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Minutes of the Twenty-Eighth Anniversary of the Georgia Baptist Convention [1849]
No full textMinutes of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 184
Minutes of the Fifty-Fourth Anniversary of the Baptist Convention of the State of Georgia [1876]
No full textMinutes of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 187
Minutes of the Fifty-Ninth Anniversary of the Baptist Convention of the State of Georgia [1881]
No full textMinutes of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 188
Minutes of the Sixty-Sixth Anniversary of the Baptist Convention of the State of Georgia [1888]
No full textMinutes of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 188
Minutes of the Sixty-Ninth Anniversary of the Baptist Convention of the State of Georgia [1891]
No full textMinutes of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 189
2023-2024 Mercer University Catalog - Regional Academic Centers
No full textMercer University Atlanta, Macon, Douglas County, Henry County, Online: Stetson-Hatcher School of Business, Tift College of Education, and College of Professional Advancement 2022-2023 Catalo
IONTOPHORESIS ASSISTED TRANSDERMAL DELIVERY OF PERINDOPRIL ERBUMINE GEL FORMULATION
No full text2023Hypertension affects nearly 78 million adults in the US every year. Perindopril erbumine (PE) is an ACE inhibitor used to treat hypertension, coronary artery disease, and heart failure. Traditional dosage forms such as tablets provide a challenge for patients to comply with the therapeutic regimen.
Transdermal delivery can address major side effects of PE such as low bioavailability, poor conversion into perindoprilat, and low intestinal absorption. Physical enhancement techniques like microneedles and iontophoresis are used to increase the delivery of molecules into and across the skin.
In-vitro permeation using cathodal and anodal iontophoresis was conducted on porcine ear skin. The current density was set at 0.5 mA/cm2 for 4 h which was followed by passive permeation up to 24 h. Further, 1% PE gel in hydroxypropylcellulose was formulated and characterized for pH and rheology. Cathodal iontophoresis was conducted on gel, and samples were analyzed by HPLC.
The total delivery of PE via passive permeation was 98.56 ± 11 μg/cm2. Iontophoresis resulted in a significant increase in the total delivery of PE of 269.27 ± 19 11 μg/cm2 through anodal and 285.48 ± 4 μg/cm2 via cathodal iontophoresis. Significant decrease in lag time of PE was observed in cathodal iontophoresis. The total delivery from gel formulation via passive permeation was 34.77 ± 9 μg/cm2 while through cathodal iontophoresis it was found to be 101.95 ± 4 μg/cm2 which reached the target delivery of 60 μg/cm2, equivalent to delivery from a 4 mg tablet, using a 50 sq.cm2 patch and taking into consideration the bioavailability.
This study demonstrated the feasibility of iontophoretic transdermal delivery of perindopril erbumine.BANGA, AJAY K.D'SOUZA, MARTIN J.CHOUGULE, MAHAVIR B.UDDIN, MOHAMMAD N.M.S
Evidence of Andragogy in a four-year baccalaureate college serving nontraditional students
No full text2023ABSTRACT
MARIA ANN. HAMMETT
EVIDENCE OF ANDRAGOGY IN A FOUR-YEAR BACCALAUREATE COLLEGE
SERVING NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY
Under the direction of Olivia M. Boggs, Ed.D.
The problem targeted by the study was that while nontraditional students are increasingly attending college in record numbers, they are more than twice as likely as other students to drop out in their first year of study, indicating the delayed promise of degree completion may never be realized. The study focused on the opportunities and fiscal challenges accompanying this exponential growth of students who are typically older, financially independent of their parents, employed full time, parents of dependent children, possibly ex-military, and often have a GED rather than a traditional high school diploma.
Using case study methodology and the lens of Malcolm Knowles’s theory of andragogy, the research identified the campus culture, philosophies, and institutional behaviors used to successfully recruit, retain, and graduate nontraditional students at a traditional college or university. The case was a four-year public state college in the northwestern United States that was nationally ranked as having the highest completion rate of nontraditional students. Two research questions guided the study: (a) In what ways do the mission, core values, and culture of a higher education institution that has created a nontraditional student program reflect the tenets of Malcolm Knowles’s theory of andragogy? and (b) What are students and leadership’s perceptions of the impact of student loan debt on student success? Data were collected and triangulated from (a) interviews with the college president, vice presidents, faculty, and staff, (b) analyses of 46 documents, and (c) surveys received from 87 current students.
