Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 41 Number 3, Winter 1999, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

8 - NOT WITH MY DAUGHTER, YOU DON'T! By Susan Fry. An SCU psychologist explores the correlation between dating and self-esteem for adolescent girls.

12 - COMMON GROUND FOUND By Tamara Straus. SCU has a new partner: the Smithsonian Center for Mate rials Research and Education. Together they are pursuing what a top-notch 21st-century education will require.

16 - THE NEW VOICES OF SANTA CLARA By Nichole Pichel, Miguel Legarreta, Charlene Abalos, Audrey Bilczo, and Jennifer Farris. Five incoming students share their experience of building values in a world of uneven prosperity, opportunity, and choice.

Designing An Analytic Deliberative Process For Environmental Health Policy Making In The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex, Seth Tuler, Thomas Webler

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Using a National Research Council Report as a centerpiece, Drs. Tuler and Webler evaluate the effectiveness of a conceptual approach to risk policy-making.

The Association Of Fluid Intake With Total Natural-Cause Mortality, Coronary Heart Disease And Fatal Stroke, Jacqueline Chung Lun Chan

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Hypohydration may be more widespread than realized since it does not always arouse a sense of thirst. When thirst is felt, it is often ignored, or satisfied before euhydration is achieved. There is growing evidence indicating that hypohydration contributes to acute and chronic illnesses, and to rheological factors associated with coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke. Therefore the relationship of fluid intake with risk of total natural-cause mortality, CHD and stroke death was examined using data on 34,192 white, non-Hispanic participants in the Adventist Health Study.

Among the 27,342 reporting no CHD, stroke or diabetes at baseline, during six years …

Characterisation And Optimisation Of Gypsum Crystallization, Catherine H. Shannon

Theses

Gypsum is produced as a by-product during the citric acid production process at ADM Ringaskiddy. The particle size and filterability of the gypsum has a critical bearing on the overall citric acid production rate. Prior to August 1996, research in the area of gypsum crystal optimisation at ADM had concentrated on the application of vortex mixing to perform the gypsum formation reaction. While the gypsum crystals produced with vortex mixing were found to be desirably clear of microcrystalline gypsum, the crystals were considerably smaller and more difficult to filter and wash. This research project sought to retain the advantages conferred …

Optimisation Studies In A Batch Pharmaceutical Company, Sarah Fitzgerald

Theses

This thesis outlines a collaborative project between industry and academia based on a short term research contract.

In the past in Eli Lilly, process optimisation in a multi-purpose, modular building had been mainly confined to equipment commissioning and new product development. It was necessary to embark upon an exercise to develop an optimisation programme m order to meet the increased requirements and demands of the building. Increased market demands, through the introduction of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, and the demand for cycle time reduction through the expiry of existing patents, made the need for optimisation inevitable.

The purpose of this thesis …

The Atomic Force Microscope In The Elucidation Of Leukocyte Abnormality, Derbrenn O'Connor

Theses

The aim of this project was to investigate the novel use of the atomic force microscope (AFM) as a technique in the elucidation of leukocyte abnormality. To this end, comparative AFM imaging and elasticity studies were performed on normal and myeloid leukaemic leukocytes.

Initially, an evaluation of techniques for the isolation of specific leukocyte (e.g. lymphocytes, granulocytes, etc.) populations from whole blood or leukocyte concentrates, was carried out. It was found that a silanised glass surface failed to select and immobilise a leukocyte population. However, centrifugation of whole blood in an Isopaque-ficoll gradient solution yielded a viable mixed leukocyte population …

Body Weight And Mortality Among Adults Who Never Smoked, Pramil N. Singh

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Most prospective studies identify an increased mortality risk for adults of high body mass index (> 27 kg/m²) that is commonly attributed to the effects of excess body fat, and also identify an increased mortality risk for adults of low body mass index (< 21 kg/m²), an association that, if causal among healthy adults, is without adequate pathophysiologic support.

