Brief Overview of the Problem: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a government funded agency, provides both legislative and judicial powers for emissions monitoring in the United States. The agency crafts laws based on self-made regulations...
Over the last 15 years, researchers have explored the use of piezoresistive microcantilevers/resonators as gas sensors because of their relative ease in fabrication, low production cost, and their ability to detect changes in mass or surface stress...
Characterization of the optical and electrical properties of organic solar cell materials is of prime importance to organic solar cell design. This thesis describes the use of capacitive photocurrent measurements to study the exciton generation and...
The properties of gold nanoparticles (GNP) holds promising potential for drug delivery, diagnostics, plasmonic photothermal therapy of diseases, electronics, catalysis, and photovoltaics (Liu et al., 2006; Huang et al., 2003; Thompson, 2007;...
Age-related macular degeneration (ARMD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP) are the two leading causes of blindness in the world today. Despite enormous efforts and advances in clinical treatment of eye diseases, there is no established method or cure of...
This dissertation presents an analytical investigation that examined the seismic performance of steel stud backed and Concrete Masonry Units (CMU) backed masonry veneer wall systems, under in and out - of - plane loads, in medium rise building...
Monoclonal antibodies directed toward tumor associated antigens are FDA approved anticancer reagents used commonly in the clinic. Administered antibodies initiate tumor cell death through several mechanisms. Improving immune mediated mechanisms,...
The lipid aldehydes, 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (4-HNE) and propene-2-al (acrolein) are reactive α,β-unsaturated aldehydes generated during the peroxidation of lipids and are implicated in the pathogenesis of several oxidative-stress mediated diseases,...
The aim of this study was to determine if playing 5 soccer matches in 4 weeks after 8 weeks of strength, conditioning and soccer training further improves aerobic and anaerobic performances. Ten college soccer players (20.1 ± 1.2 yr) completed...
Alcohol; Distillation; Alcoholic beverages; Corn--Utilization; Whiskey industry
In the whisky industry there is a balance between the desire to adhere to the traditional production process and the desire to increase profit margins. One solution that follows both stipulations is to increase the alcohol yield of a given batch of...
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level by repressing translation or stimulating mRNA degradation. In this study, I tested the hypothesis that miRNAs are differentially expressed in antiestrogen-sensitive MCF-7...
Coronary heart disease--Treatment--Cost effectiveness; Angioplasty; Medical laws and legislation--Kentucky
A myocardial infarction (MI) occurs when blood supply to the heart is cut off by a blockage in one of the coronary arteries. Most hospitals treat a patient with thrombolysis or a percutaneous coronary intervention (PC I). The latter has been...
Computer-aided minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has progressed significantly in the last decade and it has great potential in surgical planning and operations. To limit the damage to nearby healthy tissue, accurate modeling is required of the...
Iron oxide, Fe2O3, is a promising material for water splitting reaction using solar
energy due to its stability and optimal bandgap of 2 eV. Even the recent efforts, however,
using Fe2O3 thin film materials reported low efficiencies due to poor...
Fiber-reinforced polymer matrix composites (PMCs) using high-temperature thermoplastics as the matrix material represent a lightweight design solution for applications above 250°F. This is often required for aircraft structures subjected to...
Background: CHF is a chronic disease that affects nearly five million people each year; in which at least 500,000 are newly diagnosed cases. Patients diagnosed with this disease will be under a physician's care for the remainder of their life. It...
Bioinformatics; Breast--Cancer--Treatment; Medical care--Data processing
Statistical models have been the first choice for comparative effectiveness in clinical research. Though effective, these models are limited when the data to be analyzed do not fit the assumed distributions; which is mostly the case when the study...
Aluminum fiber metal laminates (AFMLs) are a promising new type of fiber metal laminate that consists of aluminum foils interleaved with layers of a graphite fiber-polymer matrix composite (PMC) material. AFMLs combine the attractive features of...
This study investigates the placebo effect in randomized controlled trials of low back pain. This effect has not been analyzed over time or in respect to low back pain. A meta-analysis was performed using the Pubmed/Medline database for low back...
Heat pipes; Solar heating--Passive systems; Solar heating--Research; Solar energy--Research
The one dimensional heat transfer, thermal diode effect of heat pipes makes
them ideal for passive solar applications. Gains in a heat pipe passive solar wall are not
lost during cloud cover or periods of low irradiation. An experimental model was...
