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University of Alabama at Birmingham

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

The Effect Of Dietary Selenium On Weight Gain And Gonad Production In The Sea Urchin Lytechinus Variegatus, Warren T. Jones Jan 2007

The Effect Of Dietary Selenium On Weight Gain And Gonad Production In The Sea Urchin Lytechinus Variegatus, Warren T. Jones

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Small Lytechinus variegatus were collected in October 2004 from Port St. Joseph Peninsula State Park, FL (30° N, 85.5° W) and transported to the Texas A&M Shrimp Mariculture Facility in Port Aransas, TX. Subadult sea urchins were held individually in 25 cm x 10 cm diameter cylindrical cages and were fed semi-purified formulated feeds containing 0.55, 1.1, or 2.4 mg Se/kg feed for 12 weeks (n = 16 individuals per feed treatment, 13.67 ± 0.20 SE g initial wet weight, 30.12 ± 0.15 SE mm diameter; 32 ± 2 ppt salinity and 22 ± 1 C). Sea urchins were weighed …

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Hell Raisers And Holy Rollers, John Christopher Mahan Jan 2007

Hell Raisers And Holy Rollers, John Christopher Mahan

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Hell Raisers and Holy Rollers seeks to explore and express, through poetry and prose, the religious tension I experienced growing up due to the influence of a morally diverse family. While my mother’s family was extremely religious, my father’s relatives were notorious for their brash and often criminal behavior. This dichotomy led to my own spiritual crisis as I struggled to find balance between my strong religious upbringing and my fascination with the “outlaw image” of my father’s family and their non-serviam approach to life. In many ways, the works attempt to capture this internal struggle and the tensions that …

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Understanding Space: The Conceptualization And Evaluation Of Display In Dia:Beacon, Krista Chandler Pitman Jan 2007

Understanding Space: The Conceptualization And Evaluation Of Display In Dia:Beacon, Krista Chandler Pitman

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In May 2003, the Dia:Beacon art museum opened its expansive doors to the public. Viewers were introduced not only to the Dia Art Foundation’s collection of major works from the 1960s to the present but also to a very different type of museum facility. With the help of a multi-million dollar face lift, this once industrial Nabisco factory became an ideal space for art installations. The galleries of Dia:Beacon were specifically designed to accommodate the Foundation’s large-scale collection. In this thesis, I discuss Dia:Beacon’s achievement in museum design and its use of display space by analyzing comparable museums and their …

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Outcomes Of Massage Interventions On Teen Mothers And Their Infants, Krista Lee Oswalt Jan 2007

Outcomes Of Massage Interventions On Teen Mothers And Their Infants, Krista Lee Oswalt

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The current study aims to determine whether teen mothers and their infants benefit from infant massage. A great deal of information related to the benefits of infant massage for premature infants is available in the literature, however, only a few studies have focused on infants of teen mothers. Because a number of risks have been associated with teen pregnancy, this population is a sensible choice for intervention. This study looks at the effects of infant massage on teen mothers and their infants, particularly in the areas of parental stress, depression, maternal confidence, and feelings about physical contact.

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The Lost Cause?: The Current State Of The Southern Culture Of Honor And Violence, Luke Aaron Williamson Jan 2007

The Lost Cause?: The Current State Of The Southern Culture Of Honor And Violence, Luke Aaron Williamson

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This paper re-considers the Southern Culture of Honor and Violence thesis that has enjoyed prevalence in the literature since the first half of the 20th century. The bulk of researchers previously investigating the link among Southernness, culture of honor, and violence have used attitudinal measures of violence, where survey respondents indicated only their preferences and opinions toward engaging in hypothesized violence. The research in this project employs a behavioral measure of violence, and improves upon prior research by measuring actual violent behaviors of respondents with a national survey of defensive gun use (DGU). Results indicate that Southern respondents show an …

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Spectral Properties Of Displacement Models, Steven Baker Jan 2007

