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University of Alabama at Birmingham

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Articles 2941 - 2970 of 5836

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Influences Of Exercise And Mental Work On Eating Behavior And Predictors Of These Effects, William H. Neumeier Jan 2016

The Influences Of Exercise And Mental Work On Eating Behavior And Predictors Of These Effects, William H. Neumeier

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Physical activity levels have decreased and obesity rates have increased. Individuals now primarily perform mental work while remaining sedentary. Mental work has been associated with increased calorie consumption and decreased cognitive performance. The increased energy consumption and decline in cognitive performance following mental work may be due to the brain’s utilization of limited energy resources. The brain may seek food to replenish energy sources, and increased food consumption without changes in energy expenditure may contribute to positive energy balance. Exercise is known to contribute to negative energy balance. In addition, acute exercise and physical fitness levels are positively associated with …

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Boundary Construction And Identity Maintenance In Institutionalized Versus Non-Institutionalized Women Methamphetamine Users, Megan Elisabeth Webb Jan 2016

Boundary Construction And Identity Maintenance In Institutionalized Versus Non-Institutionalized Women Methamphetamine Users, Megan Elisabeth Webb

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Since the late 1990s there has been an increase in the use of methamphetamine (meth) across the United States. Concerns about the physical, mental, and societal effects of the drug have been fueled by the media and anti-drug campaigns and have contributed to the demonization of meth and its users. People who use meth construct symbolic boundaries in an attempt to navigate the stigma associated with their drug use and in an attempt to maintain a positive self-identity. Symbolic boundaries are the distinctions, or social categories, that individuals make in attempt to categorize certain people and behaviors. One way that …

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Neural Network Associated With The Psychobiological Response To Stress, Muriah Wheelock Jan 2016

Neural Network Associated With The Psychobiological Response To Stress, Muriah Wheelock

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The biobehavioral response to acute stress is an allostatic process. Dysregulation of the stress response has been implicated in allostatic load and the pathophysiology of a wide range of physical and psychological disorders. There have been considerable advances within the last two decades in the field’s understanding of allostatic load and a consistent finding across studies has been that individual differences are the norm rather than the exception. That is, exposure to stress seems to have minimal negative consequences for some, but substantial negative consequences for others. Determining the neural processes associated with individual differences in stress reactivity may advance …

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Paper Me, Matthew David Whitehurst Jan 2016

Paper Me, Matthew David Whitehurst

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Paper Me is an autobiographical collage. It contains memoir essays, personal essays and comedic essays. Dark humor and sarcasm are the vehicle for the narrative voice throughout the collage. The narrative is arranged in a pseudo-chronological order, and traces a line through dotted memories: from the first memory as a child in pre-school, to the death of a friend after college. Addiction, Paternal Relationships, Politics, Absurdity/Humor, Poverty, Sociology and Philosophy are recurring themes in this collection. This is the author’s attempt to concretize a world view, as informed by personal experience, and to impart that experiential knowledge on the larger …

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Temporal Co-Expression Network Construction, Leading Sub-Network Identification, And Time Point Alignment In The Integration Of Phase Transition Theory And Systems Biology And The Application To Human Type 1 Diabetes, Nathaniel Wolanyk Jan 2016

Temporal Co-Expression Network Construction, Leading Sub-Network Identification, And Time Point Alignment In The Integration Of Phase Transition Theory And Systems Biology And The Application To Human Type 1 Diabetes, Nathaniel Wolanyk

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Systems biology is a rapidly expanding field used to tackle a wide range of biological problems. Systems biology arose to explain areas that detailed biological analysis, such as genetics and biopsies, struggled with. Systems biology is the study of the complexity within a biological system of multiple units that is due to the interaction among the units. In this dissertation systems biology will be combined with phase transition theory from physics to create a new analysis method for complex diseases and apply this new method to a longitudinal dataset on Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) to identify the key contributing molecules …

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Upper Extremity Motor Training Of A Patient With Initially Motor Complete High Tetraplegia Using Constraint-Induced Biofeedback Therapy (Cibt), Brent Womble Jan 2016

Upper Extremity Motor Training Of A Patient With Initially Motor Complete High Tetraplegia Using Constraint-Induced Biofeedback Therapy (Cibt), Brent Womble

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Treatment in this case of motor complete high tetraplegia began 22 months after injury. Electromyographic biofeedback was used to strengthen weak muscle contractions in the right upper arm to obtain limb movement. The newly emerging movement was trained by shaping to enable functional movements: controlling a wheelchair with a joystick, using a computer mouse for typing, and bringing the hand to mouth for self-feeding and facial hygiene with the aid of a Swedish Help Arm counterweight system. Some individuals with high tetraplegia may have heretofore unexplored capacity for late motor recovery with appropriate noninvasive training.

