Introduction: Sleep apnea is a pathological health condition with repeatedly paused breathing during sleep. The condition can cause serious health problems and decrease quality of life. Offering a fast diagnosis and treatment could prevent further progress of the condition. The severity of sleep apnea is indicated by an apnea hypopnea index (AHI), which is scored based on a home sleep apnea test (HSAT). The purpose: This study compared the differences between manually and automatically scored AHI, to examine if the automatic scoring is an acceptable singular method for sleep apnea diagnostics. This study also examined if AHI differences could be predicted by HSAT airflow signal quality and the degree of central or mixed apneas. Methods: Sleep apnea patients were instructed by the author how to use the HSAT equipment, data of 182 one-night HSAT recordings were then collected. Each recording was analyzed automatically and manually by a sleep specialist, using the software Noxturnal 6.3. Results: There was a great correlation between the two AHI scoring methods (Spearman’s r 0,97), but a statistically significant difference was found. The positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) of the automatic method were 96% and 97%, respectively, sensitivity was 99% and specificity 84%. A moderate, negative correlation between signal quality and AHI differences (Pearson’s r -0,31) was found, but none with central apneas. Conclusion: The results were contradictory, but considering a low Cohen’s d, this study still concludes that clinical use of automatic AHI scoring should be sufficient if AHI > 15.

This thesis details the history of Claremont Market Shares, a Community Sourced Agriculture (CSA) project based out of Claremont, California. By using this project as a jumping off point for discussing local food networks, buzzwords such as "organic" and "local" are analyzed and re-defined. I argue for a people-based food network model over the currently popular 'place-based' that prioritizes producer-consumer relationships. The CSA functions as a sustainable model of this ideology.

Sialylation is an important carbohydrate modification of glycoconjugates, which introduces sialic acids (SA). The relatively large nine-carbon, negatively charged sugars are typically located at the termini of carbohydrate chains. SA's are often required for functionally important molecular and cellular interactions including virus-host interactions, tumor progression and malignancy, immune system development and function, and nervous system development and function. However, the study of sialylation in vertebrates, including man, encounters serious obstacles associated with the complexity of vertebrates' biology and limitations of available experimental approaches. Drosophila is a useful model system with many advantages including quick generation time, a large number of progeny, simplified glycosylation and neurophysiology, and ease of genetic manipulations. The primary focus of this thesis is on the functions of Drosophila melanogaster CMP sialic acid synthetase (DmCSAS) and sialyltransferase (DSiaT) in the central nervous system (CNS). A combination of genetic, immunostaining, and neurobiology approaches were used to characterize the functions of DmCSAS and DSiaT in Drosophila. This investigation revealed the expression of DmCSAS and suggested that it plays an important role in a specialized and developmentally regulated process in the nervous system of Drosophila. Further experiments examined sub-cellular localization of DmCSAS revealing that this protein has a complex mostly Golgi-associated distribution within the cell in vivo. I discovered a novel link between Drosophila sialylation and circadian rhythm regulation. I also characterized the electrophysiological phenotypes of DmCSAS mutants and compared them to the corresponding defects associated with DSiaT mutations. My experiments also revealed that the relationship between DmCSAS and DSiaT are more complex than originally thought; these genes may have independent functions while also participating in the same pathway. Taken together, these results elucidate the sialylation pathway in Drosophila and shed more light on the role of sialylation in the nervous system. My experiments provide a unique evolutionary perspective on the sialylation pathway in animals and suggest that the neural function of SA in Drosophila can be conserved in vertebrates, including humans.

This work examines sleep apnea syndrome, sleep physiology and self control of respiration during sleep. There is a review of respiration disorders during sleep and methods of monitoring sleep apnea syndrome. In another part the data of monitoration are processed and method of flow, saturation and snoring signal events detection is described, program algorithm is described and results are presented.

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