And Being Human, Nazia Manzoor

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

ABSTRACT“The Assemblage of the Dead: Speech, Subjectivity, and Being Human” reimagines the construct of the human as a political subject of the state through a bio(necro)political lens. The project re-envisions the conceptual framework of biopolitics through an engagement with the figure of the living dead, centralized in Giorgio Agamben’s work through his casting of the figure of the Muselmann as the cipher that reveals the limits of humanity and being human. With a bid to counter-narrate the twinning of death and resistance and death and subjectivity as foundational markers of humanity in current critical scholarship of the field, this project …

Modulation Of Rho Termination : Expectation Vs Reality, Kavya Sri Sai Chegireddy

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Transcription termination factor Rho is an essential protein in many bacteria. Rho is an ATP-dependent RNA helicase that accounts for 20-50% of termination events in Escherichia coli and plays an important role in preventing pervasive transcription that otherwise might be lethal to bacteria. Rho termination usually occurs in the 3’ UTRs and non-coding regions of the DNA, and the actively transcribing RNA is believed to be protected by translating ribosomes from Rho termination since both transcription and translation are a simultaneous process in prokaryotes. However, in reality, Rho terminates transcription of some protein-coding genes, and fails to terminate transcription of …

Sex Differences In Context Fear Neural Circuitry And Behavior Across Development, Lorianna Marie Colon

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Over the span of five decades, staggering progress has been made in elucidating the neural circuits involved in fear learning. Research focused on rodents and healthy individuals has been instrumental in elucidating how abnormalities in this circuitry may lend to increased prevalence of various fear and anxiety disorders. However, many of the key findings concerning the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of fear memories have been established in the adult male rodent, leaving a gap in knowledge as to whether females and developing animals process fear and stress inducing information in a similar fashion. Compared to men, women are twice as …

Development Of Visible-Light-Mediated Photoredox Catalysis, Sarbjeet Kaur

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

ABSTRACT

Empowering Melatonin Therapeutics With Drosophila Models, Cassandra Millet-Boureima, Caroline C. Ennis, Jurnee Jamison, Shana Mcsweeney, Anna Park, Chiara Gamberi

Biology

Melatonin functions as a central regulator of cell and organismal function as well as a neurohormone involved in several processes, e.g., the regulation of the circadian rhythm, sleep, aging, oxidative response, and more. As such, it holds immense pharmacological potential. Receptor-mediated melatonin function mainly occurs through MT1 and MT2, conserved amongst mammals. Other melatonin-binding proteins exist. Non-receptor-mediated activities involve regulating the mitochondrial function and antioxidant cascade, which are frequently affected by normal aging as well as disease. Several pathologies display diseased or dysfunctional mitochondria, suggesting melatonin may be used therapeutically. Drosophila models have extensively been employed to study disease pathogenesis …

Adverse Childhood Experiences And Social Determinants Of Health In Relation To Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Admissions, Kasey Davis

The Eleanor Mann School of Nursing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This literature review was conducted in order to examine the correlation between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), social determinants of health and pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) admissions. Oftentimes, those admitted as patients in the PICU come from homes in which social determinants of health, such as poverty and lack of access to healthcare, and ACEs, such as abuse and neglect, are prevalent. Systematic studies of existing literature and experience in the hospital setting revealed the ways in which these conditions often cause children to reach such poor health conditions that they must be admitted to the PICU. In order to …

Implementing 2nd Milk’S Use Of The World Health Organization Standardized Growth Charts To Better Track The Growth And Development Of The Malnourished And Orphaned Infants In Their Supplemental Nutrition Program In Malawi, Allie Wycoff

The Eleanor Mann School of Nursing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This article considers the history and implications of the World Health Organization (WHO) standardized growth charts as well as the significant impact that growth chart utilization may have on 2^ndMilk’s ability to understand and track the nutritional status of the malnourished orphaned infants in their formula program. Specifically, this literature review examines whether or not the WHO growth charts are a meaningful tool for 2^ndMilk to adopt into their monthly baby assessments. The WHO growth charts are calibrated to express an accepted international “norm” for what an adequately nourished child looks like. In a recent service-learning …

Increased Use Of Opioids Perioperatively Leads To Unmanaged Postoperative Pain, Halida Sehic

Nursing | Senior Theses

Background: Total knee and total hip joint arthroplasty are two frequently preformed surgeries, with 5.2 million total knee arthroplasties performed the United States between the year 2000 and 2010 (Williams et al., 2015). Opioids are widely used to manage pain for patients undergoing total joint arthroplasty. However, use of opioids is associated with undesirable adverse effects, such as nausea and respiratory depression, (Johnson et al., 2011). In postoperative patients following total joint replacement, 75 % of the patients complain of inadequately controlled moderate to severe pain (De Luca et al., 2018). Increased use and overprescribing increase tolerance to opioids …

Tdec 2021 Annual Report, Tennessee. Department Of Environment & Conservation.

