Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Characterization Of Computed Tomography Radiomic Features Using Texture Phantoms, Muhammad Shafiq Ul Hassan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Radiomics treats images as quantitative data and promises to improve cancer prediction in radiology and therapy response assessment in radiation oncology. However, there are a number of fundamental problems that need to be solved in order to potentially apply radiomic features in clinic. The first basic step in computed tomography (CT) radiomic analysis is the acquisition of images using selectable image acquisition and reconstruction parameters. Radiomic features have shown large variability due to variation of these parameters. Therefore, it is important to develop methods to address these variability issues in radiomic features due to each CT parameter. To this end, …

Elastin-Like Polypeptide Fusion Tag As A Protein-Dependent Solubility Enhancer Of Cysteine-Knot Growth Factors, Tamina L. Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Elastin-like peptide (ELP) fusions promote therapeutic delivery and efficacy. Recombinant proteins, like neurotrophins, lack bioavailability, have short in vivo half-lives, and require high manufacturing costs. Fusing recombinant proteins with genetically encodable ELPs will increase bioavailability, enhance in vivo solubilization, as well as provide a cost-effective method for purification without the need for chromatography. During expression of neurotrophin-ELP (N-ELP) fusions, dense water-insoluble aggregates known as inclusion bodies (IBs) are formed. Inclusion bodies are partially and misfolded proteins that usually require denaturants like Urea for solubilization. Strong denaturants arrest ELPs stimuli-responsive property and increase unwanted aggregation, making purification difficult, yet possible. The …

Coarse-Grained Modeling Studies Of Polymeric And Granular Systems, Hong Trung Nguyen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This Dissertation is devoted to computational study of the solidification, dynamics and mechanics of model semiflexible polymers with variable chain flexibility as well as a computational investigation of the clogging phenomena observed in granular materials.

Chain stiffness is an intrinsic factor that governs single-chain flexibility. It plays a critical role in the physics of polymeric materials. In this work, we employ a coarse-grained polymer model in which chain stiffness can be tuned by a single parameter (bending stiffness kb) that yields chain shape ranging from coil-like to rod-like in the flexible and very stiff limit respectively. In chapter 2, we …

Computational Discovery Of Energetic Polynitrogen Compounds At High Pressure, Brad A. Steele

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

High-nitrogen-content energetic compounds containing multiple N-N bonds are an attractive alternative towards developing new generation of environmentally friendly, and more powerful energetic materials. High-N content translates into much higher heat of formation resulting in much larger energy output, detonation pressure and velocity upon conversion to large amounts of non-toxic, strongly bonded N2 gas. This thesis describes recent advances in the computational discovery of group-I alkali and hydrogen polynitrogen materials at high pressures using powerful first-principles evolutionary crystal structure prediction methods. This is highlighted by the discovery of a new family of materials that consist of long-sought after all-nitrogen N􀀀 5 …

Flow And Transport In Low-Gradient Rivers And Estuaries, Hunter Lee Clasen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

For this dissertation I studied flow and transport in low gradient Florida streams. Chapter 2 is a statewide analysis of long-term variations in stream discharge. The results from Chapter 2 suggest that changes in mean annual stream discharge are controlled by the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation (AMO). During the warm phase, mean annual discharge decreases in central Florida and increases in north Florida. The opposite is true during the cool phase, with mean annual discharge increasing in central Florida and decreasing in north Florida. This pattern is observed for both components of stream discharge, base flow and runoff.

The following two …

Synthesis Of Novel Agents For The Treatment Of Infectious And Neurodegenerative Diseases, Benjamin Joe Eduful

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Infectious and neurodegenerative diseases continue to be a major concern worldwide. In spite of the great advances in drug therapy for treating various infectious and neurodegenerative diseases, there is still an urgent need for new and improved drugs due to increasing drug resistance among pathogens, emergence of new pathogens, ease of transmission of infections, ineffective available treatments, toxicity associated with current standard of care, aging populations and the lack of better alternative treatment options.

