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Reaping What We Sow: The Implications And Outcomes Of Mississippi House Bill 1125, The “Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures (Reap)” Act, Kerigan Brewer

Honors Theses

Mississippi House Bill 1125 (MS HB1125), also known as the “Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures (REAP) Act,” was signed into law by Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves in early 2023 (REAP Act, 2023). It is one of multiple policies passed into law that limit the rights of transgender people. This thesis aims to clarify the history of the trans community, dispel myths around gender-affirming health care and the trans identity, and discuss the current state of anti-trans laws and transgender rights. Using a policy analysis framework by DiNitto (2011), MS HB1125 is analyzed on points like its social and economic costs, the …

Stuck In My Head: Maladaptive Daydreaming And Memory, Tamryn Woolfork

Honors College Theses

Previous research has indicated that maladaptive daydreaming (MD), a proposed psychological disorder in which people are compulsively immersed in complex daydreamed plots accompanied by intense emotional involvement and stereotypical movements (Soffer-Dudek & Theodor-Katz, 2022), may be comorbid with many disorders such as ADHD (Somer, Soffer-Dudek, & Ross, 2017). Research has also shown that MD is related to the concept of absorption in which a person’s attention is fully engaged in an outside object (Abu-Rayya, Somer, & Meari-Amir, 2019; Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974). This study examined whether MD was correlated with story world absorption, working memory span, and memory for a …

The Pam-1 Aminopeptidase Protects Against Neurodegeneration In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Caleb Coil

Honors College Theses

The deteriorating effects of neurodegenerative conditions seem inescapable for many as they age. The experimental exploration of the molecular and cellular mechanisms responsible for neurodegeneration is aided using animal models. For instance, genetic screens have identified the puromycin-sensitive aminopeptidase (PSA) as a novel effector of neurodegeneration, as mutations in PSA in fruit flies result in perturbations of neuron anatomy and an accelerated onset of neuron death. We have tested the hypothesis that PAM-1, the Caenorhabditis elegans ortholog of PSA, plays a similar role in governing neurodegeneration in nematodes. Genetic strains were created that express the green fluorescent protein (GFP) in …

Front Matter, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

Front Matter for Volume 122, Issue 7 of Michigan Law Review

Plant Model Of Α-Synucleinopathy: Expression Of Α-Synuclein A53t Variant In Hairy Root Cultures Leads To Proteostatic Stress And Dysregulation Of Iron Metabolism, Jasmina Kurepa, Kristen A. Bruce, Greg A. Gerhardt, Jan A. Smalle

Neurology Faculty Publications

Synucleinopathies, typified by Parkinson’s disease (PD), entail the accumulation of α- synuclein (αSyn) aggregates in nerve cells. Various αSyn mutants, including the αSyn A53T variant linked to early-onset PD, increase the propensity for αSyn aggregate formation. In addition to disrupting protein homeostasis and inducing proteostatic stress, the aggregation of αSyn in PD is associated with an imbalance in iron metabolism, which increases the generation of reactive oxygen species and causes oxidative stress. This study explored the impact of αSyn A53T expression in transgenic hairy roots of four medicinal plants (Lobelia cardinalis, Artemisia annua, Salvia miltiorrhiza, and Polygonum multiflorum). In all …

Vol 4 May '24 Cover, Publishing And Table Of Contents, Donna L. Williams

Journal of the Louisiana Public Health Association

No abstract provided.

Vol 4 May '24 Full Issue, Donna L. Williams

Journal of the Louisiana Public Health Association

No abstract provided.

