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Title: A quality improvement project addressing perioperative glycemic guideline adherence
Creator: Caldwell, Samuel Q.
Date: 2021
Collection: Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects
Description: A quality improvement project was conducted within the surgical department of a mid-Michigan hospital following concerns for lack of adherence to current protocols regarding perioperative glycemic management and not meeting statistical expectations. Project stakeholders and initiators configured protocol simplification and educational meetings in hopes to improve protocol adherence and statistical improvement for preoperative glycemic management. Literature synthesis and evidence-based...
Show moreA quality improvement project was conducted within the surgical department of a mid-Michigan hospital following concerns for lack of adherence to current protocols regarding perioperative glycemic management and not meeting statistical expectations. Project stakeholders and initiators configured protocol simplification and educational meetings in hopes to improve protocol adherence and statistical improvement for preoperative glycemic management. Literature synthesis and evidence-based directives drove the project implementation and goals. A three month implementation period was tracked and data was queried with the assistance of stakeholders at the project site and overall comparisons and attributions were drawn. Post-implementation and data collection, data was compiled into a formal conclusive presentation to both the project site as well as the Michigan State University College of Nursing addressing successes and short-falls of the overall project. Retrospective conclusions were drawn and recommendations for future quality improvement projects regarding this topic were discussed in order to continue the quality improvement process.
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Title: Increasing breast cancer self-awareness and screening in a vulnerable population through faith-based community outreach
Creator: Carpenter, Lauren J.
Date: 2021
Collection: Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects
Description: Breast cancer is one of the leading cancer diagnoses for women in the United States. Certain vulnerable populations are at an increased risk for breast cancer mortality, including homeless and African American women. Providing healthcare navigation, cancer education, and connecting with faith-based communities has shown to increase cancer screening rates and knowledge in these vulnerable populations. The purpose of this QI project was to provide breast cancer screening education and access to...
Show moreBreast cancer is one of the leading cancer diagnoses for women in the United States. Certain vulnerable populations are at an increased risk for breast cancer mortality, including homeless and African American women. Providing healthcare navigation, cancer education, and connecting with faith-based communities has shown to increase cancer screening rates and knowledge in these vulnerable populations. The purpose of this QI project was to provide breast cancer screening education and access to care with the goal of increasing breast cancer screening rates and breast self-awareness among at-risk women in a midwestern Michigan community attending faith-based organizations. The project was implemented at three different faith-based communities, including a community soup kitchen serving homeless people and two predominantly African American churches. An educational presentation was created to deliver tailored breast cancer information. Participants were also provided the opportunity to be enrolled for a free mammogram. The intervention was delivered virtually via a PowerPoint presentation on a secure zoom session. Enrollment forms were provided for eligible participants to be screened with a mammogram. Participant's attitudes, knowledge, and confidence towards breast cancer screening were measured before and after the intervention with surveys. A statistically significant increase in participant's knowledge regarding breast cancer screening was found among the 15 total participants. This project demonstrates that education in conjunction with faith-based communities can increase breast cancer knowledge and screening in vulnerable populations to reduce breast cancer mortality.
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Title: Improving advance care planning and advance directive rates in primary care through a multidisciplinary approach
Creator: Johnson, Vanessa N. (Vanessa Nichole-Castillo)
Date: 2022
Collection: Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects
Description: Background and Review of Literature: Lack of advance care planning (ACP) leads to unwanted treatments and suffering for patients, along with increased healthcare costs. Certain vulnerable populations are at increased risk for unnecessary suffering, including those with high emergency department (ED) utilization rates and one-year prognoses. Providing ACP education to providers and utilization of the multidisciplinary team has been shown to increase ACP and advance directive (AD) rates in...
Show moreBackground and Review of Literature: Lack of advance care planning (ACP) leads to unwanted treatments and suffering for patients, along with increased healthcare costs. Certain vulnerable populations are at increased risk for unnecessary suffering, including those with high emergency department (ED) utilization rates and one-year prognoses. Providing ACP education to providers and utilization of the multidisciplinary team has been shown to increase ACP and advance directive (AD) rates in these vulnerable populations within primary care. Purpose: The purpose of this QI project was to increase the percentage of robust ACP conversations and the completion and documentation of ACP/ADs in the electronic medical record (EMR). Methods: The project was implemented at a primary care clinic in a midwestern Michigan community. DNP students attended an informational meeting regarding the organization's EMR-based ACP tool. An educational session regarding robust ACP was held for providers, a decision tree was developed to both guide ACP appointments with a specialist and ensure proper documentation into the EMR, and scripting was created to help guide ACP conversations. Implementation Plan/Procedure: Members of the multidisciplinary team utilized the intervention. Data collection included the percentage of empaneled patients with a durable power of attorney for healthcare (DPOAH) on file, the total number of robust ACP conversations completed, and the number of patients on the population health targeting list were collected. Post-intervention, an online survey was used to assess the provider's attitudes, knowledge, and confidence towards the decision tree. Implications/Conclusion: The intervention produced positive outcomes, which included an increase in completed and documented ACP/AD and provider knowledge regarding ACP.