The first part of this manuscript (chapters 1 - 5) describes the synthesis of novel agents active against Leishmania donovani. According to the World Health Organization …

Climate Change: Aristotelian Virtue Theory, The Aidōs Response And Proper Primility, John W. Voelpel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is the first anthropogenic alteration of a global Earth system. It is globally catastrophic in terms of food production, sea level rise, fresh water availability, temperature elevation, ocean acidification, species disturbance and destruction to name just a few crisis concerns. In addition, while those changes are occurring now, they are amplifying over decadal periods and will last for centuries and possibly millennia. While there are a number of pollutants involved, carbon dioxide (CO2) which results from the combustion of any fossil fuel is the primary pollutant. It has not been considered a pollutant until recently because of its …

A Fall Prevention System For The Elderly And Visually Impaired, Yueng Santiago De La Hoz Isaza

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The World Health Organization claims that there are more than 285 million blind and visually impaired people in the world. In the US, 25 million Americans suffer from total or partial vision loss. As a result of their impairment, they struggle with mobility problems, especially the risk of falling. According to the National Council On Aging, falls are among the primary causes for fatal injury and they are the most common cause of non-fatal trauma-related hospital admissions among older adults. Visibility, an organization that helps visually impaired people, reports that people with visual impairments are twice as likely to fall …

In Situ Extrinsic Doping Of Cdte Thin Films For Photovoltaic Applications, Imran Suhrid Khan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Cadmium Telluride thin film solar cell is one of the leading photovoltaic technologies. Efficiency improvements in the past decade made it a very attractive and practical source of renewable energy. Considering the theoretical limit, there is still room for improvement, especially the cell’s open circuit voltage (VOC). To improve VOC, the p-type carrier concentration and minority carrier lifetime of the CdTe absorber needs to be improved. Both these parameters are directly related to the point defect distribution of the semiconductor, which is a function of deposition stoichiometry, dopant incorporation and post-deposition treatments.

CdTe films were deposited by the Elemental …

Dynamic Energy-Aware Database Storage And Operations, Peyman Behzadnia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Energy consumption has become a first-class optimization goal in design and implementation of data-intensive computing systems. This is particularly true in the design of database management systems (DBMS), which is one of the most important servers in software stack of modern data centers. Data storage system is one of the essential components of database and has been under many research efforts aiming at reducing its energy consumption. In previous work, dynamic power management (DPM) techniques that make real-time decisions to transition the disks to low-power modes are normally used to save energy in storage systems. In this research, we tackle …

Signal Detection Of Adverse Drug Reaction Using The Adverse Event Reporting System: Literature Review And Novel Methods, Minh H. Pham

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One of the objectives of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is to protect the public health through post-marketing drug safety surveillance, also known as Pharmacovigilance. An inexpensive and efficient method to inspect post-marketing drug safety is to use data mining algorithms on electronic health records to discover associations between drugs and adverse events.

The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, we review the methods and algorithms proposed in the literature for identifying association drug interactions to an adverse event and discuss their advantages and drawbacks. Second, we attempt to adapt some novel methods that have been used in …

Application Of Modern Foraminiferal Assemblages To Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction: Case Studies From Coastal And Shelf Environments, Christian Haller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of paleoenvironmental studies is to reconstruct characteristics of the past environment from fossil assemblages preserved in sedimentary strata. Thus, studies of modern surface assemblages, quantitatively correlated to the environmental parameters, are required before reliable interpretations can be made. For this dissertation, two different techniques were applied in two case studies: a reconstruction making use of a benthic foraminiferal transfer function from the intertidal marshes in the eastern Mississippi Sound, Alabama/Mississippi, and a qualitative reconstruction of ocean current activity on the Western Australian shelf.

