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Nano-Bio Interactions: Implications And Applications, Anushree Ghosh

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Rapid expansion of technology development at the nanoscale has underpinned a promising industry. Towards this, there remain significant information gaps which are critical with regard to decision making processes and ultimate industrial sustainability. From an implication point of view, understanding how common biological macromolecules, including glycolipids and/or biopolymers produced by bacteria and fungi, which are ubiquitous in the environment, is fundamental to predicting the behavior of released/produced nanoparticles. Conversely, other bio-based tailored macromolecules, including mussel foot protein (MFP), have significant potential as functional material coatings for advanced applications.This PhD thesis is focused on interfacial processes related to superparamagnetic iron oxide …

Fast And Radiation-Free High-Resolution Mr Cranial Bone Imaging For Pediatric Patients, Parna Eshraghi Boroojeni

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

AbstractEach year, 2.2 million pediatric head computed tomography (CT) scans are performed in the United States. Head trauma and craniosynostosis are two of the most common pediatric conditions requiring head CT scans. Head trauma is common in children and one-third of the patients that present to the emergency room undergoes head CT imaging. Craniosynostosis is a congenital disability defined by a prematurely fused cranial suture. Standard clinical care for pediatric patients with head trauma or craniosynostosis uses high-resolution head CT to identify cranial fractures or cranial sutures. Unfortunately, the ionizing radiation of CT imaging imposes a risk to patients, particularly …

Understanding Control Of Metabolite Dynamics And Heterogeneity, Christopher John Hartline

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Microbes live in complex and continually changing environments. Rapid shifts in nutrient availability are a common challenge for microbes, and cause changes in intracellular metabolite levels. Microbial response to dynamic environments requires coordination of multiple levels of cellular machinery including gene expression and metabolite concentrations. This coordination is achieved through metabolic control systems, which sense metabolite concentrations and direct cellular activity in response. Several reoccurring control architectures are found throughout diverse metabolic systems, which suggests underlying evolutionary advantages for using these control systems to coordinate metabolism. One common, yet understudied, control architecture is the positive feedback metabolite uptake loop, which …

Plasmonic Nanomaterials-Based Point-Of-Care Biosensors, Rohit Gupta

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Point-of-care (POC) biosensors, although rapid and easy-to-use, are orders magnitude less sensitive than laboratory-based tests. Further they are plagued by poor stability of recognition element thus limiting its widespread applicability in resource-limited settings. Therefore, there is a critical need for realizing stable POC biosensors with sensitivity comparable to gold-standard laboratory-based tests. This challenge constitutes the fundamental basis of this dissertation work– to expand access to quality and accurate biodiagnostic tools. At the heart of these solutions lies plasmonic nanoparticles which exhibit unique optical properties which are attractive for label-free and labelled biosensors.Firstly, we improve the stability and applicability of label-free …

Modeling The Effects Of Mechanical Loading On Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Pathogenesis In Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Derived Micro Heart Muscle, Jingxuan Guo

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Sudden cardiac death in the young is devastating. Advances in genetics have associated mutations in the contractile sarcomere apparatus of cardiomyocytes with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the most frequent cause of sudden cardiac death in the young. Currently, it is challenging to predict genotype-phenotype relationships in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy due to its incomplete disease penetrance. For example, different patients from the same family with identical genomic variants develop different symptoms. Non-genetic, environmental factors such as blood pressure are critical in heart function and disease. Therefore, understanding how mechanical factors contribute to phenotypes in diseases like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is critical for developing effective therapeutics. …

Machine Learning And Scalable Informatics Methods To Predict Disease Status From Multimodal Biomedical Data, Hossein Mohammadian Foroushani

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Biological understanding of complex diseases such as stroke and obesity is critical for the advancement of medicine. Further knowledge discovery can provide effective biomarkers to improve disease diagnosis and prognosis, identify driver mutations, predict individual genetic susceptibility for early prevention and effective disease management, and facilitate development of personalized drugs. Stroke is the second leading cause of death and long-term disability in the world. Thus, stroke management is a time-sensitive emergency. The initial hours after stroke onset map the trajectory of subsequent neurologic complications. Cerebral edema develops hours to days after acute ischemic stroke and may result in midline shift …

