MA

thesisIn 1894, John Hyrum Koyle began digging the Dream Mine, on a mountaintop in central Utah. Koyle, a Mormon bishop, had been shown where to dig, he said, by Moroni, the same heavenly messenger who had led Mormon founder Joseph Smith to unearth the golden plates. Moroni visited Koyle in a dream and showed him nine enormous caverns below the mountain, containing countless piles of gold. Moroni told Koyle that the gold would remain hidden in the caves until an unspecified time preceding the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. At that moment of chaos, Koyle and his followers would unearth the gold and it would support the financially-troubled Mormon Church through the Last Days. This thesis investigates the nature of belief in the Dream Mine, which remains fervent more than 100 years later. Although their dreams are perpetually deferred, believers tap into a rich vein of folklore that runs through Mormon cosmology. Over the past thirty years, the Dream Mine has enabled believers to maintain a psychic link to a magical past, as their church adapts to a changing, modern world. This thesis will consider how Dream Mine belief has evolved in a changing economic, political, and religious landscape, and demonstrate that the faithful find sustenance in the Mormon past while simultaneously embracing modern worldviews that extend beyond mainstream Mormonism

Comunicación familiar y violencia intrafamiliar en pobladores de un asentamiento humano, Chimbote, 2022

El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo describir la relación entre la comunicación familiar y la violencia intrafamiliar en pobladores de un Asentamiento Humano, Chimbote, 2022. El nivel de investigación fue relacional y el diseño de investigación fue epidemiológico. Tratándose de que nuestro estudio pretende relacionar dos variables, entonces es independiente de lugar y tiempo de estudio, por lo que no delimitamos las unidades de estudio sino el ámbito de recolección de datos que estará constituida por los pobladores de un asentamiento humano en la ciudad de Chimbote que cumplan con los criterios de elegibilidad. La población fue de aproximadamente 505 pobladores de la cual se extrajo 100 pobladores a través de un muestreo no probabilístico por conveniencia. Los instrumentos usados fueron la Escala de Comunicación Familiar de Olson y la Escala de Medición de la Violencia intrafamiliar de Jaramillo. Los resultados obtenidos indican que no existe relación entre la comunicación familiar y la violencia intrafamiliar, además se encontró que los pobladores presentan un nivel medio (75%) de comunicación y un nivel leve (73%) en cuanto a violencia intrafamiliar

Automated liquid handling robot for rapid lateral flow assay development

AbstractThe lateral flow assay (LFA) is one of the most popular technologies on the point-of-care diagnostics market due to its low cost and ease of use, with applications ranging from pregnancy to environmental toxins to infectious disease. While the use of these tests is relatively straightforward, significant development time and effort are required to create tests that are both sensitive and specific. Workflows to guide the LFA development process exist but moving from target selection to an LFA that is ready for field testing can be labor intensive, resource heavy, and time consuming. To reduce the cost and the duration of the LFA development process, we introduce a novel development platform centered on the flexibility, speed, and throughput of an automated robotic liquid handling system. The system comprises LFA-specific hardware and software that enable large optimization experiments with discrete and continuous variables such as antibody pair selection or reagent concentration. Initial validation of the platform was demonstrated during development of a malaria LFA but was readily expanded to encompass development of SARS-CoV-2 and Mycobacterium tuberculosis LFAs. The validity of the platform, where optimization experiments are run directly on LFAs rather than in solution, was based on a direct comparison between the robotic system and a more traditional ELISA-like method. By minimizing hands-on time, maximizing experiment size, and enabling improved reproducibility, the robotic system improved the quality and quantity of LFA assay development efforts. Graphical abstract</jats:p

Screening Antibodies Raised Against the Spike Glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 to Support the Development of Rapid Antigen Assays

The spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 is a highly conserved surface protein and as such may represent a good target for immunoassay detection. We screened a variety of antibodies that were reactive to the S glycoprotein in a highly sensitive liquid immunoassay format and also on paper-based or lateral flow assay (LFA) to assess their analytical performance. Our findings included significant variation in performance when using different sources of S antigen. We identified several antibody pairs that had an LOD of below 10 pg/mL in the liquid immunoassay format with the lowest being 3 pg/mL. The antibodies were highly specific to SARS-Cov-2 based on cross reactivity screening with other human CoVs. The LFA screening found some different optimal antibody pairs from the pool of candidate antibodies used but a several antibodies were observed to have high performance with either immunoassay format.<br /

Screening Antibodies Raised Against the Spike Glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 to Support the Development of Rapid Antigen Assays

&lt;p&gt;The spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 is a highly conserved surface protein and as such may represent a good target for immunoassay detection. We screened a variety of antibodies that were reactive to the S glycoprotein in a highly sensitive liquid immunoassay format and also on paper-based or lateral flow assay (LFA) to assess their analytical performance. Our findings included significant variation in performance when using different sources of S antigen. We identified several antibody pairs that had an LOD of below 10 pg/mL in the liquid immunoassay format with the lowest being 3 pg/mL. The antibodies were highly specific to SARS-Cov-2 based on cross reactivity screening with other human CoVs. The LFA screening found some different optimal antibody pairs from the pool of candidate antibodies used but a several antibodies were observed to have high performance with either immunoassay format.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br&gt;</jats:p