NOVEL METHOD OF THE QUANTIFICATION OF TURBULENT FLUID FLOW IN SILICONE ARTERY PHANTOMS USING ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally and is responsible for taking 17.9 million lives per year. Despite the use of clinical treatments and detection methods, there remains a large population of individuals that suffer from CVD whose symptoms are left undetected and untreated prior to a life-threatening cardiac event. This highlights a need for an early detection method that can prevent the manifestation and worsening of the disease as well as address limitations of current early detection methods. An area of interest for early detection of CVD is subclinical atherosclerosis, which is the long, early, asymptomatic stage of plaque formation. Subclinical atherosclerosis has been namely associated with endothelial dysfunction and is the result of the pathological state of the endothelium due to its impact on vascular homeostasis, thrombosis, and vascular tone. Endothelial dysfunction is a result of several factors contributing to and promoting inflammation and results in changes in biological pathways that can alter the surface of the endothelium. This surface modification or added roughness changes the flow profile from laminar to turbulent flow due to the decreased shear stress on the vascular wall. Current detection methods such as carotid intima media thickness (CIMT) and flow-mediated dilation (FMD) targeted at identifying the early stages of atherosclerosis present limitations such as identifying late-stage effects of plaque formation and subjective readings highlight the need for a different approach to early detection. This experimental study aims to present a possible method of detecting the morphological changes of the endothelium due to inflammation through acoustic analysis of flow. Three silicone artery phantom groups were created with different degrees of inner diameter surface roughness to explore the relationship between relative roughness and sound associated with fluid flow. The results of this study are power spectral density graphs (PSD) which show frequency peaks associated with each of the phantoms at a theoretical laminar and turbulent Reynolds number. The PSD graphs show that there is a difference in frequency response between a smooth and rough artery phantom at the same flow rate providing preliminary support that sound analysis of fluid flow could provide information regarding early-stage cardiovascular disease

Humanitarian Coordination and Response: International Partnerships in Face of Natural Disasters

In the 21st century, international humanitarian response remains encumbered by serious gaps and unpreparedness. The inefficacies stem from longstanding organizational challenges in the areas of accountability, predictability, and reliability. Humanitarian reform comprises three pillars: the cluster approach, timely financing, and strategic leadership. Cluster coordination, introduced in the 2005 Humanitarian Response Review commissioned by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, holds great significance because it calls for leadership in specific need areas and for the development of partnerships. This thesis aims to contribute to the growing body of literature on improving humanitarian processes to better meet the needs of affected populations by examining whether cluster coordination builds effective responses and whether a different actor may temporarily provide governmental services when the government is absent. The cases of Haiti and Myanmar, which illustrate different successes and challenges of the cluster approach, identify four fundamental features of disaster coordination and response. These features demonstrate that in an environment of trust and openness, strong cluster coordination can empower leadership and help leverage the full range of existing capacities, resulting in an effective response

PLAN-IT: Scheduling assistant for solar system exploration

A frame-based expert scheduling system shell, PLAN-IT, is developed for spacecraft scheduling in the Request Integration Phase, using the Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby (CRAF) mission as a development base. Basic, structured, and expert scheduling techniques are reviewed. Data elements such as activity representation and resource conflict representation are discussed. Resource constraints include minimum and maximum separation times between activities, percentage of time pointed at specific targets, and separation time between targeted intervals of a given activity. The different scheduling technique categories and the rationale for their selection are also considered

An Evidence-based Causal Perspective of Agrochemical Pollution and Its Impact on Health

The extensive use of agrochemicals has had a wide range of impacts on human health. The research progress of the impact of agrochemical use on human health is reviewed, in order to provide some support and protection for taking corresponding measures to minimize or avoid the harm of agrochemicals to human health

Motion of a Particle with Isospin in the Presence of a Monopole

From a consistent expression for the quadriforce describing the interaction between a coloured particle and gauge fields, we investigate the relativistic motion of a particle with isospin interacting with a BPS monopole and with a Julia-Zee dyon. The analysis of such systems reveals the existence of unidimensional unbounded motion and asymptotic trajectories restricted to conical surfaces, which resembles the equivalent case of Electromagnetism.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, onecolum

The universal functorial equivariant Lefschetz invariant

We introduce the universal functorial equivariant Lefschetz invariant for endomorphisms of finite proper G-CW-complexes, where G is a discrete group. We use K_0 of the category of "phi-endomorphisms of finitely generated free RPi(G,X)-modules". We derive results about fixed points of equivariant endomorphisms of cocompact proper smooth G-manifolds.Comment: 33 pages; shortened version of the author's PhD thesis, supervised by Wolfgang Lueck, Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster, 200

