bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Paternal developmental exposure to endometriosis causes negative transgenerational impacts on male fertility
Authors:   , Costello Katherine
Published: September 2024

Endometriosis is a gynecological disease causing pain and infertility in about 15 percent of women worldwide. Little is known regarding male fertility following prenatal exposure to endometriosis. Our hypothesis is that developmental exposure of male embryos and fetuses to endometriosis reduces spermatozoa quality and fertility. We used a well-established surgical rodent model of endometriosis (Endo rat) with a surgical control (Sham surgery). Four weeks post-surgery, founder F0 Endo and Sham rats were bred with proven fertile males to produce three subsequent generations. The phenotype of the male progeny (F1, F2, and F3 generations) was evaluated from gestational days (GD) seven to 70. At GD 70, males were randomly divided into two groups. One-half of the males from each generation were euthanized at postnatal day (PND) 70 to collect cauda epididymal spermatozoa and testes around the time of sexual maturity. The remaining half of each generation were bred with WT female rats to produce pups. Following gestation, whelping, nursing and uterine involution, males were euthanized at PND 200 to collect spermatozoa testis. Spermatozoa were isolated using a swim out method and fixed in 10 percent formaldehyde. Epifluorescence microscopy and image-based flow cytometry (IBFC) with biomarkers of histone H3 methylation (H3K9me3; retention is associated with reduced sperm quality in rodents) and sperm surface glycosylation (lectin Lens culinaris agglutinin/LCA has high affinity for defective sperm surface) were used to assess spermatozoa quality. Data analysis indicated elevated H3K9me3 and LCA labeling between Endo and Sham rat spermatozoa as well as between generations. For the first time, embryonic and fetal exposure to maternal endometriosis in founder rats influences sperm quality in male offspring of the paternal lineage. The multiplex IBFC analysis may provide future clinical applications to enhance human sperm analyses.
Boxing and mixed martial arts: sociocultural cues, ego enhancement, and aggression
Authors:   , Davis Warren Michael
Published: September 2024

This work explores two sports in the world of fight media, boxing and mixed martial arts. Employing the use of social cognitive theory, cultivation theory, and critical race theory as the frameworks from which the following analysis is based, this research positions prizefighting as a sports culture in need of communicative examination. The present study investigates how the representation of concepts such as religiosity, hypermasculinity, and physical violence permeate these two sports. A content analysis examining a total of 46 pre-fight press conferences taking place between 2012 and 2017, all derived from Home Box Office (HBO), Showtime, and the Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) was conducted. There were a variety of variables that proved to be significant in analyzing differences based on the racial/ethnic representation in the press conference, and the fight type. Some of these findings include Black fighters being overrepresented as displaying physical materialism as well as familial responsibility as compared to chance expectations. Additionally, White (non-Hispanic) fighters were overrepresented as perpetuating verbal aggression, a finding that was also significant for fight type; with mixed martial arts being overrepresented and boxing being underrepresented.
Analyzing Twitter and Instagram social networks to trace consumer opinion regarding transparency in the apparel supply chain
Authors:   , Modi Dipali
Published: September 2024

The heightened demand for apparel supply-chain transparency, advent of social media, and its increased usage in sustainability campaigns has created new opportunities to understand the public's perspective toward sustainability issues. Through social network analysis, this study aims to utilize the large-scale user-generated data on social media to gain a deeper understanding of the public's views concerning apparel supply chain transparency. Grounded in small-world theory and the strength of weak ties theory that explains structure of a social network and mechanism of information flow, this study utilizes the #whomademyclothes campaign on Twitter and Instagram as the research context. The analysis of social networks formed by the hashtags in 17,030 Instagram posts and 4,530 Twitter tweets revealed that the public associates sustainability with working condition improvements, environmental protection, community development, and transparency enhancement in the apparel supply-chain. Theses clusters were interpreted through the lens of the moral spectrum of moral responsibility framework of corporate sustainability. The findings revealed that both Twitter and Instagram users considered working condition improvement as the primary duty to fulfill. While Instagram users were more inclined towards community development, Twitter users supported environmental protection. Findings also revealed the emotion-driven Instagram community as compared to facts-driven Twitter community. This study contributes to the literature by providing a foundation for the use of social network analysis to analyze user-generated social-media data.
Psychosis risk is associated with decreased white matter integrity in corticostriatal tracts
Authors:   , Straub Kelsey T.
Published: September 2024

