Addressing Athletes Coexisting Conditions of Autism and Depression: Participants Self-Report Decreased Feelings of Depression Post Exercise

The goal of this study was to evaluate if exercise would decrease depressive symptoms of participants who reported having coexisting conditions of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and depression. Research has reported that autistic people have increased rates of depression, in comparison to general populations (Unruh et al., 2020). The purpose of this research was to evaluate if exercise would decrease depressive symptoms of the Unified Fitness athlete participants who self-identified as having depressive symptoms and ASD. This research was conducted during the Fall 2023 semester as an extension of the class Kinesiology Practicum, using the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) Unified Fitness Club (UUFC) athletes. A survey was taken before and after each UUFC exercise class over the course of a 5-week period. The survey analyzed the effect of the athletes Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) to determine the degree of which exercise intensity influenced the magnitude of antidepressive effects. It was hypothesized that the Unified Fitness Athlete’s mood would increase post exercise as measured by RPE. Following analysis of the data, the results supported that Unified Fitness athletes did on average achieve increased mood quality post exercise when compared to their pre-exercise baselines. The result revealed that exercise was causational in its ability to decrease depressive symptoms for the Unified Fitness athlete participants

Donor acceptor systems; a study using vibrational and electronic spectroscopies and computational modelling

Spectroscopic techniques, namely electronic and vibrational spectroscopy, have been shown to be very powerful tools in providing insight into the excited state nature and dynamics of compounds and complexes. A mixture of steady state, time-resolved and temperature dependent vibrational and electronic spectroscopies were used to study and characterise a range of donor-acceptor (DA) compounds. This work explores a number of DA systems, ranging from conducting polymers, to small molecule organic systems, to inorganic systems. From this breadth of samples insight can be gained into the wide range of behaviours and potential applications DA systems can have. A number of different excited states, ranging from π to π ∗ to metal-to-ligand charge-transfer (MLCT) and their interplay can be explored. In addition to looking at the electronic nature and behaviour of DA systems a, limited, exploration into aggregation, inter- and intra- molecular forces and their influence on behaviour is carried out. The primary aim is to determine what information can be extracted from new systems using the pre-establish techniques, as well as explore the use of less common techniques, such as low-frequency Raman and variable temperature resonance Raman spectroscopies, in different situations to access their suitability. In the first section a series of three conducting polymers, with various degrees of linearity in their backbone are studied. From this it can be seen that as the backbone rigidity increases the emission become less sensitive to temperature, which was interpreted as being linked to increased stability of order in solution. This conclusion was linked to the changes in emission as a function of temperature; primarily being linked to increased emission for a localised emissive state formed when bending in the polymer prevented full conjugation being achieved. Computational modelling suggested that the polymer with intermediate linearity alternated between a disordered and order configuration, while the two extremes sat more in one configuration or the other. The experimental data supports this conclusion. In Chapter 4 a pair of regioisomers, structural analogues to monomors used in the polymer construction, were studied to try understand the relationship between fluorination position and previously reported variations in physical and electronic properties. The combination of spectroscopic and computational techniques lead to the conclusion that this is result of F···S through space interactions. These interactions alter the structure and electronic properties of the molecule, by changing the electronic density distribution of the HOMO and LUMO. One example of the impact of the position of the fluorine, is that for one isomer the Stokes shift between absorbance and fluorescence was consistently 400 cm−1 greater than the other. The systems in the first two section had a complex arrangement of multiple donor and acceptor units, with even the regioisomers being D-A-D-π-D-A-D in nature. In Chapters 5 and 6 simpler DA systems, with a tetraphenylbenzene (TPB) donor attached to a fluorene based acceptor were studied. In Chapter 5 fluorenone was used as the acceptor (FTP series) and in Chapter 6 the more electron withdrawing fluoren-9-ylidene dicyano was used as the acceptor (CNTP series). A large dihedral angle between the TPB and fluorene units disrupted conjugation and lead to the systems showing minimal DA nature. The FTP series showed strong solvent and temperature dependent fluorescence, with the response found to correlate with electronic nature and excited state dynamics shown by fluorenone. The emission showed a Stokes shift of over 9000 cm−1 . For the CNTP series excited state rotation through linker between the fluorene to dicyano units resulted is near complete quenching of the emission. However, this allowed a large amount of resonance Raman data to be collected. From this an atypical and strong progression of overtone and combination bands were observed. This indicates at a large ∆Q in the excited state and allowed for more in detailed modelling of the potential energy surface, with the anharmonicity constant found to be around ∼2 x 10−3. In the final section the work moves from organic to inorganic systems, with a pair of rhenium-bipyridine based D-A-D and D-A-A based complexes. While changing between the D-A-D and D-A-A was only of limited interest, with variations in excited state lifetimes correlating with those expected from the literature and only minimal variation in the electronic absorbance intensity and Stokes shift, the more interesting part was the solvent sensitivity of the emission. Between low and high polarity solvent the lowest energy emission could be completely quenched. The combination of spectroscopic techniques and computational modelling was used to show that this was due to the interplay between an emissive 3MLCT and dark 3ILCT state. In all solvents a 1MLCT was initially populated, which decayed to a 3 MLCT state. In low polarity solvent the system got trapped here and relaxed via phosphorescence, while in high polarity solvents it could rapidly cross from the 3MLCT to a 3ILCT and undergo non-radiative decay to the ground state. Data suggests the 3MLCT to a 3ILCT crossing required structural reorganisation