Statistical Modeling of RNA-Seq Data

Recently, ultra high-throughput sequencing of RNA (RNA-Seq) has been developed as an approach for analysis of gene expression. By obtaining tens or even hundreds of millions of reads of transcribed sequences, an RNA-Seq experiment can offer a comprehensive survey of the population of genes (transcripts) in any sample of interest. This paper introduces a statistical model for estimating isoform abundance from RNA-Seq data and is flexible enough to accommodate both single end and paired end RNA-Seq data and sampling bias along the length of the transcript. Based on the derivation of minimal sufficient statistics for the model, a computationally feasible implementation of the maximum likelihood estimator of the model is provided. Further, it is shown that using paired end RNA-Seq provides more accurate isoform abundance estimates than single end sequencing at fixed sequencing depth. Simulation studies are also given.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-STS343 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The Effectiveness of Peer Mentoring in Helping First Year Students Develop Occupational Adaptation Skills

Objective. To evaluate the effectiveness of peer mentoring in helping first year, first-generation college students at Dominican University of California (DUC) adapt to university life and navigate the occupational challenges experienced during the first year of college. Method. Sixty-seven students voluntarily completed an online survey, First Year College Experience (FYCE) Survey: Adaptation to University Life. Quantitative research determined the influence of peer mentoring on the students’ adaptation and occupational performance in their transition to college. Effectiveness was determined by: 1) sense of belonging, 2) developed academic and social skills, 3) adaptive responses and strategies used, and 4) overall satisfaction with the college experience. Results. FGS experienced a greater sense of belonging compared to non-FGS (p = 0.012). Mentored students gained more skill over time academically than students who did not use peer mentoring (p = 0.003). There was no statistical difference between FGS and non-FGS in the use of adaptive strategies (p = 0.484). There was a statistical difference in use of adaptive strategies between students who were mentored and non-mentored (p=0.025). Mentored students self-reported having more problem solving strategies when confronted with a challenge compared to non-mentored students. Conclusion. The results suggest that peer mentoring is effective in helping students develop adaptive strategies, academic skills, and increasing overall college satisfaction. Implications of this study suggest that peer mentoring designed specifically for FGS in their first year of college may help FGS develop adaptive skills and flexibility in their problem-solving strategies that enhance their occupational performance as college students

A mammalian Wnt5a-Ror2-Vangl2 axis controls the cytoskeleton and confers cellular properties required for alveologenesis.

Alveolar formation increases the surface area for gas-exchange and is key to the physiological function of the lung. Alveolar epithelial cells, myofibroblasts and endothelial cells undergo coordinated morphogenesis to generate epithelial folds (secondary septa) to form alveoli. A mechanistic understanding of alveologenesis remains incomplete. We found that the planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway is required in alveolar epithelial cells and myofibroblasts for alveologenesis in mammals. Our studies uncovered a Wnt5a-Ror2-Vangl2 cascade that endows cellular properties and novel mechanisms of alveologenesis. This includes PDGF secretion from alveolar type I and type II cells, cell shape changes of type I cells and migration of myofibroblasts. All these cellular properties are conferred by changes in the cytoskeleton and represent a new facet of PCP function. These results extend our current model of PCP signaling from polarizing a field of epithelial cells to conferring new properties at subcellular levels to regulate collective cell behavior

Restorative justice as a disciplinary tool: Aperspective from Singapore

This thesis focuses on the use of Restorative Practices (RP) in two Singapore Secondary Schools. Relying mainly on the use of in-depths interviews with 149 students and 30 teachers, this study examines how the two schools’ contexts and cultural demands affect the definitions, adaptations and practices of RP. The research shows that RP is predominantly used as a disciplinary tool in order to uphold existing social norms. Many teachers could articulate the non-negotiables that must be secured in all circumstances such as those of ‘non-domination’ and ‘respectful listening’. Teachers spoke of RP as primarily about building relationships and it is about doing things with (and not to) students. However we see instances of teachers’ domination over students when teachers dictated the type of answers students were to write down on their RP forms. The relationship between corporal punishment and RP is also examined. While many teachers believed that ‘pure RP’ should not co-exist with caning, they still preferred the status quo and argued that RP should be taken as a complementary framework alongside existing corrective practices and punishment, rather than as a replacement to the existing disciplinary framework. Through an analysis of a case conference, we see how caning is retained in part because it is taken to be the utmost symbol of hard treatment that is required to express condemnation in cases of major offences. Finally, the specific context of the school is important in analysing participants’ ability to engage in RP processes such as class conferences or circles. The class is not a homogenous community that is resolving issues collectively but consists of a group of individuals who belong to a class that is attempting to resolve things but the very coming together as a class to resolve and discuss issues creates difficulty for things to get done because of the group dynamics involved