Digital Commons Network^™

Nuerogen: Eeg And Near-Infared Stimulation Control System, Michael Kreienkamp, Olivia Mcconaghy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

People suffering from neurodegenerative diseases need a viable option to help slow the progression of their symptoms and improve remaining cognitive function because brain problems can greatly limit basic body function such as balance, movement, talking, breathing, and heart function which steadily declines quality of life. Transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM) is an experimental treatment that has shown promise in helping slow or stop the progression of neurodegenerative diseases.

This year, we were able to extend the preliminary exploratory work of the senior design groups from the past two years and build upon it to make a more flexible and reliable research …

2024 Spring - East Tennessee State University Retirees Association Newsletter, Retirees Association, East Tennessee State University

ETSU Retirees Association Newsletters

No abstract provided.

A Summary Of Two Decades Of Qtl And Candidate Genes That Control Seed Tocopherol Contents In Maize (Zea Mays L.), My Abdelmajid Kassem, Dounya Knizia, Khalid Meksem

College of Health, Science, and Technology

Tocopherols are secondary metabolites synthesized through the shikimate biosynthetic pathway in the plastids of most plants. It is well known that ?–Tocopherol (vitamin E) has many health benefits for humans and animals; therefore, it is highly used in human and animal diets. Tocopherols vary considerably in most crop (and plant) species and within cultivars of the same species depending on environmental and growth conditions; tocopherol content is a polygenic, complex traits, and its inheritance is poorly understood. The objective of this review paper was to summarize all identified quantitative trait loci (QTL) that control seed tocopherols and related contents identified …

Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 113 (2nd Quarter, April 2024), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.

Beyond Bars: Rethinking Substance Use Criminalization In Federal Supervised Release, Emilia E. Mcmanus

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Fluorescence Microscopy With Deep Uv, Near Uv, And Visible Excitation For In Situ Detection Of Microorganisms, Noel Case, Nikki Johnston, Jay Nadeau

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

We report a simple, inexpensive design of a fluorescence microscope with light-emitting diode (LED) excitation for detection of labeled and unlabeled microorganisms in mineral substrates. The use of deep UV (DUV) excitation with visible emission requires no specialized optics or slides and can be implemented easily and inexpensively using an oblique illumination geometry. DUV excitation (<280 >nm) is preferable to near UV (365 nm) for avoidance of mineral autofluorescence. When excited with DUV, unpigmented bacteria show two emission peaks: one in the near UV ∼320 nm, corresponding to proteins, and another peak in the blue to green range, corresponding to …

Artsci - Newsmagazine Of The College Of Arts And Sciences, Spring 2024, College Of Arts And Sciences

CAS Publications

Welcome to the eighth annual issue of the College of Arts and Sciences newsmagazine, ArtSci. In the following pages, you will see just a glimpse of recent work being accomplished by our faculty, students, and alumni as they endeavor to shape our world and our shared futures. In the following stories, student contributors invite us to step up, speak out, and join in being part of the solutions to our society’s challenges.

1st Place Contest Entry: Modification Of Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy For Adolescents With Language Disorder, Lauren A. Fillet

Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Library Research Prize

This is Lauren Fillet's submission for the 2024 Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Research Prize, which won first place. It contains their essay on using library resources, their bibliography, and a summary of their research project on how evidence-based interventions and therapeutic techniques can be modified or supplemented in order to ensure that the benefits of these approaches are maximally accessible to those who struggle with communication.

Lauren is a student in the Masters of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders program at Chapman University. Their faculty mentor is Dr. Leah Beekman.

Pathological And Protective Immune Responses During Covid-19, Jonathan Klein

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Since its introduction into humans in late 2019, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread globally and resulted in the deaths of more than 6.5 million people in just 39 months. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 causes Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), a clinically heterogenous viral illness that may alternatively manifest as asymptomatic infection or a life-threatening viral pneumonia. This dissertation examines the range of pathogenic and protective immune responses generated in humans with COVID-19, with specific focus on the contribution of various maladaptive immune responses to the development of severe disease. The investigations presented here are organized into 4 chapters, …

Malaria Parasite, Host, And Drug Dynamics In The Context Of Artemether-Lumefantrine Treatment And Hiv-Infection, Justin Goodwin

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Malaria is a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality with an estimated 249 million cases and 608,000 deaths in 2022, overwhelmingly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the primary treatment for malaria and combine a potent short-acting artemisinin with a longer-acting partner drug. ACTs rapidly reduce the initial parasite burden, eliminate residual parasites, and provide post-treatment prophylaxis against new infections. Artemether-lumefantrine (AL) is the most widely prescribed ACT globally and in SSA. Unfortunately, ACT efficacy is threatened by widespread resistance in Southeast Asia, and by the emergence of partial artemisinin resistance in SSA. SSA also bears …

