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Bottom-Up Proteomics Analysis Pseudomonas aeruginosa Under the Effects of Antimicrobial Peptides
No full textPseudomonas aeruginosa (P.aeruginosa) is identified by the World Health Organization as a critical multidrug-resistant pathogen. Its pathogenicity is due to Quorum Sensing (QS), a regulatory system that enables communication and coordination in response to population density. QS governs behaviors such as motility, virulence, and biofilm formation, the latter making P. aeruginosa infections especially difficult to treat. Key genes to this system are lasR, rhlR, and pqsE and their protein expression. The aim of this research is to investigate how antimicrobial peptides, including Temporin L and its analogs, influence protein production in P. aeruginosa, with a focus on QS gene expression. Peptide-based antibiotics offer advantages such as broad antimicrobial activity, lower toxicity, and reduced risk of resistance development, making them promising candidates for combating multidrug-resistant infections. The methods of this experiment start with antimicrobial activity assessed by determining the MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) and NIC (lowest concentration slowing growth) of peptides against P. aeruginosa. 3mL of culture is grown until an OD of 0.5, representing actively dividing, resistant gene-expressing cells. Peptides at varying concentrations (150 µL) were introduced, and OD measurements were recorded every 30 minutes until cultures reached an OD of 1.0. Growth inhibition patterns established MIC and NIC values. The cultures were retained for LC-MS analysis. Samples were centrifuged to collect pellets, washed and purified to isolate proteins. Protein samples were prepared for bottom-up proteomic analysis. Preliminary results of Temporin L showed OD (cell growth) values decreasing as peptide concentration increased. Temporin L and TLP-1 both showed significant bacterial growth reduction where TLP-3 showed no inhibition. Proteomics analysis revealed 52 proteins in control samples versus 83 in TL treated samples, suggesting stress-induced protein upregulation. This experiment will be repeated with a variety of other peptides to identify which best target P. aeruginosa antimicrobial resistance
From Playgrounds to Health, linking Physical Activity, BMI, and Diabetes in Kids
No full textChildhood obesity remains a critical public health issue in the United States, with strong links to diabetes and other chronic conditions. Body mass index (BMI) and physical activity are two key indicators of children’s health, as they capture both risk and protective factors for long-term outcomes. Nationally representative datasets, such as the 2022-2023 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), provide valuable insights into patterns of BMI and physical activity among children aged 6-17 years. According to CDC, obesity prevalence continues to rise, while disparities in physical activity levels persist across demographic groups. Descriptive analyses of BMI and physical activity, alongside variables such as age and sex, help clarify how these factors interact and contribute to childhood health trajectories. This study uses NSCH data to examine BMI, physical activity, and their relationship with demographic variables. The findings will provide a clearer picture of child health behaviors and highlight patterns relevant for obesity prevention strategies. Additionally, examining disparities in physical activity and BMI across socioeconomic status, race, and geographic location can provide deeper insight into populations at higher risk. Early childhood behaviors often track into adolescence and adulthood, highlighting the importance of identifying at risk groups early. By recognizing these patterns, public health practitioners and policymakers can design and implement targeted interventions that promote healthier lifestyles, reduce obesity prevalence, and ultimately decrease the long-term burden of chronic diseases across the population. In addition, integrating these findings with school and community based programs can enhance outreach efforts, foster sustainable behavioral changes, and ensure that resources are directed toward the children who need them most
Detecting Relevance and Spam in Product Reviews
No full textOnline retailers such as Amazon allow customers to make review on purchased products, which can lead to challenges in managing irrelevant and deceptive product reviews. These reviews can be misleading to customers and decrease the level of trust that they have in the marketplace. This project aims to create a framework for detecting review relevance and spam through semantic analysis. Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency with logistic regression will be used to establish a baseline, while SBERT embeddings will provide semantic similarity between a review and the product description. To advance this project further, an Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis with Explicit Sentiment Augmentations (ABSA-ESA) will be used. This is an advanced deep learning approach to transform implicit sentiment into an explicit statement. A transformer model such as RoBERTa will be tuned on both the original and augmented data in order to capture the aspect-sentiment relationships. These aspects can be cross-referenced with known product attributes to assess relevance and inconsistencies between sentiment and ratings along with other irregularities can be used assess spam detection. The framework will be trained and evaluated using the Amazon Fine Food and Commerce Review datasets, the UCI SMS Spam dataset will inform spam detection, and the SemEval laptop and restaurant datasets will be used for ABSA-ESA development. Evaluation metrics will include accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and area under the precision-recall curve. This framework is designed to produce a high-precision system capable of distinguishing relevant reviews from spam or irrelevant reviews. The goal is to improve transparency and reliability in online review systems such as the one used on Amazon