Evaluation And Clinical Implementation Of A Dual-Energy Ct Stopping-Power Ratio Mapping Technique For Proton-Therapy Treatment Planning, Maria Jose Medrano Matamoros

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Proton radiotherapy has the potential to treat tumors with better conformal dose distribution than competing modalities when the rapid dose falloff at the end of the proton-beam range is correctly aligned to the edge of the clinical target volume (CTV). However, its clinical potential is dependent on the accurate localization of the Bragg-peak position from predicted stopping-power ratio maps. The method that is most commonly used in today’s clinical practice for predicting stopping-power ratio (SPR) consists of a stoichiometric calibrationtechnique based on single-energy CT (SECT) for direct estimation of patient-specific SPR distribution from vendor-reconstructed Hounsfield Unit (HU) images. Unfortunately, this …

Ligand- And Strain-Specific Control Of Microbial Communities, Austin Grant Rottinghaus

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Microbes naturally coexist in complex, multi-strain communities that are valuable assets for their host. Commensal and probiotic microbes prevent pathogen colonization, reduce the frequency and severity of various ailments, provide essential nutrients, and offer various additional benefits. Understanding the dynamics of and tailoring microbial communities to provide additional beneficial functions is a primary focus of researchers in medicine and agriculture. To date, consortia have primarily been manipulated by supplementing the communities with microbes that were engineered in vitro or by introducing stimuli that alter the metabolism or composition of the community. This method has proven successful, with numerous microbes engineered …

Calcium Bearing Mineral-Hydrogel Composites For Phosphate Removal And Recovery, Albern Xuan-Wei Tan

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The millions of tons of phosphate rock ore mined every year for use as phosphorus fertilizer have created two challenges. First, phosphate rock is a mined, non-renewable resource that is also heavily geographically concentrated, raising concerns about the long-term sustainability and availability of phosphorus. Second, after it is applied as a fertilizer, phosphorus will also be released to the broader environment. There, it contributes to harmful algal blooms and eutrophication, which threaten surface water quality and can harm aquatic ecosystems and the communities and industries that rely on them. These considerations motivate the coupled development of techniques for removing and …

Fate Of Metals In Presence Of Minerals And Mineral-Organic Assemblages, Neha Sharma

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Metals can enter aquatic systems from natural and anthropogenic processes associated with weathering, sediment re-suspension, industrial activities, and atmospheric deposition. Metals pose health and environmental risks at high concentrations due to their potential toxicity and bioaccumulation, but many trace metals also serve as essential micronutrients for biogeochemical processes in natural aquatic systems. Biogeochemical processes such as methanogenesis, denitrification, and mercury methylation require transition metals such as nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), and molybdenum (Mo) for completion. These biogeochemical processes can be substantial contributors of greenhouse gases, such as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), into the atmosphere. The behavior, …

Noninvasive Neuromodulation Via Ultrasonic Activation Of Endogenous And Exogenous Ion Channels, Yaoheng Yang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Neuromodulation technology is key to understanding brain function and treating brain diseases. Conventional neuromodulation technologies, such as direct current stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and optogenetics, predominately rely on electromagnetic waves. However, the fundamental physical law  the tradeoff-relationship between penetration and spatial resolution, limits their transcranial penetration within the superficial cortex layer. To overcome this challenge, electrodes or optical fibers need to be surgically implanted into the brain to modulate specific brain regions. Different from electromagnetic waves, ultrasound, as a mechanical wave, can non-invasively penetrate through the intact skull to reach deep brain regions with millimeter spatial focus. Ultrasound has …

Pet/Mr Imaging Biomarkers For Cerebral Small Vascular Diseases: Tissue Oxygenation Stress And Neuroinflammation, Chunwei Ying

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Fifty million people are affected by dementia worldwide. Cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) often leads to vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID), the second leading cause of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease (AD), accounting for up to 45% of dementia. White matter hyperintensities (WMH) on fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) imaging and disrupted white matter microstructure on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) have been widely used as biomarkers to evaluate CSVD.

