Digital Commons Network^™

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

All Dissertations

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

Cultivation 2.0: The Mediated Environment As Message In The 21st Century, Chelsea Slack

All Dissertations

It is hard to deny social media and its omnipresence is affecting users. What’s more, the online mediated environment is becoming increasingly diverse, with more social media platforms being created and used each year. What is social media doing to us? How do different platforms affect views of users? To answer these questions, this study applied cultivation theory to the mediated environment, which included the social media platforms of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok. With 413 respondents, the results of this study indicated that Facebook consumption is related to first order cultivation effects, and non-Facebook platforms contribute to …

Deep Learning Based Speech Enhancement And Its Application To Speech Recognition, Ju Lin

All Dissertations

Speech enhancement is the task that aims to improve the quality and the intelligibility of a speech signal that is degraded by ambient noise and room reverberation. Speech enhancement algorithms are used extensively in many audio- and communication systems, including mobile handsets, speech recognition, speaker verification systems and hearing aids. Recently, deep learning has achieved great success in many applications, such as computer vision, nature language processing and speech recognition. Speech enhancement methods have been introduced that use deep-learning techniques, as these techniques are capable of learning complex hierarchical functions using large-scale training data. This dissertation investigates the deep learning …

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

All Dissertations

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

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

All Dissertations

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

Novel Peptide Biomaterials For Enhanced Delivery Of Sirna Cargo For Treatment Of Ovarian Cancer, Timothy Samec

All Dissertations

Ovarian cancer is the 7^th leading cause of cancer related death and the 5^th most commonly diagnosed cancer among women. Primarily diagnosed in stage III or stage IV, aggressive treatment is necessary and involves surgical debulking and administration of systemic chemotherapeutics. Unfortunately, these strategies fall short in effectively treating ovarian cancer and many patients experience local disease recurrence, development of multidrug resistant tumors, regional or distant metastatic events, or a combination of the three. As such, there is a significant need for additional treatment options and methods of delivery to improve therapeutic efficacy and disease survivability.

RNA interference …

Stimuli-Responsive And Electrically Conductive Metal-Organic Frameworks, Amina Khatun

All Dissertations

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), a class of porous materials made of organic ligands linked by metal ions or cluster nodes, are well known for their highly ordered crystalline structure and chemical and structural tunability. Due to their porous nature, MOFs can encapsulate guest molecules inside the cavities. The tunable structures, compositions, porosity, and surface area make MOFs useful for various applications, such as gas storage and separation, chemical sensing, catalysis, optoelectronics, and drug delivery.

In chapter 2, I present a new luminescent metal-organic framework (LMOF) featuring energy transfer and stimuli (Hg²⁺) responsive capabilities. The two fluorophoric ligands incorporated in …

Where To Start? A Tool For Thinking About The Sdgs And Community Foundation Work, Katie Leone, Tessa Lesage

The Foundation Review

The merits of advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are widely agreed upon by the global community, but designing and applying strategies to do so at the local level can be challenging. This article aims to support community foundations in moving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development forward in practical ways by exploring the use of a point-of-entry wheel to create a shared language that can help community foundations align their local efforts with the global goals.

Since 2012, Collaboratory has been exploring the potential for integrating sustainability — encompassing economic, social, and environmental pillars — as a strategic …

De La Promesa De Los Objetivos De Desarrollo Sostenible A La Acción: El Caso De Las Fundaciones Comunitarias En Canadá, Marta Rey-Garcia, Rosane Dal Magro

The Foundation Review

La Agenda 2030 de las Naciones Unidas crea una oportunidad para que las fundacionesfilantrópicas sean más colaborativas ytransformadoras en su trabajo hacia los objetivosglobales. Así, desde 2016, el grado en que lasfundaciones adoptan el marco de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible en su funcionamiento se ha convertido en un tema de interés. Aunque lasinvestigaciones basadas en encuestas y casosmuestran un aumento de las tasas de adopción por parte de las fundaciones y existen variasherramientas para ayudarlas a actuar en pro delos objetivos, faltan pruebas sistemáticas sobrelos propósitos y los procesos de adopción de losODS entre las fundaciones.

Este vacío es …

Evapotranspiration In Mid-South Rice Production, Colby Wade Reavis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rice provides much needed sustenance to a large portion of the global population, particularly in the developing world. With stress placed on food production systems under the reality of climate change and an increasing global population, rice production systems require solutions to a number of issues, including a limited water supply. As producers explore new strategies for conserving local water resources to continue to maintain yields, new irrigation strategies and technologies are being developed and validated for use at commercial production scales. Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is an irrigation practice that provides water savings through the capture of rainfall …

Data Management Report December 2021, Tennessee. Department Of Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities

Compliance & System Data/Reports

This monthly report provides data on various aspects of the department's activities and programs.