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Title: Perinatal depression screening program evaluation
Creator: Murphy, Maeghan
Date: 2022
Collection: Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects
Description: Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are extremely common and can occur unpredictably during and after pregnancy. If left untreated, PMADs can be detrimental to the long-term health of both mothers and infants. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) is an effective and well-accepted screening method for identifying PMADs. The findings from a literature review emphasized the clinical importance of screening as well as the value of a quality improvement approach. The objective...
Show morePerinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) are extremely common and can occur unpredictably during and after pregnancy. If left untreated, PMADs can be detrimental to the long-term health of both mothers and infants. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) is an effective and well-accepted screening method for identifying PMADs. The findings from a literature review emphasized the clinical importance of screening as well as the value of a quality improvement approach. The objective of this Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project was to analyze the PMAD screening practices at a busy women's health clinic in Metro Detroit by conducting an in-depth chart review. Data gathered from this evaluation was utilized by clinic leadership to better serve patients by addressing current screening deficits within the practice. Specific areas of improvement identified by this evaluation included the need to increase the percentage of EPDS screens completed at the initial obstetric (OB) visit and ensuring behavioral health referrals were being made when patients have a positive screen.
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Title: Improvements in fine-scale estimation and evaluation of geographic variables using climate data in East Africa
Creator: Hession, Sarah L.
Date: 2011
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Global environmental change has surfaced as a critical issue to both the scientific community and the general public. One aspect of particular concern involves climate change, which will exert impacts on ecosystems and economies, presenting considerable challenge to human adaptation. In Africa, a continent that is vulnerable due to multiple stressors and low adaptive capacity, climate change is expected to significantly affect both people and ecosystems. Adaptation strategies are being...
Show moreGlobal environmental change has surfaced as a critical issue to both the scientific community and the general public. One aspect of particular concern involves climate change, which will exert impacts on ecosystems and economies, presenting considerable challenge to human adaptation. In Africa, a continent that is vulnerable due to multiple stressors and low adaptive capacity, climate change is expected to significantly affect both people and ecosystems. Adaptation strategies are being developed using information from studies that evaluate the impacts of climate variability and climate change in Africa. Recommendations are made for local development of adaptation strategies due to the heterogeneity of climate change and its effects on East Africa's climate. However, global climate change models are coarse in scale and mask much of the local variation in regional climate, indicating the need for higher resolution climate data. This dissertation addresses this need by comparing spatially explicit statistical methods of interpolation and prediction, both theoretically and empirically; expanding upon the method of universal kriging by incorporating complex feedback relationships that may produce simultaneity between precipitation and its covariates; and evaluating precipitation patterns over space in East Africa through a case study. Mechanisms of precipitation have been considered in detail, expanding upon many other spatially explicit applications of prediction methods to date. Further, spatially explicit inferential regression models have been developed to better understand spatial patterns and variability in East African precipitation. Predicted maps of precipitation, generated at a resolution of 1 kilometer, accurately reflect the mesoscale influences of topography and the presence of large water bodies (i.e., Lake Victoria) as well as the seasonal influences of the passing of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ). In terms of prediction, the spatially explicit methods considered herein clearly outperformed a global data set (i.e., the CRU TS 3.1) in terms of error and ability to reflect local variability. The method of local ordinary kriging generally outperformed the multivariate kriging techniques, indicating that precipitation patterns in areas of high topographic variability, such as East Africa, may be modeled as well or better using local search neighborhoods in the kriging process rather than using complex multivariate regression models. However, additional work to improve the multivariate regression models and overall levels of correlation are expected to yield improved prediction results. Furthermore, the case study successfully demonstrated that the newly developed method of universal kriging with instrumental variables performs similarly to other standard methods of estimation, and perhaps better in the presence of significant measurable simultaneity.
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Title: Evaluating the impact of Gliricidia sepium on soil organic matter in maize-based cropping systems in southern Malawi
Creator: Beedy, Tracy L.
Date: 2009
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Effect of cyclic AMP in modulating cell differentiation and survival behaviors
Creator: Zhang, Linxia
Date: 2010
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Electronic structure and excited state dynamics of chromium(III) complexes
Creator: Schrauben, Joel Nicholas
Date: 2010
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: How many fish are there and how many can we kill? : improving catch per effort indices of abundance and evaluating harvest control rules for lake whitefish in the Great Lakes
Creator: Deroba, Jonathan J.