The pathogenesis underlying CSVD is not well understood. It has been postulated that exposure to risk factors, including hypertension, diabetes, and smoking over years injures small arterioles, impairs autoregulation and …

Development Of The Assessment Of Clinical Prediction Model Transportability (Apt) Checklist, Sean Chonghwan Yu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Clinical Prediction Models (CPM) have long been used for Clinical Decision Support (CDS) initially based on simple clinical scoring systems, and increasingly based on complex machine learning models relying on large-scale Electronic Health Record (EHR) data. External implementation – or the application of CPMs on sites where it was not originally developed – is valuable as it reduces the need for redundant de novo CPM development, enables CPM usage by low resource organizations, facilitates external validation studies, and encourages collaborative development of CPMs. Further, adoption of externally developed CPMs has been facilitated by ongoing interoperability efforts in standards, policy, and …

Development Of A Medication Reconciliation Policy In Outpatient Mental Health Facility, Karen E. Webster

DNP and Student Works

Adverse drug events and medication discrepancies are patient safety challenges for patients and healthcare professionals. Medication errors result in approximately 7000 deaths annually, and adverse drug events harm 1.5 billion people and cost $3.5 billion annually (Dunham & Makoul, 2008). Medication reconciliation can significantly decrease medication errors. "It involves obtaining, verifying and documenting the patient's current medicines and comparing to their medication orders and the patient's condition to identify and resolve any discrepancies" (Duguid, 2012, p. 15). The deliberate time taken to complete medication reconciliation plays a significant role in patient care, along with increasing the quality of care provided. …

Thermomagnetic-Responsive Self-Folding Microgrippers For Improving Minimally Invasive Surgical Techniques And Biopsies, Caleigh R. Dunn, Bruce Lee, Rupak Rajachar

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Traditional open surgery complications are typically due to trauma caused by accessing the procedural site rather than the procedure itself. Minimally invasive surgery allows for fewer complications as microdevices operate through small incisions or natural orifices. However, current minimally invasive tools typically have restricted maneuverability, accessibility, and positional control of microdevices. Thermomagnetic-responsive microgrippers are microscopic multi-fingered devices that respond to temperature changes due to the presence of thermal-responsive polymers. Polymeric devices, made of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-acrylic acid) (pNIPAM-AAc) and polypropylene fumarate (PPF), self-fold due to swelling and contracting of the hydrogel layer. In comparison, soft metallic devices feature a pre-stressed metal bilayer …

Disjoint And Simultaneously Hypercyclic Pseudo-Shifts, Nurhan Çolakoğlu, Özgür Martin, Rebecca Sanders

Mathematical and Statistical Science Faculty Research and Publications

We characterize disjoint and simultaneously hypercyclic tuples of unilateral pseudo-shift operators on ℓ^p(ℕ) . As a consequence, complementing the results of Bernal and Jung, we give a characterization for simultaneously hypercyclic tuples of unilateral weighted shifts. We also give characterizations for unilateral pseudo-shifts that satisfy the Disjoint and Simultaneous Hypercyclicity Criterions. Contrary to the disjoint hypercyclicity case, tuples of weighted shifts turn out to be simultaneously hypercyclic if and only if they satisfy the Simultaneous Hypercyclicity Criterion.

Measuring And Controlling Medical Record Abstraction (Mra) Error Rates In An Observational Study, Songthip Ounpraseuth, Zhuopei Hu, Jeannette Lee, Jessica Snowden, Meredith N Zozus, Anita C Walden, Alan E Simon, Barbara Mcclaskey, Sarah G Sanders, Sandra S Beauman, Sara R Ford, Lacy Malloch, Amy Wilson, Lori A Devlin, Leslie W Young

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Studies have shown that data collection by medical record abstraction (MRA) is a significant source of error in clinical research studies relying on secondary use data. Yet, the quality of data collected using MRA is seldom assessed. We employed a novel, theory-based framework for data quality assurance and quality control of MRA. The objective of this work is to determine the potential impact of formalized MRA training and continuous quality control (QC) processes on data quality over time.

METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis of QC data collected during a cross-sectional medical record review of mother-infant dyads with Neonatal …

Secure Human Action Recognition By Encrypted Neural Network Inference, Shayan Shams

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Advanced computer vision technology can provide near real-time home monitoring to support "aging in place" by detecting falls and symptoms related to seizures and stroke. Affordable webcams, together with cloud computing services (to run machine learning algorithms), can potentially bring significant social benefits. However, it has not been deployed in practice because of privacy concerns. In this paper, we propose a strategy that uses homomorphic encryption to resolve this dilemma, which guarantees information confidentiality while retaining action detection. Our protocol for secure inference can distinguish falls from activities of daily living with 86.21% sensitivity and 99.14% specificity, with an average …

Words From Elsewhere: The Rhetoric Of Nineteenth Century African American Prophetic Call Narratives, Thomas M. Fuerst

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

This dissertation examines the various rhetorical tactics of the African American Prophetic Tradition of the nineteenth century, specifically those utilized in the prophetic call narratives of Maria Stewart, Nat Turner, Julia Foote, and Richard Allen. These figures anchor their larger prophetic messages in the claim that God has called them to the prophetic task. This rhetoric of calling assumes that God still speaks, and that God’s speaking matters to local communities under the thumb of racial and gendered oppression. Moreover, the rhetoric of calling assumes that God’s speaking has material (not just spiritual) effect in the world, and that God …

Social Capital And Mental Health Among Chinese Older Adults, Yuekang Li

Brown School Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to develop our understanding of social capital by exploring the dimensions and profiles of social capital among Chinese older adults and the factors and health conditions associated with social capital in later life. The approach was secondary analyses of the China Family Panel Study (CFPS), a nationally representative survey of the Chinese population. It is the intent of this work to offer applicable guidance on policy and project design regarding health promotion for the aging population through social intervention. Aim 1 explores the dimensions and associative factors of social capital of Chinese older adults. It was found …

Model-Based Deep Learning For Computational Imaging, Xiaojian Xu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation addresses model-based deep learning for computational imaging. The motivation of our work is driven by the increasing interests in the combination of imaging model, which provides data-consistency guarantees to the observed measurements, and deep learning, which provides advanced prior modeling driven by data. Following this idea, we develop multiple algorithms by integrating the classical model-based optimization and modern deep learning to enable efficient and reliable imaging. We demonstrate the performance of our algorithms by validating their performance on various imaging applications and providing rigorous theoretical analysis.

The dissertation evaluates and extends three general frameworks, plug-and-play priors (PnP), regularized …

Nanoscale Interfacial Control Of Ion Behaviors And Caco3 Formation In Environmental Systems, Yaguang Zhu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Interfaces in environmental systems can change the distribution of pollutants and nutrients, determine the fate and transport of nanoparticles, and affect the efficiency of engineering projects. Complex interactions, including electrostatic interactions, Van der Waals interactions, chemical interactions, and ion-surface specific interactions, can all contribute to different ion, ion-pair, and nanoparticle formations near interfaces. Although environmental interfaces play critical roles, only a limited number of studies have considered the nanoscale picture of how they control ions and nanoparticles. Thus, this dissertation addresses three research questions: (1) How does sulfate chemically interact with calcium carbonate (CaCO3) during its heterogeneous formation on quartz …

Five Things You Should Know This Week, Georgia Southern University

A Few Things You Should Know This Week (2020-2023)

• GS Behavioral Assessment Team (BAT) is Available to Identify Resources and Appropriate Interventions
• State of Georgia Government Vehicle Insurance ID Card is Available Online
• Please be Aware of Projects and Office Moves Around our Campuses

Macro Barriers To Business And Innovation In Developing Economies: Evidence From Egyptian, Moroccan, And Tunisian Smes, Nizar Becheikh, Mohammed Bouaddi

Faculty Journal Articles

Investing in knowledge and innovation is recognised as a key driver of economic growth in any country. This paper contributes to the thin literature on innovation determinants in developing economies by empirically examining the impact of macro-level obstacles to business on small and medium-sized enterprises’ innovations in three Arab countries, namely, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. While R&D emerged as the main factor that impacts positively and significantly the likelihood that firms innovate and succeed in producing a diverse set of product and process innovations, different combinations of other factors proved to affect innovation in each of the three countries.

