Digital Commons Network^™

Analyzing Pelvic Asymmetry By Sex And Ancestry: Insights From An Osteological Collection, Bryan O Ren, Robert W Goldberg, Karen D Standefer, Jason R Teplensky, Joseph P Drain, Conor F Mccarthy, John G Birch, Raymond W Liu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: Pelvic asymmetry has been noted in pelvic imaging, and might influence the development of various spinal pathologies, most notably scoliosis. There is a limited understanding of the relationship between pelvic asymmetry and sex and ancestry, and limited use of 3D modeling. The purpose of this study was to identify pelvic asymmetry and morphology differences between sex and ancestry utilizing 3D modeling on young adults in an osteological collection.

Methods: Thirty-three osteological pelvic specimens aged 18-25 years (average age 21.4 ± 2.0 years) were scanned to create virtual 3D models for analysis. Pelvic asymmetry and morphology were measured and compared …

Cytokine Release By Microglia Exposed To Neurologic Injury Is Amplified By Lipopolysaccharide, Scott D Olson

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and morbidity in the trauma population. Microglia drive the secondary neuroinflammatory response after TBI. We sought to determine if the microglial response to neurologic injury was exacerbated by a second stimulus after exposure to neurologic injury.

Methods: Sprague-Dawley rats (age 2-3 wk) were divided into injured and noninjured groups. Injured rats underwent a controlled cortical impact injury; noninjured rats remained naïve to any injury and served as the control group. Primary rat microglia were isolated and applied to in vitro cultures. After incubation for 24 h, the microglia were …

Reciprocal Relationships Between Stress And Depressive Symptoms: The Essential Role Of The Nucleus Accumbens, Bhim M Adhikari, Heather Bruce, Kathryn S Hatch, Si Gao, Shuo Chen, Ann Summerfelt, Thomas E Nichols, L Elliot Hong

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Stress and depression have a reciprocal relationship, but the neural underpinnings of this reciprocity are unclear. We investigated neuroimaging phenotypes that facilitate the reciprocity between stress and depressive symptoms.

METHODS: In total, 22 195 participants (52.0% females) from the population-based UK Biobank study completed two visits (initial visit: 2006-2010, age = 55.0 ± 7.5 [40-70] years; second visit: 2014-2019; age = 62.7 ± 7.5 [44-80] years). Structural equation modeling was used to examine the longitudinal relationship between self-report stressful life events (SLEs) and depressive symptoms. Cross-sectional data were used to examine the overlap between neuroimaging correlates of SLEs and …

Samhd1 Compound Heterozygous Rare Variants Associated With Moyamoya And Mitral Valve Disease In The Absence Of Other Features Of Aicardi-Goutières Syndrome, Simon J Tavernier, Michael J Bamshad, Dongchuan Guo, Bert Callewaert, Dianna M Milewicz

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Aicardi-Goutières syndrome (AGS) is an autosomal recessive inflammatory syndrome that manifests as an early-onset encephalopathy with both neurologic and extraneurologic clinical findings. AGS has been associated with pathogenic variants in nine genes: TREX1, RNASEH2B, RNASEH2C, RNASEH2A, SAMHD1, ADAR, IFIH1, LSM11, and RNU7-1. Diagnosis is established by clinical findings (encephalopathy and acquired microcephaly, intellectual and physical impairments, dystonia, hepatosplenomegaly, sterile pyrexia, and/or chilblains), characteristic abnormalities on cranial CT (calcification of the basal ganglia and white matter) and MRI (leukodystrophic changes), or the identification of pathogenic/likely pathogenic variants in the known genes. One of the genes associated with AGS, SAMHD1, has also …

Ems Treatment Guidelines In Major Traumatic Brain Injury With Positive Pressure Ventilation, Vatsal Chikani, Jeffrey T Howard, Samuel M Keim, Chengcheng Hu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Importance: The Excellence in Prehospital Injury Care (EPIC) study demonstrated improved survival in patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) following implementation of the prehospital treatment guidelines. The impact of implementing these guidelines in the subgroup of patients who received positive pressure ventilation (PPV) is unknown.

Objective: To evaluate the association of implementation of prehospital TBI evidence-based guidelines with survival among patients with prehospital PPV.