Advanced Deep Learning for Pharmaceutical Pill Defect Detection
No full textQuality assurance in pharmaceutical manufacturing represents pharmaceutical production quality assurance is an important patient and regulatory safeguard. Here, a new application of Detectron2, a cutting-edge deep learning framework that enables instance segmentation, is introduced to streamline the pill defect inspection process. Compared to human examination or general computer vision algorithms, the technique applied is more accurate in identifying various kinds of defects like cracks, chips, coloration, and impurities. The study employed a data set that comprised of 780 high-quality images of pharmacy pills and consisted of 400 training images, 250 validation images, and 130 test images from Kaggle (PudPawat). Defect annotation using the Makes Sense AI tool was performed to have standardized and proper labeling of defect morphologies. The Detectron2 model was selected due to its better ability to perform instance-level segmentation. Performance analysis revealed remarkable figures on different fronts. The model revealed a confidence rate of 99% in detecting defects with a total accuracy of 98.5% and an average Mean Average Precision (mAP) of 97.2%. Performance of bounding box detection provided an Average Precision (AP) of 41.95 with AP50 and AP75 scores of 68.58 and 44.06 respectively. Most significantly, segmentation performance achieved an AP of 45.14, with AP50 of 68.58 and AP75 of 64.64, confirming the model\u27s capability to accurately define defect boundaries. By eliminating human subjectivity, the system reduces the likelihood of defective products reaching consumers. This research demonstrates that instance segmentation using deep learning is a revolutionary technology for pharmaceutical quality control. The high precision, real-time detection provided by Detectron2 provides manufacturers with an efficient way of keeping high regulatory compliance while achieving high production throughput. This research paves the way for increased AI integration in pharmaceutical production with potential extension into other quality factors and intricate pharmaceutical formulations to create automated quality control systems
Architecture of Hope: Empowering the Youth Through Safe and Creative Spaces in Mexico
No full textAbstract:
Architecture of Hope: Empowering the Youth Through Safe and Creative Spaces in Mexico
Architecture, to me, began as a medium of expressing creativity—an extension of my upbringing and my father’s work in construction. Over time, I developed a new understanding of what it means to be an architect. I have come to realize that architecture is nothing more than an empty vessel; dormant until it is experienced. I believe we are here to use it as an instrument of connectivity—one that shapes relationships, strengthens community, and inspires hope.
In many parts of the world, youth face environments defined by violence, drug abuse, and limited access to opportunity. The absence of safe and inspiring communities contributes to disconnection and vulnerability. This research responds to those conditions by exploring how architectural qualities can be leveraged to create spaces that protect, inspire, and connect young people.
This thesis asks: How can architecture create environments that inspire youth identity, develop creativity, and offer alternatives to violence and drug culture in Mexico? The goal is to develop design strategies that foster mentorship, discipline, and a sense of belonging through socially engaged architecture.
Drawing from Giancarlo Mazzanti’s work in Colombia and other Latin American precedents, the study analyses site conditions, community dynamics, and programmatic experimentation. It envisions a hybrid youth center that integrates education, sports, and the arts—transforming unsafe areas into meaningful places of encounter and pride.
Architecture, when utilized as an active social tool, can unite and empower young people by creating environments that foster creativity, safety, and a sense of belonging. These spaces become catalysts for confidence and collective growth within vulnerable communities.
Ultimately, this thesis positions architecture as a tool to strengthen community and develop our youth within safe environments. By providing spaces for self-expression and cultivating hope, design demonstrates its ability to create meaningful changes by building not only structures but also futures
Port of Being
No full textIn the furthest, West Point of Africa, Dakar Senegal, the current fishing port is dually acting as a driver for survival and a neglected civic threshold. This site is identified by its fast paced utility usage and has quite a bit of infrastructural decay. My architectural thesis is driven by research to reimagine how Dakar’s fishing port can turn into an iconic civic space for the community. I believe that built environments show a reflection of the mental state of its people. How can we heal social fragmentation by changing the necessity of this infrastructure into an experience? To have a piece of infrastructure that transcends beyond simple industrial usage. Using ideas from Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs this project defines designing from a framework that meets survival instincts and discovers self actualization. By creating a space where physiological safety needs can propel the community to have a sense of belonging through cultural expression and empowering the economy. I plan to use methods of spatial mapping, as well as socioeconomic statistics to understand the relationship that lies between vendors, fisherman, and the transportation of supplies. I propose that this port gets transformed into an area where it contains educational facilities, markets, communal gathering spaces, and food supply storage. By threading in public gathering spaces and proper circulation into this area, it can now be positioned as a space to be the civic common area rather than feeling excluded if you are not utilizing it for labor. Utilizing this as a form of framework really attacks how infrastructural architecture that is typically ruled by logistics and efficiency can transcend into a place with urban resilience. By redesigning this area, it\u27s no longer just a place that people go to fish or transport, but a renewal framework of civic gatherings. This piece inevitably argues that architecture can address a full spectrum of what a person needs, evolving from an instrument of survival into a heart of community nuance