Using interpretivism to bring meaning to data identified five themes: Access, Employment Connection, Intentional Focus, Nimbleness, and Support that were pervasive in Perseverance College’s culture and demonstrated evidence of andragogy in their commitment to serve the nontraditional student population. Perseverance College Intentional Focus created greater Access and Support for nontraditional students, and their Employment Connection and Nimbleness ensured education programs formed connections to employment opportunities, the number one goal of nontraditional students. The researcher recommends additional research on new benchmarks for nontraditional student graduation rates, nontraditional student stop-outs, connecting education to employment, and further applications of andragogy.Boggs, OliviaIsaac, CarolMalone, SusanD.Phil
DIVERSE ROLES OF THE FREE-FATTY ACID RECEPTORS FFA1 AND FFA4 IN PAPILLARY RENAL CELL CARCINOMA CELLS
No full text2023Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is one of the deadliest genitourinary cancers, and the incidence of RCC has risen steadily. 15-20% of all RCC cases include papillary renal cell carcinoma (pRCC), the most frequent non-clear cell carcinoma subtype, which displays distinct molecular, genetic, and histological characteristics compared to the clear cell RCC (ccRCC). Advanced stage pRCC is highly metastatic and exhibits poor prognosis and the worst outcome compared to patients with ccRCC. Most of the clinical and pre-clinical studies on RCC were conducted on ccRCC, considering ccRCC is the most frequent type of RCC subtype. Therefore, traditional, and newly developed therapeutics are less effective, leaving no optimal treatment available for metastatic patients with pRCC. Therefore, it is crucial to identify novel molecular pathways for a better understanding of pRCC carcinogenesis leading to develop better and more effective pRCC-oriented drug targets. Our study demonstrates for the first time that free-fatty acid receptors 1 (FFA1) and FFA4, G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) that endogenously activated by long to medium chain fatty acids are upregulated in human pRCC cancerous tissues compared to matched noncancerous tissues. Moreover, FFA1/FFA4 expression increases as the disease approaches higher pathological T stages. We also reveal that FFA1/FFA4 transcripts are expressed in a well-characterized human pRCC cell line ACHN, but not in primary and metastatic ccRCC cell line 7860 and Caki-1, respectively. Using synthetic agonists and antagonists of FFA1 and FFA4, we showed that FFA1 and FFA4 have opposing effects in pRCC cell growth and motile activities, and astonishingly, they both serve as a “double edge sword” in the regulation of pRCC carcinogenesis. FFA1 positively regulates cell proliferation and tumor formation in pRCC and utilizes the c-Src-mediated PI3K/AKT/NF-κB/COX-2 pathway to promote serum-induced cell proliferation in vitro. On contrary, FFA1 negatively regulates the wound-healing process, migration, invasion, and EMT in ACHN cells. We also demonstrate that FFA1 regulates cell invasion in part by blocking EGFR-mediated ERK1/2 signaling; moreover, FFA1 inhibits STAT3 activation to prevent motile activities in pRCC cells. Unlike FFA1, FFA4 inhibits cell proliferation and c-Src phosphorylation in vitro, as well as reduces tumor growth in vivo. On the other hand, FFA4 promotes wound recovery, migration, invasion, and STAT3-induced EMT. FFA4-induced cell invasion is dependent on ERK1/2 pathways and to some extent on EGFR-mediated ERK1/2 signaling. Moreover, FFA4 increases cell invasion through the activation of PI3K/AKT/NF-κB signaling cascades which induces the expression of COX-2 and MMP-9 in pRCC cells. Taken together, we conclude that FFA1 and FFA4 signaling have a significant yet complex function in the regulation of cell proliferation, tumor growth, migration, and invasion in pRCC cells.Moniri, Nader H.Canal, Clinton E.Hasan, RaquibulHayslett, ReneeMomary, Kathryn M.D.Phil
Application of Recurrent Neural Networks for Pharmacokinetic Modeling and Simulation
No full text2023Pharmacometrics and the utilization of population pharmacokinetics play an integral role in model informed drug discovery and development (MIDD). Recently, there has been a growth in the application of deep learning approaches to aid in areas within MIDD. In this work, we aim to explore the potential of deep learning approaches towards drug concentration prediction and simulation. A total of 1,527 olanzapine drug concentrations sparsely sampled from 523 individuals along with eleven patient-specific covariates provided by the CATIE studies were used in model development, validation, and simulation.
LSTM and LSTM-ANN with multiple inputs were investigated towards olanzapine drug concentration predictions. The LSTM-ANN model captured the relationships within a pharmacokinetic dataset and generated olanzapine drug concentration predictions with a lower RMSE than the LSTM model. Bayesian optimization was implemented to tune the hyperparameters of the LSTM-ANN model. The LSTM-ANN model had a RMSE of 29.566 in the validation set. A population pharmacokinetic model using NONMEM model was constructed as a reference to compare the performance of the LSTM-ANN model. The RMSE of the NONMEM model was 31.129. Permutation importance revealed age, sex and smoking were highly influential covariates in the LSTM-ANN model. The LSTM-ANN model showed potential in drug concentration prediction as it performed comparably to the NONMEM model. Future studies investigating clinical studies with varying sample sizes and sampling strategies are required to further examine the potential of a LSTM-ANN model towards drug concentration prediction.
For olanzapine drug concentration simulations, three RNN cells within an RNN-ANN model with multiple inputs were studied. The GRU-ANN model resulted in the optimal RNN-ANN model with the lowest RMSE in the simulation data. Bayesian optimization was implemented to optimize the hyperparameters of the GRU-ANN model. The optimized GRU-ANN model resulted in a simulation RMSE of 24.844. Visual inspection revealed the simulated olanzapine drug concentrations were lower than their respected observed olanzapine drug concentrations. Exploratory data analysis revealed the underperformance may have been a result of dosing levels between the CATIE studies having little overlap. A comprehensive clinical trial study is required to fully explore the potential of a GRU-ANN model towards drug concentration simulations.Akil, AymanD'Souza, Martin J.Banga, Ajay K.Hayslett, ReneeVos, MiriamD.Phil