Date: 2009
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Assessing the involvement of altered neurotensin signaling in anorexia nervosa
Creator: Schroeder, Laura Elizabeth
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: ABSTRACTAssessing the Involvement of Altered Neurotensin Signaling inAnorexia NervosaByLaura Elizabeth SchroederAnorexia Nervosa (AN), characterized by a persistent and detrimental drive tolose weight via restriction of food intake and excessive exercise, is the psychiatricdisorder with the highest mortality rate. Very few options exist when consideringpharmacotherapies used to treat AN patients, and no drugs have been demonstrated tosignificantly improve weight gain. This highlights the need...
Show moreABSTRACTAssessing the Involvement of Altered Neurotensin Signaling inAnorexia NervosaByLaura Elizabeth SchroederAnorexia Nervosa (AN), characterized by a persistent and detrimental drive tolose weight via restriction of food intake and excessive exercise, is the psychiatricdisorder with the highest mortality rate. Very few options exist when consideringpharmacotherapies used to treat AN patients, and no drugs have been demonstrated tosignificantly improve weight gain. This highlights the need to not only find better drugbasedtherapies for AN but to also find druggable targets for this disorder. While AN isthought to be highly heritable, with heritability estimates ranging between 50-80%, it hasbeen challenging to identify significant genetic contributors. Thus, determining thegenetic risk factors of AN will first be required for development of better therapeutics.In an effort to better understand the genetic basis of AN, recent work has beenperformed to uncover rare genetic variants that confer high risk of disease development.Loss-of-function variants in Neurotensin (Nts) and Nts Receptor 1 (NtsR1) wereidentified in individuals with eating disorders. Nts is a neuropeptide known to regulateingestive and locomotor behavior. Nts modulates these behaviors centrally, and asubset of dopamine (DA) neurons with the ventral tegmental area (VTA) that coexpressNtsR1 are known to contribute to DA-mediated weight loss behaviors. Ablation of allNtsR1 VTA neurons was shown to promote excessive locomotor activity without asufficient increase in feeding, leading to low body weight. Finally, increased fiberdensities have been found within the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) of individuals withAN, and the LHA is a region with a significant population of Nts neurons known tomodulate both feeding and activity. We therefore hypothesized that Nts populations infeeding centers, such as the LHA, receive altered input from structures associated withAN and that alterations and/or disruption of Nts signaling promotes AN-like behaviors.This hypothesis was explored via three different approaches. First, the locationand density of Nts populations within the brains of NtsCre; Floxed GFP mice weremapped, and this revealed the presence of Nts in regions implicated in regulation offeeding and AN. The next approach involved determining if disrupted Nts signalingincreases risk for development of AN-like behaviors. This was accomplished bycharacterizing NtsR1-deficient mice both at baseline and after exposure to anadolescent-stress model of AN. This study revealed that deficiency of NtsR1 is agenetic risk factor that, when interacting with risks of being female and exposure toadolescent stress, promotes aberrant feeding, excessive locomotor behaviors, andcompulsive anxiety behaviors analogous to those observed in AN. Finally, a rabiesvirus-based method was used to identify direct inputs to LHA Nts neurons, and thishighlighted the existence of afferents, and thus top-down control, from structuresimplicated in AN. In addition, densities of these inputs were determined in mousemodels of AN, and this demonstrated that afferent inputs to LHA Nts neurons areincreased from sites associated with AN.Altogether, the data presented in this thesis highlight the possible genetic andneurocircuitry alterations to the Nts-NtsR1 system that may promote and/or be the resultof development of AN. These data also indicate the need for future studies to betterunderstand the mechanism by which such alterations in Nts signaling promote thisdisease.
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Title: Mechanisms of southern grasshopper mouse (Onychomys torridus) muscle resistance to the paralytic and lethal toxins in Arizona bark scorpion (Centruroides sculpturatus) venom
Creator: Parigi, Abhijna A.
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Voltage-gated sodium ion channels (Nav¬¬¬¬¬¬) are transmembrane proteins responsible for initiating electrical signals in excitable cells. Because Nav channels play a crucial role in neuromuscular coordination, they are targeted by a diverse array of neurotoxins produced across the animal kingdom. Arizona bark scorpions (Centruroides sculpturatus) produce toxins that disrupt Nav channel function, causing pain, muscle paralysis and respiratory failure. Southern grasshopper mice (Onychomys...