Modern salt-marsh foraminifera were collected from Grand Bay, Pascagoula, Fowl River, and Dauphin Island across …

Synthesis, Modification, Characterization And Processing Of Molded And Electrospun Thermoplastic Polymer Composites And Nanocomposites, Tamalia Julien

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the versatility and integrity of a novel, ultrasoft polycarbonate polyurethane (PCPU) by the introduction of nanoparticles and lithium salts. Additionally, the research takes into account the use of electrospinning as a technique to create PCPU and polyimide (PI) fibers. These polymers are of interest as they offer a wide range of properties and uses within the medical and industrial fields.

An industrial batch of an ultrasoft thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) was synthesized using a two-step process. The first was to create an end capped pre-polymer from methylene bis (4-cyclohexylisocyanate), and a polycarbonate polyol made up of 1,6- …

Remote Sensing And Spatial Metrics For Quantifying Seagrass Landscape Changes: A Study On The 2011 Indian River Lagoon Florida Seagrass Die-Off Event, René Dieter Baumstark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida’s seagrasses are ecologically important marine environments which have suffered major degradation caused by increasing anthropogenic pressures. A 2011 seagrass die-off event caused by an algal bloom in the Florida Indian River Lagoon (IRL) was particularly severe with a majority of seagrass lost in areas such as the Banana River. An understanding of how this coastal marine environment changed is an important step toward better managing resources for conservation. Modern tools and methods provide new opportunities to study these changes at the landscape scale, a scale that informs on the larger more comprehensive state of a system. Classified satellite imagery …

Geochemical Modeling Of Primary Morb Magmas: Implications For Parental Melting Regimes In Melt Lenses Along-Axis Of The Hess Deep Rift, Stephanie Michelle Drumm

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Hess Deep Rift in the East Pacific Rise is a mid-ocean ridge spreading center that produces melts which exhibit geochemical characteristics of evolved MORB. Using basaltic glass samples collected from multiple dive cruises that explored Hess Deep geology, volatile and chemical data were collected at USF using FTIR and EMPA, respectively. In addition, a data suite of samples of glass from Hess Deep were compiled from the EarthChem database. The intention was to use the data suite and models to compare the Hess Deep regime to analog models for mid-ocean ridge crystallization regimes and tectonic structures. The USF and …

The Stability Of Sand Waves In A Tidally-Influenced Shipping Channel, Tampa Bay, Florida, John Willis Gray

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tidally-influenced sandwaves are common coastal features present in various settings, including shipping channels. The main shipping channel in Tampa Bay under the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge (a.k.a. the Skyway Bridge) contains such sandwave bedforms. Between the years 2000 and 2017, these bedforms have been surveyed with multibeam echosounders (MBES) on 21 occasions with ranging coverage and quality of returns. Surveys between 2000 and 2009 used a 300 kHz Kongsberg EM3000; surveys between 2015 and 2017 used a 400 kHz Reson Seabat 7125. For comparable surveys, bathymetry, backscatter, slope, curvature, planform curvature, and profile curvature maps were created and analyzed. …

Assessment Of Drinking Water Quality Management And A Treatment Feasibility Study For Brick By Brick Water Storage Tanks In Rakai Uganda, James V. Murduca

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reliable access to safe drinking water is one necessity for humans to live without concern for major health risks. The overall goal of this research is to improve the public health, through improved drinking water, for communities in the Rakai District in Uganda, directly, and other communities in the world, indirectly, via dissemination of knowledge. This study specifically assessed the knowledge of drinking water quality in regards to public health, their sanitation measures, and water treatment methods for users of Brick by Brick rainwater harvesting tanks in the Rakai District (N = 28) by using a knowledge, attitudes, and practice …

Reduction In Needlestick Injuries Using A Novel Package Of Interventions, Kamal Thakor Patel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2015 Dr. Pratiksha Vaghela started the “Stop Poking Me” campaign which was aimed at curbing the increase in the number of needlesticks at the James A. Haley Veteran Affairs Hospital (JAHVA). The data for needlesticks was collected by the Occupational Medicine Clinic (OMC) between Oct 2013 and Oct 2016. We then obtained the original data from Dr. Vaghela’s project and compared the data to assess whether the new implementations have truly decreased the number of needlesticks. There was a 23.6% reduction in the number of needlesticks between 2013 and 2016 and even more importantly a 60.1% reduction between 2015 …