In this dissertation, I have conducted three studies that continue the investigation of adiposity in relation to mortality among never-smoking adults of the California Seventh-day Adventist population. Among never-smoking adults of the Adventist Mortality Study (1960-1985), the relation between …

Protease Inhibitors Of The Eastern Oyster, Crassostrea Virginica, And Their Relationship To The Protozoan Pathogen, Perkinsus Marinus, Jacques L. Oliver

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Customizable And Ontology-Enhanced Medical Information Retrieval Interfaces, Gondy Leroy, K.M. Tolle, Hsinchun Chen

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

This paper describes the development and testing of the Medical Concept Mapper as an aid to providing synonyms and semantically related concepts to improve searching. All terms are related to the userquery and fit into the query context. The system is unique because its five components combine humancreated and computer-generated elements. The Arizona Noun Phraser extracts phrases from natural language user queries. WordNet and the UMLS Metathesaurus provide synonyms. The Arizona Concept Space generates conceptually related terms. Semantic relationships between queries and concepts are established using the UMLS Semantic Net. Two user studies conducted to evaluate the system are described.

A Review Of The Anticoagulant Pesticide Pindone, Laurie E. Twigg, Tim J. Lowe, Gary R. Martin, Garry S. Gray

Books & book chapters

A review of the use of pindone for rabbit control in Western Australia is timely due to increased public concern over the use of this toxin, and because non-target deaths of some native Australian animals have been known to occur following its use. Pindone is one of the first generation indandione anticoagulant rodenticides which were developed in the late 1940' s. The toxicity of anticoagulants arises from their inhibition of vitamin K-dependent clotting factors in the blood. Thus therapeutic administration of vitamin K provides a reliable antidote against anticoagulant poisoning. Pindone is slow acting and works best with repeated small …

An Endophytic Fungus As A Source Of New Antifungal Compounds, Lisa Marie Jungbauer

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

Medical advances in society such as organ transplants, prolonged chemotherapy, and those that lengthen the lives of AIDS patients and the elderly increase the number of immunocompromised individuals(1). When the immune system is compromised, opportunistic fungi can flourish and become fatal. Current antifungal treatments are limited and often toxic(2,3). In addition, strains of fungi resistant to available antifungals are emerging(4,5). Fungi were selected as the source of potential new antifungal agents because fungal antagonism has been reported in most fungal ecosystems(6). Endophytic fungi, which inhabit the spaces between plant cells, are known producers of natural products and that assist plants …

Field Sampling And Necropsy Examination Of Fish, A. S. Kane, A. Baya, R. Reimschuessel, K. M. St. Pé, C. A. Poukish, C. P. Driscoll

Virginia Journal of Science

This paper presents an overview of observational and fish sampling tech­niques for investigating fish lesions, morbidity and mortality. These sam­pling techniques and investigations are much like detective work and require attention to detail, common sense, technical proficiency and experience. To solve the mystery of a fish kill, the investigator must use available evidence and clues to piece together a series of events that often have long since passed. The cause of these field events may be chemical, biological or physical; more often, it is some combination of these. An initial categorization approach may be used to reduce the great number …

Decision Analytic Approach To Severe Head Injury Management., Harmanec D., Tze-Yun Leong, Sundaresh S., Poh K., Yeo T., Ng I., Lew T.

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Severe head injury management in the intensive care unit is extremely challenging due to the complex domain, the uncertain intervention efficacies, and the time-critical setting. We adopt a decision analytic approach to automate the management process. We document our experience in building a simplified influence diagram that involves about 3000 numerical parameters. We identify the inherent problems in structuring a model with unclear domain relationships, numerous interacting variables, and real-time multiple inputs. We analyze the effectiveness and limitations of the decision analytic approach and present a set of desiderata for effective knowledge acquisition in this setting. We also propose a …

Artificial Societies: A Computational Model Of Disease Transmission, Nathan T. Moore

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Benchmarking Financial Operations Using The Premier Operations Outlook Database, Margaret M. Thompson

Community & Environmental Health Theses & Dissertations

Acute-care hospitals have come under increased pressure to reduce costs while increasing the quality of providing care. Historically, increasing costs of providing care has had the greatest impact on the reduction of operating margins necessary to expand capital and for repayment of debt. Facilities can benchmark internal historical data to identify areas where costs have increased and are able to explain the factors that contribute to the increases. One of the challenges facing hospitals in their efforts to reduce operating costs is how, what, and where, do they obtain comparative data to benchmark the cost of operating medical facility to …

Projections Of Alzheimer's Disease In The United States And The Public Health Impact Of Delaying Disease Onset., Ron Brookmeyer, Sarah Gray, Claudia Kawas

Ron Brookmeyer

OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study was to project the future prevalence and incidence of Alzheimer's disease in the United States and the potential impact of interventions to delay disease onset.