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Mercy Otis Warren: A Woman In Motion, Victoria Courtney Roberts Jan 2016

Mercy Otis Warren: A Woman In Motion, Victoria Courtney Roberts

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This thesis is an examination of the life of Mercy Otis Warren, who wrote the first history of the United States, was the first American woman to publish political literature under her own name, and was deeply involved in politics of the Early Republic. In the time leading up to the American Revolution, Mercy wrote many plays and poems that were circulated in an effort to convince colonists of the need to break away from the British government. Her writings and political thoughts had a great influence on the shaping of the United States, yet her name is rarely found …

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Lgbt Campus Climate Analysis Of The University Of Alabama At Birmingham, Steven Romeo Jan 2016

Lgbt Campus Climate Analysis Of The University Of Alabama At Birmingham, Steven Romeo

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problems. No cure exists so experts stress early practice of bone protective behaviors,

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Context-Enhanced Mobile Device Authorization And Authentication, Babins Shrestha Jan 2016

Context-Enhanced Mobile Device Authorization And Authentication, Babins Shrestha

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Mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) are pervasive today, continuously opening up immense opportunities for everyday users. Their burgeoning popularity, however, brings forth various security and privacy threats. One well-established threat is of mobile malware (a form of insider attack) - malicious apps that may surreptitiously misuse the sensitive resources and services available on the device. Other threats relate to unauthorized access of the device (outsider attacks) by a malicious entity in close physical proximity to the device, or having (temporary or permanent) physical possession of the device. The traditional defensive mechanisms, such as existing anti-virus software, distance-bounding protocols or …

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Studies In New Materials For Intermediate Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Alex Skinner Jan 2016

Studies In New Materials For Intermediate Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Alex Skinner

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with bone strength feedback to a computer-tailored feedback and counseling intervention

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"Sleep Tight, Don't Let The Dysfunction Bite!" The Relationship Between Sleep Problems And Behavioral And Emotional Problems In Adolescence, Meredith Ashley Henry Jan 2016

"Sleep Tight, Don't Let The Dysfunction Bite!" The Relationship Between Sleep Problems And Behavioral And Emotional Problems In Adolescence, Meredith Ashley Henry

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The effects of sleep on behavioral and emotional functioning in a low income, urban sample of 84 African American adolescents was investigated over 3 years (mean ages: 13.36, 14.76, and 16.14 years) of parent and child interviews. Results suggest child-reported sleep duration decreased while all other sleep variables remained stable. Substance use increased over time. Physical aggression and conduct problems decreased; depression, emotional problems, and hyperactivity/inattention remained stable until late adolescence and then decreased. Lower duration of sleep and more sleep problems at age 13 predicted more conduct problems at age 15 which, in turn, predicted less sleep duration and …

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Racial Disparities In Cognitive Performance In Older Adults With Diabetes, Samantha Kaytana Henry Jan 2016

Racial Disparities In Cognitive Performance In Older Adults With Diabetes, Samantha Kaytana Henry

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ABSTRACT Racial disparities on measures of cognitive performance are well-documented. The purpose of the current study was to examine education quality and health factors in explaining racial differences in cognitive performance. It was hypothesized that significant differences in test performance between African Americans and Caucasians would remain robust despite controlling for demographics. However, accounting for education quality and diabetes-related factors was expected to reduce racial differences to nonsignificance. Additionally, racial differences between objective test performance and subjective memory ratings were anticipated. The sample consisted of 247 older African American and Caucasian adults with diabetes in the Birmingham area. Participants completed …

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Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition Of Metal-Boride Interfacial Layers As Diffusion Barriers For Nanostructured Diamond Growth On Cobalt Containing Alloys Cocrmo And Wc-Co, Jamin Michael Johnston Jan 2016

Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition Of Metal-Boride Interfacial Layers As Diffusion Barriers For Nanostructured Diamond Growth On Cobalt Containing Alloys Cocrmo And Wc-Co, Jamin Michael Johnston