Social-Ecological Practice Theory And Human-Wildlife Interactions: People, Cattle, And Predators In Makgadikgadi, Botswana, Katherine Orrick

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

2024My dissertation delves into the complex interplay between human activities and wildlife dynamics, focusing on understanding and mitigating human-wildlife interactions (HWI) for sustainable coexistence. Overseeing and managing HWI requires acknowledging that the behavior and actions toward humans and wildlife are made up of local variations across both ecological and social processes. This intertwinement of ecological and social processes is complex; hence, conservation projects aiming to overcome human-wildlife conflict may, in fact, risk exacerbating it whenever either process is only superficially addressed. Ecologists, social scientists, and policy makers are challenged with a lack of knowledge surrounding subject-specific theory and language to …

Harnessing Microbial Warfare To Identify Products Lethal To Pathogenic Free-Living Amoebae By Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Carrie Anne Flynn

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Acanthamoeba castellanii is a free-living amoeba (FLA) that causes untreatable, fatal infections of the central nervous system. FLA are ubiquitous in the environment, where they graze upon bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We interrogated P. aeruginosa—under evolutionary pressure to defend against amoebal grazing—as a producer of amoebicidal compounds that could serve as leads for new and urgently needed drugs to treat amoeba infections in humans. To accomplish this, we developed novel methods to quantify killing of A. castellanii trophozoites, pseudocysts, and cysts. Together, these high throughput, reproducible, and extensively validated assays provide a robust platform to measure viability of all …

The Duality Of Neurons: Co-Transmission Of Serotonin And A Neuropeptide, Nlp-3, In The Caenorhabditis Elegans Egg-Laying Circuit, Allison Butt

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Neurons typically release both a neurotransmitter and one or more neuropeptides in a process known as co-transmission. While this process is a widely observed phenomenon, the logic of why a neuron releases these two or more different types of signals to accomplish its myriad of functions remains largely unclear. In this dissertation, I studied how two serotonergic neurons in the C. elegans egg-laying circuit—known as the Hermaphrodite Specific Neurons (HSNs)—release both the neurotransmitter serotonin and the neuropeptide NLP-3 to activate egg laying. Egg laying typically occurs in a temporal pattern with two-minute active phases, during which the HSNs are highly …

How Molecular Chaperones Promote Pathogen Survival, Carissa Chan

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

All organisms require metal ions to help carry out biological processes. Mg2+ is the most abundant divalent cation in all living cells, where it neutralizes negative charges on DNA and RNA, acts as a cofactor for enzymatic reactions, stabilizes macromolecular complexes, and fulfills numerous other essential roles. Due to the critical nature of Mg2+ in all cellular compartments, cells have developed intricate mechanisms of sensing and responding to changes in intracellular and extracellular Mg2+. Inside the cell, Mg2+ concentration in the cytoplasm impacts the synthesis, maintenance, and degradation of proteins, which perform the vast majority of biochemical functions. First, because …

Microbial Controls On Globally Significant Methane Cycling In Wetlands And Forests, Wyatt Arnold

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Methane (CH4), like carbon dioxide (CO2), is a potent greenhouse gas that has played a critical role in the warming of the planet. Yet unlike CO2, virtually all of the methane emitted into the atmosphere is the product of biological activity. Specifically, it is the metabolic byproduct of a group of archaea that are collectively referred to as methanogens. These methanogens thrive in a diversity of habitats—from landfills, to ruminant guts, to the wood of trees—and excel at converting carbon into methane. Their vast presence and activity in natural environments, like wetlands and inland waters, accounts for more than half …

Nanopatterned Electrochemical Biosensor Electrodes With Enhanced Signal And Sensitivity, Emily R. Kinser

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Innovations in materials and process development in recent decades have enabled surface engineering at the nanoscale, which provides a pathway to improvement in the performance and longevity of biomedical implants and biosensors. One such novel class of materials is bulk metallic glass. As an amorphous metal, bulk metallic glass can be molded with after initial casting to produce high-precision features by elevating the material above the glass transition temperature, Tg, via the process of thermoplastic forming (TPF). Thus, BMGs enable a unique pathway to molding nano-scale structures in air at comparably low processing temperatures. Platinum-base BMG alloys (Pt-BMGs) are of …