Improving The Security Of Building Automation Systems Through An Sel4-Based Communication Framework, Richard Habeeb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Existing Building Automation Systems (BASs) and Building Automation Networks (BANs) have been shown to have serious cybersecurity problems. Due to the safety-critical and interconnected nature of building subsystems, local and network access control needs to be finer grained, taking into consideration the varying criticality of applications running on heterogeneous devices. In this paper, we present a secure communication framework for BASs that 1) enforces rich access control policy for operating system services and objects, leveraging a microkernel-based architecture; 2) supports fine-grained network access control on a per-process basis; 3) unifies the security control of inter-device and intra-device communication using proxy …

Design, Synthesis, Application Of Biodegradable Polymers, Mussie Gide

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bacterial infections have posed a serious threat to the public health due to the significant rise of the infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There has been considerable interest in the development of antimicrobial agents which mimic the natural HDPs, and among them biodegradable polymers are newly discovered drug candidates with ease of synthesis and low manufacture cost compared to synthetic host defense peptides. Herein, we present the synthesis of biocompatible and biodegradable polymers including polycarbonate polymers, unimolecular micelle hyperbranched polymers and dendrimers that mimic the antibacterial mechanism of HDPs by compromising bacterial cell membranes. The developed amphiphilic polycarbonates are highly …

Optimal Latin Hypercube Designs For Computer Experiments Based On Multiple Objectives, Ruizhe Hou

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Latin hypercube designs (LHDs) have broad applications in constructing computer experiments and sampling for Monte-Carlo integration due to its nice property of having projections evenly distributed on the univariate distribution of each input variable. The LHDs have been combined with some commonly used computer experimental design criteria to achieve enhanced design performance. For example, the Maximin-LHDs were developed to improve its space-filling property in the full dimension of all input variables. The MaxPro-LHDs were proposed in recent years to obtain nicer projections in any subspace of input variables. This thesis integrates both space-filling and projection characteristics for LHDs and develops …

Quantifying The Effect Of Topographic Slope On Lava Flow Thickness: A First Step To Improve Lava Flow Volume Estimation Methods, Steven R. Rizo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The volume of lava flows provide important information on the magnitude of volcanic eruptions, and accurate volumes are necessary to produce reliable models of lava flow emplacement or constrain the internal structure of volcanoes. The most accurate lava flow volumes are obtainable when the topography before and after an eruption are both known, but information for the topography before lava flow emplacement is absent in non-historic lava flows. To calculate the volume of non-historic lava flows, this pre-emplacement topography needs to be reconstructed. Common methods for this include using inverse distance-weighted averages or global polynomial interpolation methods, but these can …

Reconstructing Historical Hurricane Tracks In The Atlantic Basin: Three Case Studies From The 1840s, Emily L. Cerrito

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Analyzing past tropical cyclone activity enables researchers to recognize patterns of hurricane variability, estimate hurricane return periods, and assess local risk to future storms. This paleotempestology study used original primary data to make the historical record as comprehensive and accurate as possible for three major hurricanes: October 1844, October 1846, and September 1848. This thesis presents the reconstructed storm tracks, assesses the societal impacts, and evaluates the storm intensity of these three major hurricanes for the eastern U.S. and Cuba. The data utilized in this study include ship logbooks, newspapers, diaries, and instrumental meteorological records. A geographic information system (GIS) …

A Point Cloud Approach To Object Slicing For 3d Printing, William Edward Oropallo Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Various industries have embraced 3D printing for manufacturing on-demand, custom printed parts. However, 3D printing requires intelligent data processing and algorithms to go from CAD model to machine instructions. One of the most crucial steps in the process is the slicing of the object. Most 3D printers build parts by accumulating material layers by layer. 3D printing software needs to calculate these layers for manufacturing by slicing a model and calculating the intersections. Finding exact solutions of intersections on the original model is mathematically complicated and computationally demanding. A preprocessing stage of tessellation has become the standard practice for slicing …