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This work is a compilation of theory, finite element modeling and experimental research related to the use of microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (MPECVD) of diborane to create metal-boride surface coatings on CoCrMo and WC-Co, including the subsequent growth of nanostructured diamond (NSD). Motivation for this research stems from the need for wear resistant coatings on industrial materials, which require improved wear resistance and product lifetime to remain competitive and satisfy growing demand. Nanostructured diamond coatings are a promising solution to material wear but cannot be directly applied to cobalt containing substrates due to graphite nucleation. Unfortunately, conventional pre-treatment …

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Resveratrol And Pterostilbene: A Novel Combinatorial Epigenetic Therapy In Targeting Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, Rishabh Kala Jan 2016

Resveratrol And Pterostilbene: A Novel Combinatorial Epigenetic Therapy In Targeting Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, Rishabh Kala

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Although the majority of breast cancers are estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, progesterone receptor (PGR)-positive and/or HER2 positive, approximately 20% of them are triple-negative and lack ER, PGR and HER2 protein expression. These cancers are robust and hard to treat with conventional hormone therapies. The plant-based dietary compounds resveratrol and pterostilbene (a dimethyl derivative of resveratrol) have been shown to modulate the growth of cancer cells individually via affecting genetic and epigenetic profiles, but none of the studies to date have addressed the effects of these two compounds in combination in targeting triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC). We have discovered a synergistic effect …

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Elucidating The Role Of The Pro-Survival To Pro-Death Molecular Switch In The Ire1a Signaling Pathway In Arabidopsis Thaliana, Marie Vollmer Alexander Jan 2016

Elucidating The Role Of The Pro-Survival To Pro-Death Molecular Switch In The Ire1a Signaling Pathway In Arabidopsis Thaliana, Marie Vollmer Alexander

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In eukaryotic cells, the accumulation of unfolded or misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) results in ER stress that induces a cascade of reactions termed the unfolded protein response (UPR). The most conserved UPR sensor amongst eukaryotes, Inositol-Requiring Enzyme 1 (IRE1), responds to ER stress by activating a pathway that, under normal conditions, would up-regulate the cellular pro-survival pathway. However, under extreme conditions the infected portion of the plant will ultimately “switch” from pro-survival to pro-death in order to avoid further unfavorable circumstances for the plant as a whole. Arabidopsis possesses two homologs of the major UPR sensor, IRE1a …

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Symbols Of Independence, Love, And Sorrow: Georgia O'Keeffe's Skyscraper Series, Kelly Allen Gentry Jan 2016

Symbols Of Independence, Love, And Sorrow: Georgia O'Keeffe's Skyscraper Series, Kelly Allen Gentry

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Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) became known as one of the first and most prolific American modern artists of the twentieth century. Her expansive oeuvre, which spans over six decades, is primarily comprised of pure abstractions, large-scale flower paintings, and series of landscapes, crosses, and bones from the southwestern landscape of New Mexico, where she spent the latter half of her life. In the mid-1920s however, O’Keeffe created approximately twenty images of the skyscrapers of New York City, her home from 1918 to 1949. This thesis argues that within this skyscraper series, O’Keeffe fully realized her uniquely personal and recognizable language. This …

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Towards Trustworthy Authentication In Service Oriented Computing, Rasib Hassan Khan Jan 2016

Towards Trustworthy Authentication In Service Oriented Computing, Rasib Hassan Khan

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Today's Internet and network-based applications are highly driven by the service-oriented architecture model. Given the variety of online services, we hypothesized that there is a significant non-uniformity in the behavior of users pertaining to security-oriented practices on the Internet. We performed statistical analysis on open source user-survey datasets to establish the validity of the statement. We performed further study with respect to the security-oriented behavioral practices in developing countries. We were able to determine certain traits and insecure practices that general Internet users from both developed and developing countries adopt, and addressed the corresponding issues to devise secure authentication technologies …

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Detection And Str Profiling Of Saliva Remaining In Water Bottles, Brittany Kriz Jan 2016

Detection And Str Profiling Of Saliva Remaining In Water Bottles, Brittany Kriz

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As instruments for detecting DNA have become more sensitive and reagents for amplifying DNA become more effective, forensic DNA analysts have obtained short tandem repeat (STR) profiles from evidence containing a small amount of DNA. Sources, such as dandruff, sweat, and saliva, which were once thought to be inadequate for STR profiling, can now be analyzed to effectively establish a profile. These low quantities of DNA can be recovered from liquid samples, such as saliva, or extracted and concentrated from large volumes of buffer, then amplified to give a DNA profile. This study focused on recovering saliva from drinking containers. …

