C-Terminally Truncated Apolipoprotein A1 Glutamate Residue 243 Is a Biomarker for Oxidative Stress in Coronary Artery Disease and Chronic Kidney Disease

A Thesis submitted to The University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Medicine.High density lipoprotein (HDL) oxidation is a potential biomarker for coronary artery disease (CAD) severity. Methionine sulfoxidation, tyrosine chlorination and C-terminal truncation are Apo A- I modifications that inactivate HDL and lead to pro-oxidant action. We hypothesize that C-terminal truncation of apolipoprotein A1 glutamate residue 243 (Apo A-I Des-Q243) is a byproduct of a protease, such as a matrix metalloprotease (MMP), and it is associated with the presence and severity of coronary artery disease and chronic kidney disease (CKD). We enrolled 103 patients presenting for evaluation of chest pain in this cross-sectional study at Maricopa Medical Center. Plasma and serum samples were collected, processed, and transferred to Arizona State University (ASU) Biodesign Institute for high pressure liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS). A statistical analysis was conducted with a spearman’s coefficient, two-tailed linear regression and multivariate analysis of the relative fractional abundance (RFA) of Apo A-I Des-Q243 and clinical variables. Multivariate analysis revealed significantly reduced levels of Apo A-I Des-Q243 in the presence of male gender (-1.5%, P=0.035), atrial fibrillation (-2.8%, P=0.04), and ACEi/ARB use (-2.4%, P=0.001). Additionally, a diagnosis of CKD (2.3%, P=0.037) and the presence of four (9.6%, P=0.005) or five (4.7%, P=0.045) coronary stents, regardless of vessel location, were associated with significantly increased levels of Apo A-I Des-Q243. American Indian/Alaskan race as compared to Caucasian race (Plasma -5.8%, 95% CI -9.9- -1.8%, P=0.005; Serum -4.6%, 95% CI -8.5- -0.8%, P=0.02), and the eGFR (Plasma ρ=-0.024, P=0.014, Serum ρ=-0.291, P=0.003) only reached significance in the linear regression and spearman’s correlation analysis respectively. Apo A-I Des-Q243 is elevated in patients with multiple coronary stents, and thus may be contributing to vascular inflammation and plaque formation. Furthermore, Apo A-I Des-Q243 is elevated in CKD and is directly correlated with its severity as determined by eGFR. These findings highlight the renin-aldosterone system’s (RAS) role in HDL oxidation and the anti-oxidant action of ACEi/ARBs. Apo A-I Des-Q243 appears to be an important link between CAD and CKD and is a promising biomarker that warrants further study.This item is part of the College of Medicine - Phoenix Scholarly Projects 2019 collection. For more information, contact the Phoenix Biomedical Campus Library at [email protected]

Relationship Between Mineral Content of Breast Milk and Maternal Diet

Exclusively breastfed infants require that adequate amounts of carbohydrates, fatty acids, proteins, and mineral nutrients are available to foster normal skeletal and neuromuscular growth and development. Minerals such as calcium, sodium, and potassium, which are crucial for normal physiological function, are found in variable concentrations in human milk. As well, antibodies and other rarefied minerals - selenium, zinc, manganese, and copper - are critical for protection against infection and proper function of the immune system and are supplied to the neonate by the mother\u27s milk. Although many studies have investigated the trace mineral concentrations in breast milk (1,2) few have examined the correlation between maternal dietary intake of these minerals and their concentration in breast milk. Furthermore, few studies have explored the mineral content of human milk in New Mexican populations, specifically nonHispanic whites and southwestern Hispanics

\u3ci\u3eJulianne and Kristofferson Get Back Together\u3c/i\u3e Sound Design

My design for this production was focused on trying to find a good balance between creating soundscapes that felt natural and using sound to compliment the bittersweet nostalgia of remembering a past relationship. The first task was largely accomplished through study of similar real-world environments to mimic, the second being accomplished through music choice

Who Is Texas? Exploring Dominant and Overlooked Stories about The Lone Star State