Synthesis and Characterization of Bismuth-based Bicyclic Peptide Inhibitors Targeting Main Protease of SARS-CoV-2
No full textThe emergence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus and the resultant COVID-19 disease represent the most significant public health crisis of this century, exerting a profound impact on the global economy, as well as human health and lives. The main protease (Mpro) is a vital protease that facilitates viral replication. Inhibition of this viral protease enzyme blocks the formation of functional viral proteins required for the viral life cycle. Small molecules have been shown to improve antiviral activity, but with lots of side effects. Peptide therapeutics, in contrast, are highly attractive due to their selectivity, tolerability, and fewer adverse effects. However, they aren’t without limitations, which include poor metabolic stability, membrane permeability, and oral bioavailability. Bicycling has been found to improve these limitations. Solid-phase peptide synthesizer was used to synthesize the linear peptides 3CTLP1 and 3CTLP2. After the synthesis, the peptide-resin complex was cleaved with 82.5% trifluoroacetic acid. The cleaved peptides were filtered, precipitated, lyophilized, and characterized. The linear peptides show strong peaks at m/z 1658.58 and 830.42, 1865.00 and 933.42, respectively, corresponding to the +1 and +2 charge states. These linear peptides were further synthesized into Bismuth-based bicyclic analogs by adding tris(2-carboxyethyl) phosphine (TCEP)-NaOH and Bismuth (III)bromide. A pale-yellow coloration indicated the formation of a bicyclic product, which was centrifuged, reprecipitated, lyophilized, and characterized. The bicyclic peptides, Bi-3CTLP1, show strong peaks at 1865.71 and 932.86 (corresponding to +1 and +2 charge states), and Bi-3CTLP2 shows strong peaks at 1035.94 and 690.96 (corresponding to +2 and +3 charge states). Future work will be focused on their FRET, LC-MS SIM, and gastrointestinal assays of these analogs
Election Administration - A View from the Trenches
No full textElection administration is one of the most important and increasingly contentious aspects of electoral politics. Recent evidence demonstrates that Georgia, specifically, spends more on election administration than many other states, primarily because of runoff elections. Beyond runoffs, the frequent changes to election rules and administrative procedures have also burdened counties and their administrators, but little is known about how election administrators actually respond to these challenges. This project assesses this “view from the trenches” to understand 1) how election administration has evolved, 2) what burdens election administrators face, and 3) what potential changes could make the process better for all parties. Using in-depth qualitative interviews, we explore these topics while considering the current state of election administration policy in Georgia and consider a comparative perspective with other states in the United States
Attitudes towards Regulation of Children’s Smartphone Use and Analysis of Legislation: A Mixed-Method Study
No full textAs technology rises, a shift in government is emerging with a substantial number of new laws regulating children’s smartphone use. The unprecedented nature of this change raises questions from parents and teachers about what this means. This study uses a mixed method approach to understand what this new legislation signifies, and the sentiment around it. Parents with children ages 9-14 were recruited using the snowball method and interviewed through semi-structured in-depth interviews. Using content analysis, online media such as government reports, news articles, and blog posts were studied. Both the interviews and textual analysis were coded for themes. Three themes emerged from within the parental interviews, (1) Doubt of effectiveness; (2) Support for involvement; (3) Expectations for regulation. Due to the nature of this legislation’s recency, very little research has been carried out. This study is the leading investigation into this topic, adding valuable insight to an otherwise under researched subject
Nurse Residency’s Impact on Competency: An Integrative Review
No full textBackground: New graduate nurses (NGN) often struggle transitioning from school to practice, contributing to turnover and worsening the nursing shortage, especially post COVID-19. The ANA (2023) recommends robust preceptorship programs. Nurse Residency Programs (NRP) aim to improve competency, confidence, and retention. Objective: This integrative review examined the effectiveness of NRPs in preparing NGN for professional practice. Methods: A systematic search across five databases (2019 and 2024) was conducted using Whittemore & Knafl’s framework and Braun & Clarke’s thematic analysis. Nine studies met inclusion criteria. Results: Three themes emerged: standardized transition support, curriculum reform, and supportive practice environments. NRPs reduce transition shock, improve clinical judgment, and increase retention when supported by strong institutional commitment. Conclusion: Structured NRPs are essential for bridging the academic-to-practice gap, fostering resilience, and promoting professional growth. Standardization, sustainability, and interdisciplinary collaboration are critical. Future research should assess long-term outcomes and identify high-impact components