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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Physiological State Determinants Of Maternal Cortisol Signaling And Its Impact On Offspring Quality And Fitness, Sydney Currier Oct 2021

Physiological State Determinants Of Maternal Cortisol Signaling And Its Impact On Offspring Quality And Fitness, Sydney Currier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Assessing the intergenerational effects of maternal stress is important for predicting how offspring will respond to changing environments. The overall aim of my thesis was to quantify the effects of maternal state on maternally derived egg cortisol and determine whether this variation in egg cortisol impacts Chinook salmon offspring performance and fitness in a sex-specific way. I quantified within-female changes in maternal energetics and reproductive metrics that I linked to egg quality and ultimately embryo survival. I found egg cortisol increases with increasing maternal plasma cortisol, and increases further as plasma cortisol levels rise with each day that eggs are …


An Enhancement To Cnn Approach With Synthesized Image Data For Disease Subtype Classification, Narider Pal Singh Oct 2021

An Enhancement To Cnn Approach With Synthesized Image Data For Disease Subtype Classification, Narider Pal Singh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The introduction of genetic testing has profoundly enhanced the prospects of early detection of diseases and techniques to suggest precision medicines. The subtyping of critical diseases has proven to be an essential part of the development of individualized therapies and has led to deeper insights into the heterogeneity of the disease. Studies suggest that variants in particular genes have significant effects on certain types of immune system cells and are also involved in the risk of certain critical illnesses like cancer. By analyzing the genetic sequence of a patient, disease types and subtypes can be predicted. Recent research work has …


Multilateration Index., Chip Lynch Aug 2021

Multilateration Index., Chip Lynch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We present an alternative method for pre-processing and storing point data, particularly for Geospatial points, by storing multilateration distances to fixed points rather than coordinates such as Latitude and Longitude. We explore the use of this data to improve query performance for some distance related queries such as nearest neighbor and query-within-radius (i.e. “find all points in a set P within distance d of query point q”). Further, we discuss the problem of “Network Adequacy” common to medical and communications businesses, to analyze questions such as “are at least 90% of patients living within 50 miles of a covered emergency …


A Network-Based Approach For Computational Drug Repurposing On Cancer Data, Ann Reba Thomas Alexander Jul 2021

A Network-Based Approach For Computational Drug Repurposing On Cancer Data, Ann Reba Thomas Alexander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, we are interested in finding the best drugs that can be repurposed for the disease and able to find the adverse effects such drugs that are FDA-Approved. Developing an effective drug can be a time-consuming and expensive crucible method. Network-based machine learning methods are used for predicting a given drug for A that can be used for B. It aims at finding new indications for already existing drugs and therefore increases the available therapeutic choices at a fraction of the cost of new drug development. The perturbation gene expression data corresponding to the MCF7 cell line was …


Toward Improving Understanding Of The Structure And Biophysics Of Glycosaminoglycans, Elizabeth K. Whitmore Apr 2021

Toward Improving Understanding Of The Structure And Biophysics Of Glycosaminoglycans, Elizabeth K. Whitmore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are the linear carbohydrate components of proteoglycans (PGs) that mediate PG bioactivities, including signal transduction, tissue morphogenesis, and matrix assembly. To understand GAG function, it is important to understand GAG structure and biophysics at atomic resolution. This is a challenge for existing experimental and computational methods because GAGs are heterogeneous, conformationally complex, and polydisperse, containing up to 200 monosaccharides. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations come close to overcoming this challenge but are only feasible for short GAG polymers. To address this problem, we developed an algorithm that applies conformations from unbiased all-atom explicit-solvent MD simulations of short GAG polymers …


Std Prevention: An Educational Intervention For Exotic Dancers, Maria Delurdes Dehoyos Feb 2021

Std Prevention: An Educational Intervention For Exotic Dancers, Maria Delurdes Dehoyos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Centers for Disease Control and prevention reported nearly 2.3 million STD cases diagnosed in 2017, and the number is continuing to rise. San Antonio, Texas, is ranked third in the state of Texas with the highest STD rates and leading in the state with congenital syphilis. There is an increased risk for contracting STDs working in the sex industry. There are little to no studies pertaining to any educational interventions offered to exotic dancers to increase personal knowledge on STDs. This research has focused on an educational intervention offered by a nurse practitioner to exotic dancers in two adults-only …


Design, Synthesis And Applications Of Nanoparticles In Suppression Of Mosquito-Born Flaviviridae Viruses, Maria R. Blahove Jan 2021

Design, Synthesis And Applications Of Nanoparticles In Suppression Of Mosquito-Born Flaviviridae Viruses, Maria R. Blahove

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently, nanoparticles have become an origin of exploration in the chemistry field due to their unique medical uses. The current drug delivery models of nanoparticles often include a metal base with a drug conjugated to its surface. However this raises concerns regarding toxicity. A novel approach to solving this dilemma is the development of nanosized biocompatible polymer-based micelles, created from PEG-PCL-PEG triblock polymer, and formed around a drug of choice. The goal is to create a drug carrier nanoparticle system that is labile at a specific intracellular pH, without undue toxicity to the cell. This creates a drug-loaded nanoparticle that …