Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1990. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [210]-222).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Food Science." Includes bibliographical references (p. 122-130).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1992. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [210]-240).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 294-317).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-130).

M.Tech. / It is estimated that 59% of South African adult women and 29% of South African adult men are overweight (Department of Health, 2004). Significant risks arise from being overweight including: elevated cholesterol and the development of cardiovascular disease which increases with a greater gain in weight (Duyff, 2006). There is a lack of sufficient evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of many of the herbal weight-loss products currently available thus indicating that more research on herbal products and their efficacy in weight-loss is required (Lenz and Hamilton, 2004). The aim of this study is to determine the efficacy of a herbal complex (Aloe ferox, Fucus vesiculosis, Taraxacum officinale and Trigonella foenum– graecum) as an aid in weight loss in females utilising comparative measurements of the participants’ weight, Body Mass Index (BMI), body fat percentage and circumferential measurements of their hips, waist, thighs, upper arms and abdomen. The study was a quantitative, double blind placebo controlled study. The study involved thirty overweight female participants (BMI 25.5 - 30 kg/m²) between the ages of twenty and thirty five. The participants were recruited by means of advertisement posters placed at the University of Johannesburg, Homoeopathy Health Centre. The participants were randomly divided into two groups of fifteen. One group received the herbal complex (Aloe ferox, Fucus vesiculosis, Taraxacum officinale and Trigonella foenum– graecum) and the other group received the placebo. Participants from both groups attended an initial interview where they were screened by means of a questionnaire and physical examination, including the measurement of their height and weight, calculation of their Body Mass Index (BMI) and body fat percentage, as well as the circumferential measurement of their hips, waist, thighs, upper arms and abdomen. Each participant was given a weekly diary and instructed to take fifteen drops of the issued medication three times daily, after meals for the duration of the full eight week study. Participants were examined, weighed, and the measurement of their body circumference and fat percentage were recorded every second week for the duration of the eight week study. Data from each participant was collected and analysed using repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). From statistical evaluation, it was determined that the herbal complex (Aloe ferox, Fucus vesiculosis, Taraxacum officinale and Trigonella foenum– graecum) was ineffective as an aid in weight loss in females.

Metal catalysis of symmetric and asymmetric carbene transfer reactions has been widely applied in natural product synthesis and material science over years. Metal carbene can be easily generated from the extrusion of nitrogen under the catalysis of metal complexes to further undergo various organic reactions, O/N/C-H insertions, cycloadditions, and ylide formations. Currently, the dominant effective catalysts for carbene reactions are built with expensive precious metal, for example, rhodium, ruthenium, palladium, gold. Notably, the effective reactivity and enantioselectivity of the dirhodium(II) catalysts are researched and established over the decades. However, the use of precious metal catalysts is the major source of metal residues in pharmaceutical products; thus, it becomes a concerning safety factor towards the environment. Iron, instead, to our interest, is an economical and ecofriendly element. Iron has been used in different catalytic reactions but achieved moderate reactivity and low enantioselectivity towards carbene transfer reactions. Within, the electronic environment and the mechanism of iron catalysts are underdeveloped. A new series of ligands named bis(imino)pyridine family has been found to be able to offer coordinate sites for transition metals to build effective metal complexes can be used for different organic reactions. This type of ligand can be easily synthesized in relatively short steps and the structure of the substituents can be facially tuned. These advantages show the great potential of bis(imino)pyridine ligands in organic catalysis. In this project, bis(imino)pyridine ligands were applied as the backbone structure to construct a series of achiral and chiral iron catalysts that were investigated in catalytic metal carbene reactions in terms of reactivity and selectivity. By manipulating the structure of the ligands, the high reactivity of the achiral iron(II) complexes towards various carbene reactions was achieved, while moderate enantioselectivity was observed by the catalysis of chiral iron(II) complexes. To our delight, the bis(imino)pyridine iron(II) complex, for the first time, is shown as an effective metal carbene catalyst for carbene transfer reactions of donor–acceptor diazo compounds. Its broad catalytic capability is demonstrated by a range of metal carbene reactions, from cyclopropanation, cyclopropenation, epoxidation, and Doyle–Kirmse reaction to O–H insertion, N–H insertion, and C–H insertion reactions. The asymmetric cyclopropanation of styrene and methyl phenyldiazoacetate was successfully achieved by the new chiral bis(imino)pyridine iron catalyst, which delivers a new gateway for the development of chiral iron catalysis for metal carbene reactions.