Increasing Economic Stability in Fayetteville, NC Through the Creation of an Accountable Care Community to Improve the Health of Cumberland County Residents

This proposal describes an Accountable Care Community (ACC) that will increase economic stability in Fayetteville, North Carolina (NC) to improve the health of Cumberland County (CC) residents. Economic stability is an important social determinant of health. Fayetteville has a poverty prevalence of 19.2% compared to 17% and 13% in CC and NC, respectively. Poverty has a negative impact on citizens’ health contributing to CC ranking 73rd among NC counties in health outcomes. This proposal describes a multigenerational approach to decrease poverty by providing workforce development opportunities and increased funding to expand Early Head Start (EHS) for families in Fayetteville. Both Workforce development and EHS correlate to improved health outcomes by enabling parents to increase their incomes and allowing children to build strong socioemotional skills and improve academic achievement, respectively. This ACC entails an interdisciplinary partnership with the CC Health Department acting as the backbone organization.Master of Public Healt

Low- versus Mid-frequency Raman Spectroscopy for in Situ Analysis of Crystallization in Slurries

Slurry studies are useful for exhaustive polymorph and solid-state stability screening of drug compounds. Raman spectroscopy is convenient for monitoring crystallization in such slurries, as the measurements can be performed in situ even in aqueous environments. While the mid-frequency region (400-4000 cm(-1)) is dominated by intramolecular vibrations and has traditionally been used for such studies, the low-frequency spectral region (Peer reviewe

INCREASING ECONOMIC STABILITY IN FAYETTEVILLE, NC, THROUGH THE CREATION OF AN ACCOUNTABLE CARE COMMUNITY TO IMPROVE THE HEALTH OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY RESIDENTS

This proposal describes an Accountable Care Community (ACC) that will increase economic stability in Fayetteville, North Carolina (NC) to improve the health of Cumberland County (CC) residents. Economic stability is an important social determinant of health. Fayetteville has a poverty prevalence of 19.2% compared to 17% and 13% in CC and NC, respectively. Poverty has a negative impact on citizens’ health contributing to CC ranking 73rd among NC counties in health outcomes. This proposal describes a multigenerational approach to decrease poverty by providing workforce development opportunities and increased funding to expand Early Head Start (EHS) for families in Fayetteville. Both Workforce development and EHS correlate to improved health outcomes by enabling parents to increase their incomes and allowing children to build strong socioemotional skills and improve academic achievement, respectively. This ACC entails an interdisciplinary partnership with the CC Health Department acting as the backbone organization.Master of Public Healt

Accurate Crystal Structure Prediction of New 2D Hybrid Organic Inorganic Perovskites

Low dimensional hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites (HOIPs) represent a promising class of electronically active materials for both light absorption and emission. The design space of HOIPs is extremely large, since a diverse space of organic cations can be combined with different inorganic frameworks. This immense design space allows for tunable electronic and mechanical properties, but also necessitates the development of new tools for in silico high throughput analysis of candidate structures. In this work, we present an accurate, efficient, transferable and widely applicable machine learning interatomic potential (MLIP) for predicting the structure of new 2D HOIPs. Using the MACE architecture, an MLIP is trained on 86 diverse experimentally reported HOIP structures. The model is tested on 73 unseen perovskite compositions, and achieves chemical accuracy with respect to the reference electronic structure method. Our model is then combined with a simple random structure search algorithm to predict the structure of hypothetical HOIPs given only the proposed composition. Success is demonstrated by correctly and reliably recovering the crystal structure of a set of experimentally known 2D perovskites. Such a random structure search is impossible with ab initio methods due to the associated computational cost, but is relatively inexpensive with the MACE potential. Finally, the procedure is used to predict the structure formed by a new organic cation with no previously known corresponding perovskite. Laboratory synthesis of the new hybrid perovskite confirms the accuracy of our prediction. This capability, applied at scale, enables efficient screening of thousands of combinations of organic cations and inorganic layers.Comment: 14 pages and 9 figures in the main text. Supplementary included in pd

Questioning context: a set of interdisciplinary questions for investigating contextual factors affecting health decision making

Objective  To combine insights from multiple disciplines into a set of questions that can be used to investigate contextual factors affecting health decision making. Background  Decision‐making processes and outcomes may be shaped by a range of non‐medical or ‘contextual’ factors particular to an individual including social, economic, political, geographical and institutional conditions. Research concerning contextual factors occurs across many disciplines and theoretical domains, but few conceptual tools have attempted to integrate and translate this wide‐ranging research for health decision‐making purposes. Methods  To formulate this tool we employed an iterative, collaborative process of scenario development and question generation. Five hypothetical health decision‐making scenarios (preventative, screening, curative, supportive and palliative) were developed and used to generate a set of exploratory questions that aim to highlight potential contextual factors across a range of health decisions. Findings  We present an exploratory tool consisting of questions organized into four thematic domains – Bodies, Technologies, Place and Work (BTPW) – articulating wide‐ranging contextual factors relevant to health decision making. The BTPW tool encompasses health‐related scholarship and research from a range of disciplines pertinent to health decision making, and identifies concrete points of intersection between its four thematic domains. Examples of the practical application of the questions are also provided. Conclusions  These exploratory questions provide an interdisciplinary toolkit for identifying the complex contextual factors affecting decision making. The set of questions comprised by the BTPW tool may be applied wholly or partially in the context of clinical practice, policy development and health‐related research.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86973/1/j.1369-7625.2010.00618.x.pd