Design, setting, and participants: The EPIC study was a multisystem, intention-to-treat study using a before/after controlled design. Evidence-based guidelines were implemented by emergency medical service agencies across Arizona. This subanalysis was planned a priori and …

Evaluating The Readability Of Online Blood Cancer Education Materials Across Different Readability Measures

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction The National Institutes of Health and the American Medical Association recommend patient education materials (EMs) be at or below the sixth-grade reading level. The American Cancer Society, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and National Comprehensive Cancer Network have accurate blood cancer EMs. Methods One hundred one (101) blood cancer EMs from the above organizations were assessed using the following: Flesch Reading Ease Formula (FREF), Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL), Gunning Fog Index (GFI), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook Index (SMOG), and the Coleman-Liau Index (CLI). Results Only 3.96% of patient EMs scored at or below the seventh-grade reading level in all modalities. …

Transcriptional Signature Of Durable Effector T Cells Elicited By A Replication Defective Hcmv Vaccine, Diane F Barrett, Richard E Rupp, Ningyan Zhang, Tong-Ming Fu, W Jim Zheng, Zhiqiang An

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a leading infectious cause of birth defects and the most common opportunistic infection that causes life-threatening diseases post-transplantation; however, an effective vaccine remains elusive. V160 is a live-attenuated replication defective HCMV vaccine that showed a 42.4% efficacy against primary HCMV infection among seronegative women in a phase 2b clinical trial. Here, we integrated the multicolor flow cytometry, longitudinal T cell receptor (TCR) sequencing, and single-cell RNA/TCR sequencing approaches to characterize the magnitude, phenotype, and functional quality of human T cell responses to V160. We demonstrated that V160 de novo induces IE-1 and pp65 specific durable polyfunctional …

The Relationship Between Situated Reading Motivation And Perception Of The Learning Environment For Adolescent Students, Travis Vandervelden

Doctoral Dissertations

Reading proficiency is particularly crucial for adolescent students who are expected to adopt and approximate a multitude of authentic literacy practices in several different content areas within the span of a single school day. A large number of adolescent students are failing to master basic levels of reading, and are thus uniquely disadvantaged in secondary schools, where reading is not only more complex, but teachers also spend less time teaching students how to read. Reading motivation has been a focus of research to address the lack of reading proficiency in classrooms. An understudied area within this field of research is …

Loma Linda Nurse - Vol. 31, Loma Linda University School Of Nursing

Loma Linda Nurse

FEATURES

4 | The Next Chapter for LLUSN

8 | 50 Years of West Hall

10 | Dr. Shawn Collins Named New Dean

12 | Dr. Gloria Huerta Named New Associate Dean

14 | Adventist Nursing Theory with Dr. Patricia Jones

LLUSN HIGHLIGHTS

16-23 | ALUMNI NEWS

24-27 | ACADEMICS

28-32 | HOMECOMING

33-35 | FACULTY UPDATES

Trends Of Sediment Resuspension And Budget In Southern Lake Michigan Under Changing Wave Climate And Hydrodynamic Environment, Longhuan Zhu, Pengfei Xue, Guy Meadows, Chenfu Huang, Jianzhong Ge, Cary D. Troy, Chin H. Wu

Michigan Tech Publications

Sediment suspension and transport driven by waves and currents play a significant role in both the ecological and physical environments of large lakes. Lake Michigan has faced a rapidly increasing water level associated with intensified wind waves in the past decade. To investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of suspended sediment concentration (SSC) and associated coastal sediment budgets in southern Lake Michigan, a 30-year (1991–2020) hindcast was performed using a coupled wave-current-sediment model (SWAN-FVCOM-CSTMS). We found that in southern Lake Michigan, the basin-wide mean SSC increased, and the coastal sediment loss accelerated dramatically, corresponding with intensified waves, currents and lake water level …

Exploring Lstm-Based Attention Mechanisms With Pso And Grid Search Under Different Normalization Techniques For Energy Demands Time Series Forecasting, Andri Pranolo, Xiaofeng Zhou, Yingchi Mao, Bambang Widi Pratolo, Aji Prasetya Wibawa, Agung Bella Putra Utama, Abdoul Fatakhou Ba, Abdullahi Uwaisu Muhammad