Integrating Wearable Devices For Intelligent Health Monitoring System, Sondous Sulaiman, Mohammed Najm

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

It is known that many individuals suffer from chronic diseases such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea, which requires constant monitoring, which is only found in the hospital, and the high cost that the individual cannot afford, especially at present. This paper proposes a system through which an individual can monitor vital signs and can use the wearable device by himself without the need for assistance. Wearable devices have been used from the sensors where the proposed system uses six sensors which are the electrocardiogram, the pulse oximeter, heart rate, blood pressure, skin temperature, temperature, and humidity …

Detection And Classification Of Leaf Disease Using Deep Learning For A Greenhouses’ Robot, Shahad Ahmed, Saman Hameed

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Plant diseases are a severe threat to the environment, economy, and health. Early disease identification remains a challenging task in Iraq due to the scarce of the necessary resources and infrastructure. This paper uses various deep learning algorithms to detect different diseases on plant leaves and detect healthy ones, using an RGB camera as a crucial part of our real-time autonomous greenhouses' robot along with using two datasets, plant-village and cotton dataset, to investigate the best conVolutional neural network architecture. The first dataset contained 10,190 images from the plant-village open datasets; it includes four crops with ten distinct classes of …

Image Encryption Paillier Homomorphic Cryptosystem, Zainab Mohammed, Hala Bahjat, Abdul Mohssen Jaber Abdul Hossen

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

With the increasing use of media in communications, both academia and industry pay attention to the content security of digital images. This research presents a Homomorphic cryptosystem-based asymmetric picture encryption technique (Paillier). The algorithm is used for securing images that transmit over public unsecured channels. The Homomorphic property is used in this paper, which is comprised of three steps: key generation, encryption, and decryption. To realize such approach, the encryption cryptosystem must support additional operation over encrypted data. This cryptosystem can be effective in protecting images and supporting the construction of programs that can process encrypted input and produce encrypted …

Data Hiding By Unsupervised Machine Learning Using Clustering K-Mean Technique, Hiba Hamdi, Maisa'a Abid Ali

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Steganography includes hiding text, image, or any sentient information inside another image, video, or audio. It aims to increase individuals’ use of social media, the internet and web networks to securely transmit information between sender and receiver and an attacker will not be able to detect its information. The current article deals with steganography that can be used as machine learning method, it suggests a new method to hide data by using unsupervised machine learning (clustering k-mean algorithm). This system uses hidden data into the cover image, it consists of three steps: the first step divides the cover image into …

An Enhanced Hybrid Edge-Cloud Algorithm For Reducing Iot Service Delay, Rawaa Ammar, Hassan Jaleel, Ghaida Muttashar Abdel Saheb

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

The Savvy Manufacturing plant could be a concept that communicates the conclusion goal of fabricating digitization. A Smart Factory, within the most common sense, profoundly digitized shop floor that collects and offers information persistently through associated computers, gadgets, and generations. In this work, the factory is represented by five types of sensors. The reading of the sensor values is sent to one of the Edge servers and cloud computing. One Edge server is selected based on calculating the time it takes for each server. The highest least time priority is chosen to receive the data coming from the sensors. This …

Study Of Cyber Security Effects On Wireless Sensors Networks, Shaymaa Mahmood, Yossra Hussain

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

In recent two years, information systems have been adopted in most fields of life due to the health state around the world. At the same time, the risk factor of security attacks is increased sharply as well. These attacks consider different actions toward damaging the data of systems or even making down their work. In this paper, a study of cyber-threats (attacks) on Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is presented. This study illustrates the effects of the cyber-threats on the WSN according to the network layers, as well as their privacy concerns. The outcome of this study is the classification of …

Speaker Recognition System Based On Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient And Four Features, Ashraf Tahseen, Hasanen S., Mohammad N. Fadhil

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Biometrics signs are the most important factor in the human recognition field and considered an effective technique for person authentication systems. Voice recognition is a popular method to use due to its ease of implementation and acceptable effectiveness. This original_study will introduce a speaker recognition system that consists of preprocessing techniques to eliminate noise and make the sound smoother. For the feature extraction stage, the method Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) is used, and in the second step, the four features (FF) Mean, Standard Division, Zero-Cross and Amplitude, which added to (MFCC) to improve the results. For data representation, vector …