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Sea Urchins Under Predicted Near-Future Ocean Conditions: The Effects Of Ocean Warming And Acidification On Physiology And Behavior, Cecilia Joy Brothers Jan 2016

Sea Urchins Under Predicted Near-Future Ocean Conditions: The Effects Of Ocean Warming And Acidification On Physiology And Behavior, Cecilia Joy Brothers

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Sea urchins (Class Echinoidea) play important economic and ecological roles in the marine ecosystems they inhabit. However, climate change is causing seawater temperatures to increase and pH and the saturation state of polymorphs of calcium calcite to decrease at unprecedented rates, and these changes may have serious implications for the fitness and survival of sea urchin populations. The purpose of the present dissertation was to determine the effects of ocean warming and acidification on the physiology and behavior of sea urchins. This research was conducted on three sea urchin taxa (Lytechinus variegatus, Heliocidaris erythrogramma, and Sterechinus spp.) representing species that …

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Mending Rural America: Disaster Recovery In Small Municipalities, Marybrook Burchfield Jan 2016

Mending Rural America: Disaster Recovery In Small Municipalities, Marybrook Burchfield

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Long-term disaster recovery is an important aspect of public administration, especially as the United States is more frequently affected by natural disasters. Federal, state and local governments must adapt and respond to their citizens’ needs. This research analyzes one small Alabama community’s recovery following a devastating series of tornados. This case study on the City of Cordova is conducted via a document analysis of local newspaper articles, government documents and personal communication. The experiences of Cordova are analyzed using principles outlined in FEMA’s National Disaster Recovery Framework. The analysis suggests that disaster recovery in a small city or town is …

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Primary Visual Cortex And Plasticity Following Central Vision Loss, Wesley K. Burge Jan 2016

Primary Visual Cortex And Plasticity Following Central Vision Loss, Wesley K. Burge

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Age-related macular degeneration is one of the most common causes of blindness in the industrialized world, and the advanced phase of the disease that causes significant vision impairment affects nearly 2 million individuals in the United States (Friedman et al., 2004). It is characterized by the degeneration and eventual death of retinal photoreceptors in the macula, which is the area of the retina that mediates central vision. The resulting loss of cells often leads to profound deficits in visual function. However, many individuals with age-related macular degeneration learn to use their spared peripheral vision for visual tasks such as reading, …

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Racial Segregation: Slum Clearance And Urban Renewal In Birmingham, Alabama, 1950-1960, Michael Barrett Jan 2016

Racial Segregation: Slum Clearance And Urban Renewal In Birmingham, Alabama, 1950-1960, Michael Barrett

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RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION: SLUM CLEARANCE AND URBAN RENEWAL IN BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, 1950-1960 MICHAEL D. BARRETT HISTORY ABSTRACT In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to Birmingham, Alabama as the “Most segregated city in America.” The city’s history of racial subjugation and conflict certainly validates King’s statement. Yet should Birmingham stand alone when it comes to racial segregation through the auspices of federal housing programs? The Housing Act of 1949 provided federal funds for slum clearance and urban renewal projects in city centers. Title I of the Act gave local housing agencies authority to determine the areas …

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Meta-Analysis Of Cognitive Performance In Fibromyalgia, Tyler Reed Bell Jan 2016

Meta-Analysis Of Cognitive Performance In Fibromyalgia, Tyler Reed Bell

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Fibromyalgia is a disease that encompasses difficulties with pain, physical function, and emotion, but is also characterized by complaints of poor cognition. Over the last two decades, a vast amount of literature has tested for cognitive differences between individuals with and without fibromyalgia. The purpose of the current study was to conduct a quantitative synthesis on these differences across multiple cognitive domains. After a systematic search of eligible studies, random-effect meta-analyses were conducted on effect sizes (Hedges’ g) derived from 37 cross-sectional studies covering domains of processing speed, memory and executive function. Participants included persons with fibromyalgia (total n = …

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Evaluating Driving Performance Of Adolescents And Young Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorders Around Social And Non-Social Hazards, Haley Johnson Bishop Jan 2016

Evaluating Driving Performance Of Adolescents And Young Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorders Around Social And Non-Social Hazards, Haley Johnson Bishop