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

Advanced analytical approaches are required to accurately forecast the energy sector's rising complexity and volume of time series data. This research aims to forecast the energy demand utilising sophisticated Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) configurations with Attention mechanisms (Att), Grid search, and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). In addition, the study also examines the influence of Min-Max and Z-Score normalization approaches in the preprocessing stage on the accuracy performances of the baselines and the proposed models. PSO and Grid Search techniques are used to select the best hyperparameters for LSTM models, while the attention mechanism selects the important input for the LSTM. …

Hybrid Method For User Review Sentiment Categorization In Chatgpt Application Using N-Gram And Word2vec Features, Husna Luthfiatun Nisa, Atina Ahdika

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has significantly influenced nearly all aspects of life. One AI product widely used by people worldwide is the Chat Generative Pre-Training Transformer (ChatGPT), which can respond to questions conversationally. Although data indicates that the use of ChatGPT in Indonesia is less widespread than in other countries, a Populix survey reveals that half of the respondents have utilized ChatGPT, using AI more than once a month. This indicates its crucial role among the Indonesian population. ChatGPT is not limited to browsers; it is also available as a downloadable application on the Google Play Store. …

Convolutional Neural Network In Motion Detection For Physiotherapy Exercise Movement, Dika Fikri Laistulloh, Anik Nur Handayani, Rosa Andrie Asmara, Phillip Taw

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

Physiotherapy focuses on movement and optimal utilization of the patient's potential. Exercise Therapy is a physiotherapy procedure that specifically focuses exercises on active and passive movements. Cerebral Palsy (CP) patients are one of the sufferers of motor disorders of the upper extremities. Cerebral Palsy (CP) patients suffer from disorders in motor functions of the upper extremities. Physiotherapy Exercise Movement has 4 categories of movement exercises for the therapy of people with upper extremity body disorders: Elbow flexor strengthening in sitting using free weights, lifting an object up, reaching diagonally in sitting, and reaching from a low surface to a high …

Docker Optimization Of An Automotive Sector Virtual Server Infrastructure, Leonel Hernandez, Carlos Eduardo Uc Rios

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

Server virtualization is a powerful strategy for optimizing network infrastructure. It allows multiple virtual servers to run on a single physical server, maximizing resource utilization and improving efficiency. Deploying server virtualization using Docker technology offers a lightweight and flexible approach to optimizing network infrastructure. Docker contains package applications and their dependencies, enabling consistent and efficient deployment across various environments. Specifically, optimizing virtual server infrastructure using Docker Technology in the automotive sector focuses on improving the efficiency and management of the company's virtual server resources. By implementing Docker technology, a container platform that allows the packaging and running of applications in …

Timbre Style Transfer For Musical Instruments Acoustic Guitar And Piano Using The Generator-Discriminator Model, Widean Nagari, Joan Santoso, Esther Irawati Setiawan

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

Music style transfer is a technique for creating new music by combining the input song's content and the target song's style to have a sound that humans can enjoy. This research is related to timbre style transfer, a branch of music style transfer that focuses on using the generator-discriminator model. This exciting method has been used in various studies in the music style transfer domain to train a machine learning model to change the sound of instruments in a song with the sound of instruments from other songs. This work focuses on finding the best layer configuration in the generator- …

Molecular Geometry Changes In Some Carbonyls And Aromatic Rings Upon Electronic Excitation: Herzberg-Teller Vibronic Coupling And Unitary Duschinsky Rotation, Maryam Yahya Al-Sakkaf

Theses

The common assumption in probing the dynamical motion of molecules is that the molecular electronic activity depends weakly on vibrational coordinates on electronic excitation. Therefore, electron-vibration interaction, which is known as Vibronic Coupling (VC), may be ignored. The Herzberg-Teller theory of Vibronic Coupling (HTVC) is a breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation (BOA) since nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom can no longer be separated. The inclusion of a single quantum of a non-totally symmetric vibrational mode changes the overall symmetry of the state and permits the transition. Often, this assumption may be invalid, especially in carbonyl and aromatic compounds. This …

Intelligent Tutoring System Ontology, Wael Mohamed Hassan

Theses

The integration of pedagogical rules into Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) using semantic web technologies, particularly the Web Ontology Language (OWL), holds great promise for enhancing the capabilities of these systems. However, a significant challenge arises from the labor-intensive process of manually constructing ontologies, which can consume valuable time and resources. While ontologies offer numerous advantages, including robust knowledge inference and scalability, the limitations of manual ontology creation are evident in terms of time and flexibility. Therefore, the primary objective of this research is to develop an efficient and automated solution that harnesses the benefits of ontologies while reducing the time …