3d Textured Model Encryption Using 2d Logistic And 3d Lorenz Chaotic Map, Nashwan Alsalam, Abdul Monem S., Shaimaa H. Shaker

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

The widespread of recent multimedia, including various 3D model applications in different domains of areas, may lead to 3D models being stolen and attacked by hackers. Moreover, 3D models must be protected from unauthorized users and when transmitting over the internet. Nowadays the 3D model protection is a very important Issue. This paper proposed a scheme that provides high protection for the textured 3D model by implementing multiple levels of security. The first level of security is achieved by encrypting the texture map based on a key generated by a 2D Logistic chaotic map. The second level of security is …

Load Balancing And Detection Of Distributed Denial Of Service Attacks Using Entropy Detection, Hiba Salah, Ahmed Al-Saadi

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

Software Defined Network (SDN) is a modern network architecture that has a centralized controller. It is more flexible, and programmable due to the separation of the control plane from the data plane. However, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks is one of the dangers that the SDN network is facing. It could attack and stop the controller from working, causing the whole system to be down. Moreover, DDoS attacks can target the hosts and the switches to stop the services for a long time as they could cause more damage to the network or datacenter. In this work, a proposed …

Timetabling Problem Solving Based On Improved Meerkat Clan Algorithm (Imca), Mohammed A., Hasanen S.

Iraqi Journal of Computers, Communications, Control and Systems Engineering

The university courses timetabling problem (UCTP) is a big topic among academics and institutions since it occurs every academic year. In general, UCTP is the distribution of events across slots time for each room based on a list of restrictions provided in one semester, such as (hard constraint and soft constraint), with the objective of avoiding conflicts in such assignments. Hard constraints should never be breached when striving to satisfy as many soft constraints as possible. There are many different methods used in automating the problems of the university timetabling course in higher education institutions. This paper presents an improved …

Front Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Teresa R. Behrens

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Walking The Talk On Sustainable Development Goals: The Case Of Community Foundations In Canada, Marta Rey-Garcia, Rosane Dal Magro

The Foundation Review

The United Nations 2030 Agenda creates an opportunity for philanthropic foundations to become more collaborative and transformative in their work toward global goals. Thus, since 2016, the extent to which foundations adopt the Sustainable Development Goals framework in their functioning has become a topic of interest. Although survey- and case-based research shows increased rates of self-reported adoption and several tools are available to help foundations to act toward the goals, there is a lack of systematic evidence about the purposes of and processes for adopting the goals among foundations.

This void is particularly relevant for community foundations, as they have …

Localizing The 2030 Agenda With Community Data: Lessons From The Community Foundations Of Canada’S Vital Signs Program, Beth Timmers, Alison Sidney

The Foundation Review

Drawing on case studies in Canada, this article analyzes the critical role that community indicators can play in philanthropy’s ability to localize the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the associated Sustainable Development Goals to address complex societal and environmental challenges.

Measurement is an integral component of Agenda 2030, and communities are increasingly using indicators to align their plans, inform granting decisions, and track equity and sustainability outcomes. Canada’s most extensive community-driven indicator program, Vital Signs, uses different types of data to measure the vitality of a community and support action toward improving collective quality of life; and …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Back Matter

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

A Case Study On The Use Of The Sdgs With A Collective Impact Initiative In Southwest Florida, Tessa Lesage, Aysegul Timur, Dakota Pawlicki

The Foundation Review

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals can be a useful framework on which to design, evaluate, and communicate collective impact initiatives. Using as a case study the FutureMakers Coalition, a collective impact initiative launched by the Southwest Florida Community Foundation to transform its region’s workforce, the field can gain insights into how the goals can strengthen collective impact work locally and nationally.

This article will discuss how the foundation facilitated the setting of a common agenda and the use of the Sustainable Development Goals to help build consensus among 251 active partners on how to measure progress toward the coalition’s …

Proof Positive: Applications Of Chemical Analysis Techniques In Art Forgery Detection, Joseph Fryc

Museum Studies Theses

In response to the subjective nature of older forgery detection techniques, modern forgery detection methods rely heavily on chemical analysis of the materials utilized in a given piece of work in order to make authenticity determinations. Chemical methods of detection at their core provide an objective determination of facts regarding the composition of materials utilized in contested pieces and provide a relative date of production for those materials. In this way, chemical analysis helps service the field of modern forgery detection as a direct compliment to traditional stylistic analysis, by providing extra data on the piece that can often be …