Spectral Properties Of Displacement Models, Steven Baker

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The recent study of Schr¨odinger operators with random potentials has provided significant insight into our understanding of the electronic properties of disordered media. This work presents new results concerning the spectrum of a class of random operators called displacement models. Such models may be used to model solids in which the positions of the individual atoms are randomly perturbed from an ideal periodic lattice. In particular, we will provide a characterization of the almost sure spectral minimum of the random displacement model, bounds on the integrated density of states, and a rigourous proof of the lack of classical Lifshitz tails …

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Outlier Detection By Network Flow, Ying Liu Jan 2007

Outlier Detection By Network Flow, Ying Liu

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Outliers are those points which are different from or inconsistent with the rest of the data. Novel, new, abnormal, unusual or noisy information can all be called outliers. Sometimes the outliers are more interesting than the majority of the data, such as the applications of intrusion detection and unusual usage of credit cards. With the increase of the complexity and variety of datasets, the challenges of outlier detection are how to catch similar outliers as a group, and how to evaluate the outliers. The research described in this dissertation has investigated the above challenges and has addressed the solutions. A …

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Life Course Religiosity And Spirituality And Their Relationship To Health And Well-Being Among Homebound Older Adults, Caroline O. Robinson Jan 2007

Life Course Religiosity And Spirituality And Their Relationship To Health And Well-Being Among Homebound Older Adults, Caroline O. Robinson

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The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among religiosity, spirituality, physical health and mental well-being among a sample of homebound older adults. Taking a life course approach, this study explored how religiosity and spirituality across the life course influence homebound elders’ health and well-being. The sample consisted of 200 community-dwelling, homebound adults aged 60 and older (mean age 79, 62% White, 38% African American, 80% female, and 20% male). Participants completed a guided interview that measured physical health and mental well-being as well as involvement in three domains of religiosity and spirituality across the participants’ life history …

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Domestic Anticommunism In Alabama And The Resurgence Of American Conservatism, Jordan R. Bauer Jan 2007

Domestic Anticommunism In Alabama And The Resurgence Of American Conservatism, Jordan R. Bauer

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This thesis examines the pervasive anticommunist movement in Cold War Alabama. It considers the ways in which many white conservative Alabamians used anticommunism to resist the dramatic social and political changes of the 1960s and 1970s. During this time, Alabama’s anticommunist campaign focused on seeking out “subversives” in public schools. Another main target of the state’s anticommunist network was the black civil rights movement. As the struggle for racial equality gained momentum, many white Alabamians responded by labeling civil rights activists as communists. The thesis argues that Alabama’s anticommunist movement was directed against radicals in academia, secularism, the federal government, …

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Religion And Sprituality In The Practice Of Public Administration, James Coe Walker Jan 2007

Religion And Sprituality In The Practice Of Public Administration, James Coe Walker

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Until very recently very little attention has been paid to the role played by religion and spirituality in the practice of public administration. This reflects the strictly secular understanding of the profession that has dominated it since its inception. This deeply held understanding does not reflect the way public administration is actually practiced in the United States. A survey of American Society of Public Administration (ASPA) members currently involved in the active practice of public administration found that 58% of the practitioners surveyed reported that “Religious values guide my decisions,” and over 74% report that they feel “called” to a …

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The Molecular Biology Of Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination In Reptiles, Keela Dodd Jan 2007

The Molecular Biology Of Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination In Reptiles, Keela Dodd

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Temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) is a type of environmental sex determination in which the egg’s incubation temperature determines the sex of the embryo. The exact physiology of TSD is not yet understood. Hormones and temperaturetriggered genes have been hypothesized to play a role. This study evaluates putative male and female factors that may play a role in TSD. Regarding female factors, this study evaluates clutch sensitivity to estradiol-17β and an aromatase inhibitor, and estradiol- 17β’s potential role in müllerian duct differentiation. Regarding male factors, this study also quantifies SOX9 mRNA during TSD in untreated and estradiol-17β treated embryos. In the …

