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...
This dissertation is concerned with investigating robust approaches for the control of pneumatic muscle systems. Pneumatic muscle is a novel type of actuator. Besides having a high ratio of power to weight and flexible control of movement, it also...
Graft rejection; Diagnostic imaging; Postoperative care
The fourth hand transplant recipient in Louisville lost his graft at nine months post transplant from ischemia due to severe graft arteriopathy. Conventional imaging techniques and clinical measurements, including CT angiography and measurements of...
In this thesis self-assembled growth of Ag2Ga nano-needles on batch fabricated
micro-grippers are reported. The room temperature growth of Ag2Ga nano-needles have
been recently developed as stylus for Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Integration...
An investigation was made into the relative costs of excavation retention by two systems: conventional soldier pile-wale-tieback support, and support by soil nailing. The investigation included design of excavation supports by the two...
Microelectromechanical systems; Biotelemetry; Strains and stresses--Measurement
Lumbar arthrodesis or spinal fusion is usually performed to relieve back pain and regain functionality from ruptured discs, disc degenerative disease, trauma and scoliosis. Metal rods are often fixed to the spine with screws or hooks, while fusion...
Transcendence (Philosophy) in art; Androgyny (Psychology) in art; Jungian psychology; Art--Psychological aspects
From a Jungian perspective, this thesis investigates the ideal of androgynous transcendence by identifying the Jungian anima-animus archetype within three specific artworks produced by three differing traditions. As a result, this thesis...
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...
In this novella, a young girl wakes to discover she has lost her voice and that
people can no longer hold their secrets back from her. Tasked with offering them
absolution through listening, she must also deal with the increasing toll bearing...
Phase II clinical trial are generally single arm trial where a homogeneity assumption is placed on the response. In practice, this assumption may be violated resulting in a heterogeneous response. This heterogeneous or overdispersed response can be...
Determining the mechanical properties of the spine is a significant step in understanding the behavior of the spine under normal conditions. Although a limited amount of data for cyclic loading is currently available, the tests are not completely...
Loneliness--Fiction; Widowers--Fiction; Supernatural in literature
Happy Death Men is a series of excerpts from a novel of the same name. It is a work of
magical realism that follows in the footsteps of Haruki Murakami and Neil Gaiman. The
novel consists of two main storylines, one about a widower named Henry, and...
Cardiac mapping has become an important area of research for understanding the mechanisms responsible for cardiac arrhythmias and the associated diseases. Current technologies for measuring electrical potentials on the surface of the heart are...
Athletic shoes; Foot--Wounds and injuries--Prevention
The purpose of this investigation was to determine if cycling shoes made with stiff material cause an increase in peak plantar stress over shoes with less stiff material. Shoe stiffness measurements were collected under controlled conditions and in...
Fantasy fiction, American; Fantasy fiction, Japanese
This creative thesis follows the opening story arc to a larger fiction project in the genre of high fantasy fiction. Structurally and stylistically, by incorporating contemporary contributions to the genre from Japanese popular culture, this story...
Wit and humor--Therapeutic use; Behavior therapy; Wit and humor--Psychological aspects
Objective: To evaluate the influence of positive affect inductions on daily and weekly Positive and Negative Affect Scales (PANAS) in a community setting. Methods: Humor messages were distributed to participants four times per day during a...
Supervisory control systems--Security measures; Computer security; Security systems
This thesis documents the successful development and testing of a more secure industrial control system field device architecture and software. The implementation of a secure field device has had limitations in the past due to a lack of secure...
For this thesis, I wrote 28 new pages, all composed between December, 2011 and March,
2012. They are the best I've written. The other five pages are drafts from work
previously written in U of L Creative Writing workshops. My poems endeavor to...
Dermal wounds, including bed sores, pressure ulcers, and diabetic ulcers have a large impact on American healthcare costing up to $7 billion per year. Adequate pharmaceutical remedies applied at constant rate could prove to increase the healing...
Hospitals--Emergency services--Quality control; Time management surveys
Kosair Children’s Hospital Emergency Department in Louisville, KY has been
reporting low patient satisfaction, which could result in a decrease in revenue and patients
for the hospital. Patient throughput times in Kosair’s emergency room have a...