Ell Cultural Inclusion Initiative, Julia L. Gidley

Masters Theses

This project draws on Maslow’s theory of motivation using his hierarchy as a framework, as well as Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. This project aims to engage and involve English Language Learners (ELL) in the classroom by informing educators of strategies that help to find commonalities among students and cultivate communication between Native English Speakers and ELLs thus developing a culturally inclusive classroom. By building the relationships between the two student subgroups (ELLs and NESs) teachers will gain a class of students who have a well-developed world view, increase language acquisition, and develop a deep appreciation and respect for other cultures. Through …

Development Of Noninvasive Biomarkers For Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy, Dinal Jayasekera

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) represents the most common cause of chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) in adults. Many patients with symptomatic CSM will experience a decline in neurological function and consequently undergo surgical decompression. Unfortunately, surgeons are unable to adequately counsel patients about the benefits of surgery because the natural history of disease and outcome after decompression vary widely among patients. This can hinder the decision-making capacity of patients and physicians. Therefore, we require additional tools to help guide therapy and counsel patients with CSM. Noninvasive biomarkers present valuable potential as predictors of a patient’s recovery in the long term. …

Dynamic Continuous Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems, Khoi Hoang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem (DCOP) formulation is a powerful tool to model multi-agent coordination problems that are distributed by nature. The formulation is suitable for problems where the environment does not change over time and where agents seek their value assignment from a discrete domain. However, in many real-world applications, agents often interact in a more dynamic environment and their variables usually require a more complex domain. Thus, the DCOP formulation lacks the capabilities to model the problems in such dynamic and complex environments. To address these limitations, researchers have proposed Dynamic DCOPs (D-DCOPs) to model how DCOPs dynamically …

Tfa Inference: Using Mathematical Modeling Of Gene Expression Data To Infer The Activity Of Transcription Factors, Cynthia Ma

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Transcription factors (TFs) are a set of proteins that play a key role in the information processing system that enables a cell to respond to changes in internal and external state. By binding near a gene in a cell’s DNA, a TF can influence that gene’s expression level, triggering the appropriate increase or decrease in production levels of proteins that are needed to handle stressors like a change in nutrient availability or damage to the cell’s internal structures. Transcription factor activity (TFA) is a measure of how much effect a TF has on its target genes in a given sample …

Smart Sensing And Clinical Predictions With Wearables: From Physiological Signals To Mental Health, Ruixuan Dai

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Wearable devices such as smartwatches and wristbands are gaining adoption. Recent advances in technology in wearables enable remote health monitoring. However, there are challenges in exploiting wearables in healthcare applications. First, sensor readings from wearables are vulnerable to motion and noise artifacts. A robust pipeline is needed to extract reliable measurements from noisy signals. Second, while wearables support an increasing number of sensing modalities, there is a significant need to generate more clinically meaningful measurements with wearables. Finally, to incorporate wearables into clinical practice, we need to establish the link between wearable measurements and clinical outcomes, thus supporting clinical decisions. …

Scheduling For High Throughput And Small Latency In Parallel And Distributed Systems, Zhe Wang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Parallel and distributed systems are pervasive, such as web services, clouds, and cyber-physical systems. We often desire high throughput and small latency in the parallel and distributed system. However, since the system is distributed and the input is online, scheduling for high throughput while keeping the latency small is often challenging. In this dissertation, we developed scheduling algorithms, policies, and mechanisms to approach high throughput with small latency in various parallel and distributed applications. First, we developed AMCilk runtime system for running multi-programmed parallel jobs on many-processor machines. When running parallel jobs, the allocation of processors to the parallel jobs …