Ph.D. (Chemistry) / This thesis was devoted to the synthesis of new bisphosphonates molecules, the study of their reactivity and the evaluation of their biological activities. The synthesis of epoxyalkylgembisphosphonates was carried out in three steps. The first step was the synthesis of arynyl and alkynylphosphonates by metallation of alkyl and aryl acetylenes followed by condensation with diethylchlorophosphate at low temperature. The second step was the synthesis of vinylgembisphosphonates by a tributylphosphine catalyzed phosphorylation of arynylphosphonates. The last step to epoxyalkylgembisphosphonates was achieved by oxidation of vinylgembisphosphonates using ethylmethyldioxirane generated in situ from potassium monopersulfate (caroate) and butanone in a phase transfer system. The synthesized epoxyalkylgembisphosphonates were studied in order to assess their reactivity with different nucleophiles and their chemical usefulness. All the synthesized compounds were characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, infrared (IR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (GCxGC-TOF-MS). In term of reactivity, epoxyalkylgembisphosphonates were found to be less reactive than epoxyphosphonates. As far as their biological activities are concerned, epoxyalkylgembisphosphonates were found to be more potent than some commercially available antibiotics.

This paper concerns the preparation of some bis derivatives of dialkylaminoalkoxypropionitirles from trimethylene, hexamethylene, octomethylene, and decamethylene bromides. These compounds are to be tested for curariform activity and anesthetic values by Parke, Davis and Company.

Research has shown that health promotion programs (HPP) that incorporate education about physical activity (PA) are one mode of rehabilitation that can improve the health of individuals with disabilities. However, education-based PA curriculum is not included in the rehabilitation program for individuals with a brain injury, indicating a gap in services provided. Consequently, the purpose of this study was to create and deliver a physical activity centered education (PACE) program that supplemented the existing rehabilitation program for brain injury. PACE consists of an 8-week (16 session) program aimed to (1) increase self-efficacy for being physically active of PACE program participants, (2) increase PA stage of change in PACE program participants or the maintenance of adequate level of PA, and (3) improve the rehabilitation outcomes (i.e., abilities, participation, adjustment) of PACE program participants. Based on previous research, it is hypothesized that participation in PACE will result in (1A) increased self-efficacy for PA, (1B) greater self-efficacy for PA than the standard of care group, (2A) increased readiness to be physically active, (2B) greater readiness to change their PA behavior than the standard of care group, (3A) improved rehabilitation outcomes, and (3B) greater rehabilitation outcomes than the standard of care group. the PACE program resulted in: (1) an average increase of 19.36% in participants’ PA self-efficacy (effect size [ES] = 0.37), (2) 15 of the 22 PACE participants (68.18%) reported readiness to engage in regular PA , and (3) an increase in rehabilitation outcomes (i.e., abilities, adjustment, and participation)In conclusion, the PACE program can improve PA self-efficacy, readiness for regular PA behavior, and improved short-term rehabilitation outcomes.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Over the past decades there has been a global increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity. The increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity leads to surging of associated co-morbidities of overweight and obesity in low/medium income countries which eventually overburdens the vulnerable health systems threatens by malnutrition and communicable diseases in low/medium income countries. The designed interventions to curb overweight/obesity in high income countries might be inappropriate to apply in low income countries, such as Nigeria, due to the different cultural norms and values regarding types of food, and physical activity. The overall aim of this study is to design an intervention that will be culturally appropriate for overweight and obesity management among Nigerians. The convergent parallel mixed method design specifically was used in this study. This involves simultaneous timing of carrying out both quantitative and qualitative strands of mixed methods during the same phase of the research process, prioritizes the methods equally, and keeps the strands autonomous during analysis and then mixes the results during overall implementation/execution. The population for the quantitative part was Nigerians residing within sixteen enumeration areas of Alimosho Local Government area of Lagos State, Nigeria. Overweight and obese Nigerians as well as traditional healers and healthcare professionals were purposely selected for the qualitative phase. Delphi study was the last phase of study which involved recruitment of healthcare professionals in the management of overweight and obesity. A sample size of 2250 was projected and approached for this while 1571 consented and participated in the study. This gave a response rate of 69.82%. About 51.2% of the sample population was male and 48.8% female. The mean age of the total sample was 35.36(SD =11.66). Using BMI, the prevalence of overweight/obesity was 42.3% using BF%, the prevalence of body fatness was 39.2% of which 62.5% were females. Data analysis shows strong positive correlation between other measures of body fatness (.694 to .872) except WHR with low but positive relationships between BF% (184), BMI (.280), WC (.495), and negative relationships with HC (-.077) and BAI (-.076). Gender, marital status and age are predictors of overweight and obesity among Nigerians. Type of diet, meal timing, reduced physical activity and genetic factor were perceived as the causes of overweight and obesity. Diet therapy, an increase in physical activity and the use of herbs were various ways perceived to assist in reducing excess body weight. Among the challenges faced by overweight and obese Nigerians were lack of time for exercise because of the nature of their jobs, lack of recreational facilities, lack of motivations and support from family members to reduce weight, lack of money and poor/lack of knowledge to reduce weight. Experts unanimously agreed that the content of a culturally appropriate intervention should be individualised and to include physical activity/exercise, diet therapy, education and self-monitoring. There was a unanimous decision that the intervention should be done for a duration of 12 weeks at health facility and should be held for between 1-2 times per week if holding at community (excluding community/ public health facility) for 12 weeks in total. In addition, experts agreed that the use of media such as television, radio, weekly newspapers and magazines should be used for preventive campaigns.