Role Of Lipid Transfer Proteins In Lipid Droplet Dynamics, Neng Wan

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Eukaryotic cells compartmentalize their cellular processes in organelles. Lipid droplets (LDs) are key organelles in energy and membrane lipid homeostasis. It has become evident that LDs form membrane contact sites with other organelles throughout their lifetime, from biogenesis to degradation. Lipid transfer proteins (LTPs) localize to LDs, often at sites of LD-organelle contacts. Several known and newly identified LTPs impact LDs biogenesis and degradation, suggesting a role of protein mediated lipid transport in modulating LDs dynamics. The mechanisms of how lipid transport precisely participates in these functions is largely unclear. I characterized the protein spartin, mutations of which leads to …

Business As Usual: Organizational And Market Responses To The Natural Environment And Magnification Of Inequality, Taylor Martin Holdaway

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Climate change is a multifaceted and insidious grand challenge facing the world. Natural disasters and extreme weather conditions, made more common by climate change, will cause enormous ecological, human, and economic damage across the globe. Businesses, organizations, and markets are critically implicated in climate change due to their culpability for greenhouse gas emissions and their roles in building or hindering adaptive capacity and mediating transfers of wealth resulting from climate change. In my dissertation, I investigate how individuals, businesses, and markets respond to climate-related disasters and extreme weather conditions and how these processes contribute to patterns of inequality in the …

Spatial Multi-Omics Mapping Of The Human Brain Hippocampus, Graham Su

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

With the introduction of next-generation high-throughput DNA sequencing, “Omics” has become staple in biological and biomedical research. Currently, single-cell omics has enabled a wide range of biomolecular assays at single cell level including proteomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, metabolomics, and more. These techniques have the power to interrogate the different dimensional states of single cells and in parallel with one another. Extensive and rich datasets have been produced with these methods ranging from normal to developing to diseased cells, especially informative in delineating heterogeneous populations. However, the trade-off for high-throughput single-cell Omics is the loss of cellular phenotypic and positional information. When …

High-Dimensional Molecular Quantum Dynamics With Tensor-Trains And Quantum Computation, Ningyi Lyu

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This thesis introduces numerically exact methods for simulating the quantum dynamics of complex molecular systems beyond the limitations of current models like Transition State Theory and the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. By leveraging tensor-train-based solvers and advancements in quantum hardware, particularly bosonic circuit Quantum Electrodynamics (cQED) processors, we address the computational challenges posed by the "curse of dimensionality" of high-dimensional molecular wavepackets. Our methods demonstrate significant progress in modeling intricate chemical processes such as electron and energy transfer and photochemical reactions across various systems from biological complexes to in-solvent intramolecular charge transfer processes. We specifically focus on the development and application of …

Capturing Membrane Snapshots: A Quantitative Guide For Spatially-Resolved Extraction Of Membrane Proteins On Native Membranes, Caroline Brown

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Membrane proteins (MPs) stand as pivotal regulators of cellular functions, orchestrating intricate processes vital for organismal homeostasis. However, traditional methodologies employed to study MPs, such as detergent extraction, often fail to accurately preserve the native membrane environment. This deficiency results in the loss of critical biological information, hindering our understanding of MP structure, function, and interactions. To address these limitations, I employ innovative strategies centered around the utilization of membrane active polymers (MAPs). MAPs offer a promising alternative to conventional detergent-based extraction methods by enabling the preservation of the native bilayer environment during MP extraction. Through their unique chemistry, MAPs …

Sacramental Reason: Speculative Thought In Catholic Modernity, Jack Hanson

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of the position of Catholicism in the conceptual organization of secular modernity. Inspired by the plenitude of roles the Catholic plays in formations of religious and cultural self-narration, I take up three thinkers for whom the Catholic represents above all a means of navigating the contradictory structures of modernity, avoiding both the simple negativity of critique and the delusion of nostalgic reaction. For Charles Péguy, early intimations of a modern mysticism lead him to a paradoxical appreciation of his greatest antagonists, which in turn sets the stage for his return to the Catholicism of his …

Ensuring K-12 School Safety During A Respiratory Viral Pandemic, Dan Li

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

In recent times, the world has witnessed an unprecedented global crisis with the outbreak of COVID-19. This pandemic has not only brought about a paradigm shift in our daily lives but has also significantly impacted various sectors of society, including the education system. K-12 schools are a major concern for viral transmission due to the close social interactions between children, crowded institutional environments, and suboptimal vaccine coverage. Children have close interactions with their household members, who are active in all sectors of society. The K-12 educational landscape has faced an array of challenges in the face of managing the COVID-19 …

Data-Driven Methods For Super-Resolution Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging, Siyuan Dong

