This dissertation outlines the design and development of the first fully-soft, snake robot and its snake-inspired skin. Soft robotics takes advantage of soft materials to, among other things, improve robot interactions with complex, unstructured environments. Due to the interplay between the soft material and the environment, minor tweaks to the...
Mystical experiences are ineffable, thus defining mysticism itself is a difficult feat. To aid in the construction of a definition of mysticism it is imperative to break down the unique elements of a mystical experience and try to give examples of where we can see all of these elements interacting....
Nitric oxide (NO) is a signaling molecule that regulates blood pressure and vascular tone. Humans produce NO by endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS), which is impaired in patients with cardiovascular disease leading to increased blood pressure, endothelial dysfunction, and an increased risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Maintaining optimal levels of...
Atherosclerosis is the underlying cause of ischemic heart disease and stroke and is the leading cause of death worldwide, especially in developed countries. As an inflammatory disease of arteries in a hyperlipidemic milieu, expression of adhesion molecules, such as endothelial-leukocyte adhesion molecule-1 (E-selectin) and intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), on endothelial...
Atmospheric pressure plasma is non-thermal at millimeter to micrometer separations. It represents an alternative low exergy initiator of many chemical reactions. In many instances heat, light or sound are not efficient providers of the necessary energy to overcome chemical activation barriers. The focus of this research is applying dc nonthermal...
Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across...
Nuclear Factor, Erythroid Derived 2, Like 2 (NFE2L2 or Nrf2) is the primary transcription factor in cellular defense against oxidative and xenobiotic stresses in higher eukaryotes. This basic leucine zipper transcription factor regulates over 200 antioxidant, detoxification, and lipid metabolizing genes by binding to the Antioxidant Response Element (ARE; a...
Inhibiting pancreatic lipase activity is an effective means of reducing fat absorption, which may have a role in combating obesity by limiting energy intake. The use of pharmaceutical lipase inhibitors has been limited due to the prevalence of undesirable side effects. Polyphenols represent an alternative strategy to inhibit digestive enzymes...