Show moreVoltage-gated sodium ion channels (Nav¬¬¬¬¬¬) are transmembrane proteins responsible for initiating electrical signals in excitable cells. Because Nav channels play a crucial role in neuromuscular coordination, they are targeted by a diverse array of neurotoxins produced across the animal kingdom. Arizona bark scorpions (Centruroides sculpturatus) produce toxins that disrupt Nav channel function, causing pain, muscle paralysis and respiratory failure. Southern grasshopper mice (Onychomys torridus) hunt bark scorpions. In response to selection by scorpion venom, grasshopper mice have evolved physiological resistance to toxins that cause pain and death. Although previous work identified modifications in one grasshopper mouse Nav channel (Nav1.8) that provide resistance to venom pain, mechanisms underlying resistance to muscle paralysis remain unknown. In skeletal muscle, Nav1.4 channels regulate muscle contraction. Previous studies showed that toxins in C. elegans and C. vittatus venoms disrupt Nav1.4 gating mechanisms. Thus, I tested the hypothesis that C. sculpturatus venom contains toxins that target Nav1.4, and that grasshopper mice are resistant to the effects of these toxins via molecular changes to their Nav1.4. Using molecular and electrophysiological analyses, I compared the structural and functional properties of grasshopper mice Nav1.4 channels to those of house mice and rats (rodents that are both sensitive to scorpion venom) and found that grasshopper mice Nav1.4 has evolved reduced sensitivity to C. sculpturatus venom. Further, I identified amino acid changes in the grasshopper mice Nav1.4 protein that contribute to reduced toxin sensitivity. Finally, I show that the beta subunits (accessory proteins that modulate Nav1.4 channel gating kinetics) of grasshopper mice do not have species-specific effects on channel function in the presence or absence of venom. My results demonstrate that highly conserved proteins can be evolutionarily modified with minimal effects to their baseline functional properties.
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Title: " ... To do credit to my nation, wherever I go" : West Indian and Cape Verdean immigrants in Southeastern New England, 1890-1940
Creator: Edwards, Janelle Marlena
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This work is a community study that centers the experiences of black immigrants as an overlapping diaspora in multi-ethnic and transnational African-American history. It argues that, through the operationalization of their familial networks, ethnic organizations, and neighborhood enclaves, black immigrants in New England depart from traditional histories of assimilation and acculturation. Though much scholarship has been dedicated to the politically charged organizations and black immigrant...
Show moreThis work is a community study that centers the experiences of black immigrants as an overlapping diaspora in multi-ethnic and transnational African-American history. It argues that, through the operationalization of their familial networks, ethnic organizations, and neighborhood enclaves, black immigrants in New England depart from traditional histories of assimilation and acculturation. Though much scholarship has been dedicated to the politically charged organizations and black immigrant participation in New York, this microhistory of Southeastern New England's port cities -- Providence and New Bedford--demonstrates the commonplace, quotidian lives of West Indians and Cape Verdeans as neighbors, friends, and relatives who experienced and adapted to their diaspora condition differently. While West Indians altered their community landscape and eventually assimilated into the African-American community, Cape Verdeans retained a Cape Verdean ethnic identity, bolstered by their transnational shipping fleet and the constant flow of people, goods, and ideas from the homeland.
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Title: Toward zero delay video streaming
Creator: Al-Qassab, Hothaifa Tariq
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Video streaming has been growing rapidly since the beginning of this century and it is expected to continue growing. With rapid growth of Internet traffic led by video traffic, the Internet busy hours on both mobile and fixed connection segments will double before the end of this decade. Meanwhile, transmission delay is a well-known problem in video streaming and it has been addressed by many prior works that demonstrated the feasibility of reducing packet delays over the Internet by...