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Characterization, Community Structure And Ecological Importance Of Sponge-Associated Bacteria, Patrick M. Erwin Jan 2007

Characterization, Community Structure And Ecological Importance Of Sponge-Associated Bacteria, Patrick M. Erwin

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The study of sponge-bacteria symbioses is emerging as a prominent field in marine biology and biotechnology, with implications ranging from a fundamental understanding of sponge ecology and insight into the evolution of prokaryote-eukaryote symbiotic interactions to natural products prospecting and bioactive metabolite synthesis. The research conducted herein integrates molecular genetic techniques with ecological methodologies to address fundamental issues of sponge-microbe associations. Bacterial communities associated with the marine sponges Hymeniacidon heliophila and Xestospongia sp. were compared to microbial assemblages from ambient seawater and the sympatric tunicate, Didemnum sp, using replicated clone libraries of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes and terminal restriction …

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On The Dynamical, Geometric, And Arithmetic Properties Of Euclidean Lattices, Lee Michael Goswick Jan 2007

On The Dynamical, Geometric, And Arithmetic Properties Of Euclidean Lattices, Lee Michael Goswick

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This dissertation consists of three papers concerning certain aspects of Euclidean lattices. The first two examine dynamical properties of 2D billiards in the lattices Z2 and Z2 ∪(1/2, 1/2) + Z2. The third explores arithmetic and geometric properties of Z3 by exploiting the algebraic structure of the quaternions and the Gaussian integers.

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Localization Properties For The Unitary Anderson Model, Eman F. Hamza Jan 2007

Localization Properties For The Unitary Anderson Model, Eman F. Hamza

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We study a unitary version of the one-dimensional Anderson model, given by a five diagonal deterministic unitary operator multiplicatively perturbed by a random phase matrix. This operator models the time evolution of an electron in a one-dimensional metal ring subject to a magnetic field that linearly increases with time. We fully characterize positivity and vanishing of the Lyapunov exponent for this model for arbitrary distributions of the random phases. This includes Bernoulli distributions, where in certain cases a finite number of critical spectral values, with vanishing Lyapunov exponent, exists. Thus, we prove that for all non-trivial distributions the model has …

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Fuzzy Systems Simulation: Models, Foundations, And Systems Development, Leonard J. Jowers Jan 2007

Fuzzy Systems Simulation: Models, Foundations, And Systems Development, Leonard J. Jowers

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Simulations of modeled systems are e®ective tools for evaluating system attributes; fuzzy logic provides for simulation of systems with inherent uncertainties. This re- search to advance simulation of fuzzy systems involves several studies in a planned sequence. Continuous fuzzy system modeling activities constitute a ¯rst stage of re- search action, a natural °ow from earlier work on modeling discrete fuzzy systems; the notion of using crisp simulation to carry out fuzzy computations is at the heart of the work. This activity requires choosing tools and problems with which to demon- strate feasibility and broad applicability of the approach. Some fundamental …

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A Model Transformation Approach To Automated Model Evolution, Yuehua Lin Jan 2007

A Model Transformation Approach To Automated Model Evolution, Yuehua Lin

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It is well-known that the inherent complex nature of software systems adds to the challenges of software development. The most notable techniques for addressing the complexity of software development are based on the principles of abstraction, problem decomposition, separation of concerns and automation. As an emerging paradigm for developing complex software, Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) realizes these principles by raising the specification of software to models, which are at a higher level of abstraction than source code. As models are elevated to first-class artifacts within the software development lifecycle, there is an increasing need for frequent model evolution to explore design …

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Sperm Production And Vitellogenesis As Biomarkers Of Endocrine Disruption In The Male Western Mosquitofish, Gambusia Affinis, Paul D. Melvin Jan 2007