The state of Texas has an image problem. For some reason, Hollywood and the news media are telling one dominant story about Texas, and leaving out other stories about our state -- important ones! In this 7th grade humanities unit, students will brush up on social studies skills, and develop in such areas as: reading maps, making graphs, detecting bias, analyzing primary sources, and identifying different perspectives. In order to answer the question, Who is Texas, really? students will engage in research and use an expository organizational structure of their choice (compare & contrast, problem-solution, etc.) to communicate their findings. Each student is responsible for answering the question through a different social studies lens: a cultural lens, a geographical lens, an economic lens, a political lens, or a historical lens, using evidence in the form of maps, graphs, primary sources, and media. Finally, students will use their research papers as a springboard to develop a documentary to place on YouTube that tells the world what Texas is really like; to share the truth beyond stereotypes. In other words, we\u27ll research as many stories about Texas as we can, and we\u27ll do our best to celebrate stories from Texas that aren\u27t usually told. While this unit explores Texas specifically, at it\u27s heart, it\u27s meant as a middle school introduction to social studies skills and expository writing. For this reason, it can be adapted easily to fit the narrative of any state

Ab Initio Methyl Linoleate Bond Dissociation Energies: First Principles Fishing for Wise Crack Products

With the prices of petroleum reflecting demand for this finite resource, attention has been turned to alternative sources of energy. Biodiesel, defined as fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), exhibits many of the same properties as conventional diesel but is derived from biological sources. FAMEs are subsequently thermally cracked to form more light-weight petrochemical products. I aim to further understand the thermal cracking procedure, at an atomic-level, in hopes that this may aid in future engineering of viable fuels. I studied the effective computational modeling of bond disassociations in the FAME methyl linoleate. Bond dissociation in a 44-reaction database with known experimental energies were used to evaluate density functional (B3LYP, M06-2X, B97D), wavefunction (MP2), and composite methods (G3 and CBS-QB3). I found that the M06-2X/ 6-31+G(d,p) model chemistry provides results comparable to the composite CBS-QB3 method at a much reduced cost. Data were then compiled for possible bond dissociations in FAME methyl linoleate. Lastly, atom-centered density propagation (ADMP) trajectory calculations were performed to obtain a statistical evaluation of thermal cracking products of methyl linoleate. As a result, I have parameterized an effective methodology to evaluate the thermal cracking process of FAMEs

MULTI-ROBOT COVERAGE WITH DYNAMIC COVERAGE INFORMATION COMPRESSION

This work considers the problem of coverage of an initially unknown environment by a set of autonomous robots. A crucial aspect in multi-robot coverage involves robots sharing information about the regions they have already covered at certain intervals, so that multiple robots can avoid repeated coverage of the same area. However, sharing the coverage information between robots imposes considerable communication and computation overhead on each robot, which increases the robots’ battery usage and overall coverage time. To address this problem, we explore a novel coverage technique where robots use an information compression algorithm before sharing their coverage maps with each other. Specifically, we use a polygonal approximation algorithm to represent any arbitrary region covered by a robot as a polygon with a fixed, small number of vertices. At certain intervals, each robot then sends this small set of vertices to other robots in its communication range as its covered area, and each receiving robot records this information in a local map of covered regions so that it can avoid repeat coverage. The coverage information in the map is then utilized by a technique called spanning tree coverage (STC) by each robot to perform area coverage. We have verified the performance of our algorithm on simulated Coroware Corobot robots within the Webots robot simulator with different sizes of environments and different types of obstacles in the environments, while modelling sensor noise from the robots’ sensors. Our results show that using the polygonal compression technique is an effective way to considerably reduce data transfer between robots in a multi-robot team without sacrificing the performance and efficiency gains that communication provides to such a system

Challenges to Crowdfunding Offering Disclosures: What Grade Will Your Offering Disclosure Get?

