In this thesis I examine the biocultural affects of nutrition and pregnancy on dental health throughout Ecuador. Factors such as diet, fertility rates, cultural practices and barriers to health care are investigated through a review of the existing literature. Three main regions of Ecuador were selected for examination -- the...
The core element of democracy is elections. Modern elections not only cost a lot of money to conduct elections, but we also bear a lot of social costs when the election is questioned. For this reason, the US and European countries have been considering ways to innovate by introducing IT...
The purpose of the present study was to investigate value perceptions and consumption behaviors of sneakerheads who are mixed-role resellers of sneakers. “Sneakerhead” is a term given to those who collect and wear sneakers with a vast amount of effort and resources (Semmelhack, Garcia, Lepri, Willis, & Hatfield, 2015). “Mixed-role...
Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is an enveloped, single-stranded positive-sense RNA virus. The BVDV genome is about 12.5 kb long and consists of a single open reading frame (ORF) flanked by untranslated regions at the 5' and 3' ends (5'-UTR and 3'- UTR, respectively). To investigate the role of cis-sequences...
The integration of low-pressure membrane filtration and aerobic granular sludge (AGS) reactor leads to a novel environmental biotechnological process with strong potential to overcome membrane fouling and demonstrate excellent wastewater treatment performance. However, membrane fouling mechanisms in the AGS based membrane bioreactor (MBR) are lack of systematic elaboration. In the...
Cyprinid herpesvirus 3 (CyHV-3), commonly known as koi herpesvirus (KHV), is a member of the Alloherpesviridae and is a deadly pathogen for koi and common carp, Cyprinus carpio. It causes severe gill necrosis and nephritis, dermal ulceration and hemorrhage, and mass mortality of up to 100% of affected fish. Fish...
We study joint nonlinear state estimation with multi-period measurement vectors that are potentially corrupted by sparse gross errors. The identifiability-aware approach is proposed to leverage common characteristics of fundamentally identifiable gross errors to enhance error correction performance. First, we derive a necessary rank condition that the sparsity pattern of any...
There has been tremendous growth in using data analytic and machine learning algorithms to make critical decisions, such as in the national power grid, healthcare operations, and autonomous vehicles. Employing data analytic for decision-making allows cyber attackers to manipulate the decisions of these algorithms through data falsification. Hence, the trustworthiness...
The development of technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), light detection and ranging (lidar), and sensor-based systems poses new opportunities for researchers to rethink how construction safety and health can be approached during the design, planning, and construction phases of a project. Nevertheless, the majority of the technology applications...
Recent advances in nanocrystalline materials production are expected to impact the development of next generation low-cost and/or high efficiency solar cells. For example, semiconductor nanocrystal inks are used to lower the fabrication cost of the absorber layers of the solar cells. In addition, some quantum confined nanocrystals display electron-hole pair...