Psychosis is associated with increased striatal dopamine and it is thought that altered connectivity between the striatum and the cortex could contribute to psychosis. In particular, there is theory and research linking psychosis to altered connectivity between the striatum and several cortical networks, especially the limbic, default mode, and frontoparietal networks. However, it is still unclear whether psychosis risk is associated with altered white matter connectivity between the striatum with any cortical region. Further, no previous study has directly examined whether psychosis risk is associated with altered connectivity with specific cortical networks. In the current study, I examined integrity of white matter tracts in psychosis risk (n=18) and non-psychosis risk comparison participants (n=19). Tracts were identified using probabilistic tractography. I found that psychosis risk was associated with significantly decreased connectivity between the striatum and the limbic cortical network, especially in the right external capsule and with connections to the right prefrontal cortex. There was a trend for psychosis risk to also be associated with decreased striatal-default mode network connectivity. However, there were no significant group differences for striatal-frontoparietal network connectivity. Hence, the current research suggests that psychosis risk is associated with decreased white matter integrity in networks involved in processing emotional and personally relevant information.
Comparative study of brain waves classification using fast fourier transform and feed forward neural network
Authors:   , Shinde Shekhar
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Brain is one of the complex network known. There are several techniques available to acquire signals originating inside brain. If we can classify those signals based on frequency, it will be easy to understand how brain works. But the signals recorded have very low amplitudes and it is often added with nose. Different parts of the brain emit different kind of frequency, which are broadly classified as Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta and Gamma. Our first task is to classify these different signals based on their frequencies. Two of such classification techniques are presented here. First, calculation of frequency using Fast Fourier Transform, a linear process and second, Artificial Neural Network based on Feed Forward Model (FFNN), non-linear process. Artificially simulated data show that with no noise added to the signal, FFT provides 100 percent accurate classification. When external White or Pink Noise was added to the signal, FFT accuracy got plummeted, but accuracy by FFNN surpassed FFT results. A comparative study between both these methods has been presented, and it showed that, not only signal amplitude but also number of cycles affect signal classification accuracy.
Uncertainty management in mass shootings: antecedents, appraisals, and communication behavior
Authors:   , Chung Surin
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This study focuses on expanding the theoretical knowledge of perceived uncertainty in risk communication research. This study investigates the relationship between three situational antecedents (i.e., problem recognition, constraint recognition, and involvement recognition) and perceived uncertainty. Also, this study examines the relationship among perceived uncertainty, three types of appraisals (i.e., danger, loss, and opportunity), and three types of communication behavior (i.e., information seeking intention, information attending intention, and information avoidance intention) in the context of mass shootings. A cross-sectional online survey collected a sample from introductory journalism and communication courses at a large mid-western university. A total of 637 responses were analyzed through an ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression and a series of parallel mediation models. The results revealed that the three situational antecedents were significantly associated with perceived uncertainty in the context of mass shootings. The results showed that perceived uncertainty had a positive indirect effect on information seeking intention via anxiety and hope. Also, perceived uncertainty had a positive indirect effect on information attending intention via anxiety and sadness. The findings of this study advance uncertainty management theory and the situational theory of publics by investigating the causes and outcomes of perceived uncertainty. At the same time, the findings provide important insights for gun safety related communicators and organizations by suggesting knowledge of how publics evaluate uncertainty about mass shootings and how they acquire information to address the uncertain risk.
Impedance based MEMS sensor for monitoring time sensitive oocyte cryopreservation
Authors:   , Al Yousuf Rafal Qasim
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] In recent centuries, women in their 30s and 40s have represented an increasing portion of fertility patients who have had difficulties in fertilization. Those patients' problems are poor oocyte quality and other reproductive sequelae like chromosomally abnormal pregnancies, such as Down's syndrome and miscarriage. Hence, these troubles along with other reasons such as diseases, including cancer, inspire researchers to study, develop and improve oocyte cryopreservation. Oocyte cryopreservation is considered a critical technique in assisted reproductive treatments (ARTs). However, the technical difficulties connected with the unique properties of the mammalian oocyte and a lack of deep understanding of oocyte cryobiology are what is behind the need for pushing for the clinical application of oocyte cryopreservation. The definition of optimal cryopreservation protocols enormously rely on the knowledge of cell membrane permeability to water and cryoprotective agents. This paper presents an innovative technique for oocyte cryopreservation by minimizing the damage to the oocyte via feedback control of the CPA concentration during equilibration. Hence, this technique differs from the current cryopreservation protocol for human female fertility that is unreliable and subject to significant user variation. The oocyte cryopreservation is achieved by equilibrating individual oocytes with high concentrations of permeating chemicals known as cryoprotectants or CPAs. This equilibration causes two modes of damage to oocytes: mechanical damage due to osmotically driven water influx and efflux, and toxic damage due to prolonged exposure to too-high CPA concentrations. Our device allows feedback control with minimal intervention; all measurements are translated directly into voltages that can be used to inform the control system to enable processing oocytes with nearly zero user intervention. Also, a goal state is given and concentrations are changed so that the desired state is achieved and maintained.
Permutation compression with applications to genomic data
Authors:   , Vatsa Shobha
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] High Sequencing Technology generates data at an increasing rate. The technology is used widely in molecular biology. Technologies similar to this are producing sequences at comparatively lower cost than the cost of storing the massive sequences. In applications like gene rearrangement, genomic comparison, and extraction of phylogenetic information, the order of genes is important as comparing the chromosomes can give insights into the similarity or difference in the positions in gene arrangement. Since the chromosomes are represented as permutations of genes, for large genomic species like Human, these permutations are needed to be handled efficiently in terms of storage. This requires an effcient compression technique that could store the permutations in compact form with reduced the size. This can reduce the cost of storage as well as save time and effort to retrieve the required information about the position of the gene. In computer science, traditional compression techniques which are used widely for compressing integers are developed around the frequency of symbols in the dataset. However, in permutation where each integer appears exactly once, the existing algorithms developed so far cannot be used to compress these types of datasets. This opens-up the area for the researchers to develop novel compression technique that could exploit the characteristics of such type of data represented using notation of permutations. This research presents a novel compression algorithm developed by utilizing the unique feature of genomic data.
In vitro digestion and beta-carotene delivery of emulsion stabilized by heated WPI and pectin mixture
Authors:   , Tang Yafen
Published: September 2024

