Digital Commons Network^™

Toward Lignin Valorization: Development Of Rhodococcus Opacus Pd630 As A Chassis For Triacylglycerol (Tag) Production From Recalcitrant Aromatic Feedstocks, Rhiannon R. Carr

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The advent of the industrial era was precipitated by the discovery of fossil fuels, and ushered in unprecedented changes for humanity included but not limited to the development of rapid transit and communications, improvements to food distribution and preservation, the mass production of goods, and a radical rearrangement of communities from relatively small enclaves to metropolises. With all the benefits, however, come considerable costs, especially to the global environment. Greenhouse gas emissions, built up over centuries of unregulated combustion, have precipitated a rate of global temperature change unparalleled in the 4.5 billion-year history of this planet. In order to preserve …

An Analysis Of The Patent Linkage System And Development Of The Biosimilar Industry In Taiwan, Jerry I-H Hsiao

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In 2019, as an effort to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement (now Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)), Taiwan has implemented the patent linkage system which covers both small molecule generic drugs and large molecule biosimilar into the Pharmaceutical Affair Act. The system modeled after the U.S.’s patent linkage system designed for small molecule drugs under the Hatch Waxman Act (HWA). Based on the experience of the patent linkage system under the HWA, biosimilar industry representatives in Taiwan contended that the adoption of the patent linkage system will be detrimental to the development of local industry. By …

Latent Tuberculosis Infection In A Patient With A Negative Interferon Gamma Release Assay Prior To Biologic Initiation For Crohn's Disease, Muaaz Masood, Reid Wasserman, Vignesh Nagesh, Humberto Sifuentes

Student Publications

CASE: Biologic therapy has revolutionized the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Nevertheless, it is well known that biologics are associated with an increased risk of opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis (TB). Screening tests indicated before biologic initiation, namely interferon gamma release assay (IGRA) or tuberculin skin tests (TST), may be falsely negative. We present the case of a male with uncontrolled Crohn’s disease (CD) with a negative screen for TB and how a high index of suspicion led to the discovery of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) and the appropriate deferment of biologic therapy. A 63-year-old South Asian male with …

The Causal Effects Of Growing Up In A Two-Parent Household: Evidence From The Psid On Schooling, Earnings, And Labor Force Participation, Bob Shihao Wen

All Dissertations

The children who grew up in a two-parent household earn more than the other children reared in non-intact parental families. The causal effects of growing up in a two-parent household can be identified using two specification strategies. First, I include the parental household income and educational attainment in the model, along with the child’s demographic characteristics (age, gender, race, and state of residence), to disentangle the childhood family structure effect from the other parental influence. Second, I use the average state divorce rate over the child’s first 16 years of childhood and the childhood years of exposure to the no-fault …

Influencing The Inflammatory Response Through Multi-Scale Geometry, Antibiotic Release, And Fluid Management In A Textile-Based Biomaterial Wound Dressing, Elizabeth Gianino

All Dissertations

The total population of diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetes mellitus in the United states is expected to rise by 54% between the years of 2015 and 2030 contributing to $200 billion in health care expense. The exponential rise in common diabetic wounds, such as diabetic foot ulcers, puts a large population at risk for complications such as infection, amputation, and even death. Peripheral neuropathy leading to late diagnoses, patient non-compliance, and lack of holistic treatment options all contribute to complications with the incidence of new ulcer formation after treatment reaching 50%. This work explores the design, development, and in vitro evaluation …

Understanding And Modulating Amyloid Aggregation, Yanting Xing

All Dissertations

Amyloids are the products of protein misfolding into fibril-like structures, which take place in human tissues and organs, including the human brain, heart, liver, and pancreas. As the deposition of amyloid fibrils usually leads to the dysfunction or death of cells, the formation of amyloid is associated with more than 20 human diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and type 2 diabetes. Understanding how soluble peptides to form amyloid fibrils and how to modulate those amyloid aggregation are central to the design of rational therapeutic strategies against those diseases. Increasing experiments suggest that amyloid peptides can undergo liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) …

Capillary Driven Transport In Soft Solids, Saiful Islam Tamim

All Dissertations

Soft solids, such as polymeric gels, are elastic materials that can be significantly deformed by capillary forces which act at the interface. The coupling between elasticity and capillarity is known as elastocapillarity and is useful to wide ranging applications, from drop pinchoff of bioinks for 3-D printing tissue scaffolds, to generating droplet patterns on microfluidic devices. In this dissertation, we develop mathematical models of elastocapillary driven motions in soft solids. The focus is on understanding the relevant physics in such complex phenomena, while also recovering the limiting cases of classical fluid mechanics and solid mechanics theories.