Using Additional Measures Of Handgrip Strength To Predict Aerobic Capacity In Wheelchair Users, Eric Naugle

All NMU Master's Theses

Manual wheelchair users have been shown to have low physical capacity and impaired ability to perform activities of daily living. Current tests and protocols for assessing physical capacity in wheelchair users have specific boundaries. Measuring handgrip strength (HGS) with electronic handgrip dynamometers has been shown to be a reliable measure of muscle function and a convenient assessment of overall muscle strength. This study aimed to determine the correlation of maximal HGS, HGS rate of force development, HGS fatigability, HGS isometric control, and HGS asymmetry to a six-minute wheelchair propulsion (6MPT) test in ambulatory young adults. Thirty-four recreationally active ambulatory individuals …

Evaluating Embryo Survival Of Surrogate Fish Species Using Multiple Incubators: Continuing Efforts Towards Reintroducing Arctic Grayling (Thymallus Arcticus) Into Lower Michigan Streams, Joshua Mutchler

All NMU Master's Theses

Arctic Grayling Thymallus arcticus have been successfully reintroduced to the Upper Missouri River Basin of Montana using Remote Site Incubators (RSI). Widespread use of RSIs as part of reintroduction efforts in Michigan is challenged by low gradient streams, which limit deployment success. In this study, I evaluated the utility of an alternative instream rearing device, the Floating Basket Incubator (FBI), by directly comparing the survival of Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss, Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis, and Walleye Sander vitreus (as Arctic Grayling surrogates) between RSI and FBI in stream and hatchery environments. In addition, I assessed how abiotic and …

A Parametric Study On The Energy Dissipation Capability Of Frictional Mechanical Metamaterials Engineered For Vibration Isolation, Shayan Khosravi, Mohsen Amjadian

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Mechanical metamaterials are engineered structures with complex geometric arrangements that display unconventional mechanical properties which are uncommon in traditional materials. They possess the ability to manipulate and control mechanical wave propagation across specific frequency ranges known as frequency bandgaps. This feature makes them extremely useful for a variety of applications in structural control including passive vibration isolation. These materials can be engineered to selectively block or redirect the input motion at their dominant frequency while allowing the transmission of motion at other frequencies. This paper aims to study the dynamic performance of an innovative mechanical metamaterial designed for seismic isolation …

World Class Supply Chain 2024: Thriving In Volatile Times, Michael Haughton

Business Faculty Publications

The Eighth Annual World Class Supply Chain Summit was convened on May 1st, 2024 under the theme of Thriving in volatile times. The theme, which embodies the expressed interests of attendees in last year’s post-summit survey, underscored the supply chain community’s focus on how to succeed in a supply chain world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). The summit’s deliberations on the theme featured two keynote addresses (one each by an industry executive and a research scholar), an industry panel, a student panel, and an intergenerational fireside chat by a panel comprising individuals with experiences ranging from a …

Instant3d: Instant Text-To-3d Generation, Ming Li, Pan Zhou, Jia-Wei Liu, Jussi Keppo, Shuicheng Yan, Xiangyu Xu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Text-to-3D generation has attracted much attention from the computer vision community. Existing methods mainly optimize a neural field from scratch for each text prompt, relying on heavy and repetitive training cost which impedes their practical deployment. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for fast text-to-3D generation, dubbed Instant3D. Once trained, Instant3D is able to create a 3D object for an unseen text prompt in less than one second with a single run of a feedforward network. We achieve this remarkable speed by devising a new network that directly constructs a 3D triplane from a text prompt. The core …

Reflections On Linear B, (Part 3): The Egyptian Cat-God Mau, Gerald Leonard Cohen

Arts, Languages and Philosophy Faculty Research & Creative Works

The cat figure in Linear B sign 80 (with antecedents) likely derives ultimately from the nightly defeat of the Egyptian god of chaos (Apep, aka Apophis) by the sun god Ra, who took the form of the divine cat Mau. An alternative interpretation is set forth in Ferrara and Weingarten 2022, which sees the cat portrayals for wool or woolen products in Cretan Hieroglyphics as traceable to the cat sound /ma/ appearing by coincidence in Greek μαλλός ‘wool’ (possibly of pre-Greek origin). Perhaps both factors played a role (multiple causation).