Evaluating The Impact Of Hybrid Ventilation Strategies On Reducing The Cooling Load And Achieving Thermal Comfort Of Buildings: Regarding Arid Climate Of Uae, Sheikha A Hmed Al Niyadi

Theses

The hybrid ventilation system has shown considerable potential in managing indoor thermal comfort, preserving indoor air quality, and minimizing energy usage. This is achieved by integrating natural and mechanical ventilation. When natural ventilation is unfeasible, the system smoothly transitions to mechanical ventilation to uphold optimal indoor thermal comfort levels. However, the application of this system in extremely arid regions poses a challenge due to the high energy consumption linked to air conditioning and cooling during the summer. In these areas, air conditioning and cooling alone represent approximately 60% of urban energy consumption. This study aims to assess the viability of …

Theoretical And Computational Astrochemistry: A Variational Quantum Monte Carlo (Vqmc) Study Of The Trihydrogen Molecule Cation (H3+), Ahmad Saeed Alsaed

Theses

H₃⁺ is the simplest Three-Center Two-Electron molecule and it is of much interest in astrochemistry due to its high occurrence in the outer space, high reactivity, and strong acidic properties. In addition,H₃⁺ is involved in many chemical reactions in the interstellar medium (ISM) and its significant ability to absorb energy contributed to the cooling of the Universe during its early stages.

The main objective of this thesis is to approximate the ground state electronic energy of H₃⁺ by using a simple trial wavefunction consisting of a doubly occupied molecular orbital multiplied by a Jastrow …

Locally Tailored Knowledge, Attitude And Practice Towards Diet Sustainability Questionnaire: Validation Among Uaeu Adults, Asma Bahaaldeen Numan

Theses

Food production is a major contributor to global environmental change and sustainability. Sustainable diets can be defined as “diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and healthy life for present and future generations”. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) aims to enhance its food security to meet the current local demand and future needs of an increasing population. Before determining a sustainable diet pattern for the UAE population, it is foremost more important to understand the perception of sustainable diet production and consumption. A thorough comprehension of the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the United Arab …

Faithful Representation Of Free Groups And Congruent Subgroups Of Sl3(Z), Julius Kurian

Theses

This thesis is concerned with the matrix representation of a free nonabelian group by matrices of size ≥ 3. We proceed from defining an equivalence class and then transitioning to free groups.We discuss in details the group G_n(k) which is the group generated by the matrices filled with first, (second, etc.) column, except for the intersection with the diagonal, and we have ones on the diagonal and zeros at the other places. The filled places are occupied by the same parameter k. An alternative proof for the known fact that G_n(3) is not …

Pricing Asian Options During Crises With The Impact Of Exogenous Event, Moath Ali Bakour

Theses

Asian options are financial derivatives products whose value depends on the value of underlying asset prices. These options are called path-dependent since their payoff is built on the prices of the underlying asset over some time. As in the case of the European options, the Asian option pricing problem is primarily subject to the prediction model for asset prices. The pioneer Black-Scholes model in the paper [2] suggests a GBM-Geometric Brownian motion. The Black-Scholes formula has several shortcomings. For instance, the Geometric Brownian motion does not take into consideration crises. Another problem in the Black- Scholes model is that it …

Perspectives Of Special Education Teachers On The Transition Of Students With Special Needs From High School To University, Noor Abdulkader Mamich

Theses

Post-secondary transition is a significant phase in the life of high school students with special needs. Special education teachers play a crucial role in supporting students in this process. This study aims at exploring the perspectives of special education teachers on transitioning high school students with special needs into university. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four special education teachers in Al Ain city in the United Arab Emirates. The teachers were asked questions on four themes: their skills on postsecondary transition, their post-secondary transition planning, the barriers they face during post-secondary transition, and finally the facilitation of smooth post-secondary transition …

Unveiling The Origins Of Source Code Through Authorship Attribution: A Comparative Study Of Ai And Human Coding Patterns, Shamma Humaid Alalawi