This dissertation investigates two …

Exploring The Role Of Ampk In Nutrient Sensing And Signaling In The Human Parasite Trypanosoma Brucei, Jessica Jones

All Dissertations

African trypanosomes are protozoan parasites that cause the diseases African sleeping sickness and nagana, in humans and cattle respectively. These parasites have complex life cycles with infection of a mammalian host, ~5mM glucose, following transmission by an insect vector, essentially zero glucose. With these pathogens being exposed to rapidly changing glucose abundance in a host-dependent manner, the ability to sense and rapidly respond to changes in the availability of the hexose are critical. First, I provide a review of glucose metabolism in Trypanosoma brucei. Then, we explore the role of the catalytic α subunit of AMPK, a eukaryotic master …

Development Of Tissue Engineered Scaffolds For Cardiovascular Repair And Replacement In Pediatric Patients, Dipasha Sinha

All Dissertations

Congenital Heart Diseases (CHD) are abnormalities present in the heart and great vessels at birth. It is one of the most frequently diagnosed congenital disorders, affecting approximately 40,000 live birth each year in the United States. The incidence of new CHD patients and the relative distribution of defects have not changed over time and remain a birth rate function. Out of the new patients found to have CHD each year, an estimated 2,500 patients have a defect that requires a substitute, non-native valve, or conduit artery to replace structures that are congenitally absent or hypoplastic. Materials in current use for …

Development Of Solution Blow Spun Nanofibers As Electrical And Whole Cell Biosensing Interfaces, Craig Levar Miller

All Dissertations

Infectious pathogens place a huge burden on the US economy with more than $120 billion spent annually for direct and indirect costs for the treatment of infectious diseases. Rapid detection schemes continue to evolve in order to meet the demand of early diagnosis. In chronic wound infections, bacterial load is capable of impeding the healing process. Additionally, bacterial virulence production works coherently with bacterial load to produce toxins and molecules that prolongs the healing cycle. This work examines the use of nonwoven polymeric conductive and non-conductive nanofiber mats as synthetic biosensor scaffolds, drug delivery and biosensor interface constructs. A custom-made …

Uncovering The Intricacies Of The Clinical Intake Assessment: How Clinicians Prioritize Information In Complex Contexts, Margaret M. O'Neill, Ora Nakash

School for Social Work: Faculty Publications

Objective: Based on a single intake interview, mental health clinicians must distill their assessment to brief statements reflecting essential information. We explored how clinicians organize and prioritize the clinical information they collect during the initial assessment of their clients. Method: We conducted in-depth semistructured interviews with a convenience sample of 38 clinicians in four community-and hospital-based mental health clinics in Israel. Clinicians were interviewed immediately following an intake session with 117 clients and were asked about the client’s main problem, evaluation process, rapport with the client, and role of sociocultural factors in assessment. We identified primary themes across interviews. Results: …

Interaction Between Alcohol Consumption And Pnpla3 Variant In The Prevalence Of Hepatic Steatosis In The Us Population, James Potter, Ruben Hernaez, Jeanne M Clark

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND & AIMS: To our knowledge, the interaction between alcohol consumption and PNPLA3 genotype on hepatic steatosis has not been explored in a representative sample. To examine the interaction between alcohol consumption and PNPLA3 genotype on hepatic steatosis in the US adult population.

METHODS: Cross-sectional study of 4,674 adult participants of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Phase 2 (1991-1994) with data on PNPLA3 genotype, self-reported alcohol consumption, ultrasound-defined hepatic steatosis and socio-demographic characteristics.

RESULTS: In 1991-1994 in the U.S. population, the weighted allele frequency of the G (risk) allele of the rs738409 at PNPLA3 was 25.4%. We …

Predicted Vitamin D Status And Colorectal Cancer Incidence In The Black Women's Health Study, Hanna Gerlovin, Laura F White, Lucile L Adams-Campbell, Lynn Rosenberg, Hemant K Roy, Julie R Palmer

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: Observational studies, mostly among White populations, suggest that low vitamin D levels increase colorectal cancer risk. African Americans, who are disproportionately burdened by colorectal cancer, often have lower vitamin D levels compared with other populations.