Learning Adversarial Semantic Embeddings For Zero-Shot Recognition In Open Worlds, Tianqi Li, Guansong Pang, Xiao Bai, Jin Zheng, Lei Zhou, Xin Ning

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Zero-Shot Learning (ZSL) focuses on classifying samples of unseen classes with only their side semantic information presented during training. It cannot handle real-life, open-world scenarios where there are test samples of unknown classes for which neither samples (e.g., images) nor their side semantic information is known during training. Open-Set Recognition (OSR) is dedicated to addressing the unknown class issue, but existing OSR methods are not designed to model the semantic information of the unseen classes. To tackle this combined ZSL and OSR problem, we consider the case of “Zero-Shot Open-Set Recognition” (ZS-OSR), where a model is trained under the ZSL …

Time-Controllable Keyword Search Scheme With Efficient Revocation In Mobile E-Health Cloud, Yinbin Miao, Feng Li, Xinghua Li, Zhiquan Liu, Jianting Ning, Hongwei Li, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Deng, Robert H.

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Electronic health (e-health) systems may outsource data such as patient e-health records to mobile cloud servers for efficiency gains (e.g., minimizing local storage and computation costs). However, such a move may result in privacy implications in the presence of semi-honest cloud servers. Searchable Encryption (SE) can potentially facilitate privacy-preserving searches based on keywords for encrypted data stored in the mobile cloud, but most existing SE solutions do not support temporal access control (i.e., a mechanism that grants access permissions to users for specified time ranges). Hence, in this paper we design a time-controllable keyword search scheme by using an attribute-based …

Cooperative And Bifunctional Adsorbent-Catalyst Materials For In-Situ Vocs Capture-Conversion, Sukanta K. Mondal, Peter Aina, Ali A. Rownaghi, Fateme Rezaei

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) Are Gases that Are Emitted into the Air from Products or Processes and Are Major Components of Air Pollution that Significantly Deteriorate Air Quality and Seriously Affect Human Health. Different Types of Metals, Metal Oxides, Mixed-Metal Oxides, Polymers, Activated Carbons, Zeolites, Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and Mixed-Matrixed Materials Have Been Developed and Used as Adsorbent or Catalyst for Diversified VOCs Detection, Removal, and Destruction. in This Comprehensive Review, We First Discuss the General Classification of VOCs Removal Materials and Processes and Outline the Historical Development of Bifunctional and Cooperative Adsorbent-Catalyst Materials for the Removal of VOCs from …

L-Ergothioneine Slows The Progression Of Age-Related Hearing Loss In Cba/Caj Mice, Mark A. Bauer, Parveen Bazard, Alejandro A. Acosta, Nidhi Bangalore, Lina Elessaway, Mark Thivierge, Moksheta Chellani, Xiaoxia Zhu, Bo Ding, Joseph P. Walton, Robert D. Frisina

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The naturally occurring amino acid, l-ergothioneine (EGT), has immense potential as a therapeutic, having shown promise in the treatment of other disease models, including neurological disorders. EGT is naturally uptake into cells via its specific receptor, OCTN1, to be utilized by cells as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. In our current study, EGT was administered over a period of 6 months to 25–26-month-old CBA/CaJ mice as a possible treatment for age-related hearing loss (ARHL), since presbycusis has been linked to higher levels of cochlear oxidative stress, apoptosis, and chronic inflammation. Results from the current study indicate that EGT can prevent aging …

The Effect Of Intangible Assets On Corporate Financial Performance: The Evidence From Serbia, Vladimir Dženopoljac, Amer Rastić, Aleksandra Dženopoljac

All Works

The paper examines how intangible assets, measured as the Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC), impact the margin and return ratios of the most profitable companies in Serbia. Previous research has demonstrated that intangible assets have a positive effect on the company’s profitability across various contexts, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Serbia as well. This research study aims to determine whether intangible assets have a positive effect on the four ratios, namely the Net Profit Margin (NPM), the Earnings Before Interests, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization margin (EBITDAm), Return on Assets (ROA), and Return on Equity (ROE) or not. …