Physical Activity, Healthcare Use, and Medication Use in Diabetes Patients by Julie Kwon Evans MS, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, 2013 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Psychology Walden University November 2019

Clinically significant motor impairment affects 50-100% of those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Although not included in the diagnostic criteria, research suggests that motor impairments appear during infancy, precipitate the onset and progression of classical autistic symptomology, and are associated with the severity of autist deficits. Presently, few studies directly address motor impairment in ASD. In those that do, physical education, exercise, and exergaming interventions have been found to enhance motor skill proficiency. Little is known about the effect of unstructured physical activity on motor skills in children with autism. Thus, this pilot study sought to examine the impact of unstructured, one-on-one, physically active play on motor skill proficiency as defined by the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2) in autistic children between ages 3 and 10. Twenty, one-on-one, 60-minute play-based physical activity sessions were administered over a 10-week period (2x/week). The physical activity environment was arranged according to the North Carolina Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communications Handicapped Children (TEACCH) guidelines. Session structure precluded skill teaching and sought to elicit gross and fine motor activity within physical activity opportunity stations, but without regard to type or intensity of activity. A comparison of pre-and post-intervention TGMD-2 scores captured motor skill outcomes. Findings suggest that unstructured physically active play is not sufficient to improve global motor skill competency in young children with autism. However, active play fostered significant improvements in two in running skill scores. The TGMD-2 is designed to assess those skills that would foster participation in physical education and recreational settings. Improved running may advance play-abilities and support other forms of activity. Future research should consider using assessments more sensitive to acute changes in motor skill efficacy, measurement of time spent in physically active play, and qualitative analysis of parent-perceived outcome and improvement.

The purpose of this study is to investigate, empirically, the response of the severely mentally retarded to different types of music, tonic and sedative, as well as responses during "quiet" periods.

