A hyper basis function network (HyperBF) is a generalized radial basis function network (RBF) where the activation function is a radial function of a weighted distance. The local weighting of the distance accounts for the variation in local scaling...
Among gynecological malignancies, carcinoma of the cervix is the leading cancer type worldwide. Conversely, vaginal tumors account for an incidence of approximately 1-2% of lower genital tract malignancies. Interestingly, the major shared risk...
Background: Emerging circulatory support devices that operate in counterpulsation to the native heart require synchronized timing of device ejection and filling on a beat-to-beat basis with the native heart using a patient's ECG. Surface leads are...
Pattern recognition systems; Cluster analysis; Data mining
Despite the large number of existing clustering methods, clustering remains a challenging task especially when the structure of the data does not correspond to easily separable categories, and when clusters vary in size, density and shape. Existing...
T cells; Disease susceptibility; Lupus; Sex factors in disease
Females are more susceptible to autoimmune disease than males. In several mouse models of disease, castration of males exacerbates disease while androgen treatment ameliorates disease. These data suggest hormones can have an influence on disease...
Myocardial infarction; Glucose--Metabolism; Mitochondrial DNA
Heart failure is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the USA. During the development of heart failure, many cardiac parameters change at the same time including fuel metabolism, oxidative stress and mitochondrial function. Each of these...
Human exposure to mercury has been shown to cause a number of adverse health outcomes, predominantly neurological effects. The developing fetus is most susceptible, and even low levels of exposure have been shown to produce nervous system deficits....
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a fibrotic lung disease with poor prognosis.
To address this disease broadly, the candidate engaged in clinical work, literature
analysis, database analysis, and laboratory work. The clinical work culminated...
Mosquitoes as carriers of disease; Dengue viruses; Mosquitoes--Physiology
In the course of their life cycle, mosquitoes undergo an ontogenetic niche shift; immature larval development occurs within an aquatic habitat from which adult mosquitoes subsequently disperse into the terrestrial environment. While adult female...
Legal and illegal gambling opportunities are readily available to students on college campuses and surrounding areas (Saum, 1999). College students are at an age that is highly impressionable, experimental, and prime to taking risks while ignoring...
Oxygen is critical to aerobic metabolism, but hyperoxia is cytostatic and cytocidal. The precise mechanisms involved in hyperoxic cell injury remain incompletely understood although there is substantial support for the possibility that hyperoxia...
Periodontitis--Treatment; Peptides--Therapeutic use
Periodontitis and its systemic sequelae remain a major public health problem and
developing a cost-efficient therapy will benefit healthcare worldwide. Adherence of
Porphyromonas gingivalis to Streptococcus gordonii facilitates colonization of the...
Recent studies indicate post-translational deacetylation by members of the superfamily of histone deacetylase complexes (HDACs) is necessary for oligodendrocyte precursor cell (OPC) differentiation into mature oligodendrocytes (OLs). However, it...
Hurricane Katrina, 2005--Psychological aspects; Writing--Psychological aspects; Psychic trauma in literature; Crisis in literature
The discourses of "trauma" and "post-trauma" have become pervasive in representations of life as it is lived in contemporary globalized culture. As new media technologies make the world more accessible, we become accustomed to...
Short-term memory; Memory--Effect of sound on; Memory--Effect of noise on; Speech
The Irrelevant Speech Effect (ISE) is a phenomenon in which the presentation of
auditory materials (typically speech) impairs the serial recall of visually presented
materials, either digits or letters. Although this effect has been replicated in a...
Java (Computer program language); Application software--Development
The purpose of this thesis is to design, implement, and evaluate a software package that is mutli-platform and will provide software integrity management (SIM). The software package is implemented in Java and will perform two hashing algorithms,...
Women in literature--History--19th century; Consumption (Economics) in literature; Materialism in literature; American literature--19th century--Social aspects
This dissertation examines American consumer culture and its influences on images of women created in art and literature at the turn of the twentieth century. It is divided into four substantive parts and uses the methods and theoretical approaches...