Post-Brexit International Trade: The Impact Of Brexit Import Duties On The Outdoor Clothing Industry Between The United Kingdom And The Republic Of Ireland., Nurdin Shadiev

Business ETD Collections

This study investigates the effects of changing import duties and customs following Brexit on trade within the outdoor clothing sector in the UK and Ireland. Brexit has caused drastic changes to the terms of trade for the UK following its withdrawal from the EU. These changes particularly affect the outdoor clothing sector and other businesses that rely on already established trade relationships with the Republic of Ireland. This review aims to examine the impacts of Brexit import duties on the outdoor clothing sector.

Democracy Building Instruction: Defining A Theory Of The Dispositions Of Democracy To Support Democratic Education, Jackie M. Miller

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

What are the attitudes, mindsets, and capacities that promote the full flourishing of individuals as well as our collective society? Based on a review of the literature on democratic education, the researcher posits a humble theory (i.e., a local theory in educational research) of the dispositions of democracy and then asks educators from Kindergarten through College (K-College) to share their perspectives, reflect on, co-construct, and revise this initial theory. The study considers the overarching question: What do educators perceive to be the essential dispositions necessary to promoting, perpetuating, and productively participating in a democracy, and how can educators help students …

Before And Beyond The Comintern: The American Popular Front, Kent Kiser

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This project explores the concept of the Popular Front in the United States as a cross-class coalition, mass-party movement that attempted to attract the urban working and middle classes as well as small farmers. In contrast to the academic perception that the Popular Front’s birth and growth in the United States from 1935 to 1938 was an abrupt turn in Communist policy ordered from above, this thesis argues that the beginning and changes to the Popular Front had substantial American roots. Tracing the Popular Front concept of a mass Farmer-Labor Party back into the nineteenth century, this thesis challenges a …

Learning To Roll: Characterizing Infant Rolling With Biomechanics, Danielle N. Siegel

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Motor skills, like rolling, are an important part of an infant’s cognitive and motor development by facilitating interactions with others and their surrounding environment. Additionally, an infant’s musculoskeletal and motor development is largely affected by their environment and in the U.S., infants spend a majority of their time in commercial infant products, including those at an incline. The biomechanical impacts of infants spending time at an incline is an understudied area, and almost 12,000 emergency room visits occur each year due to injuries involving commercial infant products. Therefore, the overall objective of this study was to understand how an infant’s …

Nesting In Urban Areas Affects American Kestrel Home Range Size And Adult Female Health, Jessica Michele Taylor

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Urbanization is happening at an unprecedented rate, and wildlife must adapt or face population declines. American Kestrels inhabit urban areas, however, whether human-dominated landscapes impact kestrel space-use, survival and reproductive success is largely unknown. We monitored American Kestrel nest boxes along a gradient of urbanization, measured using impervious surface area (ISA), and deployed GPS tags on breeding adults to examine the relationship between urbanization, home range size, and adult and nestling health. Male kestrel home ranges were 9.14 times larger than female home ranges, and home range size decreased as ISA increased for both sexes (β = -1.96, SE = …

Developing A Convolutional Neural Network (Cnn) Model For Facial Expression Recognition (Fer), Danrlei Martins, Leonardo Diesel

ICT

This Capstone Project focused on developing an accurate Facial Expression Recognition (FER) model by leveraging deep learning techniques, specifically Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). The objective was to explore, design, and implement custom architectures and evaluate their performance against existing work. The process involved several stages, such as data preprocessing, data augmentation, architecture design, hyperparameter tuning, and performance assessment using metrics like accuracy and F1-score while utilizing the FER-2013 dataset for training. The resulting FER model exhibited competitive accuracy levels and generalization capabilities, opening up opportunities for real-time implementation and application across various domains.