METHODS: The numbers of individuals in the United States with Alzheimer's disease and the numbers of newly diagnosed cases that can be expected over the next 50 years were estimated from a model that used age-specific incidence rates summarized from several epidemiological studies, US mortality rates, and US Bureau of the Census projections.

RESULTS: in 1997, the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease in the United States was 2.32 million (range: …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 40 Number 3, November 1998, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

8 - EARTHBOUND IN TUSCANY By Susan Vogel. Cultivating the soil and restoring a Tuscan farmhouse became regenerative physically and spiritually for SCU English professor Edward Kleinschmidt.

14 - PREMIES By Sue Frey. Kathy (Straus) VandenBerg '66 pioneers a rule-defying path, as she puts tenderness and love above tubes and isolation in caring for premature newborns.

18 - SEA HUNT By Connie Hinckley. SCU SCREEM team members probe the blue-black waters of the Arctic Ocean for historic bounty using high-tech robotics.

26 - THE VILLAGE PEOPLE By Kathleen (Nino) Castello '88. Some 40 years ago a community of ex-GIs and …

Assessing The Accuracy Of A New Diagnostic Test When A Gold Standard Does Not Exist, Todd A. Alonzo, Margaret S. Pepe

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Often the accuracy of a new diagnostic test must be assessed when a perfect gold standard does not exist. Use of an imperfect test biases the accuracy estimates of the new test. This paper reviews existing approaches to this problem including discrepant resolution and latent class analysis. Deficiencies with these approaches are identified. A new approach is proposed that combines the results of several imperfect reference tests to define a better reference standard. We call this the composite reference standard (CRS). Using the CRS, accuracy can be assessed using multistage sampling designs. Maximum likelihood estimates of accuracy and expressions for …

1998 Scholars And Artists Bibliography, Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University, Friends Of The Michael Schwartz Library

Scholars and Artists Bibliographies

This bibliography was created for the annual Friends of the Michael Schwartz Library Scholars and Artists Reception, recognizing scholarly and creative achievements of Cleveland State University faculty, staff and emeriti

Stachybotrys: Is Nevada At Risk?, Terrylynn C. Foley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Stachybotrys chartarum (atra) is a toxigenic fungus that is known to adversely impact the health of animals. Until recently, there have only been a few documented clinical reports linking Stachybotrys chartarum to human health effects. Scientists are increasingly convinced that Stachybotrys and its metabolites are responsible for several adverse health effects experienced by people all over the world, although conclusive proof has yet to be established. All the physical requirements needed for indoor Stachybotrys sporulation and growth is provided through water leaks (plumbing, roof or ceiling), flood events, nutrient sources (cellulose and nitrogen), pH, and temperature(23° - 28°C). Stachybotrys has …

Variability Analysis Of Discrete Cosine Transform Coefficient (Dctc) Features For Speech Processing, Bingjun Dai

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this research, the variability of Discrete Cosine Transform Coefficient (DCTC) features was investigated. Additionally, a new pitch-synchronous processing method was explored to increase the stability of features and to reduce window effects when compared to the regular method. The noise sources that lead to feature variability were analyzed, and different smoothing methods were tested. It was found that longer frames, frequency warping, time smoothing of the log spectrum, and DCS level time smoothing, all help reduce DCTC variability and increase classification performance. The pitch­ synchronous method was implemented with Matlab. Important processing methods, including pitch period estimation, time­ domain …

Localization Of Sodium, Potassium-Adenosine Triphosphatase In The Cerebral Cortex Of Developing Rats, Maki Ujiie

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Active transport via Na⁺, K⁺-ATPase plays an important role in establishing and maintaining proper ionic gradient across all mammalian cell membranes. A strict regulation of Na⁺, and K⁺ ion levels is especially important in excitable cells such as neurons and myocytes. Inhibition of the enzyme is associated with several pathological conditions and has serious detrimental effects on cerebral cortical cells. Yet the enzyme appears to be limited in amount and distribution in newborn rats. In this study, Na_⁺, K⁺- ATPase expression and distribution in early postnatal rats were studied …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 40 Number 2, August 1998, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

8 - THINKING ON THEIR FEET By Tegan McLane. A renowned choreographer coaches SCU dance students to craft bold, new expressions.

12 - MARRIED IN THE MISSION By Tegan McLane. Alumni remember returning to SCU for the most precious - and sometimes the most traumatic- days of their lives.

20 - THE GOOD DEATH By Connie Hinckley. Can physician-assisted suicide provide death with dignity as Oregon voters think?

