Combating obesity through technology and school based interventions

Obesity is a complex disease that has arisen from multifaceted interactions of environmental and heritable factors. Apart from the heritable factors, the basis for the rise in overweight and obesity is due to an energy imbalance. This energy imbalance is a result of an increase in calories consumed, a decrease in regular physical activity, or both. Even though there are a multitude of reasons that have contributed to obesity such an energy imbalance, lack of sleep, medication, type of job, busy lifestyle, these areas have not been as extensively explored. Therefore, the main focus of this thesis was the four primary contributors: screen time, diet, exercise and environment and their influence on an individual\u27s weight status from childhood through adulthood. To explore these areas two studies were performed. The purpose of the first study was to determine the difference in the amount of snack food a young adult consumed while watching television without interruptions or while watching television and multitasking (chatting). Overall, the goal of this study was to understand the impact, if any, of multitasking on caloric intake of snack foods in young adults. The purpose of the second study was to implement a school-based health intervention (Let\u27s Go 5-2-1-0) that focuses on improving child behaviors related to screen time, diet, exercise and environment. The findings of these studies suggest that the environment in which an individual lives in is complex and that it is difficult to disrupt unhealthy behaviors. Ultimately, obesity prevention rather than treatment is an important strategy for decreasing overall obesity rates in the United States

Inflation system for balloon type satellites Patent

Inflation system for balloon type satellite

Towards the identification of Verticillium effector molecules involved in host plant developmental reprogramming

Die Infektion von Arabidopsis thaliana Col-0 Pflanzen mit dem Verticillium longisporum Isolat VL43 und dem Verticillium dahliae Isolat VdJR2 resultiert in klar zu unterscheidenden Krankheitssymptomen, wie die verfrühte Seneszenz (early senescence) bzw. die Welke (wilting). Um herauszustellen ob VL43- und VdJR2-ähnliche Infektionssymptome Spezies-spezifische Merkmale sind, wurde eine Verticillium Stammkollektion, bestehend aus 21 amphihaploiden V. longisporum und 46 haploiden V. dahliae Isolaten systematisch analysiert und kategorisiert in Bezug auf die Induktion von Krankheitssymptomen auf den A. thaliana Ökotyp Col-0. Die Analysen ließen die Klassifizierung von drei unterschiedlichen Interaktionsklassen zu: „early senescence”, „wilting” und „asymptomatic”. Für die detaillierte Charakterisierung der Interaktionsklassen „early senescence” und „wilting” wurden Verticillium Isolate gewählt, die auf robuste Weise diese Infektionssymptome induzieren. Diese wurden untereinander in Bezug auf ihre Fähigkeit innerhalb der Pflanze zu proliferieren und entwicklungsorientierte Veränderungen innerhalb der Blattvaskulatur der Pflanze zu induzieren verglichen. Die Analysen zeigten, dass Isolate der „wilting“ Interaktionsklasse eine erhöhte Lignifizierung der Xylemzellwände in Blättern auslösen. Im Gegensatz dazu induziert die Infektion mit Isolaten der „early senescence“ Interaktionsklasse die verfrühte Seneszenz der Pflanze, sowie eine entwicklungsorientierte Umprogrammierung der Blattvaskulatur. Interessanterweise stellen entwicklungsorientierte Veränderungen der Blattvaskulatur eine generelle Antwort von Wirtspflanzen auf diese Verticillium Interaktionsklasse dar, da dieses Symptom ebenso in Nicotiana benthamiana, eine Solanaceae Spezies, induziert wird. Somit wurde postuliert, dass Isolate der Interaktionsklasse „early senescence“ spezielle pilzliche Effektormoleküle besitzen, die diese Infektionssymptome auslösen. Um potentielle pilzliche Effektormoleküle zu identifizieren, die spezifisch für die „early senescence” Interaktionsklasse sind, wurden vergleichende Genomsequenzanalysen mit haploiden V. dahliae Isolaten der drei Interaktionsklassen durchgeführt. Die Daten deuteten auf Sequenzen hin, die in der „early senescence” Interaktionsklasse existieren, aber nicht in den Genomen von Isolaten der „wilting” und „asymptomatic” Interaktionsklassen vorkommen und somit möglicherweise Gene für pilzliche Effektoren beherbergen, die in der Symptomentwicklung der verfrühten Seneszenz eine Rolle spielen. Darüberhinaus wurden vergleichende in planta Transkriptomanalysen mit V. dahliae Isolaten durchgeführt, die Welke oder verfrühte Seneszenz auslösen. Hierbei wurden pilzliche Gene identifiziert, die im Vergleich zur „wilting“ Interaktionsklasse eine erhöhte Transkriptmenge in der Interaktionsklasse “early senescence” aufwiesen. Aus dieser Gruppe von Genen wurden Effektorkandidaten ausgewählt. Bemerkenswerterweise war unter den hochregulierten Effektormolekülen eine Ligninase, CEL, die möglicherweise Lignin hydrolysiert und somit einen Einfluss auf die Unterschiede der Lignifizierungsmenge von Xylemzellwänden hat. Die Gene zweier Kandidateneffektoren, CEL und CE1, wurden bezüglich ihrer Promotersequenzen zwischen den Isolaten der zwei Interaktionsklassen untersucht. Nennenswerterweise wurden keine eindeutigen Sequenzunterschiede in den Promoterregionen der drei Kandidatengene gefunden, die ihre differentielle Expression zwischen der „wilting“ und „early senescence“ Interaktionsklasse erklären würden. Somit wurde angenommen, dass die Expression dieser Gene epigenetisch kontrolliert wird