Sperm Production And Vitellogenesis As Biomarkers Of Endocrine Disruption In The Male Western Mosquitofish, Gambusia Affinis, Paul D. Melvin

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Estrogenic compounds of anthropogenic origin enter the environment from several different sources, including domestic wastewater and agricultural runoff. Natural estrogens, synthetic estrogens, and estrogen breakdown products have been identified in wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents. These compounds have direct and indirect effects on the endocrine systems of organisms living in the receiving waters. Male mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) have been suggested as model bioindicator organisms for endocrine disruption by estrogenic compounds for a variety of reasons, including their hardiness, broad environmental tolerances (including temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen), widespread geographical distribution, and ease of use in the laboratory. We examined two …

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Multiple Roles: Benefits Or Strain? An Examination Of The Effects Of Work And Mothering On Health Lifestyle Behaviors For Women Living With Hiv/Aids, Mercy W. Mwaria Jan 2007

Multiple Roles: Benefits Or Strain? An Examination Of The Effects Of Work And Mothering On Health Lifestyle Behaviors For Women Living With Hiv/Aids, Mercy W. Mwaria

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Does occupying multiple roles cause strain or does it lead to health lifestyle practices for women living with HIV/AIDS? Previous research has established a relationship between multiple role occupation and physical and mental wellbeing for women. Health lifestyle modifications for persons living with HIV/AIDS benefit health by slowing down disease progression and enhancing the body’s tolerance to drug therapies. This study extends these findings to a specific population of women living with HIV/AIDS and examines health lifestyle outcomes for this population. Using data from the HIV Cost and Services Utilization Study (HCSUS), the study draws on a subsample of women …

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Qospl: A Quality Of Service-Driven Software Product Line Engineering Framework For Design And Analysis Of Component-Based Distributed Real-Time And Embedded Systems, Shih-Hsi Liu Jan 2007

Qospl: A Quality Of Service-Driven Software Product Line Engineering Framework For Design And Analysis Of Component-Based Distributed Real-Time And Embedded Systems, Shih-Hsi Liu

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Software complexity may be reduced and productivity may be increased by the synergy of Component-Based Software Engineering and Software Product Line En- gineering. The synergistic techniques decrease complexity by uplifting software ar- tifacts to a higher abstraction level, namely the component level, and de¯ning the interfaces, interactions, and contexts of such artifacts for composing software systems. Such synergistic techniques also facilitate productivity increase by promoting feature reusability, leveraging component replacement and o®ering selectivity among prod- uct variants. When applied to Distributed Real-time and Embedded (DRE) systems, however, these technologies must ful¯ll such systems' time-critical missions and nu- merous functional and …

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Temperament, Sensation-Seeking, Sleep Patterns, And Alcohol Use During A Competitive Athletic Season: Predicting Injuries In College Athletes, Zachary H. Osborn Jan 2007

Temperament, Sensation-Seeking, Sleep Patterns, And Alcohol Use During A Competitive Athletic Season: Predicting Injuries In College Athletes, Zachary H. Osborn

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Temperament, sensation-seeking, general personality variables, sleep patterns, and alcohol use have all been shown to be related to injuries in both community-based and athlete samples. However, these variables have not been studied in concert with one another to examine how they might interact to predict injuries. One-hundred and seventy-eight athletes (both football and soccer) completed pre-season alcohol use and sleep pattern questionnaires, as well as personality measures. The results indicated that playing football predicted more total injuries. No other personality, sleep, or alcohol use variables were predictive of injuries or injury related variables. Analyses also indicated that football players suffered …

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Genetic And Epigenetic Modulation Of Telomerase Activity In Development And Disease, Sharla Marion Ostein Phipps Jan 2007

Genetic And Epigenetic Modulation Of Telomerase Activity In Development And Disease, Sharla Marion Ostein Phipps

