Vibrio parahaemolyticus is a leading cause of acute gastroenteritis associated with consumption of seafood, particularly raw oysters. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 45,000 cases of V. parahaemolyticus infection occur each year in the U.S. A recent CDC report revealed that the incidence of...
Analytical chemistry is an essential qualitative and quantitative tool to describe foods and biomaterials and their changes during production, processing and distribution. In this work, rapid analytical procedures for the extraction and quantification of components in fluid milk and diatom fermentation broth were developed. Analytical methods to measure the concentration...
BiCuOSe and SnS are layered, moderate band gap (ε[subscript G] ≈ 1 eV) semiconductors that exhibit intrinsic p type conductivity. Doping of BiCuOSe with Ca results in a slight expansion of the lattice and an increase of the hole concentration from 10¹⁸ cm⁻³ to greater than 10²⁰ cm⁻³. The large...
Chronic hepatitis B disproportionately affects Asian Americans. Although Asians make up only 4.2% of the total United States (U.S.) population, they account for more than half of those infected with hepatitis B. If left untreated, chronic hepatitis B could lead to cirrhosis, liver damage, and liver cancer. Studies show that...
The silviculture of mixed dipterocarp forests of Peninsular Malaysia can potentially be improved by developing quantitative tools and guidelines for this forest type. This thesis addresses three key objectives; 1) to test the hypothesis that a maximum size-density relationship can be identified in hill dipterocarp forests of Peninsular Malaysia, 2)...
Nanoparticles (NPs), defined as materials having at least one dimension (height, width, diameter) in the nanoscale, are increasingly being incorporated into a wide variety of products and are replacing traditional bulk materials in many applications. This is because they can be more efficacious, more sustainable, and can have unique characteristics...
In supervised learning, label information can be provided at different levels of granularity. For small datasets, it is possible to acquire a label for each data instance. However, in the big-data regime, this fine granularity approach is prohibitively costly. For example, in semi-supervised learning, only a limited number of samples...
The literature on first-generation South Asian American (SAA) mental health is limited despite the increased focus of studies on help-seeking behaviors and subjective well-being over the past decade. Therefore, we designed a web-based survey seeking to address two research questions. Research Question 1 informed Study 1 of this dissertation project:...