Movie Recommendation System., Ingrid Menezes Castro, Robert Szlufik

ICT

This project is focused on implementing a Movie Recommendation System with the use of Machine Learning. The system was developed in Python and the datasets used were 'Movies' and 'Ratings' from MovieLens 25M. This project was developed with the CRISP-DM methodology and each of the phases is detailed in a report and Jupyter Notebook.

The system is a hybrid combining best qualities of collaboration filtering and user grouping. In the project we compare some models' accuracies, upgrade a chosen model and show the improved performance of our hybrid model that used the SVD algorithm. We are able to find recommended …

Utilizing Spatial Transcriptomics To Compare Gene Expression In Volumetric Muscle Loss Injury Recovery, Colton Gattis

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Volumetric Muscle Loss (VML) injuries are known to disrupt the normal regenerative process via fibrosis leading to an extensive permanent loss of muscle function. The specific causation of this disruption remains to be defined; however, with new developments in transcriptomics, genetic trends can be identified across regions of tissue over time. This study follows VML injuries within the tibialis anterior of a mouse model for fifteen days after initial injury to attempt to identify expected transitions in healing. Genetic presence began to become more diversified as recovery progressed from four to fifteen days post injury with spatial clusters becoming globalized …

Survival Of Methanogens Desiccated On Mars Soil Simulants: Implications For Life On Mars, Lanee Knight

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Because of Mars’s chemical features, it can be studied in the search for life and is a significant figure in the study of astrobiology (McKay, 2010). Dr. Kral’s laboratory studies methanogens, microorganisms in the domain Archaea, as possible life forms on Mars. Since some methanogens can withstand harsh environmental conditions and emit methane as a waste product, the growth of these microorganisms can be used as an indicator of potential life in the Mars subsurface (Kral et al., 1998). In this research, four methanogens, Methanothermobacter wolfeii, Methanobacterium formicicum, Methanosarcina barkeri, and Methanococcus maripaludi were desiccated in the …

Growth Of Methanogens On Kaolinite, A Clay That Has Been Identified On Mars, Hailey Littrell

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Methanogens have been studied as a model for life on Mars for 28 years now in the Kral lab. The discovery of methane in the Martian atmosphere by ground-based and orbital observations as well as Curiosity Rover (Formisano, V. et al., Krasnopolsky, V.A. et al., Mumma, M.J. et al.) has added relevance to these types of studies. Methanogens were chosen due to their ability to live in harsh environments, very similar to the Martian terrain. In addition to methane in the atmosphere, phyllosilicate clays have also been identified. One of those clays is kaolinite. Kaolinite has been found to not …

Deep Learning In Indus Valley Script Digitization, Deva Munikanta Reddy Atturu

Theses and Dissertations

This research introduces ASR-net(Ancient Script Recognition), a groundbreaking system that automatically digitizes ancient Indus seals by converting them into coded text, similar to Optical Character Recognition for modern languages. ASR-net, with an 95% success rate in identifying individual symbols, aims to address the crucial need for automated techniques in deciphering the enigmatic Indus script. Initially Yolov3 is utilized to create the bounding boxes around each graphemes present in the Indus Valley Seal. In addition to that we created M-net(Mahadevan) model to encode the graphemes. Beyond digitization, the paper proposes a new research challenge called the Motif Identification Problem (MIP) related …

Incentive-Based And Media Literacy-Informed Approaches To Improve Vaping Cessation Among Young Adults: A Pilot Study Protocol, Troy B. Puga Jr

Capstone Experience: Master of Public Health

Introduction: Youth and young adult vaping is rapidly rising within the United States, and is approaching epidemic levels. Vaping has been marketed as a safe alternative to smoking, however, there has been clear negative health effects of vaping. Modern day vaping interventions targeting this population remain limited. With the rapid rise of vaping and the negative health effects, tested interventions are needed. This protocol research paper defines the background and methodology behind the registered clinical trial entitled Incentive-based and media literacy-informed approaches to improve vaping cessation among young adult: a pilot study protocol.

Methods: This protocol research paper will describe …