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Inflammatory Factor and Biomarkers for Epithelial Ovarian Cancer
No full textPh.D.While ovarian cancer is the second most common gynecological cancer, it is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the US. Due to a lack of adequate screening tools, it is imperative to develop innovative methods to identify women at greater risk of developing invasive epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). This dissertation had three aims: 1) determine if endometriosis is associated with highly fatal EOC, 2) evaluate the expression of Flotillin 1 (FLOT1) as a marker of clinic pathology and patient outcomes in women with serous EOC, and 3) investigate the prognostic role of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) and cluster of differentiation 8 (CD8) in clinical outcomes in EOC. This dissertation utilized pooled data from 18 case-control studies participating in the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium, tissue microarray-based immunohistochemistry from 492 patients diagnosed with EOC who underwent primary surgery at Roswell Park comprehensive Cancer Center, and tissue microarrays from 416 patients diagnosed with invasive EOC to determine these relationships. Women with endometriosis had an increased odds of 12 month highly fatal EOC by 73% (OR= 1.73, 95% CI: 1.18, 2.55) and 18 month highly fatal EOC by 43% (OR=1.43, 95% CI: 1.12, 1.83) compared to women without endometriosis. After histotype stratification, endometriosis was associated with endometrioid (OR=3.04, 95% CI: 1.33, 6.88) and clear cell (OR=2.67, 95% CI: 1.27, 5.58) 12 month highly fatal EOC and endometrioid (OR=2.29, 95% 1.08, 4.84) and clear cell (OR=3.39, 95% CI: 2.19, 5.23) 18 month highly fatal EOC. FLOT1 expression was detected in 346 cases of serous histology. Women with high FLOT1 expression had lower survival probabilities compared to women with lower FLOT1 expression (HR=1.63, 95% CI: 1.31-2.34). High expression of PD-L1 and CD8 was associated with histology, advanced grade and stage, and better overall survival (all p<0.05). High expression of PD-L1 combined with CD8 was associated with better overall survival (HR=0.75, 95% CI: 0.75, 0.99; p=0.03). Our findings support the relationship between endometriosis and highly fatal EOC, particularly in endometrioid and clear cell histotypes. Additionally, FLOT1, PD-L1 and CD8 are potential biomarkers for ovarian cancer
Cold War Mobilities: Indonesian Sojourning Writers, Neoliberalism, and Cultural Politics
No full textPh.D.This dissertation investigates the lived experience and narratives produced by Indonesian writers and humanities scholars who received funding to pursue graduate studies and join writing workshops in the U.S. during the 1960s-1980s. I view the act of mobilizing Indonesian intellectuals to the U.S. as a Cold War strategy, through which scholars who arrived and encountered U.S. liberal democracy would return home to ‘modernize’ Indonesia and direct the country away from the communist bloc. This dissertation investigates the various parties that had made intellectual sojourn possible, the cultural politics which motivated the trip, the ideologies that fueled it, and the outcome of the scholars’ trip to the U.S. This dissertation engages with two levels of inquiry: understanding how sending scholars was a crucial part of Cold War strategy, and using this as a ‘narrative from below’ to assess to the global phenomena of human mobility under neoliberalism. Using literary history, literary analysis, and oral history approaches, this dissertation scrutinizes U.S. exceptionalism that was at play in educating intellectual elites of the Global South as well as the various strategies applied by sojourning intellectuals to counter the politics of their mobility. This dissertation contributes to Cold War scholarship by revealing the importance of Indonesia in the global Cold War, as well as to Area Studies scholarship on the issue of transnational mobility by revealing the interlink between the mobility of professional migrants, knowledge, and capital
Enantioselective Syntheses of Six-Membered Saturated Oxygen Heterocycles via Copper(II)-Catalyzed Carboetherification and Hydroetherification of Unactivated Alkenes
No full textPh.D.The full text PDF of this dissertation is embargoed at author's request until 2021-02-19.In this dissertation, the enantioselective copper-catalyzed carboetherification and hydroetherification of unactivated alkenes is discussed. These methods enable access to a number of enantioenriched six-membered ring oxygen heterocycles, found in many natural products and bioactive compounds, such as, tetrahydropyrans, dihydropyrans, isochromans, and morpholines. This thesis is divided into two chapters. Chapter one describes the advances in enantioselective carboetherification reactions in their application to five and six-membered ring oxygen heterocycles. Our development of the first enantioselective copper-catalyzed carboetherification and oxidative coupling of alkenols to make six-membered cyclic ethers and its application to a short synthesis of a σ1 receptor ligand is presented. Chapter two discusses our expansion to developing the first enantioselective copper-catalyzed hydroetherification reaction to access six-membered oxygen heterocycles.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Episodic future thinking as an intervention on mothers’ food shopping behavior