Show moreVideo streaming has been growing rapidly since the beginning of this century and it is expected to continue growing. With rapid growth of Internet traffic led by video traffic, the Internet busy hours on both mobile and fixed connection segments will double before the end of this decade. Meanwhile, transmission delay is a well-known problem in video streaming and it has been addressed by many prior works that demonstrated the feasibility of reducing packet delays over the Internet by employing a variety of end-to-end techniques. This thesis consists of two parts that introduce new video streaming frameworks over the Internet and over connected-vehicle networks, respectively. Our objective in the first part of this thesis is to improve video streaming over the Internet. The emerging of new technology such as the HTTP-based Adaptive Streaming (HAS) approach has emerged as the dominant framework for video streaming mainly due to its simplicity, firewall friendliness, and ease of deployment. However, recent studies have shown that HAS solutions suffer from major shortcomings, including unfairness, significant bitrate oscillation under different conditions and significant delay. On the other hand, Quality-of-Service (QoS) based mechanisms, most notably multi-priority queue mechanisms such as DiffServ, can provide optimal video experience but at a major cost in complexity within the network. Our objective in this thesis is to design an efficient, low complexity and low delay video streaming framework.We call our proposed Internet streaming framework Erasable Packets within Internet Queues (EPIQ). Our proposed solution is based on a novel packetization of the video content in a way that exploits the inherent multi-priority nature of video. An important notion of our proposed framework is Partially Erasable Packet (PEP) that has two key attributes: (1) Each PEP packet carries multiple segments corresponding to multiple priority levels of the video content; and (2) High priority segments are placed next to the packet header while low-priority segments are placed toward the tail of the PEP packet. Furthermore, to evaluate our framework performance, we developed an analytical model for EPIQ that shows significant improvements when compared to the conventional and multi-priority queue video transmission models. Our proposed solution consists of a new Active Queue Management (AQM) that is similar to the RED algorithm. Under congestion, a best-effort AQM router can simply erase an arbitrary portion of a PEP packet starting from its tail where we denote this process as Partial Erasing (PE). To complement partial erasing in the AQM, a rate control protocol similar to TFRC is proposed to ensure fairness for video and non-video traffic. We demonstrate the viability of the proposed framework by simulating High Definition (HD) Video on Demand (VoD) streaming on the popular network simulator ns-2. Our results show that EPIQ provides improvements in video quality in terms of PSNR by at least 3dB over traditional video streaming formworks. In addition, packet loss ratio and delay jitter performance are comparable to the optimal video streaming mechanism that is offered by multi-priority systems such as DiffServ.The main objective of the second part of the thesis is to develop a vehicle active safety framework that utilizes video streaming and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication for driver warning. Most prior efforts for V2V safety applications have been limited to sharing vehicle status data between connected vehicles. On the other hand, video streaming has been mainly proposed for video contents sharing between vehicles or dashboard camera sharing.We propose a Cooperative Advanced Driver Assistance System (C-ADAS) where vehicles share visual information and fuse it with local visuals to improve the performance of driver assistance systems. In our proposed system, vehicles share detected objects (e.g., pedestrians, vehicles, cyclists, etc.) and important camera data using the DSRC technology. The vehicle receiving the data from an adjacent vehicle can then fuse the received visual data with its own camera views to create a much richer visual scene. The sharing of data is motivated by the fact that some critical visual views captured by one vehicle are not visible or captured by many other vehicles in the same environment. Sharing such data in real-time provides an invaluable new level of awareness that can significantly enhance a driver-assistance, connected vehicle, and/or autonomous vehicle’s safety-system. The experimental results showed that our proposed system performed as intended and was able to warn drivers ahead of time, and consequently, it could mitigate major accidents and safe lives.
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Title: Noradrenergic mechanisms of preclinical Alzheimer's disease
Creator: Kelly, Sarah Colette
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) neuron loss is a feature of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The LC is the primary source of norepinephrine (NE) in the forebrain, where it modulates attention and memory in vulnerable cognitive regions such as prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus. Furthermore, LC-mediated NE signaling is thought to play a role in blood-brain barrier (BBB) maintenance and neurovascular coupling, suggesting that LC degeneration may impact the high comorbidity of cerebrovascular...
Show moreNoradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) neuron loss is a feature of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The LC is the primary source of norepinephrine (NE) in the forebrain, where it modulates attention and memory in vulnerable cognitive regions such as prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus. Furthermore, LC-mediated NE signaling is thought to play a role in blood-brain barrier (BBB) maintenance and neurovascular coupling, suggesting that LC degeneration may impact the high comorbidity of cerebrovascular disease (CVD) and AD. However, the extent to which LC projection system degeneration occurs in the earliest stages of AD and the physiological consequences of this phenomenon is not fully characterized to date. To address these issues, we analyzed LC tissue samples from University of Kentucky AD Center (UKADC) subjects who died with a premortem diagnosis of no cognitive impairment (NCI) and Braak stages 0-II at autopsy, NCI subjects with Braak stages III-V thought to be in a preclinical AD (PCAD) stage, and subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or mild AD. Paraffin-embedded pontine tissue blocks containing the LC were cut at 20μm, immunostained with tyrosine hydroxylase (TH, a marker for NE synthesis), and analyzed to estimate total TH-positive LC neuron number. We measured a significant ~40-55% loss of LC neuron numbers in MCI and AD compared to NCI, whereas the mild ~25% LC neuron loss observed in PCAD did not reach significance. However, the topographical, rostrocaudal extent of LC cell loss in PCAD was significantly different from NCI and MCI. Moreover, LC cell loss correlated with premortem global cognition across the diagnostic groups. Studies were also performed to compare additional LC neuronal pathologies (phospho-tau and DNA/RNA oxidative damage markers) across the diagnostic groups. A significant ~15-30% increase in phospho-tau was observed in PCAD and MCI compared to NCI. DNA/RNA oxidative damage was significantly increased by ~25-40% in MCI and AD compared to NCI and PCAD. LC phospho-tau pathology correlated with Braak stage, whereas LC oxidative damage correlated with premortem global cognitive performance . Finally, while LC neuron number did not correlate with scores of global arteriosclerosis or microinfarcts, pontine arteriosclerosis severity was increased by two-fold in MCI and AD. To model the relationship between LC projection system degeneration and forebrain neuronal and vascular pathology in vivo, we stereotactically lesioned LC projection neurons innervating the PFC of the TgF344-19 rat model of AD (aged 6 months) using the noradrenergic immunotoxin, dopamine-β-hydroxylase IgG-saporin (DBH-sap), or an untargeted control IgG saporin (IgG-sap). DBH-sap lesioned animals performed significantly worse on the Barnes maze task and displayed increased amyloid and inflammatory pathology, as well as evidence for vessel remodeling and BBB leakage, compared to IgG-sap control animals. Taken together, these data compiled in my dissertation shed light on the multifactorial noradrenergic pathways contributing to neuronal and vascular pathologies during the onset of AD.
