Complement, an early recognition system of innate immunity that senses local tissue damage and infection, cross-talks with and regulates other signaling systems, including Toll-like receptor (TLR) pathways. In the context of periodontitis,...
Metaphor; English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching
This dissertation is a theoretical examination and textual analysis of the metaphors used to describe the act of writing and the teaching of writing. Within Rhetoric and Composition, there are specific conceptual metaphors that are instrumental to...
No current microfabrication technique exists for producing room-temperature, high-precision, point-to-point polymer nanofibers in three dimensions. Producing rounded structures in a third dimension is particularly difficult to accomplish with...
The Knudsen pump works on the principle of thermal transpiration. As a result of requiring a thermal gradient, channel hydraulic diameter smaller than the mean free path of the gas being pumped, and having no moving parts, the Knudsen pump features...
Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have attracted enormous attention in the field of nanotechnology for applications such as, immunoassay, drug delivery, contrast enhancement and tumor therapy. The typical range of gold nanoparticles varies from 1– 150...
Spinal cord injury (SCI) can be divided into two distinct stages, an initial mechanical impact and a later "secondary injury" resulting from a cascade of cytokines triggering a spreading demyelination and apoptosis of neurons and glia...
Integrated circuits--Design and construction; Integrated circuits industry--Technological innovations
Lithographic processes for printing device structures on integrated circuits plays a major role in the semiconductor industry. This project aims at designing and fabricating a programmable mask for a direct write lithography system which can...
c-Myc dysregulation is one of the most common abnormalities found in human cancer. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are functionally intertwined with the c-Myc network as multiple miRNAs are regulated by c-Myc, while others directly suppress c-Myc expression. In...
Current high-throughput gene expression experiments have a straightforward design of examining
the gene expression of one group or condition relative to that of another. The data is typically
analyzed as if they represent strictly intracellular...
Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) ranks among the major causes of morbidity and mortality in the world and effects millions of patients each year. Progression of ALD is well characterized and is actually a spectrum of liver diseases, which progresses...
Human adenoviruses (Ads) can infect and replicate in cells at different cell-cycle stages. Ads with the E1 B55K deletion preferentially replicate in cancer cells and cause oncolysis. Our laboratory has previously shown that the Ad E1 b gene is...
This thesis is divided into two parts below. Part I Adriamycin (ADR) can produce nephrotoxicity in rodents. The underlying mechanism may relate to ADR induced oxidative stress. In this study, we used transgenic mice (NMT3), which over-expressed the...
Periodontitis--Age factors; Natural immunity; Age factors in disease
Periodontal disease arises from excessive host inflammatory responses to the tooth-associated microbial biofilm, known as dental plaque. Severity ranges from superficial inflammation of the gingivae (gingivitis) to extensive destruction of...
Periodontitis--Age factors; Natural immunity; Age factors in disease
Age-related alterations in innate immunity are poorly understood. The identification of those mechanisms, which are dysfunctional in old age, will shed light on potential therapeutic strategies for chronic inflammatory diseases prevalent in the...
Mishaps in prenatal development can influence mammary gland development
and, ultimately, affect susceptibility to factors that cause breast cancer. This research was
based on the underlying hypothesis that maternal dietary composition during...
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...
An ensemble consists of a set of individual predictors whose predictions are combined. Generally, different classification and regression models tend to work well for different types of data and also, it is usually not know which algorithm will be...
Due to the complex nature of interactions at the genomic level as well as the large number of proteins present in an organism, understanding the functions of various genes that are expressed is essential. Creating an analysis pipeline for Expressed...
The goals of this dissertation is to further the understanding of the roles of two genes identified by differential display polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) of cat visual cortex as candidate genes to play a role in visual cortical plasticity....
INTRODUCTION: Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a disorder that is prevalent throughout the world. It is believed that 5% of school aged children suffer from ADHD, with some estimates indicating as high as 10% may suffer from the...