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The end replication problem of linear chromosomes leads to the erosion of telomeric DNA with each cell division. A mechanism to counteract telomeric attrition involves the activity of the specialized ribonucleoprotein telomerase. Expression of the catalytic subunit of telomerase, hTERT, is tightly regulated and this regulation is achieved through both genetic and epigenetic mechanisms. Activators such as c- MYC and SP1 and repressors such as MAD1, Menin, and p53 mediate hTERT transcription. Epigenetic control mediated by DNA methylation and histone modifications such as methylation and acetylation can reversibly and potently regulate telomerase activity. Not only is there synergism between the …

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Perceived Stress, Pain Coping Strategies, Pain Interference, And Social Support: Mediators And M Oderators Of Depression In A Spinal Cord Injury Sample With Chronic Pain, Michael W. Wilson Jan 2007

Perceived Stress, Pain Coping Strategies, Pain Interference, And Social Support: Mediators And M Oderators Of Depression In A Spinal Cord Injury Sample With Chronic Pain, Michael W. Wilson

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Chronic pain and depression are frequently co-reported secondary complications following spinal cord injury (SCI) that impact multiple psychosocial domains. This study investigated the contribution of pain intensity, perceived stress, pain coping strategies, pain interference, and social support in depression and sought to identify mediator and moderator effects in the pain-depression relationship among persons with chronic SCI pain. Perceived stress, pain coping strategies, and pain interference were proposed as likely mediators of pain intensity and depression. Different types of social support were proposed as likely moderators of pain intensity and depression. The SCI sample consisted of 60 people with chronic pain …

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Component-Based Language Implementation With Object-Oriented Syntax And Aspect-Oriented Semantics, Xiaoqing Wu Jan 2007

Component-Based Language Implementation With Object-Oriented Syntax And Aspect-Oriented Semantics, Xiaoqing Wu

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Providing proper modularity is one of the major challenges in software development. In the context of programming language implementation, two key factors impede the modularization process in a compiler system: First, the parser, as the core of the language implementation, usually is specified in a non-decomposable style such that it must be built as a whole regardless of the complexity of the grammar. This usually yields poor comprehensibility, reduced changeability, limited reusability, and hampers independent development of the language implementation. Second, the interconnected nature of syntax and semantic analysis of a language propels the compiler implementation to have each phase …

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Grammar-Driven Generation Of Domain-Specific Language Testing Tools Using Aspects, Hui Wu Jan 2007

Grammar-Driven Generation Of Domain-Specific Language Testing Tools Using Aspects, Hui Wu

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Domain-specific languages (DSLs) assist a software developer (or end-user) in writing a program using idioms that are similar to the abstractions found in a specific problem domain. Testing tool support for DSLs is lacking when compared to the capabilities provided for standard general-purpose languages (GPLs), such as Java and C++. For example, support for debugging and unit testing a program written in a DSL is often non-existent. The lack of a debugger and unit test engine at the proper abstraction level limits an end-user‟s ability to discover and locate faults in a DSL program. This dissertation describes a grammar-driven technique …

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An Exploration Of Local Smart Growth Initiatives Within The United States, William Patrick Bryant Jan 2007

An Exploration Of Local Smart Growth Initiatives Within The United States, William Patrick Bryant

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This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of smart growth policy mechanisms available to local governments within the United States. It begins with a description a sprawl, including its causes, impacts, and effects on society. The thesis then transitions to a discussion of the smart growth philosophy, including a definition of smart growth, a discourse debunking common smart growth myths, and an explanation of the economic benefits resulting from smart growth implementation. The discussion concludes with recommendations and examples of specific smart growth techniques that local governments can adopt in pursuit of a smart growth planning agenda.