Annual Report

No abstract provided.

Second Look Commission 2021 Annual Report, Tennessee. Commission On Children And Youth.

Second Look Commission Annual Report

No abstract provided.

Kaleidoscopic Katas: An Intercultural Somatic Curriculum For Holistic Health, Emily Seymour

Master's Theses

The intent of this research study was to combine three African and Eastern somatic movement practices into a modern dance curriculum. Few studies have investigated the therapeutic value of subtle body awareness in a dance class context. This integrative study combined psychological, physiological, and contemplative pedagogical approaches, which led to the development of a comprehensive five-part workshop with five adult participants. This ten-hour online class series involved learning a traditional Afro-Haitian serpent dance called the Yanvalou, the Tantric practice of Chakra Yoga, and the Five Animals qigong. The original curricular goal was to combine these three modalities into five sequential …

Balancing Increased Physical Demands: An Analysis Of Cross-Training Practices In Young Adult Ballet Dancers, Brooke Yuspeh

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to see what young adult ballet dancers knew about cross-training and if they found cross-training methods they practiced effective in supporting their dance technique and helping to prevent injuries. To uncover this information, the researcher used the following essential questions to guide this project: Q1: How do young adult ballet dancers practice cross-training? Q2: Which of these cross-training modalities are considered most effective? The research instruments used in this study included a survey consisting of multiple-choice, multiple-selection, and open-ended questions and an optional journal reflection consisting of open-ended questions. There were a total of …

Knowledge And Practice On Pest Management Of Ethnic Potato Farmers In Southern Shan State, Myanmar, Pyae Pa Pa Aung, Supawan Visetnoi

Jurnal Geografi Lingkungan Tropik (Journal of Geography of Tropical Environments)

Potato is cultivated as the main tuber crop which is essential for ethnic farmers’ household income in Southern Shan State, Myanmar. Most ethnic farmers use chemicals widely to enhance crop yield and reduce pests. Overuse and misuse of pesticides could lead to a series of health impacts and environmental issues. The main aim of the study is to explore farmers’ current practices and knowledge level on pesticides in potato production. The participants of 100 farmers were chosen from each village with a cluster and purposive sampling technique using structured questionnaires to collect the data from a village in Kalaw Township. …

Biodiversity Scale-Dependence And Opposing Multi-Level Correlations Underlie Differences Among Taxonomic, Phylogenetic And Functional Diversity, Nadejda A. Mirochnitchenko, Erica F. Stuber, Joseph J. Fontaine

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Aim: Biodiversity is a multidimensional property of biological communities that represents different information depending on how it is measured, but how dimensions relate to one another and under what conditions is not well understood. We explore how taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity can differ in scale-of-effect dependence and habitat-biodiversity relationships, and subsequently how spatial differences among biodiversity dimensions may arise. Location: Nebraska, United States. Taxon: Birds. Methods: Across 2016 and 2017, we conducted 2,641 point counts at 781 sites. We modeled the occupancy of 141 species using Bayesian Bernoulli-Bernoulli hierarchical logistic regressions. We calculated species richness (SR), phylogenetic diversity (PD), …

If You Think Ai Won't Eclipse Humanity, You're Probably Just A Human, Gary D. Brown

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Building machines that can replicate human thinking and behavior has fascinated people for hundreds of years. Stories about robots date from ancient history through da Vinci to the present. Whether designed to save labor or lives, to provide companionship or protection, loyal, capable, productive machines are a dream of humanity.

The modern manifestation of this interest in using human-like technology to advance social interests is artificial intelligence (AI). This is a paper about what that interest in AI means and how it might develop in the world of national security.

This abstract has been adapted from the author's introduction.

Facing Injustice: How Face Recognition Technology May Increase The Incidence Of Misidentifications And Wrongful Convictions, Laura Moy

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

Part I of this Article explains how face recognition is used in conjunction with eyewitness identification in the law enforcement context. Part II explores how and why the growing use of face recognition technology may increase, rather than decrease, misidentifications and therefore wrongful convictions. Part III recommends policy changes that should be considered, including some of the reforms to eyewitness identification procedures that have been advanced by others.