Construction organizations have had to increase their productivity and make the project process, from conceptual design to handing over, more efficient in order to increase their profit margins. The Information Technology (IT) industry has developed new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions and tools which aim to support construction organizations in projects in order for them to achieve their goals of reduced project costs, increased project control and increased productivity. An ICT tool that, during recent years, has grown to potentially create a new paradigm within the construction industry is Building Information Modeling (BIM). But as the construction industry has shown it cannot absorb new technological innovations as fast as the market responds, the entire industry has hereby been perceived as conservative and slow in adoption of BIM throughout the whole project lifecycle. An interesting contradiction is why there has been such slow adoption of BIM when improved productivity and effectiveness is a prerequisite for increased profit margins. The evaluation of this contradiction formed the basis for this thesis. In compliance with the construction company Skanska Sweden AB, for which this research has been conducted, a decision was made to evaluate this problem with focus on how BIM can be used in the production phase of construction projects and how it can be aligned to production processes to increase productivity. A specific production process, work preparations, was chosen to be evaluated as an example of what obstacles there are of implementing BIM and how BIM can be of value in the production phase. To answer this questions a literature study in combination with empirical observations through qualitative interviews was performed. The literature study was conducted in the areas of communication, ICT and BIM. The qualitative study consisted of interviews with personnel from the central organization of Skanska and with production personnel from four different projects. The findings revealed that there are several obstacles with implementing BIM in the production phase and that an organizational induced iterative improvement process is imperative to assure effective BIM diffusion and hence an increased BIM maturity level in the production environment. Furthermore, the research shows that the BIM maturity level will set the standard for how well BIM can be used as a tool to support production processes. Moreover, our research has resulted in a three-step model which provides recommendations how Skanska and other construction organizations gradually can increase their BIM maturity level in the production phase and thereby utilize BIM in production processes such as work preparations.

Antimalarial drugs are becoming less effective due to the emergence of drug resistance. At this time, resistance has been reported for all available antimalarial marketed drugs, including artemisinin, thus creating a perpetual need for alternative drug candidates. The traditional drug discovery approach of high throughput screening (HTS) of large compound libraries for identification of new drug leads is time-consuming and resource-intensive. While virtual screening, which enables finding drug candidates in-silico, is one solution to this problem, the accuracy of these models is limited. Artificial intelligence (AI) however has demonstrated highly accurate performances in chemical property prediction utilizing either structure-based or ligand-based approaches. Leveraging this ability and the existing models, AI could be a suitable alternative to blind-search HTS or feature-based virtual screening. This model would recognize patterns within data and allow the search for hit compounds to be done in an intelligent manner. In this work, we introduce DeepMalaria, a deep-learning-based process capable of predicting the anti-plasmodial properties and parasite to human selectivity of compounds from their SMILES. This graph-based model is trained on nearly 13,000 publicly available antiplasmodial compounds from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) which are currently being used to find novel antimalarial drug candidates. We used this model for predicting hit compounds from a macrocyclic based compound library. To validate the DeepMalaria generated hits, we utilized the widely used SYBR Green I fluorescence-based phenotypic screening. DeepMalaria was able to predict all compounds that showed nanomolar activity and 87.5% of the compounds with an inhibition rate of 50% or more at 1 µM. Further experiments to reveal the compounds' mechanism of action has shown us that one of the hit compounds, DC-9237, inhibits all intraerythrocytic asexual stages of Plasmodium falciparum, and is a fast-acting compound, making it a strong candidate for further optimization.

This study comprised of a survey of 807 students in geosciences classes at Mississippi State University to determine the perceived level of threat from eight natural hazards: hurricanes, hail, lightning, tornadoes, earthquakes, ice storms, floods, and wildfires. Responses were analyzed to detect spatial differences in perceptions of threats across the state of Mississippi for comparison. Actual occurrences of the natural hazards and preparations for dealing with these hazards were recorded by county and MEMA districts. Threat perceptions for hurricanes, ice storms, floods, and lightning showed spatial differences, whereas threats from hail, tornadoes, earthquakes, and wildfire showed no spatial differences. All perceived threats except ice storms paralleled the actual recorded occurrences of the respective hazards spatially. Preparations for each hazard included the adoption of MEMA’s Basic Plan for the entire state.