Females have a higher incidence of autoimmune diseases than males for reasons that are currently unknown. CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells play an important role in the maintenance of immunological homeostasis and self-tolerance by suppressing...
In this dissertation, standardized methods for measuring electron emission (EE) from nanostructured materials are established. Design of an emitter array platform, synthesis and nanomanipulation of different types of are successfully conducted....
Nanoparticles; Drug delivery devices; Gene therapy
The properties and broad applications of nano-magnetic colloids have generated much interest in recent years. Specially, Fe304 nanoparticles have attracted a great deal of attention since their magnetic properties can be used for hyperthermia...
We aimed to examine differences in treatment impacts and quality of life between adult orthodontic patients with Invisalign and fixed appliances. Adults represent a burgeoning branch of orthodontics yet many prospective patients have been reluctant...
Accelerated life testing; Reliability (Engineering); Service life (Engineering)
This dissertation is focused on finding lower confidence limits for the reliability of systems consisting of Wei bull components when the reliability demonstration testing (RDT) is conducted with zero failures. The usual methods for the parameter...
Nanomaterials have many intriguing applications in biology and medicine. Unique properties such as enhanced electrical properties, increased chemical reactivity and resistance to degradation, novel optical properties and comparable size to that of...
Optimal trajectory generation is an essential part for robotic explorers to execute the total exploration of deep oceans or outer space planets while curiosity of human and technology advancements of society both require robots to search for...
Electromyography; Spinal cord--Wounds and injuries
Introduction: Approximately 12,000 new cases of spinal cord injury (SCI) are reported each year in the US. Currently, the most widely used method of assessing the recovery of voluntary capability after spinal cord injury is the American Spinal...
Symmetric piezoresistive microcantilever beams have been demonstrated in previous research to be capable of sensing the presence of surrounding gas. This occurs as the damping effect of the gas changes the beam resonance behavior. Device...
Emergency medicine--Diagnosis; Emergency medical services
A retrospective study involving the secondary analysis of public health surveillance records was undertaken to characterize the reliability and validity of an EMS dispatch data-based scheme for assigning emergency patients to surveillance syndromes...
This study investigated teachers' inclusion of racially diverse literature within their classroom libraries, how the representations within the literature compared with the students in the classrooms, the inclusivity of students' book selections,...
Christian leadership--Case studies; Rural churches--Kentucky; Clergy; School improvement programs; Educational leadership
This qualitative study sought to illuminate successful practices of a turnaround leader in a rural church that are applicable cross-contextually, so as to inform the leadership efforts of various organizations seeking to reproduce organizational...
This study expands our efforts to make a new class of Pt (II) compounds analogous to cisplatin and its derivatives using sterically hindered ligands. Pt compounds in this series have been synthesized using specially designed pyridine and...
c-Myc dysregulation is one of the most common abnormalities found in human cancer. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are functionally intertwined with the c-Myc network as multiple miRNAs are regulated by c-Myc, while others directly suppress c-Myc expression. In...
Williams syndrome--Genetic aspects; Anxiety disorders
Genetic factors play an important role in the etiology of anxiety disorders. Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic disorder caused by a deletion on chromosome 7q11.23 and associated with increased prevalence of anxiety disorders relative to the general...
Micro air vehicles (MAVs) are type of unmanned aircraft with a maximum length of 150 mm (6 in.) and flight speed of less than 10 m/s. Because their flight speed is comparable to the environmental wind speed coupled with their small size and low...
Computer vision; Pattern recognition systems; Human face recognition (Computer science)
Humans have the uncanny ability to perceive the world in three dimensions (3D), otherwise known as depth perception. The amazing thing about this ability to determine distances is that it depends only on a simple two-dimensional (2D) image in the...
A hyper basis function network (HyperBF) is a generalized radial basis function network (RBF) where the activation function is a radial function of a weighted distance. The local weighting of the distance accounts for the variation in local scaling...
Economic development--Political aspects; Metropolitan areas--Economic aspects; Municipal government
Fragmentation of governments and urban sprawl has been a subject of debate for a considerable time. The discussion often centers on whether space (sprawl) and politics (fragmentation) make a difference in the economic development of metropolitan...
Radio frequency allocation; Wireless communication systems
Recently, the need for wireless and mobile communications has grown tremendously and it is expected that the number of users to be supported will increase with high rates in the next few years. Not only the number of users, but also the required...