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The leading cause of death among adolescents is motor vehicle collisions, which may be due to a number of factors including inexperience and incomplete brain development. These risks may be even more prominent for young drivers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) because of additional impairments in processing speed, social communication and emotional regulation. Despite elevated safety risks, little research has considered the impacts of ASD on driving. This study aimed to characterize driving performance and hazard perception of drivers with ASD, specifically various types of hazards (e.g., pedestrians or other cars). The study also aimed to investigate factors that predict …

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Machine Learning Of Composite Concepts And The Alleviation Of The Content Completeness Problem In Text Mention Normalization, John David Osborne Jan 2016

Machine Learning Of Composite Concepts And The Alleviation Of The Content Completeness Problem In Text Mention Normalization, John David Osborne

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A critical area in the field of information extraction is the assignment of ontological categories (meaning) to fragments of natural language. These fragments are termed ``utterances'' when referring to a continuous fragment or ``mentions'' when the fragment may be discontinuous. In text, most approaches to ontological assignment use named entity recognition (NER) to first discover mention boundaries. This can then be followed by a concept recognition or normalization process to assign a more precise conceptual category to the NER discovered mention. Typically this semantic assignment is represented by only a single identifier from an ontology. If the provided semantic categories …

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Joint Intervention In Opposing Pathways, Pi3k/Akt And Tgf-Beta, With Px-866 And Raloxifene, To Alter Gene Expression And Suppress Estrogen Receptor-Positive Breast Cancer Cell Proliferation, Gregory William Peek Jan 2016

Joint Intervention In Opposing Pathways, Pi3k/Akt And Tgf-Beta, With Px-866 And Raloxifene, To Alter Gene Expression And Suppress Estrogen Receptor-Positive Breast Cancer Cell Proliferation, Gregory William Peek

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For each regulatory pathway implementing environmental or internal messages, there is at least one additional pathway to relay a message to override or modify the original message, in the event of new or conflicting input. The opposing pathway may also be an instrument for negative feedback or redundancy as well as for transmission of additional encountered conditions or considerations. Because the multiple disease conditions based on aberrant cell cycle proliferation often require a level of correction independent of opposing feedback, selection of opposing pathways for complementary joint input is a practical approach to cancer and related proliferation-associated diseases. Accordingly, I …

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Liminal, Cheyenne Day Taylor Jan 2016

Liminal, Cheyenne Day Taylor

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The following thesis is a creative one, composed of thirty poems written in various forms. Included in this work are different types of sonnets, including Elizabethan and Petrarchan, experiments with less frequented forms such as villanelle, pantoum, and triolet, and many poems written in blank verse and syllabics. Thematically, this collection deals with liminality—times of transition and uncertainty where people are no longer exactly who or what they used to be but are not quite fully across the threshold into a new phase. This liminality presents in multiple different ways, with speakers who are dealing with transitions such as ending …

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Entanglement In Disordered Quantum Xy Chains, Houssam Abdul Rahman Jan 2016

Entanglement In Disordered Quantum Xy Chains, Houssam Abdul Rahman

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HC2 is conservative under both

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Pattern Formation And Semilinear Evolution Equations In Function Spaces, Kwadwo Antwi-Fordjour Jan 2016

Pattern Formation And Semilinear Evolution Equations In Function Spaces, Kwadwo Antwi-Fordjour

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predictors, and find that under the test of group differences, MacKinnon and White’s HC2

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Targeting Voltage Gated Sodium Channels For Prevention Of Breast Cancer Metastasis, Shilpa Dutta Jan 2016

Targeting Voltage Gated Sodium Channels For Prevention Of Breast Cancer Metastasis, Shilpa Dutta

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Voltage gated sodium channels (VGSC) are a recently identified drug target involved in the breast cancer invasion mechanism. VGSCs participate in the acidification of the perimembrane, activating the cysteine proteases, cathepsin B and S, thereby triggering the proteolysis of the extracellular matrix and the basement membrane, thereby promoting cell invasion. Highly aggressive, invasive breast cancer cells dramatically overexpress one subtype of VGSC, nNav1.5. Described here are the design, synthesis and in vitro evaluation of drug-like, small molecule blockers of nNav1.5 that are potential therapeutic agents for the prevention of breast cancer metastasis. Initially, five compounds were designed and synthesized based …

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