Public health surveillance; Social networks--Health aspects; Information storage and retrieval systems--Public health
Early information is crucial for policy makers and public health officials responsible for protecting the public from the virulent spread of contagious diseases. Current indicators of the spread of contagious outbreaks lag behind the actual spread...
In this dissertation research, we aim to solve problems of two types of survival data, clustered survival data with potentially informative cluster size and sojourn time data. The methods for these two types of data are different. However, both...
Protein C (PC) is an important anticoagulant, antithrombotic, and antiinflammatory in blood plasma. PC deficiency can lead to severe venous thrombotic events, including lung embolism, stroke, and heart attack. In the body, PC is activated only when...
Several technical and economic obstacles currently hamper the industrial development of ethanol from biomass. One of the key bottlenecks is the slow kinetics of the enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose, and the subsequent rate reduction as the...
This thesis is written to investigate if and how far the German credit financial market could be promising for consulting fees in the field of mortgage loan banking. The problem identified is an extensively discussed issue in the German credit...
The phase II clinical trial is a critical step in the drug development process. In the oncology setting, phase II studies typically evaluate one primary endpoint, which is efficacy. In practice, a binary measurement representing the response to the...
Clustered longitudinal data is often collected as repeated measurements on subjects over time arising in the clusters. Examples include longitudinal community intervention studies, or family studies with repeated measures on each member. Meanwhile,...
Parkinson's disease--Treatment; Stem cells--Therapeutic use
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a hypokinetic movement disorder resulting from the
progressive neurodegeneration of the dopaminergic nigrostriatal system in the brain and
the resulting imbalance between dopamine and acetylcholine in the basal ganglia...
Arsenic--Physiological effect; Cardiovascular system--Diseases; Liver--Effect of arsenic on; Arsenic--Toxicology
Chronic arsenic exposure is associated with increased cardiovascular disease (CVD). Prenatal arsenic exposure at 49 ppm arsenic accelerates atherosclerosis underlying CVD in ApoE-/- mice, but the mechanism is unknown. This dissertation examines the...
In recent years, a number of computational and statistical problems for identifying SNP-SNP interactions in high dimensional survival data have been studied, and several data mining approaches have been proposed. However, the relative performance...
We formulate an integro-difference model to predict the growth and spatial
spread of a perennial plant population with an age-structured seed bank. We allow
the seeds in the bank to be of any age, producing an infinite system of equations.
The...
The use of a fluidized bed dryer to dry acrylo-nitrile-
butadiene-styrene terpolymer was studied. Data for
fluidized bed drying were obtained from the Monsanto
Company's fluid bed dryer. Fluid bed theory, drying
phenomena, and fluid bed drying...
Obesity in children; Obesity in adolescence; Orthodontics
The purpose of this study was to determine if obesity impacts craniofacial dimensions in adolescent and teenage subjects. Twenty-one cephalometric measurements were selected as a basis for comparison between normal weight, overweight and obese...
The objective of this thesis is to develop computer programs for the dynamic analysis of structures. For a shear building two computer programs were developed: (1) Dynamic Analysis of a Shear Building within the Elastic Range and (2) the Dynamic...
This thesis describes 1) the kinetics of vapor phase place exchange reactions on films of gold monolayer protected clusters (Au MPCs) to alter the functionality of the Au MPCs, 2) applications of the reaction for altering chemiresistive sensing...
Copper--Physiological effect; Copper in the body; Heart--Hypertrophy
Previous studies have shown that copper (Cu) supplementation at physiologically relevant levels reverses cardiac myocyte hypertrophy induced by phenylephrine (PE), and that this effect was VEGF-dependent. Yet, the amount of VEGF in the media was...
Blood flow--Measurement; Magnetic resonance imaging
Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) is a progressive atherosclerotic disorder which
is defined as any pathologic process obstructing the blood flow of the arteries supplying
the lower extremities. Moderate stenoses mayor may not be...
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...
It is known that carbohydrates on oxidation break into fragments which later are oxidised, or reduced, according as the conditions of the bodily functioning may favor, and it is in this process or reaction of the carbohydrate molecule that the...