Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1967. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed Sept. 4, 2007). Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2008. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-110). Also available on the World Wide Web.

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation focuses on utilization of poly(N-isopropylacylamide) (pNIPAm) based mirogels for regulated macromolecule drug delivery applications. There is particular emphasis on incorporation of stimuli responsive materials into multi-layer thin film constructs with the main goal being fabrication of highly functional materials with tunable release characteristics. Chapter 1 gives a broad overview of hydrogel and microgel materials focusing on fundamental properties of pNIPAm derived materials. Chapter 2 illustrates the progression of controlled macromolecule release from hydrogel and microgel materials and sets up the scope of this thesis work. Chapter 3 details studies on thermally modulated insulin release from microgel thin films where extended pulsatile release capabilities are shown. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on more fundamental synthesis and characterization studies of PEG and acrylic acid modified pNIPAm microgels that could ultimately lead to the design of protein loaded microgel films with tunable release characteristics. Chapter 6 illustrates fundamental macromolecule loading strategies, which could also prove useful in future protein drug delivery design using stimuli responsive networks. Chapter 7 concentrates on direct insulin release studies that probe the interaction between entrapped and freely diffusing protein and microgels. These model experiments could prove useful in design of tunable macromolecule drug release from functionally modified microgels and could aid in the tailored design of peptide-loaded microgel thin films. Chapter 8 discusses the future outlook of controlled macromolecule release from microgel based materials.

This thesis reports a comprehensive study of the electrostatic solvation energy computation for macromolecules. In the molecular dynamics (MD) simulations it is important to be able to compute the free energy of the system accurately and efficiently. The solvation energy which is dominated by the electrostatics plays a significant role in the dynamics of macromolecules in solution. The standard way of computing the electrostatic solvation energy is to solve the Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) equations. However, due to the large size of the system, the computation cost of solving the PB equation becomes a bottleneck even for the continuum implicit solvent. The alternative method is the newly developed generalized Born (GB) method which gives a good approximation to the PB calculation if the Born radii are properly computed. The computation of the Born radii is the core computation in the GB method and is laborious. In this thesis we present a novel error-bounded fast surface GB approach which significantly improves the traditional surface GB approaches. An analytic algebraic spline model is built for the geometric model of the molecular surfaces which allows one to do the accurate computation on a coarse mesh. Based on the surface GB theory, we develop an algorithm that computes the Born radii by using the fast summation algorithm at a complexity nearly linear in terms of the number of atoms of the molecule and the number of elements on the mesh of the molecular surface. The algorithm is also extended to the electrostatic forces calculations. Finally we propose a hierarchical coarse grained (CG) model aiming at reducing the number of atoms in a macromolecule while still being able to reproduce the geometry as well as the electrostatic interactions of the atomic model. / text

No description available.

The purpose of this investigation was to study the effects of decreased barometric pressure on the transcapillary movement of molecules by monitoring the macromolecular capillary permeability with lymph derived primarily from the hepatic and gastrointestinal regions of the dog.