Chapter 1: Munchnones and mesoionic heterocycles The reactivity, regioselectivity, and synthetic applications of munchnones (1,3-oxazolium-5-olates) is a common theme which runs through Chapters 2-5. The definition, structure, and reactivity of...
A yearly breast contrast-MR scan is recommended to high-risk women because of MR's high sensitivity to breast tumors. However, breast contrast-MR yields a high number of false positives that lead to expensive and sometimes unnecessary biopsy...
Continual improvements to clinical breast imaging technologies have led to ever earlier detections and increasingly accurate localizations of female breast cancers. While these advancements have certainly improved the prognoses of many patients,...
Brain tissue mechanics are an important biomarker for neurological disorders, yet methods to obtain tissue information yield inconsistent conclusions. These techniques can be invasive or require excised tissue, where tissue function is altered from...
As the visual effect and movie industries are striving for realism and high fidelity images, physically based lighting, global illumination, realistic materials, and highly tessellated geometry are gradually accepted and used in movie and game...
Radio relics are extended regions of synchrotron radio emission that have been found in the outskirts of a few dozen galaxy clusters. Relics are often associated with clusters undergoing merger activity. They are not associated optically with a...
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the USA and worldwide causing 160,000 and 1.5 million deaths per year, respectively. Due to the late stage of diagnosis, poor efficacy of chemotherapies (targeted and pleiotropic), and...
Production of fuel ethanol from cellulosic materials is a potentially attractive way to meet sustainability, energy security, and environmental goals. However, the high cost of processing using current technology has thus far prevented...
Many protocols for adoptive T cell therapy (ACT) include preparative conditioning strategies to deplete host lymphocytes prior to T cell infusion. Total body irradiation and high-dose chemotherapy regimens not only relieve immunosuppression, but...
Thermodynamics, and the classic balance between entropy and enthalpy, provides a proverbial zoo of exotic phase behaviour that chemists can harness to create new materials out of simple liquids and polymers. The diversity of self-assembling...
We have a limited understanding of how an opinion is originated, how an opinion and information supporting and explaining it gets conveyed, and how the communicated opinion is perceived and processed by others. One direction of current research...
The purpose of this thesis is to describe methods for detecting hidden crevasses on glaciers in Polar regions. Crevasses form in ice sheets as a result of forces imposed upon the brittle ice. The crevasses are hidden from view by bridges of soft...
Objectives: This dissertation comprises three essays on geographic variations in healthcare, and the association between utilization and health outcomes. I first explore associations between outpatient visits and Medicare beneficiaries'...
During our fieldwork with real-world organizations---including those in Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), network configuration management, and the electrical power grid---we repeatedly noticed that security policies and related security artifacts...
Nanoparticles have made significant advances in recent years in the realm of cancer therapy. These nanoparticles typically range in size from 10-250nm in diameter, allowing for differential systemic-based biodistribution. The enhanced permeability...
As methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) hospitalizations keep increasing, the understanding of the characteristics that make one isolate more successful over another is paramount. Strain variations among Staphylococcus aureus observed...
The processes affecting gas transport through the firn column are important to understand in order to accurately interpret climate records from ice cores. Historically, density measurements have been used to estimate open and closed porosity in the...
Telecommunication -- Traffic -- Measurement -- Statistical methods. IEEE 802.11 (Standard). Universities and colleges -- Computer networks -- New Hampshire -- Hanover -- Case studies.
The edge of the Internet is increasingly wireless. Enterprises large and small, homeowners, and even whole cities have deployed Wi-Fi networks for their users, and many users never need to--or never bother to--use the wired network. With the advent...
After decades of searching we have yet to find the progenitor systems for type Ia supernovae. In fact most of what we know about this homogeneous class of supernovae is from spectral features associated with the incinerated remains of the C+O white...
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. The discovery of breast tumor subtypes and the subsequent development of treatments aimed at them has allowed a reduction in the mortality of breast cancer. However, tumors with similar...
Access control is a core component of any information-security strategy. Researchers have spent tremendous energy over the past forty years defining abstract access-control models and proving various properties about them. However, surprisingly...
Estrogen -- Receptors -- Regulation. Selective estrogen receptor modulators. Receptor-ligand complexes. Breast -- Cancer -- Chemoprevention. Colon (Anatomy) -- Cancer -- Chemoprevention.
We have previously shown that the selective estrogen receptor modulator, Arzoxifene (Arz), and the rexinoid, LG100268 (268) synergistically prevent breast cancer in an ER+ breast cancer model. This study was designed to determine the mechanism of...