No full textPh.D.This dissertation seeks to answer scientific questions regarding the efficacy of episodic future thinking (EFT) as an intervention on behaviors related to weight gain (e.g. food shopping behavior, impulsivity) for mothers with overweight and obesity who are interested in buying healthier foods for their families. Using the NIH Stage Model for Behavioral Intervention Development, each experimental study in this body of work is informed by and builds on the previous study. In manuscript 1, studies 1 and 2, we analyzed the effect of EFT on calories purchased in a hypothetical online shopping task in the laboratory. In studies 1 & 2 we found EFT effective at reducing calories and improving the nutrient profile of mothers' food purchases when compared to semantic (study 1) and episodic (study 2) control conditions. For manuscript 2, study 3 we conducted a brief proof-of-concept field study to see if findings would translate beyond the laboratory. In study 3 participants completed questionnaires and created cues in the laboratory, but went shopping at their preferred brick-and-mortar stores, returning with receipts the following day. In study 3 participants in the EFT group purchased significantly fewer calories and grams of fat, saturated fat, and milligrams of sodium than participants in the episodic control. In manuscript 3 (study 4) we sought to test whether EFT could improve food shopping behavior over a longer period of time (e.g. 1 week) and whether a brief DASH-diet education (e.g. 10-minute video and handouts outlining what food groups to buy) would help participants to identify and purchase more nutrient dense health-promoting foods. Study 4 was a mixed design, with EFT groups that received DASH-diet education or food safety education, and episodic thinking controls that received DASH-diet education or food safety education. In study 4 we did not see an EFT specific effect or a DASH specific effect on calories purchased, but we observed an EFT trend on fat purchased and an EFT effect on milligrams of sodium purchased. There was also an EFT effect on DASH diet adherence scores. Potential explanations for the discrepancy in these findings and future directions are discussed.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Computational Modeling of Magnetic Stimulation of Spinal Cord: Neuromodulation for Neurogenic Bladder
No full textM.S.Neurogenic bladder is the condition in which a person lacks bladder control due to brain, nerve or spinal cord function. A person with spinal cord injury cannot urinate at will and may need a catheterization to empty the bladder. We hypothesized that neuro-modulation of the spinal cord using transcutaneous magnetic stimulation would guide these patients to allow voluntary micturition and eliminate the need for catheterization. Transcutaneous magnetic stimulation (TMS) is non-invasive, painless and safe which has been used to modulate neuronal function in the treatment of various disorders. TMS depends on time-varying magnetic fields to induce an electric field. In the current research, we used computational modeling for TMS to stimulate the lumbar region of the spinal cord to improve the bladder function. Here we present a fast, versatile, and robust computational approach using the Sim4life Biophysics tool to calculate the electric field induced by differentTMS coils within a spinal cord level of Human Model and calculating the activating function using MATLAB.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Advanced Thin-Film Nanocomposite Membranes for Water Desalination
No full textM.S.Reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes have emerged as an energy-efficient technology for water desalination. These thin-film composite membranes are based on highly crosslinked polyamides prepared from interfacial polymerization, and their further use is limited by their low water permeance. Recently, the polyamides can be doped with nanoparticles with well-structured pores (such as carbon nanotubes, graphene oxide, and zeolites) to increase water permeance. However, the thin-film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes show decreased ion rejection due to the defects between the polymers and nanoparticles. The objective of this work was to develop TFN membranes by incorporating metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and metal- organic polyhedra (MOPs) in the selective polyamide layers. The effects of the processing conditions (for interfacial polymerization) and particle size on the desalination performance were thoroughly investigated. The addition of the MOFs increases water permeance by 175% for the RO applications while retaining the salt rejection. The addition of MOP in the NF membranes increases the water permeance by 66% while achieving excellent rejection for 2000 ppm Na2SO4.Keywords: Water purification; nanocomposites; reverse osmosis membranes; nanofiltration membranes; ZIF-8; Fe-MOP.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Red Donkeys and Blue Elephants: An Examination of Liberals' and Conservatives' Divergent Responses to Expectancy Violation
No full textPh.D.When presented with situations that violate expected associations about the world (i.e., expectancy violations), individuals are thought to initially experience proximal, avoidant-oriented responses consistent with attentional vigilance, anxiety, and uncertainty. These proximal responses to expectancy violation are theorized to then motivate more distal, approach-oriented responses to palliate anxious arousal, which generally entails bolstering commitment to other established associations and belief frameworks (e.g., political or social groups). Previous work argues that the likelihood and rate of transitioning from avoidance-oriented to approach-oriented defense responses varies across individuals. The current research argues that political ideology may be one such individual difference that predicts divergences in expectancy violation response. Although past research argues that those who possess conservative political beliefs, relative to those who possess relatively liberal political beliefs, should respond more negatively to threat broadly, there are theoretical reasons to expect that conservative beliefs may also provide individuals with a sense of clarity in the face of expectancy violation, promoting greater approach-oriented, commitment responses. Across two pilot studies, the current work finds evidence that liberals and conservatives diverge in their expectancy violation response patterns. Specifically, conservatives demonstrated greater evidence of approach-oriented responses (e.g., greater relative challenge as defined by the biopsychosocial model of challenge/threat [BPSC/T], greater commitment to political ideology). However, liberals demonstrated greater evidence of avoidance-oriented