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Title: Methodology towards accessing small molecule heterocycles for h20S and TB proteasome modulation
Creator: Bethel, Travis Kordero
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "This dissertation focused on the development and advancement of methodology for accessing imidazoline scaffolds and other small heterocyclic molecules for biological evaluation. Past research within the Tepe group has correlated functionalized 2-imidazolines to proteasome modulation. Further diversification of the methodology for accessing these 2-imidazoline scaffolds, has allowed for the synthesis of a small library of analogs for SAR evaluation with the h20S proteasome. These finding were...
Show more"This dissertation focused on the development and advancement of methodology for accessing imidazoline scaffolds and other small heterocyclic molecules for biological evaluation. Past research within the Tepe group has correlated functionalized 2-imidazolines to proteasome modulation. Further diversification of the methodology for accessing these 2-imidazoline scaffolds, has allowed for the synthesis of a small library of analogs for SAR evaluation with the h20S proteasome. These finding were used to further experimentally model and synthesize more efficacious 2-imidazoline derivates for proteasome modulation. The proteasome is responsible for the degradation of polyubiquitinated proteins in the cell, producing amino acids that can then be used for alternative cellular functions. The introducition of small heterocyclic molecules like 2- imidazolines, bind to the proteasome and lower is efficacy for protein digestion through modulation of its activity."--Page ii.
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Title: Three Essays in the Economics of Education
Creator: Kho, Kevin
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Chapter 1: School Cellphone Bans and Student Substance Abuse: Evidence From California Public High SchoolsFollowing high profile school shootings and the September 11th terrorist attacks, public concern over school emergency preparedness prompted the California State Legislature in 2003 to overturn a statewide ban against student possession of cellphones on campuses. After the repeal of the prohibition, which had been established in 1988 to curb drug dealing, school districts were allowed...
Show moreChapter 1: School Cellphone Bans and Student Substance Abuse: Evidence From California Public High SchoolsFollowing high profile school shootings and the September 11th terrorist attacks, public concern over school emergency preparedness prompted the California State Legislature in 2003 to overturn a statewide ban against student possession of cellphones on campuses. After the repeal of the prohibition, which had been established in 1988 to curb drug dealing, school districts were allowed individually to either continue banning phones or modify their device policies; most opted over time to accommodate usage during certain hours of the day. Using fixed effects regression analysis clustered at the district level, I exploit variation in the timing of district policies to estimate the impact on substance abuse from lifting school cellphone bans. Results provide evidence that allowing students to use cellphones at school increases opportunities to obtain and abuse controlled substances; this effect is particularly pronounced in the incidence of marijuana smoking among 9th graders, who exhibit a 1.3 percentage point higher chance of reporting past-month marijuana use in the year a ban is lifted.Factors involved may include the capability that the technology provides to negotiate high risk interactions in private and to seek out and contact a relatively small number of drug suppliers; as is thus to be expected, no impact is found on the consumption of cigarettes, which can be obtained legally by a large proportion of high schoolers.Chapter 2: Impact of Internet Access on Student Learning in Peruvian Schools (with Leah Lakdawala and Eduardo Nakasone)We investigate the impacts of school-based internet access on pupil achievement in Peru, using a large panel of 5,903 public primary schools that gained internet connections during 2007-2014. We employ an event study approach and a trend break analysis that exploit variation in the timing of internet roll-out up to 5 years after installation. We find that internet access has a moderate, positive short-run impact on school-average standardized math scores, but importantly that this effect grows over time. We provide evidence that schools require time to adapt to internet access by hiring teachers with computer training and that this process is not immediate. These dynamics highlight the need for complementary investments to fully exploit new technological inputs and underscores the importance of using an extended evaluation window to allow the effects of school-based internet on learning to materialize.Chapter 3: Discretionary School Discipline Policies and Demographic DisparitiesIn 2014, California passed the law AB 420, becoming the first state to limit the use of school suspensions and expulsions as punishment for "willful defiance" - a subjectively determined offense thought by state lawmakers to lead to racial disparities in discipline. In this paper, I overview the state's recent (from 2012-2017) progress in reducing exclusionary discipline and note effects on disproportionality, here characterized as the difference between a given group's proportion of discipline and its proportion of enrollment. Using identification by treatment intensity, based on schools' pre AB 420 proportion of discipline attributable to willful defiance, I also attempt to gauge the effectiveness of reducing punishment of defiance in mitigating disproportionality. School level administrative data from elementary schools (spanning kindergarten through 5th grade) indicate that exclusionary discipline has considerably declined throughout the period. On the other hand, it does not appear that AB 420, along with lower willful defiance related discipline, has reduced disproportionality.