Recent years have witnessed a new class of monitoring applications that need to continuously collect information from remote data sources. Those data sources, such as web click-streams, stock quotes, and sensor data, are often characterized as...
Floral nectar of many plant species is prone to colonization by microorganisms. Their presence and metabolism have the potential to modify a suite of traits important for pollinator attraction, including nectar quality and scent. However, studies...
Fluorescence molecular imaging will have an important clinical impact in the area of guided oncology surgery, where emerging technologies are poised to provide the surgeon with real-time molecular information to guide resection, using targeted...
Annual screening mammograms are recommended for all women above 40 years of age for early detection of breast cancer, and are known to improve cancer mortality rates. However, mammography is hampered by low sensitivity and a high rate of false...
Magnetic susceptibility imaging of magnetic nanoparticles (mNPs) has many potential applications in biomedicine such as contrast enhanced imaging and image guidance for magnetic hyperthermia therapy. This thesis describes three imaging methods...
This project focuses on the development of research tools and methods that are used to study the relationship between neural activity and subsequent hemodynamic responses in the human brain. This relationship, referred to as neurovascular coupling,...
Opinion dynamics is a complex procedure that entails a cognitive process when it deals with how a person integrates influential opinions to form revised opinion. Early research on opinion formation and social influence can be traced back to the...
Casimir effect. Zero-point field. Electric conductivity. Quantum electrodynamics.
The Casimir force arises from an alteration of boundary condition in vacuum and is often regarded as a manifestation of quantum zero point energy. Considerable progress has been made in the last decade with an impressive achievement of experimental...
Epilepsy is associated with cognitive impairments which often manifest as a higher prevalence of memory impairments. Memory impairments in patients with epilepsy may persist even with sufficient control of seizures, suggesting other factors may...
RNA binding proteins are fundamental components of crucial biological processes in all domains of life. The development of techniques to study RNA binding protein complexes is, therefore, broadly impactful. I employed multiple genome-wide...
The need for social connection is a pervasive and powerful human drive. When this fundamental need is not fulfilled, people place greater emphasis on forming social bonds and are motivated to behave in ways consistent with accomplishing these...
This thesis presents two-fluid simulations of forced magnetic reconnection with finite electron inertia in two and three dimensional periodic systems. Reconnection in the system is driven by a spatially localized forcing function, added to the ion...
Diffuse optical imaging techniques can be combined with standard imaging technologies such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging to allow measurement of spectroscopic signals pertaining to the molecular components of...
Internet -- Security measures. Public key infrastructure (Computer security). Digital signatures. Peer-to-peer architecture (Computer networks) -- Security measures.
The Internet has become a virtual place where people not only operate in isolation but also interact with other Internet users. Collaborative systems are becoming more popular. Applications now being introduced could provide better remote education...
This thesis constitutes the first steps in the author's program to investigate the question of when a homotopy of 2-cocycles ω = {ω[subscript t]}[subscript t∊[0,1]] on a locally compact Hausdorff groupoid Ɠ induces an isomorphism of the...
The focus of this thesis is the study of nuclearity and exactness for groupoid crossed product C*-algebras. In particular, we present generalizations of two well-known facts from group dynamical systems and crossed products to the groupoid setting....
Gene set testing has become a critical tool for interpreting the results of high-throughput genomic experiments. Despite the development of robust statistical methods and extensive gene set collections, however, the results from gene set testing...
Study 1 This systematic review aimed to synthesize the emerging body of work on the impact of employment, with a focus on prospective cohort studies. Researchers identified relevant studies for review via PubMed, expert referral, and reference...
In the past few years there has been a tremendous growth in the usage of digital images. Users can now access millions of photos, a fact that poses the need of having methods that can efficiently and effectively search the visual information of...
Despite the recent FDA approval of the potentiator drug Kalydeco for treatment of cystic fibrosis (CF), only a small (3-5%) portion of patients benefit from this drug. Other functional classes of drugs including correctors are under clinical...
Sexual selection is a driver of biodiversity and creates spectacular forms of variation. However, only recently have we begun to understand how this variation operates on the postcopulatory level and how cryptic mechanisms affect male-male...
Swarming motility is a flagella-dependent surface motility, and is also a form of bacterial group behavior. Similar to its counterpart biofilm formation, our understanding of swarming motility has been hampered by its complex set of requirements...
Proteins are ubiquitous in cells and are essential to a wide range of biological processes. Since existing proteins occupy only a small portion of the space of possible amino acid composition, understanding their sequence-structure-function...