Physical inactivity, a phenomenon on the rise in numerous countries, has gained global attention because of its negative effects on humans' physical wellness. It represents a stumbling block in the way of living a healthy lifestyle. Recent statistics of World Health Organization (WHO) ranked physical inactivity as the fourth leading risk factors for adults' mortality all over the world [1]. Also, physical inactivity is considered as one of the most prominent contributing factors in several severe diseases such as breast and colon cancer, diabetes and many heart- related diseases [1]. Therefore, improving daily physical activity levels is an urgent societal goal in order to tackle the physical inactivity problem. Achieving such challenging goal requires addressing the factors that affect adults’ physical activity. In fact, there are many factors that lead to physical inactivity such as the busy lifestyle, lack of awareness regarding required physical activity levels and other environmental factors. Physical activity advisory systems can be seen as a promising solution for the inactivity problem. In order to enhance their effectiveness, these systems must take into account most of the factors previously mentioned. In this thesis, we aim to provide a method to promote the increase of daily physical activity levels by leveraging biofeedback and context awareness features. In order to achieve this purpose, we design and develop an algorithm that provides a user with personalized physical activity advice. This advice increases the user's awareness through the use of calories expenditure. To add a context awareness component to our algorithm, we propose an extension of the Ubiquitous Biofeedback (UB) Model [2]. We believe that combining the biofeedback feature with context awareness component would make the system sensitive to the user’s status and thus increase the chances of her or him following it. This advice represents the daily-recommended amount of physical activity for maintaining healthy lifestyle according to [3, 4]and other international organizations' recommendations. In order to prove the concept of the proposed algorithm and extended UB Model, we design and develop a system called "CAB". It is a context aware biofeedback system that tracks user's physical movement and estimates the amount of calories burnt to provide the user with a personalized physical activity advice that considers user's current status, preferences and surrounding environmental context. The system utilizes a biofeedback sensor and a smart phone in order to provide the personalized advice that is delivered to the user in a form of multiple-mode feedback/notification (text, audio and haptic). In this thesis, we provide detailed information about the design requirements, the design model, the proposed system and its related hardware components and software modules. The qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the developed system CAB shows a positive impact on the experiment sample group by motivating the participants to reach or exceed the recommended number of calories to be burned daily for most of the evaluation days.

The Appalachian Mountains are the source of the greatest diversity of salamanders in the world and the preservation and protection of this unique regional diversity are of important consideration. Salamanders can be subject to numerous diseases like ranaviruses and chytrid fungi, but an important factor to consider is other stressors that may affect salamander’s ability to recover from outbreaks. Human activity, be it habitat disruption or providing some vector for disease spread between populations and species, may have large impacts upon salamander population health. Identifying sites where salamanders and human activity are frequently overlapping in the territory could provide sites for future comparisons between more isolated populations and allow a better understanding of how humans may affect salamander populations. To identify sites where human activity may be common, a newt that is a quick colonizer of ephemeral pools, the Eastern Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) was selected to observe. These sites were qualified upon their likeliness to support Notophthalmus viridescens individuals and other amphibian life cycles. Details such as forested canopy, ephemeral pools or stationary water ponds, leaf litter, and other amphibian activity were qualified by their presence or lack thereof. These sites were surveyed during fall thru winter, and the distance between these sites and closest human activity centers were measured in meters using Google Maps. Such activity centers could be classified as residences, public buildings, roads, trails, fences, or land disturbed by human activity like a construction site. Some sites will be purposely further away from human activity as for some comparison to more isolated sites. These sites should show that Notophthalmus viridescens can be found near human activity centers and therefore may be subject to be much influence from them.

Objectives: This study examined the effect of sampling duration, in units of work cycles, on the precision of estimates of exposure to forceful exertion obtained with surface electromyography (EMG). Methods: Recordings of the activity of the flexor digitorum superficialis, extensor digitorum, and upper trapezius muscles over 30 consecutive work cycles were obtained for a random sample of 25 manufacturing workers, each of whom was performing a unique production task representing a portion of the whole job. The mean root-meansquare amplitude and the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles of the distribution function of the amplitude probability were calculated for each cycle. Bootstrap analyses were used to examine the precision of the summary measures as the sampling duration increased incrementally from 1 to 30 work cycles. Precision was estimated by calculating the coefficient of variation (CV) of the bootstrap distributions at each sampling duration increment. Results: The average minimum sampling duration for a bootstrap distribution CV of 15% ranged from 2.0 (SD 1.5) cycles to 7.5 (SD 9.6) cycles, depending on muscle and summary measure. For a 5% CV, the average minimum sampling duration ranged from 11.9 (SD 9.0) to 20.9 (SD 10.5) cycles. Conclusions: The results suggest that sampling as few as three work cycles was sufficient to obtain a bootstrap distribution CV of 15% for some of the muscles and summary measures examined in this study. While limited to machine-paced, cyclic manufacturing work, these results will assist the development of exposure assessment strategies in future epidemiologic studies of physical risk factors and musculoskeletal disorders.