This abstract has been adapted from the author's introduction.

Docket Selection And Judicial Responsiveness: The Use Of Ai In The Colombian Constitutional Court, Pablo Rueda Saiz

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article addresses some of the limitations of AI as a tool to preselect a long or shortlist of cases for a court at the apex of the judicial system to review. It focuses on the Colombian Constitutional Court, as an example of a court at the apex of the judicial system that has been historically responsive to claims for fundamental rights. Docket selection is an example of a classification problem using supervised learning, in which a machine groups data according to preestablished characteristics.

This Article draws from two different bodies of literature to analyze the consequences of using AI …

Serum Uric Acid And Its Change With The Risk Of Type 2 Diabetes: A Prospective Study In China, Haiyan Su, Tong Liu, Yupeng Li, Yuxin Fan, Baoping Wang, Ming Liu, Gang Hu, Zhaowei Meng, Qing Zhang

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

Objective: To assess the association of baseline uric acid levels and their changes from baseline to Year 1 with the risk of type 2 diabetes. Research design and methods: This study cohort included 9471 subjects without a history of diabetes at baseline. The incident diabetes was diagnosed according to the American Diabetes Association standard. Results: During a mean follow-up of 2.9 years, we identified 762 type 2 diabetes cases. Multivariate-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of diabetes across baseline tertiles of serum uric acid were 1.00, 1.15, and 1.32 (P for trend = 0.018), respectively. Participants with hyperuricemia compared with those without …

Physical Activity And Sleep Duration During Pregnancy Have Interactive Effects On Caesarean Delivery: A Population-Based Cohort Study In Tianjin, China, Yingzi Yang, Weiqin Li, Wen Yang, Leishen Wang, Jinnan Liu, Junhong Leng, Wei Li, Shuo Wang, Jing Li, Gang Hu, Zhijie Yu, Xilin Yang

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

Background: There were inconsistent findings in the literature regarding the associations of physical activity and sleep duration during pregnancy with caesarean delivery for different reasons. It was also unknown whether physical activity and sleep duration during pregnancy had interactive effects on the risks of different types of caesarean delivery. The study aimed to investigate the effects of physical activity, sleep duration and their interactions on the risk of caesarean delivery for medical reasons and non-medical reasons. Methods: From October 2010 to August 2012, a prospective population-based cohort of 13,015 pregnant women was established in six central urban districts of Tianjin, …

Examining An Intersection Of Environmental Justice And Covid-19 Risk Assessment: A Review, Ashley Ellis

Honors Theses

This study views the risks associated with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) as an environmental injustice issue due to the connection between existing environmental disparities and the disproportional negative impacts brought upon by the virus. The social and health determinants attributed to those environmental disparities have traditionally been evaluated as individual risk factors, an approach that fails to gauge the complexity of an environmental injustice issue. This study employs the emerging theory of intersectionality, a belief that phenomena cannot be linked to one principal cause but instead an interconnected web of influences, in order to synthesize the multitude of factors believed …

The Role Of A-Layer In Polyunsaturated Fatty Acid (Pufa)-Mediated Effects On Aeromonas Salmonicida Subsp. Salmonicida, Allen Lin

Honors Theses

Aeromonas salmonicida subsp. salmonicida is a Gram-negative bacterium that infects salmonids and non-salmonids worldwide leading to an infection known as furunculosis, which is characterized by skin lesions and hemorrhages of the fish epidermis. This infection is carried out by a A+ (virulent strain) of A. salmonicida containing an important virulent factor known as the A-layer, which is a 2D paracrystalline structure that binds to the basement membrane and functions to promote adherence to host membranes and resistance to host defense. The purpose of this study was to examine the ability of the A+ A. salmonicida to incorporate exogenous fatty acids …

Swarming Oscillators With Time-Delayed Interactions, Nicholas S. Blum

Physics

We investigate the role of delay in the collective dynamics of particles that swarm in space and possess an internal oscillatory degree of freedom, called swarmalators. Swarmalators were introduced recently by O’Keeffe, Hong, and Strogatz in Nature Communications 8, 1504 (2017). The addition of a time delay into the system of swarmalators was motivated by the biology of early embryonic development. This delay leads to a rich phenomenology, which includes two new collective states, which we call "semi-static crystal" and "boiling". In the semi-static crystal state, all particles in a cluster undergo decaying radial oscillations completely in phase with one …