26 - LET THEM EAT WINDOWS By Susan Vogel. An SCU symposium takes a close look at Microsoft, which grew from a little company that could to an engine geared to outdistance …

Modelling Medical Decisions In Dynamol: A New General Framework Of Dynamic Decision Analysis, Tze-Yun Leong, Cungen Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Dynamic decision analysis concerns decision problems in which both time and uncertainty are explicitly considered. We present a new dynamic decision analysis framework, called DynamoL, that supports graphical presentation of the decision factors in multiple perspectives. To alleviate the difficulty in assessing conditional probabilities over time in dynamic decision models, DynaMoL incorporates a Bayesian learning system to automatically learn the probabilistic parameters from large medical databases. We describe the DynaMoL modeling and learning architecture through a medical decision problem on the optimal follow-up schedule for patients after curative colorectal cancer surgery. We also show that the modeling experience and results …

Analyzing The Effects Of Display Characteristics And Cognitive Variables On Performance Using Keystroke And Eye Movement Data, Orhan E. Beckman

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Information about how operators use their eyes while interacting with visual displays is often an overlooked aspect of human-computer interaction. Such information is fundamental to assessing the quality of software interfaces and understanding the cognitive processes that underlie operator behavior. Other research evaluating information displays evolved from using reaction time and subjective data as dependent variables to using oculometric measures. In the current research conventional performance measures are coupled with oculometric measures to evaluate the influence display characteristics and cognitive variables have on performance.

Twelve subjects used a software program to complete a series of specified tasks. Subjects were asked …

Determination Of The N-Terminal Amino Acid Residues On Polypeptides In Secondary Wastewaters, Edward L. Creecy

Chemistry & Biochemistry Theses & Dissertations

The N-terminal amino acid residues on polypeptides and proteins were determined in wastewaters prior to chlorination. The terminal amino groups'ere first derivatized with the well known derivatizing agent dansyl chloride, and then the resulting dansyl amino acid hydrolyzed from the peptide chain by a propionic acid/ hydrochloric acid mixture. The resulting dansyl amino acids were then separated and detected using reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. The majority of N-terminal residues detected were the more polar amino acids. Concentrations ranged from 1 x 10^-10 to 3 x 10^-7 moles/liter. It is suggested that the shorter …

Review Of: Allan Mazur, A Hazardous Inquiry: The Rashomon Effect At Love Canal, Thomas G. Field Jr.

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Review of: Allan Mazur, A Hazardous Inquiry: The Rashomon Effect at Love Canal (Harvard University Press 1998). Abbreviations,, appendices: Chron- ology and The Basics of Toxicology, bibliography, chronology, figures, index, photos, references. LC 97-44639; ISBN 0-674-74833-6 [255+xiv pp. $26.00 Cloth, 79 Garden Street; Cambridge MA 02138.]

Nuclear Waste And Native America: The Mrs Siting Exercise, M. V. Rajeev Gowda, Doug Easterling

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Drs. Gowda & Easterling provide cross-cultural perspectives on issues of risk perception, equity and policy as they affect nuclear waste storage on Native American sites.

A Pilot Study Testing A Proprietary Sealant For Plaque Reduction, Jennifer Rowland

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Enamel demineralization due to increased plaque accumulation is a well-recognized problem associated with fixed orthodontic appliances. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a proprietary product to be marketed by 3M Unitek for the reduction of plaque accumulation and thereby reduce enamel demineralization.

Sixty four bovine teeth were divided equally into an untreated control group and a group treated with the proprietary sealant product. Both groups were subsequently immersed in a Streptococcus mutans culture. Plaque deposits from each group were removed, suspended in trypticase soy broth, serially diluted, and plated on trypticase soy agar at 1, …

Does The Oswestry Or Sf-36 Help A Therapist To Predict Treatment Classification, Amy Crawford, Denese D. Kaufeldt-Soliz

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of two disability questionnaires, the Oswestry Low Back Pain Disability Questionnaire (Oswestry) and the Medical Outcome Study Short Form-36 (SF-36), and a standardized physical examination and diagnostic classification system. The physical examination was performed by the evaluating therapists from the clinic and classification was determined by the evaluating therapists and the investigators to ensure correct subject placement into treatment Stages la, lb, or II. Data collection occurred at an outpatient physical therapy clinic in a metropolitan area health maintenance organization, where a sample of 221 subjects with low back pain …