METHODS: We assessed predicted vitamin D score in relation to colorectal cancer among 49,534 participants in the Black Women's Health Study, a cohort of African American women followed from 1995 to 2017 through biennial questionnaires. We derived predicted vitamin D scores at each questionnaire cycle for all participants using a previously validated prediction model based on actual 25-hydroxyvitamin D values from a subset of …

Transient Ascaris Suum Larval Migration Induces Intractable Chronic Pulmonary Disease And Anemia In Mice, Grace Adeniyi-Ipadeola, Li-Zhen Song, Alan R Burns, Ana Clara Gazzinelli-Guimaraes, Ricardo Fujiwara, Maria Elena Bottazzi, Jill E Weatherhead

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Ascariasis is one of the most common infections in the world and associated with significant global morbidity. Ascaris larval migration through the host's lungs is essential for larval development but leads to an exaggerated type-2 host immune response manifesting clinically as acute allergic airway disease. However, whether Ascaris larval migration can subsequently lead to chronic lung diseases remains unknown. Here, we demonstrate that a single episode of Ascaris larval migration through the host lungs induces a chronic pulmonary syndrome of type-2 inflammatory pathology and emphysema accompanied by pulmonary hemorrhage and chronic anemia in a mouse model. Our results reveal that …

Genetic Testing In Ambulatory Cardiology Clinics Reveals High Rate Of Findings With Clinical Management Implications, Ginger A Metcalf, Mullai Murugan, Trevor D Hadley, Varuna Chander, Paul S De Vries, Xiaoming Jia, Aliza Hussain, Ali M Agha, Aniko Sabo, Shoudong Li, Qingchang Meng, Jianhong Hu, Xia Tian, Michelle Cohen, Victoria Yi, Christie L Kovar, Marie-Claude Gingras, Viktoriya Korchina, Chad Howard, Daniel L Riconda, Stacey Pereira, Hadley S Smith, Zohra A Huda, Alexandria Buentello, Patricia R Marino, Lee Leiber, Ashok Balasubramanyam, Christopher I Amos, Andrew B Civitello, Mihail G Chelu, Ronald Maag, Amy L Mcguire, Eric Boerwinkle, Xander H T Wehrens, Christie M Ballantyne, Richard A Gibbs

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

PURPOSE: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in adults in the United States, yet the benefits of genetic testing are not universally accepted.

METHODS: We developed the "HeartCare" panel of genes associated with CVD, evaluating high-penetrance Mendelian conditions, coronary artery disease (CAD) polygenic risk, LPA gene polymorphisms, and specific pharmacogenetic (PGx) variants. We enrolled 709 individuals from cardiology clinics at Baylor College of Medicine, and samples were analyzed in a CAP/CLIA-certified laboratory. Results were returned to the ordering physician and uploaded to the electronic medical record.

RESULTS: Notably, 32% of patients had a genetic finding with clinical …

Northern Bobwhite Occupancy Patterns On Multiple Spatial Scales Across Arkansas, Ellery V. Lassiter, Marcus Asher, Grace Christie, Connor Gale, Andrhea Massey, Cody Massery, Christopher R. Middaugh, John T. Veon, Brett A. Degregorio

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Northern bobwhite Colinus virginianus populations have been rapidly declining in the eastern, central, and southern United States for decades. Land use change and an incompatibility between northern bobwhite resource needs and human land use practices have driven declines. Here, we applied occupancy analyses on two spatial scales (state level and ecoregion level) to more than 5,000 northern bobwhite surveys conducted over 6 y across the entire state of Arkansas to explore patterns in occupancy and land use variables, and to identify priority areas for management and conservation. At the state level, northern bobwhite occupied 29% of sites and northern bobwhite …

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 …

Effect Of Cyclic Heat Stress On Feeding-Related Hypothalamic Neuropeptides Of Three Broiler Populations And Their Ancestor Jungle Fowl, Giorgio Brugaletta, Elizabeth S. Greene, Travis Tabler, Sara K. Orlowski, Federico Sirri, Sami Dridi