Parallelizing Tabu Search Based Optimization Algorithm On Gpus, Vinaya Malleypally

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are many combinatorial optimization problems such as traveling salesman problem, quadratic-assignment problem, flow shop scheduling, that are computationally intractable. Tabu search based simulated annealing is a stochastic search algorithm that is widely used to solve combinatorial optimization problems. Due to excessive run time, there is a strong demand for a parallel version that can be applied to any problem with minimal modifications. Existing advanced and/or parallel versions of tabu search algorithms are specific to the problem at hand. This leads to a drawback of optimization only for that particular problem. In this work, we propose a parallel version of …

Supported Perovskite-Type Oxides: Establishing A Foundation For Co2 Conversion Through Reverse Water-Gas Shift Chemical Looping, Bryan J. Hare

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Perovskite-type oxides show irrefutable potential for feasible thermochemical solar-driven CO₂ conversion. These materials exhibit the exact characteristics required by the low temperature reverse water-gas shift chemical looping process. These properties include structural endurance and high oxygen redox capacity, which results in the formation of numerous oxygen vacancies, or active sites for CO₂ conversion. A major drawback is the decrease in oxygen self-diffusion with increasing perovskite particle size. In this study, the La_0.75Sr_0.25FeO₃ (LSF) perovskite oxide was combined with various supports including popular redox materials CeO₂ and ZrO₂ along with more abundant …

Design And Implementation Of A Ferrocement Improved Cookstove In Rural Panama, Josh Donegan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Household air pollution contributes to the premature death of more than 4 million people annually. Improved cookstoves are one technological intervention that can potentially reduce exposure to household air pollution. However, improved cookstove implementation programs need to consider measures to increase sustainability and promote long-term adoption. The objectives of this research were 1) to develop and implement a new ferrocement cookstove for Peña Blanca, a rural indigenous community in the Ngäbe-Bugle region of Panama, 2) to evaluate its potential sustainability in comparison to the most common cooking technologies observed in the community, 3) to prepare a construction manual for the …

Effectiveness Of Biocide Substitution And Management Plan Implementation For The Control Of, Adelmarie Bones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

After the notorious outbreak and discovery of Legionella bacteria in 1976, the waterborne pathogen was added to the list of disease-causing agents associated with the built environment. Legionella pneumophila was discovered when it was identified as the agent that caused 34 deaths and an outbreak of pneumonia-like symptoms in several attendees of the 1976 American Legion Convention held in Philadelphia (OSHA, 2017).

Recently published data from the year 2015 reported more than 6,000 Legionnaires’ cases identified in the United States (CDC, 2016). This is a concerning number given that one in every ten infected persons will die of the disease. …

Angiostrongylus Cantonensis: Epidemiologic Review, Location-Specific Habitat Modelling, And Surveillance In Hillsborough County, Florida, U.S.A., Brad Christian Perich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a parasitic nematode endemic to tropical and subtropical regions and is the leading cause of human eosinophilic meningitis. The parasite is commonly known as rat lungworm because the primary host in its lifecycle is the rat. A clinical overview of rat lungworm infection is presented, followed by a literature review of rat lungworm epidemiology, risk factors, and surveillance projects. Data collected from previous snail surveys in Florida was considered alongside elevation, population per square kilometer, median household income by zip code territory, and normalized difference vegetation index specific to the geographic coordinates from which the snail samples …

Strategies To Adjust For Response Bias In Clinical Trials: A Simulation Study, Victoria R. Swaidan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background: Response bias can distort treatment effect estimates and inferences in clinical trials. Although prevention, quantification, and adjustments have been developed, current methods are not applicable when subject-level reliability is used as the measure of response bias. Thus, the objective of the current study is to develop, test, and recommend a series of bias correction strategies for use in these cases. Methods: Monte Carlo simulation and logistic regression modeling were used to develop the strategies, examining the collective impact of sample size (N), effect size (ES), reliability distribution, and response style on estimating the treatment effect size in a series …