Structural Analysis And Vaccine Efficacy Of Hla Mutants, Kelly Tomaszewski

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Staphylococcus aureus is a commensal of the human skin and also a major human pathogen. Currently, there has been no successful vaccine despite many approaches over the last two decades. S. aureus α-hemolysin (Hla), a potent cytotoxin, plays an important role in the pathogenesis of S. aureus diseases, through the activation of its receptor, ADAM10. We utilized three distinct Hla mutants with differing structural and ADAM10 binding properties to examine for vaccine efficacy. Our studies have demonstrated immunization with each vaccine candidate antigens provided significant protection against S. aureus skin infection yet elicited distinguishable immune responses. We have also generated …

Toxicity Of Indoor Dust-Derived Trace Elements And Organic Contaminants Impact On Normal Human Colon Epithelial Cells, Noura Abdulrahman

Theses (2016-Present)

Indoor dust stands out as a burgeoning challenge in society due to its implication on people’s health. Exposure to toxic dust particles occurs in different ways that include inhalation, ingestion, and dermal contact. In the hindsight, many people spend most of their time indoors exposing themselves to high levels of dust. Notably, different groups of individuals present varied risk levels to the toxicity of particles with vulnerable persons being susceptible to adverse effects of these contaminants. This includes the elderly, children, and immunocompromised individuals. The study examines the impacts of two variables that are trace elements (TMD) and organic contaminants …

Why So Negative? Street Literature And Its Negative Effects On The African American Psyche, Lilly Lamia Simone

Theses (2016-Present)

Urban literature, more widely known as street lit is a genre of literature that glorifies and exaggerates drugs, violence, and sex in the lives of its African American characters. Through Street lit readers are introduced to the black man as a figure of power through illegal activity in his community, and black women as either overly aggressive or figures in need of protection. These novels choose loyalty over family, drugs, and athleticism over education, and money and power over morality. These novels and their glorifications cause African American people to see dream lives in goals that are not only unattainable …

The Role Of Embodied Metaphor In The Relationship Between Vestibular Dysfunction, Anxiety And The Self, Kaitlyn Abrams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is considerable evidence that vestibular dysfunction and anxiety are correlated. Clinical and philosophical arguments suggest that a loss of sense of self, experienced through symptoms like derealization and depersonalization, might contribute to this relationship. The present study used a mixed methods approach, including Systematic Metaphor Analysis, to analyze written short answer and quantitative survey data from one hundred and thirteen participants with vestibular disorders. The Systematic Metaphor Analysis revealed several primary metaphor concepts which elucidated the connections between concrete experience and abstract concepts in vestibular dysfunction. These included metaphors of Agency, Stability, Orientation, Self-Object, and Figure-Ground. Primary metaphors for …

Fluoroalcohol Induced Supramolecular Biphasic Systems Of Zwitterionic Surfactants, Mixed Amphiphiles, And Polar Organic Solvents In Proteomics And Environmental Analysis, Durga Khanal

Chemistry & Biochemistry Dissertations - Archive

In this research, we have investigated several HFIP-induced biphasic systems of zwitterionic surfactants like CHAPS and DMMAPS and their mixed amphiphilic systems for the extraction, enrichment, and fractionation of mixture of standard proteins and complex sample mixture of yeast proteins. The biphasic systems of zwitterionic surfactants (CHAPS and DMMAPS) and their mixed amphiphiles with quaternary ammonium salts (QUATS= TBAB, TEAB) provide concomitant extraction of hydrophobic membrane proteins, enrichment of lower abundance proteins to one phase, and fractionation of complex sample mixture into two phases. The results obtained from these biphasic systems were compared with control systems of aqueous solutions of …

Jack Philp: Zebrafish Research For A Cause, Georgia Southern University

Athletics: News & Publications

• Jack Philp: Zebrafish Research for a Cause

Expanding The Conceptualization Of Support In Low-Wage Carework: The Case Of Home Care Aides And Client Death, Emma K. Tsui, Marita Lamonica, Maryam Hyder, Paul Landsbergis, Jennifer Zelnick, Sherry Baron

Publications and Research

Home care aides are a rapidly growing, non-standard workforce who face numerous health risks and stressors on the job. While research shows that aides receive limited support from their agency employers, few studies have explored the wider range of support that aides use when navigating work stress and considered the implications of these arrangements. To investigate this question, we conducted 47 in-depth interviews with 29 home care aides in New York City, focused specifically on aides’ use of support after client death. Theories of work stress, the social ecological framework, and feminist theories of care informed our research. Our analysis …