Tobacco smoke is a strong and independent risk factor for several chronic systemic diseases and also increases susceptibility to a multitude of bacterial infections, including periodontal infections. Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory disease...
Dimorphism is a highly conserved process in fungi in which a transition between a unicellular, yeast-like growth form and either a unicellular or multicellular, filamentous growth form occurs in response to several different environmental cues. The...
During the 2004-05 school year, over 10,000 international student-athletes competed for National Collegiate Athletic Association schools (NCAA, 2006b). Few researchers have examined how international student-athletes' college experiences compare to...
Guanine-rich oligonucleotides (GROs) are being developed as a novel anticancer agents. GROs exhibit potent antiproliferative properties against several malignant cell lines and in established in vivo tumor models. In a recent Phase I clinical trial...
Data libraries--Security measures; Computer networks--Security measures; Information storage and retrieval systems; Digital preservation
Data centers (DC) are the core of the national cyber infrastructure. With the incredible growth of critical data volumes in financial institutions, government organizations, and global companies, data centers are becoming larger and more...
Worry in children; Anxiety in children; Cognition in children; Child psychology
Although worry is common in children, little is known about its development and maintenance. The current study reviews several areas of the literature to inform a comprehensive cognitive model of clinical worry in children. Parental influences on...
This dissertation is an examination of fire department response times in eight major cities of the United States including Houston, TX, Charlotte, NC, St. Paul, MN, Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, Louisville, KY, San Francisco, CA and Miami, FL. This...
Mogul Empire--Social life and customs; Drinking of alcoholic beverages--India--History; Drug abuse--India
Intoxicant use in Mughal India was not only widespread, it also represented an important part of the empire's history and culture. The influence of intoxicants - specifically opium and alcohol - has often been overlooked in secondary literature,...
Women air pilots; Women--Recreation--Social aspects; Leisure--Social aspects
Serious leisure theory (Stebbins, 1992) is used to frame this examination of women's long-term involvement in airplane piloting. Through in-depth, semi-structured telephone and e-mail interviews with women having over 15 years experience as private...
English language--Study and teaching--Foreign speakers--Case studies; English language--Study and teaching--Kentucky--Louisville
This thesis examined the structure and processes of several different organizations that offer English as a Second Language (ESL) classes in one Kentucky county. The purpose of the study was to analyze the structure of the organizations, and then...
Item response theory; Goodness-of-fit tests; Monte Carlo method
Item response theory (IRT) is expanding to diverse research settings, without accompanying access to easily implemented model fit methods. One simple model fit approach involves x2/df ratios. However, its utility is not known across several...
The concept of quality of life (QOL) has been the topic of many research projects, yet several clinically relevant aspects of this concept have been overlooked. Specifically, few studies have addressed the impact of such demographic variables as...
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...
Anxiety in children; Resilience (Personality trait) in children; Temperament in children; Child development
Anxiety is a common and debilitating disorder in children. Until recently, research in the field of child anxiety has focused on the identification of specific risk factors in the development of child anxiety. More recent studies have begun to...
Computer-assisted instruction--Planning; Universities and colleges--Technological innovations; Distance education
This study focused on the development and validation of a web-based survey instrument designed to measure faculty perceptions on the importance of 24 variables that contribute to the facilitation of online postsecondary course development. It...
Recently, social multimedia-sharing websites, which allow users to upload, annotate, and share online photo or video collections, have become increasingly popular. The user tags or annotations constitute the new multimedia "meta-data". We...
Human adult olfactory epithelium contains neural progenitors (hONPs) which replace damaged cellular components throughout life. Methods to isolate and expand the hONPs have been developed in our laboratory. In response to morphogens, the hONPs...
Medical records--Data processing; Data mining; Databases--Design
A major problem with integrating information from multiple databases is that the same data objects can exist in inconsistent data formats across databases and a variety of attribute variations, making it difficult to identify matching objects using...
The research in this dissertation describes a simple electrochemical approach for fabricating nanoscale (metal/metal) or molecular (metal/polymer or self assembled monolayer (SAM)/metal) junctions. The fabrication involves metal deposition on one...
20S proteasome, essential component of protein degradation mechanism, is important to maintain homeostasis. Its malfunctions have been associated with several pathological conditions. This study presents an extensive study of murine cardiac 20S...
