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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Development of Cochliomyia macellaria on Equine and Porcine Striated Muscle Tissue and Adult Attraction to Larval Resource

Boatright, Stacy Ann 2009 August 1900 (has links)
Cochliomyia macellaria (Fabricius) has great importance in forensics and is commonly utilized in estimating the period of insect activity (PIA) on a corpse due to its rapid colonization time of fresh remains, active oviposition during daylight, and its abundance throughout the southern United States. The purpose of this study is to determine what effects tissue and temperature will have on C. macellaria. The purpose of my secondary studies on attraction to larval resource is to gain insight into the behavior of adult blow flies in order to determine what factors drive colonization of remains. Forensic entomology can use development data of calliphorid flies to estimate their PIA on human remains. C. macellaria has major implications in medico-legal entomology as well as in veterinary entomology and are often found on human remains in Texas during the warm months of the year. Furthermore, C.macellaria is a secondary myiasis producer; this means that its larvae may be found infesting living animal or human muscle tissue and potentially could be involved in veterinary forensic cases. This study will help provide better insight on the behavior of C. macellaria in Texas as it relates to tissue type and temperature. In this experiment larvae were reared at three separate temperatures (21°C, 24°C, and 27°C) on either equine or porcine striated muscle tissues. Eggs were inoculated onto each tissue and monitored every hour for hatch. Once hatch occurred, observations were shifted to every twelve hours. Three larvae were sampled during each observation period. Sampled larvae were weighed and length was recorded. Additionally, stage of development was determined. Pupae were collected and time to adult emergence recorded. Furthermore, life-history traits, such as emergence pattern and adult longevity, were recorded. This study is the first in Texas and second in the United States to examine the development of C. macellaria and could provide significant information for cases of myiasis and neglect of both humans and animals. In contrast, rearing flies on beef liver or pork chops, which tends to be a standard procedure often employed may not be applicable to myiasis cases of equines. Data from this study could provide greater insight to developmental differences of forensically important blow flies on striated muscle from different vertebrate species. Since porcine tissue was used in the Florida study, it was also utilized in our study in order to allow a comparison. To date there is only one data set on the development of C. macellaria in the United States. Fly populations in different climates are suspected to have different development rates. This study will compare data from central Texas to data generated in Florida. If variation of development rates is demonstrated for different populations, then forensic entomologists should use data that are more conducive to their given geographic area. My secondary objective first looked at whether larval resource had an attraction effect on the subsequent adult C. macellaria flies. One cohort of larvae was reared on bovine testicles, while another was reared on bovine liver. The subsequent adults were then tested in a dual-choice olfactometer which possessed testicles at one end and liver at the other end. The second set of experiments also involved using a dual-choice olfactometer; however, all larvae were reared on bovine liver and fresh liver was placed at one end of the olfactometer, while fresh liver with conspecific larvae was placed at the end of the other. The purpose of this experiment was to assess whether adult C. macellaria flies were more attracted to the presence of conspecific larvae. These experiments will give us more insignt into adult blow fly behavior and help us to understand what factors drive colonization of remains.
2

A computational-based drug development framework.

January 2011 (has links)
Tse, Ching Man. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 188-200). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.vi / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Obtain information on drug targets --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2 --- Drug Design --- p.5 / Chapter 1.3 --- Interface for interaction --- p.9 / Chapter 1.4 --- Summary --- p.10 / Chapter 2 --- Background Study --- p.12 / Chapter 2.1 --- Protein Function Prediction --- p.16 / Chapter 2.2 --- Drug Design --- p.37 / Chapter 2.3 --- Visualisation and Interaction in Biomedic --- p.44 / Chapter 3 --- Overview --- p.48 / Chapter 3.1 --- Protein prediction using secondary structure analysis --- p.52 / Chapter 3.2 --- Knowledge-driven ligand design --- p.55 / Chapter 3.3 --- Interactive interface in virtual reality --- p.57 / Chapter 4 --- Protein Function Prediction --- p.60 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.61 / Chapter 4.1.1 --- Motivation --- p.61 / Chapter 4.1.2 --- Objective --- p.62 / Chapter 4.1.3 --- Overview --- p.63 / Chapter 4.2 --- Methods and Design --- p.66 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Feature Cell --- p.68 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Heterogeneous Vector --- p.71 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Feature Cell Similarity --- p.75 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Heterogeneous Vector Similarity --- p.79 / Chapter 4.3 --- Experiments --- p.85 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Data Preparation --- p.85 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Experimental Methods --- p.87 / Chapter 4.4 --- Results --- p.97 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Scalability --- p.97 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Cluster Quality --- p.99 / Chapter 4.4.3 --- Classification Quality --- p.102 / Chapter 4.5 --- Discussion --- p.103 / Chapter 4.6 --- Conclusion --- p.104 / Chapter 5 --- Drug Design --- p.106 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.107 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Motivation --- p.107 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Objective --- p.109 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- Overview --- p.109 / Chapter 5.2 --- Methods --- p.111 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Fragment Joining --- p.115 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Genetic Operators --- p.116 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Post-Processing --- p.124 / Chapter 5.3 --- Experiments --- p.128 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Data Preparation --- p.129 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Experimental Methods --- p.132 / Chapter 5.4 --- Results --- p.134 / Chapter 5.4.1 --- Binding Pose --- p.134 / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Free Energy and Molecular Weight --- p.137 / Chapter 5.4.3 --- Execution Time --- p.138 / Chapter 5.4.4 --- Handling Phosphorus --- p.138 / Chapter 5.5 --- Discussions --- p.139 / Chapter 5.6 --- Conclusion --- p.140 / Chapter 6 --- Interface in Virtual Reality --- p.142 / Chapter 6.1 --- Introduction --- p.143 / Chapter 6.1.1 --- Motivation --- p.143 / Chapter 6.1.2 --- Objective --- p.145 / Chapter 6.1.3 --- Overview --- p.145 / Chapter 6.2 --- Methods and Design --- p.146 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Hybrid Drug Synthesis --- p.147 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Interactive Interface in Virtual Reality --- p.154 / Chapter 6.3 --- Experiments and Results --- p.171 / Chapter 6.3.1 --- Data Preparation --- p.171 / Chapter 6.3.2 --- Experimental Settings --- p.172 / Chapter 6.3.3 --- Results --- p.173 / Chapter 6.4 --- Discussions --- p.176 / Chapter 6.5 --- Conclusions --- p.179 / Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.180 / A Glossary --- p.184 / Bibliography --- p.188
3