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The People I Know, Max Everhart Jan 2007

The People I Know, Max Everhart

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This is a collection—one personal essay and three short stories. In these works, I explore the concept of anger and identity and how these components create tension within the traditional immediate family framework. As I wrote, I continually asked myself a very specific question—a question that I wanted the thesis that follows to provide an answer for: can one maintain his or her identity while still fulfilling the responsibilities of being a father, son, husband, or wife? I begin this collection with an intensely personal essay entitled, “Name- Calling.” Set against the background of a fantastical assassination attempt on George …

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Acetylcholinesterase In The Sea Urchin Lytechinus Variegatus : Characterization And Developmental Expression In Larvae, Natalie A. Jennings Jan 2007

Acetylcholinesterase In The Sea Urchin Lytechinus Variegatus : Characterization And Developmental Expression In Larvae, Natalie A. Jennings

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Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in a deuterostome invertebrate, the echinoid Lytechinus variegatus, has been characterized. Kinetic parameters Vmax, Km, Kss, and b were 453 ± 183 μM ATCh hydrolyzed/minute, 185 ± 11 μM, 308 ± 100 mM, and 0.2, respectively for the substrate acetylthiocholine (ATCh) and 3.1 ± 1.2 μM BTCh hydrolyzed/minute, 654 ± 424 μM, 36 ± 31 mM, and 0.6, respectively for substrate butyrylthiocholine (BTCh). Pharmacologic analyses were performed with four inhibitors of cholinesterases, physostigmine, BW284c51, ethopropazine, and iso-OMPA, and yielded IC50 values of 106 ± 4 nM, 718 ± 118 nM, 2.57 ± 0.6 mM, and > 0.0300 M, respectively. …

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Depressive Symptomatology And Suicide Attempts In Adolescents With Mobility Limitations, Ann I. Alriksson-Schmidt Jan 2007

Depressive Symptomatology And Suicide Attempts In Adolescents With Mobility Limitations, Ann I. Alriksson-Schmidt

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Adolescents with mobility limitations may be at increased risk of certain adverse outcomes because of unique or exacerbated pre-existing challenges. The current study examined the relationships among mobility limitations, depressive symptomatology, and suicidal behaviors. Moreover, it was examined if pain and perceived social support mod-erated the relationships between severity of mobility limitations and the three outcome variables, and whether depressive symptomatology mediated the relationships between mobility limitations and suicidal behaviors. Secondary analyses of the AddHealth data set were performed. The sample was 49.18% female, 16.02% African-American, 65.46% Caucasian, 12.20% Hispanic, and 6.33% coded as Other. The mean age was 15.96 …

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Monte Carlo Studies With Random Fuzzy Numbers, Areeg Abdalla Jan 2007

Monte Carlo Studies With Random Fuzzy Numbers, Areeg Abdalla

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This thesis is devoted to solve fuzzy optimization problems using Monte Carlo methods. In the ¯rst four chapters, we are ¯nding a fuzzy function that best ex- plains the fuzzy data. We study di®erent models; linear, polynomial, exponential and logarithmic. To ¯nd the best model that explains some data, we look for the one that minimizes some error measure. We use several popular error measures. Also, we discuss and compare our results with previous published results. Then we study a fuzzy optimization problem in queuing theory where it is used to model a web site. The variables are a mix …

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Green Tea Polyphenols Are Associated With Changes In Genetic And Epigenetic Anti-Cancer Mechanisms In Vitro And In Vivo, Joel Bradford Berletch Jan 2007

Green Tea Polyphenols Are Associated With Changes In Genetic And Epigenetic Anti-Cancer Mechanisms In Vitro And In Vivo, Joel Bradford Berletch

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Human chromosomes are protected from degradation associated with cell division by hexameric repeats of 5’-TTAGGG-3’ termed telomeres. During cellular replication human chromosomes undergo the loss of up to 300 bp of DNA with each division, reaching a critical length which leads to senescence and apoptosis. Most cancer cells bypass this lifespan regulatory mechanism by the expression of telomerase, a protein complex that adds telomeres through the reverse transcriptase activity of its catalytic subunit, hTERT. Approximatly 90% of all cancers express the hTERT gene making it an attractive target for novel cancer therapies. The objective of this dissertation was to help …

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