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging (MRSI) is a non-invasive imaging technique for studying metabolism and has become a crucial tool for understanding neurodegenerative diseases, cancers and diabetes. High spatial resolution MRSI is needed to characterize small lesions and intra-lesion heterogeneity, but in practice MRSI is acquired at low resolution due to time and sensitivity restrictions caused by the low metabolite concentrations. Therefore, there is an imperative need for a post-processing approach to generate high-resolution MRSI from low-resolution data that can be acquired fast and with high sensitivity. In computer vision, enhancing image resolution is known as image super-resolution, which is a …

Fundamental Limits In Large-Scale Multiple Testing And Its Application, Yutong Nie

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The false discovery rate (FDR) and the false non-discovery rate (FNR), defined as the expected false discovery proportion (FDP) and the false non-discovery proportion (FNP), are the most popular benchmarks for multiple testing. Despite the theoretical and algorithmic advances in recent years, the optimal tradeoff between the FDR and the FNR has been largely unknown except for certain restricted classes of decision rules, e.g., separable rules, or for other performance metrics, e.g., the marginal FDR and the marginal FNR (mFDR and mFNR). In this dissertation, we determine the asymptotically optimal FDR-FNR tradeoff under the two-group random mixture model when the …

Investigating The Sequence Requirements For Specific Ligand Recognition In Variant Riboswitches, Kathryn Barth

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Recognizing and responding to environmental stimuli is essential for organisms across all domains of life. Riboswitches sense environmental stimuli in the form of a small molecule ligand and then structurally rearrange to modulate gene expression in response. Specific ligand recognition is, therefore, a requirement of a functional riboswitch. This dissertation focuses on relating the primary sequence of a riboswitch to a role in ligand specificity. Unlike structural studies, which are used to identify nucleotides in direct ligand contact, I have taken a mutational approach to determine which nucleotides, when mutated, alter riboswitch function or ligand specificity. I focus on variant …

Uncovering Transkingdom Connectivity Through Mapping Host-Microbiota Interactions, Nicole Sonnert

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Our microbiota, the trillions of microbes that constitutively colonize every outward-facing surface of our bodies, have diverse impacts on human physiology, yet the molecular bases for these effects remain mostly unknown. Classical pathogens often invade host tissues and modulate immune responses through interactions with human extracellular and secreted proteins (the ‘exoproteome’). Commensal microbes may also facilitate niche colonization and shape host biology by engaging host exoproteins; however, direct microbiota-exoproteome interactions remain largely unexplored. We developed and validated a novel technology, BActerial Selection to Elucidate Host-microbe Interactions in high Throughput (BASEHIT), that enables proteome-scale assessment of human exoproteome-microbiome interactions. Using BASEHIT, …

Transition Metal Complexes For Electrocatalytic Ammonia Oxidation, Hanyu Liu

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Our rapidly increasing population’s growing need for food, fertilizer, and clean energy necessitates an exploration into the oxidation of ammonia (NH3) for its application as a carbon-free fuel and a precursor for nitrite and nitrate production Traditional ammonia oxidation (AO) techniques, such as the Ostwald process, demand considerable energy and result in greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, electrochemical AO emerges as an energy-efficient solution. This thesis investigates the development and characterization of copper and iridium-based molecular and heterogeneous catalysts targeting selective electrochemical AO in aqueous environments.Chapter 2 focuses on [Cu(bipyalk)]+, a mononuclear copper electrocatalyst exhibiting selective ammonia oxidation to nitrite …

Exploring Function And Mechanism Through Intuitions, Explanations, & Learning, Amanda Mccarthy

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Imagine learning about a car engine for the first time. You might expect that the person explaining to you how a car engine works would first explain the role that the car engine has within the car (functional information) before diving into how the camshaft, pistons, spark plugs, cylinders, and crankshaft all work together to make the car engine work (mechanistic information). Where might this intuition that functional information should come before mechanistic information come from? Is mechanistic information too convoluted to be understood without function as a cognitive scaffold? This thesis considers the strength of this intuition of explanatory …

Investigating The Cellular Role Of Lama Phosphorylation On Asymmetric Polar Growth In Mycobacteria, Celena Gwin

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

From dividing labor within communities to having a flexible response to environmental insults, phenotypic heterogeneity provides numerous benefits to microorganisms. Mycobacteria create this heterogeneity, in part, by their unique pattern of asymmetric growth and division, which generates a population of cells that varies in size, growth rate, and antibiotic susceptibility (1). The deletion of a single gene conserved exclusively in mycobacteria, known as lamA, abrogates a significant amount of this heterogeneity (2). We set out to characterize this protein of relatively unknown function using a combination of genetics, biochemistry, live cell time-lapse microscopy, and super-resolution microscopy.We show that LamA coordinates …