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Title: Constellating cultural rhetorics, first year writing, and service-learning : a story of teaching and learning
Creator: Prielipp, Sarah E.
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation examines the relationships among cultural rhetorics theory and methods, first year writing, and service-learning by showing the ways these theories and pedagogies constellate, or build, new things from their intersections and relationality. The author argues that “story is theory is practice” and demonstrates how this can work in first year writing through a cultural rhetorics-informed service-learning pedagogy. The author explains that this story of teaching and learning –...
Show moreThis dissertation examines the relationships among cultural rhetorics theory and methods, first year writing, and service-learning by showing the ways these theories and pedagogies constellate, or build, new things from their intersections and relationality. The author argues that “story is theory is practice” and demonstrates how this can work in first year writing through a cultural rhetorics-informed service-learning pedagogy. The author explains that this story of teaching and learning – both hers and her students – builds theory through sharing their stories of practice in their writing classroom. This theory/story/practice shows us how relationality, accountability, and reciprocity help develop habits of mind that may transfer to other situations to become active, engaged citizens for social justice.Chapter one develops Wilson’s Indigenous research paradigm as a theoretical framework for the author’s teaching and research by explaining her research paradigm for this project and discussing the literature that she draws on throughout this project. Chapter two further explains how she defines and uses service-learning by providing two case studies from the FYW courses she taught at Michigan State University in the 2016-2017 academic year. Chapter three begins to constellate cultural rhetorics theory and methods, first year writing, and service-learning using Wilson’s Indigenous research paradigm as a framework. The “half” chapters are her students’ voices, their stories in their words; these student selections help to show how they are practicing habits of mind throughout the course in their writing.
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Title: Controlling the surface processes of X- and Z-type ligands to tailor the photophysics of II-VI semiconductor nanocrystals
Creator: Saniepay, Mersedeh
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: II−VI colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs), such as CdSe NCs, are often plagued by efficient nonradiative recombination processes that severely limit their use in energy-conversion schemes. While these processes are now well-known to occur at the surface, a full understanding of the exact nature of surface defects and of their role in deactivating the excited states of  NCs has yet to be established, which is partly due to challenges associated with the direct probing of the complex and...
Show moreII−VI colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs), such as CdSe NCs, are often plagued by efficient nonradiative recombination processes that severely limit their use in energy-conversion schemes. While these processes are now well-known to occur at the surface, a full understanding of the exact nature of surface defects and of their role in deactivating the excited states of  NCs has yet to be established, which is partly due to challenges associated with the direct probing of the complex and dynamic surface of colloidal NCs. In this dissertation, we report a detailed study of the surface of cadmium-rich zinc-blende CdSe NCs. The surfaces of these cadmium-richspecies are characterized by the presence of cadmium carboxylate complexes (CdX2) that act as Lewis acid (Z- type) ligands that passivate under-coordinated selenide surface species. The systematic displacement of CdX2 from the surface by N,N,N′,N′-tetramethylethylene-1,2-diamine (TMEDA) has been studied using a combination of 1H NMR and photoluminescence spectroscopies. We demonstrate the existence of two independent surface sites that differ strikingly in the binding affinity for CdX2 and that are under dynamic equilibrium with each other. A model involving coupled dual equilibria allows a full characterization of the thermodynamics of surface binding (free energy, as well as enthalpic and entropic terms), showing that entropic contributions are responsible for the difference between the two surface sites. Importantly, we demonstrate that cadmium vacancies only lead to important photoluminescence quenching when created on one of the two sites, allowing a complete picture of the surface composition to be drawn where each site is assigned to specific NC facet locale, with CdX2 binding affinity and nonradiative recombinationefficiencies that differ by up to two orders of magnitude.To understand the effect of steric hindrance and types of functional groups in different ligands on X-type ligand exchanges, using NMR, PL and UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy, we studied X-type exchanges on CdSe NCs capped with native carboxylates, with oleic acid, oleyl thiol, benzoic acid and benzenethiol ligands. We discussed the results and occurrence of undesired pathways including displacement of Z-type ligands, and suggested ligand exchange strategies that most likely lead to 100% X-type exchange.The structural complexity of surface of CdS NCs is also discussed in this dissertation. We demonstrate presence of two different sulfur surface defects on CdS NCs with ligand binding equilibrium constants that are two orders of magnitude apart and 20-60% smaller than those of selenium on similar size CdSe NCs. We also correlated the different surface defects to the PL quenching efficiency of CdS NCs.