Domain ontology learning from the web an unsupervised, automatic and domain independent approach

Sánchez, David January 2007 (has links)
Zugl.: Barcelona, Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña., Diss., 2007 / Hergestellt on demand
4

Value of pharmaceutical innovation the access effects, diffusion process, and health effects of new drugs /

Cong, Ze. January 2009 (has links) (PDF)
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pardee Rand Graduate School, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.
5

Bioinformatics mining of the dark matter proteome for cancer targets discovery

Unknown Date (has links)
Mining the human genome for therapeutic target(s) discovery promises novel outcome. Over half of the proteins in the human genome however, remain uncharacterized. These proteins offer a potential for new target(s) discovery for diverse diseases. Additional targets for cancer diagnosis and therapy are urgently needed to help move away from the cytotoxic era to a targeted therapy approach. Bioinformatics and proteomics approaches can be used to characterize novel sequences in the genome database to infer putative function. The hypothesis that the amino acid motifs and proteins domains of the uncharacterized proteins can be used as a starting point to predict putative function of these proteins provided the framework for the research discussed in this dissertation. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
6

Multi-tree Monte Carlo methods for fast, scalable machine learning

Holmes, Michael P. 09 January 2009 (has links)
As modern applications of machine learning and data mining are forced to deal with ever more massive quantities of data, practitioners quickly run into difficulty with the scalability of even the most basic and fundamental methods. We propose to provide scalability through a marriage between classical, empirical-style Monte Carlo approximation and deterministic multi-tree techniques. This union entails a critical compromise: losing determinism in order to gain speed. In the face of large-scale data, such a compromise is arguably often not only the right but the only choice. We refer to this new approximation methodology as Multi-Tree Monte Carlo. In particular, we have developed the following fast approximation methods: 1. Fast training for kernel conditional density estimation, showing speedups as high as 10⁵ on up to 1 million points. 2. Fast training for general kernel estimators (kernel density estimation, kernel regression, etc.), showing speedups as high as 10⁶ on tens of millions of points. 3. Fast singular value decomposition, showing speedups as high as 10⁵ on matrices containing billions of entries. The level of acceleration we have shown represents improvement over the prior state of the art by several orders of magnitude. Such improvement entails a qualitative shift, a commoditization, that opens doors to new applications and methods that were previously invisible, outside the realm of practicality. Further, we show how these particular approximation methods can be unified in a Multi-Tree Monte Carlo meta-algorithm which lends itself as scaffolding to the further development of new fast approximation methods. Thus, our contribution includes not just the particular algorithms we have derived but also the Multi-Tree Monte Carlo methodological framework, which we hope will lead to many more fast algorithms that can provide the kind of scalability we have shown here to other important methods from machine learning and related fields.
7

A national electronic database of special music collections in South Africa

De Jongh, Martha Susanna 03 1900 (has links)
Thesis (MMus (Music))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / In the absence of a state-sponsored South African archive that focuses on collecting, ordering, cataloguing and preserving special music collections for research, the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) was established in 2005 as a research project at the University of Stellenbosch. Music research in South Africa is often impeded by inaccessibility of materials, staff shortages at archives and libraries, financial constraints and time-consuming ordering and cataloguing processes. Additionally there is, locally, restricted knowledge of the existence, location and status of relevant primary sources. Accessibility clearly depends on knowing of the existence of materials, as well as the extent to which collections have been ordered and catalogued. An overview of repositories such as the Nasionale Afrikaanse Letterkundige Museum and Navorsingsentrum (NALN), the now defunct National Documentation Centre for Music and the International Library of African Music (ILAM) paints a troubling picture of archival neglect and disintegration. Apart from ILAM, which has a very specific collecting and research focus, this trend was one that ostensibly started in the 1980s and is still continuing. It could be ascribed to a lack of planning and forward thinking under the previous political dispensation, aggravated by policies of transformation and restructuring in the current one. Existing sources supporting research on primary materials are dated and not discipline-specific. Thus this study aims to address issues of inaccessibility of primary music materials by creating a comprehensive and ongoing national electronic database of special music collections in South Africa. It is hoped that this will help to alert researchers to the existence and status of special music collections housed at various levels of South African academic and civil society.

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