Theses

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques have been used for source code authorship attribution, which is the process of identifying the original author of a given piece of code. With the advancement of AI technologies like ChatGPT, which can generate code, there is a need to accurately identify whether a piece of code is written by a human or generated by a machine. This is crucial for intellectual property protection, cybersecurity, and software forensics. The main objective of this thesis is to review existing research on source code authorship attribution and conduct several experiments to determine the best AI …

Improving Early Design Processes With The Use Of Bim And Vr Technologies In The Gcc Construction Industry, Mohamed Wahid Mohamed

Theses

The early stages of construction projects play a crucial role in determining the outcome of the entire project life cycle. However, conventional early design practices have been facing significant challenges and limitations in recent times. These challenges include a lack of coordination among various disciplines, communication gaps, and poor decision-making. Unfortunately, these challenges often lead to increased costs, project delays, and change orders. To tackle these challenges, it is essential to adopt the latest technological advancements in the construction industry. This is especially important given the complexity of modern construction projects and the rapid construction growth. One of the most …

Mapping And Analyzing Urban Growth In The Abu Dhabi Metropolitan Using Geospatial Technologies Integrated With Machine Learning, Hamsa Mohamed Yusuf

Theses

Urbanization is happening at a rate twice the increase in population on a worldwide scale. This has great environmental and social impacts, along with large impacts on regional climate and one of the reasons for this is the ever-continuous change of land use and land cover. The availability of high-resolution satellite imagery in addition to the advancements in geospatial technology allow mapping of LULC changes to be done accurately, efficiently and covering wide areas. This thesis studies the urban Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) that happened in Abu Dhabi city for the last 3 decades by utilizing geospatial …

Bearing The Benefit: An Evolution Of Passing To Trespassing & How We Got Here, Kennedi J. Williams

Honors College Theses

In recent years, we have seen a shift in the social treatment of white people in America. The desire to be politically correct at all times, in hopes of avoiding becoming the next viral “Karen” or racist has become imperative. The following thesis will explore the latest trend of white women buying racial capital by producing mixed-race children. At first glance, this idea can be a bit problematic. How can we assume the reasoning behind a woman choosing to bear a child? With this in mind, I would like to emphasize that individuals do not have to consciously be racist …

Enzymatic Production Of Cyclodextrin Using Cyclodextrin Glycosyltransferase Immobilized In Metal Organic Frameworks (Mofs), Babatunde Azeez Ogunbadejo

Dissertations

Cyclodextrins (CDs) and their derivatives have attracted significant attention in the pharmaceutical, food, and textile industries, which has led to an increased demand for their production. CDs are typically produced by the action of cyclodextrin glycosyltransferase (CGTase) on starch. Owing to the relatively high cost of enzymes, the economic feasibility of the entire process strongly depends on the effective retention and recycling of CGTase in the reaction system, while maintaining the enzyme’s activity and stability. Previous supports used for this purpose such as silica and hydrogels, have numerous drawbacks, including enzyme leaching, activity loss and significant mass transfer limitations. The …

Enhancement Of Rainfall Prediction And Satellite Precipitation Estimates: A Machine Learning Approach For United Arab Emirates, Faisal Baig

Dissertations

The accurate estimation of rainfall in arid regions presents a significant challenge due to sparse ground observations and complex atmospheric dynamics. This dissertation investigates various aspects of rainfall estimation and prediction in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), employing Satellite Precipitation Products (SPPs) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques. The research is structured around four key articles, each addressing different facets of the overarching theme. The first publication examines rainfall variability, consistency, and concentration in the UAE by comparing satellite precipitation products with rain gauge observations, highlighting the discrepancies between the two data sources. The second publication evaluates the performance of precipitation …

School Leadership For The Practice Of Inclusive Education In Elementary Schools In The United Arab Emirates, Aysha Saeed Al Nuaimi

Dissertations

The number of students with disabilities in regular classrooms is increasing. In 2020, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) introduced a new policy with the goal of promoting inclusive education in all public schools. Although the UAE government is committed to the education of children with disabilities, the role of school leaders is vital to the successful implementation of inclusive education in schools. While school leaders have been found to be the main agents in steering inclusive practices, their contribution to practices in schools in the UAE context remains empirically unresearched. The objective of this study was to explore elementary school …