Crowdfunding is a term used in many different contexts. The conversation surrounding crowdfunding encompasses diverse considerations and interests. In its broadest sense, crowdfunding is a technological fundraising medium for businesses, projects, or charitable causes. Instead of dealing with a financial institution or specific angel investors or venture capital funds, crowdfunded start-ups try to raise money from a worldwide crowd. Some crowdfunding campaigns solicit donations and pre-orders, such as Kickstarter or Gofundme. Others sell securities. This Comment will only address the rules that apply to crowdfunding campaigns which offer securities. Securities laws have two prime directives. First, companies can only offer and sell securities in a registered offering or in an offering that satisfies the requirements of an exemption from registration. Second, these businesses must not misstate material facts or omit material facts if the omission would make its other disclosures misleading to investors. Primarily, the JOBS Act and other crowdfunding laws focus on the first prime directive. They create exemptions from registration that allow businesses to crowdfund, utilize general solicitation and, in some cases, offer and sell securities to non-accredited investors. These new exemptions present exciting and important changes that democratize the capital raising process by allowing new subsets of businesses to communicate with a broader investor base than ever before. This Comment will briefly discuss these updated exemptions with a particular focus on Title II of the JOBS Act and the related SEC Rule 506(c), as well as Title IV of the JOBS Act and what some call Regulation A+. Both Rule 506 (c) and Regulation A+ are revolutionary because they change who may talk to investors and the technologies that may be used to reach them. The primary focus of this Comment is to discuss these securities laws\u27 requirements for disclosures to investors in light of the brave new world crowdfunding offers. On their face, the updated exemptions change very little about what issuers must say to investors. The disclosure challenges posed by the updated exemptions affect new issuers who have little prior disclosure experience and may have very low compliance budgets. These challenges require such new issuers to comply with traditional securities disclosure rules when they are talking to a less sophisticated crowd of investors than ever before utilizing new technological platforms that are constantly evolving. This Comment discusses how and why an issuer taking advantage of these updated exemptions might inadvertently violate securities disclosure laws when the speaker changes, the audience changes, or the disclosure platform changes, and how to avoid potential traps these changes create when paired with newly available disclosure platforms

Flight Test Data System for Strain Measurement

This thesis describes the design and evaluation of two devices to be included in the next generation of the family of devices called the Boundary Layer Data System (BLDS). The first device, called the Quasi-Static Strain Data Acquisition System, is a continuation of the BLDS-M series of devices to be known as the Flight Test Data System (FTDS) that uses a modular approach to acquire non-flow, quasi-static mechanical strain measurements. Various breakout boards and development boards were used to synthesize the device, which were housed by a custom PCB board. The system is controlled by the SimbleeTM System on a Chip (SOC), and strain measurements are acquired using the HX711 analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and acceleration measurements are acquired with the ADXL345 accelerometer. The Arduino IDE was used to program and troubleshoot the device. The second device, called the Dynamic Strain Data Acquisition System, is a laboratory proof-of-concept device that evaluates various methods of acquiring dynamic strain measurements that may be used in future FTDS designs. A custom PCB board was designed that houses the microcontroller and the various passive components and ICs used to acquire and store strain measurements. The system is controlled by the Atxmega128A4U microcontroller, and measurements are acquired using the AD7708 external ADC and the on-board ADC of the microcontroller. Atmel StudioTM was used to program the microcontroller in C/C++ and to troubleshoot the device. Both devices were tested extensively under room temperature and low temperature conditions to prove the reliability and survivability of each device. The quasi-static data acquisition system was validated to acquire and store measurements to a microSD card at 10 Hz, with a peak operating current under 60 mA. The dynamic data acquisition system was proven to acquire a thousand measurements at 1 kHz and store the data to a microSD card, with a peak operating current under 60 mA

Comparison of path-planning and search methods for cooperating unmanned aerial vehicles

The main goal of this research effort is develop a simulation environment for cooperating UAVs within MATLAB\u27s SIMULINK. This is the first step in a process that will eventually lead to the implementation of model UAVs on a model battlefield. The interest in cooperation of UAVs over the past decade has grown significantly. This is due to several reasons including lower operational cost, lower risk for humans, and greater maneuverability.;This research explores two scenarios. The first is a scenario in which all of the characteristics of a battlefield are known prior to the UAVs being launched. Three prevalent path-planning methods are compared based on calculation speed and optimization. This thesis shows that a visibility graph method leads to the lowest cost solution, while the Voronoi diagram method provides a computationally inexpensive solution.;The second scenario is a search and destroy mission where nothing is known about the battlefield prior to UAVs launch. This will consist of the vehicles visiting a set of predetermined waypoints until a target is found. The result of this research produces a simulation of cooperating UAVs that shows the potential of fulfilling many realistic missions in a battlefield environment