Graduate, 1st Place: World War I War Front and Home Front: The Correspondence that Brought Them Together

The First World War was the first time American soldiers had participated in a war at a distance from home that did not easily facilitate home furloughs. Although the United States and Europe are physically separated by more than 3,500 miles, the relative distance between American World War I soldiers on the war front and their families on the home front was minor; the correspondence between them mitigated the physical and cognitive distance. Historians of the First World War have explored soldiers’ contact with their families while in training camps and the US military’s intentional cultivation of a balance between strong masculine and gentle feminine characteristics through that contact, the development of a network of Hostess Houses in which soldiers could find rest and entertainment and families travelling to visit them would have accommodations, and the effects of total war mobilization on the relationship between home and war fronts. Benjamin Ziemann studied Bavarian soldiers’ correspondence to determine the ways personal letters connected home and war fronts and how they experienced the war. This paper aims to enhance the extant scholarship on correspondence between home and war fronts from an exclusively American perspective, building upon Benjamin Ziemann’s analysis and conclusions in his 2007 book War Experiences in Rural Germany. He asserts that the death and destruction witnessed and partaken of by front line soldiers was not a brutalizing experience, rather it either faded in their memories or was transformed into an enhanced appreciation of home and family

Formal Verification throughout the Development of Robust Systems

As transistors are becomming smaller and smaller, they become more susceptible to transient faults due to radiation. A system can be modified to handle these faults and prevent errors that are visible from outside. We present a formal method for equivalence checking to verify that this modification does not change the nominal behavior of the system. On the other hand, we contribute an algorithm to formally verify that a circuit is robust against transient faults under all possible input assignments and variability. If equivalence or robustness cannot be shown, a counterexample is generated

The impacts of accessibility on vulnerability of place in Comfort Castle, Jamaica

Jamaica experiences meteorological, hydrological, and geological natural hazards that can produce island-wide impacts. The island’s exposure to multiple hazard types requires effective and sustainable mitigation and disaster risk management to lessen potential impacts, especially for vulnerable populations and communities. Comfort Castle, a small rural farming community, sits in the upper Rio Grande Valley of Portland parish and experiences earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, heavy rainfall, and floods. Steep terrain and remoteness due to geographic location affect the community’s geophysical vulnerability. Their social vulnerability results from a lack of employment, health, educational, and livelihood resources within the community. Together, geophysical, and social factors combine to create overall vulnerability of place and understanding these root causes leads to effective mitigation. In the case of Comfort Castle, limited accessibility is a common denominator among its root causes and exacerbates both geophysical and social vulnerability. Ethnographic and GIS analyses reveal the linking and influential connection between the community’s accessibility and vulnerability of place. This study calls for existing vulnerability models like the Pressure and Release and Access models to place a significant emphasis on the role of accessibility as it relates to vulnerability. In doing so, mitigation measures can start at the deepest level and effectively lead to a reduction in vulnerability to natural hazards