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Title: A search for resonant Z' production in high-mass dielectron final states with the ATLAS detector in Run-2 of the Large Hadron Collider
Creator: Willis, Christopher G.
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: A search is performed for new resonant high-mass phenomena in the dielectron final state. The search uses 36.1 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data, collected at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider during its 2015 and 2016 data-taking runs. The dielectron invariant mass is used as the search variable. No significant deviations from the Standard Model prediction are observed. Upper limits at the 95\% credibility level are set on the cross...
Show moreA search is performed for new resonant high-mass phenomena in the dielectron final state. The search uses 36.1 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data, collected at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider during its 2015 and 2016 data-taking runs. The dielectron invariant mass is used as the search variable. No significant deviations from the Standard Model prediction are observed. Upper limits at the 95\% credibility level are set on the cross section times branching fraction to dielectron pairs for resonant $Z^{\prime}$ models considered in the search. Lower limits on the resonance pole mass are also presented. For the $Z^{\prime}_{\mathrm{SSM}}$, masses are excluded up to 4.5 TeV, while masses up to 4.1 TeV are excluded in the $E_{6}$-motivated $Z^{\prime}_{\chi}$ model. Limits are also derived in the Minimal $Z^{\prime}$ Model on the relative coupling strength $\gamma^{\prime}$. In addition, a series of studies are conducted in order to assess and reduce the dominant systematic uncertainty of this analysis, which arises from the imprecise knowledge of the Parton Distribution Functions in regions of very high parton $x$. While this uncertainty does not limit the discovery potential of the analysis presented here, it has the potential to do so in future searches. A novel approach is developed, and is shown to significantly reduce this systematic uncertainty in the high-mass search region of interest, thereby improving the discovery potential of future analyses.
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Title: "Flooding oil" : investigating poor health in vulnerable communities in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria
Creator: Barry, Fatoumata Binta
Date: 2018
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The Niger Delta region in Nigeria has been exploited for decades due to extensive oil and gas deposits that have led to devastating livelihood and health consequences. In addition to oil and gas industry impacts, floods are intensifying in Niger Delta communities that have annual flooding during the rainy season (April to October). In 2012, Nigeria experienced a severe flooding event that damaged infrastructure and livelihoods with virtually no studies completed about the health consequences....
Show moreThe Niger Delta region in Nigeria has been exploited for decades due to extensive oil and gas deposits that have led to devastating livelihood and health consequences. In addition to oil and gas industry impacts, floods are intensifying in Niger Delta communities that have annual flooding during the rainy season (April to October). In 2012, Nigeria experienced a severe flooding event that damaged infrastructure and livelihoods with virtually no studies completed about the health consequences. This dissertation research study aims to fill this scholarly gap by disentangling the emerging health concerns in Niger Delta oil communities with particular attention to women and children as they are sensitive indicators of population health. It utilizes a mixed-methods approach with the inclusion of Eco-Syndemics and African womanism theoretical perspectives. It was found that the Niger Delta has multiple pre-existing vulnerabilities that put the population at more risk during flooding events. Also, through an evaluation of airborne concentrations of chemicals released by gas flares and a retrospective, cross-sectional comparison, women and children in Uzere (oil community) have greater exposure levels to toxic chemicals released and more health concerns than similar women and children in Aviara (non-oil community), even though both communities are located in flood-prone areas in the Niger Delta. Overall, this dissertation research advances our understanding of the complexity of health hazards in communities close to oil and gas activities in the midst of more severe flooding. It also enriches scholarly and policy debates by providing an initial assessment of the link between climate variability and health in vulnerable communities. -- Abstract.
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