responses (e.g., greater relative threat as defined by the BPSC/T; more negative, avoidance-oriented emotions). In the current study, I aimed to bolster and expand upon this broader theoretical framework, by examining the processes underlying this divergence in responses (e.g., situational and/or chronic perceptions of political instability or disorder), as well as examining additional theoretical moderators. I found that an induction of political instability—reading an article about a Trump loss for conservatives, an article about a Trump victory for liberals, and or a neutral article—moderated the previously observed relationship between political ideology and expectancy violation. However, the nature of this interaction diverged from hypotheses. Specifically, when exposed to a neutral task that did not violate expectancies, conservatives and liberals predictably differed across conditions designed to induce political instability for either group, with liberals tending to exhibit more positive responses after reading about a Trump loss, and conservatives tending to exhibit more positive responses after reading about a Trump victory. However, when exposed to expectancy violation, these relationships were reversed across measures of challenge/threat and task performance. Although I present plausible explanations for this pattern of responses, future research should further explore the mechanism underlying liberals' and conservatives' divergent responses to expectancy violation.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Exploring the Utility of Bayesian Networks in Histopathological Image Analysis: Beyond Classifier Networks
No full textM.S.Pathologists' assessment of tissue histology is primarily confined to the study select spatial features of interest for making diagnostic and/or prognostic decision. In recent years, research scientists have applied high-throughput computational methods such as neural networks (NN) capable of learning their own descriptive features to minimize prediction cost. For image related projects convolutional neural networks have proven highly effective and have surged in popularity over a variety of tasks. However, a major drawback of NN tools is the significant gap in understanding between researchers and clinicians. In a clinical environment it is important to establish the biological relevance of the feature sets that are important for informed decision making. Bayesian networks (BNs), a type of probabilistic graphical model, have not been widely adapted in computational pathology despite the wide variety of potential benefits. They allow clinicians to incorporate hand-crafted features from a wide range of modalities to assess disease progression on a continuous scale. In this thesis, we have explored the different functionalities of BNs and how they can be utilized to better understand the factors contributing to progression of Diabetic Nephropathy (DN). Our key results include DN stage classification with absolute error (AE) of 1.25 using a BN constructed from n = 1124 human DN glomeruli. This result outperforms classical machine learning methods, such as k-nearest neighbor, decision trees, and SVM. Although more modern classification methods (MLP, AdaBoost, Nearest Centroid) achieved a slightly lower AE, the benefit of BN is the ability to directly model feature relationships to impart more information on underlying disease mechanisms.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Photocatalysis and Charge Transfer Dynamics in Cadmium Chalcogenide Quantum Dot-Based Heterostructures
No full textPh.D.Quantum dot (QD)-based heterostructures are intriguing material architectures for light harvesting, excited-state charge transfer, and solar energy conversion. The design of such architectures for photocatalysis requires careful consideration of both thermodynamic offsets and interfacial charge-transfer kinetics. This dissertation explores the photocatalysis and charge transfer dynamics in cadmium chalcogenide QD-based heterostructures. Chapters 2-5 of this dissertation focus on heterostructures comprising MxV2O5 (M = intercalated metal cation, Pb2+ or Sn2+) or α-V2O5 nanowires (NWs) interfaced with CdE (E=S/Se/Te) QDs with programmable energetic offsets to promote light-induced charge separation and photocatalytic proton reduction. Chapter 6 reports on dynamics of electron transfer (ET) from photoexcited CdSe QDs and adsorbed fullerene derivatives, as well as redox photocatalysis at these nanocomposites.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*
Coupled Relational Symbolic Execution
No full textPh.D.The goal of this work is to lay down a theoretical foundation for the use of symbolic execution to verify and refute relational properties. Relational properties are properties about two runs of two programs on related inputs, or about two executions of a single program on related inputs. Relational properties are useful to formalize notions in security and privacy, and to reason about program optimizations. Standard (unary) symbolic execution has already been used to verify and refute relational properties of programs. Usually, this is done by reducing the relational property to a unary one for a modified program. Relational symbolic execution instead relies on a relational semantics. It allows the user to reason about pairs of programs without the need to modify the program or the specification. The first part of this manuscript will show examples of deterministic relational properties, and strategies to reduce the set of possible setof states. The result, Relational Symbolic Execution, or RSE, is a sound and (relatively) complete verification (and refutation) system for relational deterministic properties. The second part of this manuscript will concern a specific relational probabilistic property: Differential privacy. Differential privacy is a gold standard for privacy in statistical analysis that can be satisfied by algorithms and hence programs.**To request an accessible version of the file(s) associated with this item, contact [email protected]. Please include the item's persistent URL [http://hdl.handle.net/. . .] in your request.*