Environmental regulations have contributed to environmental quality improvements over the past century in the U.S. Potential consequences of environmental regulations for economic growth and productivity have been widely examined in the economics literature. However, there’s limited research on how such policies affect human health, fetuses and infants especially. In this...
About 48 million cases of Foodborne illnesses (FBIs) are estimated to occur every year in the US. These are diseases caused by contamination of foods with bacteria, viruses, protozoa, parasites and toxic chemicals. Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) are an important health-care and community associated problem. Since C. difficile spores have...
Our goal is to build a system to model the RNA sequences that reveals their structural information by using efficient dynamic programming algorithms and deep learning approaches. We aim to 1) achieve linear-time for RNA secondary structure prediction based on existing minimum free energy models; 2) utilize deep neural networks...
The overall objective of this dissertation study was to develop and validate the performance of cellulose nanomaterials (CNs) incorporated fruit coatings for improving the storability of postharvest pears and bananas under various storage conditions. Four specific studies were conducted to fulfill the research objectives as stated below.
First, cellulose nanocrystal...
Image feature detection and matching are two critical processes for many computer vision tasks. Currently, intensity-based local interest region detectors and local feature-based matching methods are used widely in computer vision applications. But in some applications, such as biological object recognition tasks, within-class changes in pose, lighting, color, and texture...
Circadian clocks coordinate molecular, cellular, physiological, and behavioral processes with the 24-hour solar day. While clock functions are well understood in young animals, it is not clear how aging or neurodegenerative disease affects the various levels of the circadian system. A common symptom of many neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease...
Vortex shedding is a phenomenon relevant to any industry dealing with fluid flow. The shed vortices often produce oscillatory forces, which have been suspect in the catastrophic failure of airplanes and bridges alike. To prevent further engineering failures a better understanding of the underlying physics is needed. It has been...
The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to transformative developments across multiple sectors, fostering innovation and redefining our interactions with technology. As AI matures and becomes integrated into society, it offers numerous opportunities to address global challenges and revolutionize a wide array of human endeavors. These advances are driven...
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is defined as excess hepatic lipid accumulation, in the absence of excess alcohol consumption and chronic liver disease. NAFLD can range in severity from simple fatty liver (steatosis) to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). NASH is defined as hepatic steatosis with inflammation and hepatic injury and describes...
The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) is a ligand activated transcription factor that is a member of the basic helix-loop-helix PER-ARNT-SIM (bHLH/PAS) protein family of cellular sensors. The AHR is conserved across multiple animal phyla and is required for proper vertebrate development. A structurally diverse group of chemicals, including polycyclic aromatic...