The complexity of high-dimensional data creates a number of concerns when trying to analyze it. This data often consists of a response or survival time and potentially thousands of predictors. These predictors can be highly correlated, and the...
Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote five poems that critiqued Soviet society. The poems, on topics as diverse as anti-Semitism, the suppression of humor, the mistreatment of women, state repression, and bureaucracy, were written at separate times and for...
The Kosair Children's Hospital, located in Louisville, Kentucky, is the only children's hospital in the state. Recently, the hospital's emergency department has developed concerns with patient satisfaction. Patients have experienced excessive...
Naja kaouthia is a significant species because it feeds primarily on agricultural pests, causes human mortality, and is commercially exploited. Understanding the life history and demography of harvested populations is essential to providing...
Marginal inference for waiting times in multi-stage time-to-event models is complicated by right censoring of observations as well as the prior history of events in the model. In general, complications arise due to the evolution of the censoring...
Current wind power technology is not economically feasible throughout most of the United States due to low average wind speeds. A design for a small-scale wind concentrator device suitable for use in areas of low wind velocity was tested using...
High dynamic range imaging involves imaging at a bit depth higher than the typical 8-12 bits offered by standard video equipment. We propose a method of imaging a scene at high dynamic range, 14+ bits, to detect motion correlated with changes in...
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...
Mixed-effects model is an efficient tool for analyzing longitudinal data. The random effects in mixed-effects model can be used to capture the correlations among repeated measurements within a subject. The time points are not fixed and all...
The aim of the study is to determine factors contributing to satisfaction with orthognathic surgery. It was hypothesized that specific factors contribute to the patient's perception of success. 37 patients who had orthodontic/orthognathic surgery...
Griffithsin (GRFT) is a carbohydrate binding protein derived from the red alga Griffithisia sp. that has been shown to effectively interfere with the cellular attachment and infectivity of a number of viruses, including HIV-1. However, it is...
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...
Mycobacterium tuberculosis causes the often-fatal infectious disease Tuberculosis, and infects approximately one third of the world's population. Gaining a better understanding of how these bacteria regulate gene expression for intracellular...
Unrepaired DNA damage poses a serious threat to the genetic stability of a replicating cell. One mechanism of tolerating this damage is translesion DNA synthesis (TLS), in which an accessory polymerase synthesizes DNA directly across from a damaged...
Long-term exposure to harmful carcinogens like benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) are linked to lung cancer. Benzo[a]pyrene diol epoxide (BPDE), the ultimate carcinogen produced by BaP bioactivation, is believed to play an important role in lung carcinogenesis....
This dissertation focuses on the mechanisms and implications of perceptual learning of binocular interactions. Perceptual learning is an important means of adapting to the changing environment, demonstrating the possibility of neural plasticity in...
Sleep apnea syndromes; Overweight persons--Health and hygiene; Obesity
Overweight and obesity is a major contributing factor in an estimated 70% of all obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) cases. Approximately five percent of the adult population has OSA, and the numbers continue to soar with the rising prevalence of...
Drug delivery systems; Curcumin--Therapeutic use--Administration
Curcumin, a plant derived compound has shown significant potency against various chronic diseases like cancer in cell culture and animal studies. However, the introduction of this compound into clinical setting is limited by its poor oral...
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...
Many species of fungi undergo a dimorphic transition to switch from a unicellular yeast-like growth form to a filamentous growth form. Ustilago maydis undergoes such a transition, in response to successful mating events and subsequent host cues, to...