No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Master of Science / Department of Diagnostic Medicine/Pathobiology / Sanjeev Narayanan / The use of antimicrobials in animal feed has come under increasing scrutiny from the public and regulatory agencies. Direct-fed microbials (DFM) are considered valuable alternatives to antimicrobials in food animal nutrition. DFM are products containing live (viable microorganisms). Studies in Europe have reported antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in organisms used in DFM. This is of serious concern because of the potential for transferring resistance to pathogenic bacteria in the gut. The aim of the present study is to characterize phenotypic and genotypic AMR profiles for 20 different antimicrobials in bacterial strains isolated from 10 commercially available DFM used in. Two antimicrobial susceptibility testing methods, disc diffusion and broth micro-dilution based assay were performed. Enterococcus faecium isolates showed resistance towards metronidazole (n=9/9) with a MIC of > 32 μg/mL, erythromycin (n=5/9) with a MIC of ≥ 8 μg/mL, ciprofloxacin (n=2/9) with a MIC ≥ 4 μg/mL, ceftriaxone (n=6/9) with a MIC ≥ 0.25 μg/mL, rifampin (n=8/9) with a MIC of > 4 μg/mL, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (n=4/9) with a MIC ≥ 1 μg/mL and clindamycin (n=5/9) with a MIC of > 0.5 μg/mL. A Propionibacterium freudenreichii isolate showed resistance towards kanamycin with a MIC of > 64 μg/mL. The same strain also had a MIC of 16 μg/mL for levofloxacin. Two Lactobacillus acidophilus were resistant to vancomycin (n=2/6) with a MIC ≥ 32 μg/mL. All the Lactobacillus species including L. acidophilus (n=6), L. casei (n=4) and L. plantarum (n=2) were resistant to metronidazole, MIC > 32 μg/mL. Two strains of Bacillus subtilis showed resistance to clindamycin, with an MIC of 4 μg/mL and erythromycin with an MIC of > 8 μg/mL, and one strain had no zone of inhibition for metronidazole (MIC > 32 μg/mL). Microarray analysis revealed resistance genes in E. faecium strains of 3 different DFM, including aminoglycoside resistance genes, ant(4’)-Ia, erythromycin resistance genes, ere(A2) and ermB, tetracycline resistance genes, tet39, tet31, tetK and tetC, and beta-lactam resistance gene, pbp5. Conjugation with filter mating showed erythromycin resistance gene transfer, msrC gene, from donor strains to a recipient strain (E. faecium 45-24). These studies show that AMR is prevalent among bacterial strains used as DFM in the cattle industry in the U.S., justifying further characterization, detection and observation of transferable antibiotic resistance between the same genus. .

This thesis examines the effects of phonics-emphasis Direct Instruction reading programs on the phonological processes of students with teacher-identified reading problems in nine northern and western Melbourne primary schools. The students (131 males and 75 females, mean age 9.7 years, standard deviation 1.2 years) were assigned to the treatment condition or to wait-list comparison groups. Based on the results of a program placement test of rate and accuracy, students were assigned to one of two entry points into the Corrective Reading program (A, B1). The students in the intervention group received 60-65 lessons (in groups of five to ten students) from teachers at their schools, or, for some students, at a resource centre for surrounding schools. An additional study, with younger (mean age 8.8 years) less advanced readers involved a similar design and teaching approach. The program, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, was presented to thirteen student s in two settings. When compared with a similar cohort of wait-list students, the students in each program made statistically significant and educationally important gains in such phonologically-based processes as word attack, phonemic awareness, and spelling; and, statistically significant gains, of at least moderate effect size, in phonological recoding in lexical access and phonological recoding in working memory. A further question involved the prediction (from pretest scores) of those students who would not make progress in word attack solely from the reading programs. In this thesis, only the presence or absence of the reading programs predicted improvement in word attack. The studies in this thesis contribute to the long-standing debate on how best to ensure that children learn to read; to the understanding of the relationship between phonemic awareness and reading; to an understanding of the effects of the current system on at-risk children; and, how additional or alternative approaches more attuned to the findings of reading research may improve the effectiveness of the system.

A novel variation of Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS) has been utilized to measure a high voltage collected on an aluminum target by Direct Energy Conversion. The maximum high voltage on the target was measured to be 97.5 kV +/- 2 kV. The resistance of the circuit was then calculated based on the current driving different target voltages. The resistance was calculated to be 199.4GΩ +/- 5%. It was shown that by simply measuring the neutral particles’ energy spectra, the voltage on the target and resistance of the circuit can be found with certainty. The experimental data agree well with previous work and with the scattering theory developed. Thus, the capability of RBS has been extended to measure high voltages generated by direct energy conversion; this is something that has not been done before.

In this thesis, we will address several important issues on the direct sequence ultra-wideband (DS-UWB) wireless system and will provide a comprehensive analytical study on DS-UWB with different channel models, as well as the impact of pulse shapes on the overall performance.

The increased popularity of personal marketing and printing on demand technology has substantially changed the advertising practice. Taking direct mail (DM) as an example, DM is no longer treated as ¡§junk mail¡¨ but useful marketing tool after combining personal information with interesting advertisement, such as combining customers¡¦ credit card statements with customized advertisement based on their purchasing behavior. Personalized DM has become a brand new approach for advertising that may lead to better communication effect. In this research, we formulated a research framework based on the Advertisement Attitude Mediating Model, which measures the effect of advertisement in three aspects: attitude towards the advertisement, attitude towards the advertised product, and purchase intention. Product category (shopping goods and specialty goods) and need for cognition (high and low) were moderators. Experiment method was utilized in this research to examine the effect of personalized DM. A total of 329 college students participated the experiment and they were divided into six groups with different settings in three different degrees of personalization (personalized, half-personalized, and none-personalized) and two product categories. Among them, 235 eventually completed the experiment to provide valid data for analysis. The results include: (1) personalized information has a positive effect on consumers¡¦ attitude towards DM; (2) personalized product recommendation can improve consumers¡¦ attitude towards product and increase their purchase intention; (3) A higher degree of personalization produce the better advertising effects; (4) The effect of personalization varies in different product category. Specialty goods is more suitable for personalized DM than shopping goods; (5) The consumer¡¦s need for cognition does not affect the effect of personalized DM. Chen, Chih-Hau

None