Poultry Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Heat stress (HS) has been increasingly jeopardizing the sustainability of the poultry production. Moreover, modern high-performing chickens are far less able to withstand HS than their predecessors due to higher growth rate and metabolic rates. Performance losses caused by HS are mainly ascribed to decreases in feed consumption. Since feed intake is tightly controlled by the hypothalamic centers of hunger and satiety, we sought to determine the effect of chronic cyclic HS on the expression of feeding-related hypothalamic neuropeptides (FRHN) in unselected chickens (i.e., the ancestor junglefowl—JF) and three broiler lines from diverse stages of genetic selection (i.e., the slow …

Expression And Purification Of Cytochrome 2u1 And Canine 1a2 And Metabolism Of Caffeine By Cytochrome 1a2, Brenda M. Wekesa

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Cytochrome P450 enzymes are a large family of membrane heme proteins involved in eliminating drugs and the synthesis or elimination of steroids, eicosanoids, and vitamins. CYP2U1 is one of the poorly characterized P450 enzymes classified as orphan cytochrome P450 with unknown exact biological function. It is expressed in the brain and thymus as a catalyst in the hydroxylation of arachidonic acid. Unlike other cytochrome P450s, CYP2U1 is a bit unusual with forty extra amino acids. If a mutation occurs, it can lead to an early onset inherited disorder of the central nervous system called Hereditary Spastic Paraplegias (HSP). Most of …

Genetic Liability To Cannabis Use Disorder And Covid-19 Hospitalization, Alexander S Hatoum, Claire L Morrison, Sarah M C Colbert, Evan A Winiger, Emma C Johnson, Arpana Agrawal, Ryan Bogdan

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Vulnerability to COVID-19 hospitalization has been linked to behavioral risk factors, including combustible psychoactive substance use (e.g., tobacco smoking). Paralleling the COVID-19 pandemic crisis have been increasingly permissive laws for recreational cannabis use. Cannabis use disorder (CUD) is a psychiatric disorder that is heritable and genetically correlated with respiratory disease, independent of tobacco smoking. We examined the genetic relationship between CUD and COVID-19 hospitalization.

METHODS: We estimated the genetic correlation between CUD (case:

RESULTS: Genetic vulnerability to COVID-19 was correlated with genetic liability to CUD (

CONCLUSIONS: Problematic cannabis use and vulnerability to serious COVID-19 complications share genetic underpinnings …

Reassessing Associations Between White Matter And Behaviour With Multimodal Microstructural Imaging, Alberto Lazari, Piergiorgio Salvan, Michiel Cottaar, Daniel Papp, Olof Jens Van Der Werf, Ainslie Johnstone, Zeena-Britt Sanders, Cassandra Sampaio-Baptista, Nicole Eichert, Anderson M. Winkler

School of Medicine Publications

Several studies have established specific relationships between White Matter (WM) and behaviour. However, these studies have typically focussed on fractional anisotropy (FA), a neuroimaging metric that is sensitive to multiple tissue properties, making it difficult to identify what biological aspects of WM may drive such relationships. Here, we carry out a pre-registered assessment of WM-behaviour relationships in 50 healthy individuals across multiple behavioural and anatomical domains, and complementing FA with myelin-sensitive quantitative MR modalities (MT, R1, R2∗).

Surprisingly, we only find support for predicted relationships between FA and behaviour in one of three pre-registered tests. For one behavioural domain, …

Anterior-Posterior Axis Of Hippocampal Subfields Across Psychoses: A B-Snip Study, Elisabetta C. Del Re, Victor Zeng, Ney Alliey-Rodriguez, Paulo Lizano, Nicolas Bolo

School of Medicine Publications

Background: The hippocampus (HP) is affected across psychoses, including schizophrenia (SZ), bipolar type 1 (BDP) and schizoaffective (SAD) disorders. We examined HP subfield volumetric abnormalities along the anterior-posterior (ventral-dorsal) axis of the HP in psychosis probands, defined by traditional (DSM) diagnoses and biologically defined subtypes (biotypes, based on cognition and electrophysiology). We hypothesized that biotypes would be better discriminated by HP longitudinal axis subfields abnormalities than DSM. Methods: The sample included 455 probands from the Bipolar Schizophrenia Network for intermediate Phenotypes (BSNIP) dataset (age 35 ± 12.0): 124 unaffected (age 40.4 ± 15.8) and 299 healthy controls (HC; 37 ± …

Health Reform Reconstruction, Lindsay F. Wiley, Elizabeth Mccuskey, Matthew B. Lawrence, Erin C. Fuse Brown

Faculty Scholarship

This Article connects the failed, inequitable U.S. coronavirus pandemic response to conceptual and structural constraints that have held back U.S health reform for decades and calls for reconstruction. For more than a half-century, a cramped "iron triangle" ethos has constrained health reform conceptually. Reforms aimed to balance individual interests in cost, quality, and access to health care, while marginalizing equity, solidarity, and public health. In the iron triangle era, reforms unquestioningly accommodated four legally and logistically entrenched fixtures - individualism, fiscal fragmentation, privatization, and federalism - that distort and diffuse any reach toward social justice. The profound racial disparities and …

Nmr Spectroscopy-Based Metabolomics Of Platelets To Analyze Brain Tumors

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

"Tumor-educated platelets" have recently generated substantial interest for the diagnosis of cancer. We hypothesized that tumor educated platelets from patients with brain tumors will reflect altered metabolism compared to platelets from healthy volunteers. Here, in a pilot study, we have employed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy in platelets from brain tumor patients to demonstrate altered metabolism compared to the platelets obtained from healthy volunteers.

An Examination Of Strategies For Social-Emotional Learning In Preschool Classroom Settings, Eva J. Thomas

Education Doctoral

This study examined the strategies and practices implemented in a preschool classroom to successfully address social-emotional learning (SEL) for preschool children with intensive needs. There is a gap in the literature regarding how preschool teachers integrate instructional practices and SEL in preschool classroom settings with challenging student behaviors. The study identified and analyzed the experiences of coaches and teachers using embedded SEL strategies and instructional practices to support the needs of challenging students. The study employed semi-structured interviews to identify the perceptions of teachers and coaches as to what strategies and supports worked best in three types of preschool classroom …

2021 December, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for December of 2021.

Youth Mental Health Service Preferences And Utilization Patterns Among Latinx Caregivers, Alejandro L. Vázquez, María De La Caridad Alvarez, Cynthia M. Navarro Flores, José Manuel González Vera, Tyson S. Barrett, Melanie M. Domenech Rodríguez

Psychology Faculty Publications

Latinx caregivers underutilize traditional youth mental health services (MHS) relative to their White counterparts. Disparities may be explained by barriers preventing engagement in traditional MHS. A potential mismatch between available services and preferred culturally appropriate healing practices may also contribute to treatment disparities. The current study examined Latinx caregivers’ perceived need for and utilization of support services in relation to family characteristics, youth problem-type, and barriers to care. Findings were contextualized by assessing caregiver preferences for addressing youth psychopathology. The study consisted of 598 Latinx caregivers from across the United States. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression models were used …

A Proposed Mechanism For Financial Reporting On Sustainable Investment And Its Role In Achieving Value Added - Applied In The Iraqi Midland Refineries Company-, Mohammed Ataallah Ali, Salman Hussin Abdullah

Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences

The research aims to develop a proposed mechanism for financial reporting on sustainable investment that takes the specificity of these investments. To achieve this goal, the researcher used (what if scenario) where the future financial statements were prepared for the year 2026, after completion of the sustainable project and operation, as the project requires four years to be completed. The researcher relied on the results of the researchers collected from various modern sources relevant to the research topic and published on the internet, and the financial data and information obtained to assess the reality of the company's activity and its …

Confidence Interval For The Mean Of A Beta Distribution, Sean Rangel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Statistical inference for the mean of a beta distribution has become increasingly popular in various fields of academic research. In this study, we developed a novel statistical model from likelihood-based techniques to evaluate various confidence interval techniques for the mean of a beta distribution. Simulation studies will be implemented to compare the performance of the confidence intervals. In addition to the development and study involving confidence intervals, we will also apply the confidence intervals to real biological data that was gathered by the Department of Biology at Stephen F. Austin State University and provide recommendations on the best practice.

The Philosophy Of Outliers: Reintegrating Rare Events Into Biological Science, Chelsea N. Cook, Angela R. Freeman, James C. Liao, Lisa A. Mangiamele

Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Individual variation in morphology, physiology, and behavior has been a topic of great interest in the biological sciences.While scientists realize the importance of understanding diversity in individual phenotypes, historically the minority results (i.e., outlier observations or rare events) of any given experiment have been dismissed from further analysis. We need to reframe how we view outliers to improve our understanding of biology. These rare events are often treated as problematic or spurious, when they can be real rare events or individuals driving evolution in a population. It is our perspective that to understand what outliers can tell us in our …