In this study, the impact of a whey protein isolate (WPI) and pectin complex (formed heating the mixture at 85[degrees]C and pH 7) on digestion properties and delivery of [beta]-carotene in oilin-water emulsions was investigated using the in vitro gastric and intestinal models. Beta-Carotene enriched emulsions were stabilized by WPI, heated WPI (HWPI), unheated WPI-pectin mixture (MIX) or heated WPI-pectin mixture (HMIX). As emulsions were digested in the in vitro gastric and intestinal digestions, their droplet size, zeta-potential, microstructure, free fatty acid release and beta-carotene release were measured. Results showed that emulsions stabilized by WPI underwent significant changes during gastric digestion as shown by increased mean droplet sizes and extensive coalescence. These changes have been found to decrease bioaccessibility of beta carotene. The presence of pectin could lead to oil droplet flocculation with much lower extent of coalescence which resulted in decreased beta-carotene release and thus favoring its bioaccessibility during intestinal digestion. Heating of WPI or mixed WPI and pectin also led to decreased coalescence and provided protective effect on beta carotene during gastric digestion. During intestinal digestion, emulsions stabilized by WPI and HWPI completely broke down due to proteolysis while those containing pectin showed better stability due to a more intact interfacial layer structure. Generally, it was found that pectin and heating process favored the stability of emulsion during gastrointestinal digestion overall, which facilitated the digestion of emulsified lipid. However, at the same time, the presence of pectin inhibited the intestinal digestion of lipid by limiting the adsorption of lipase at the interface. Similar effects were observed on the release and bioaccessibility of beta-carotene. A linear relationship was found between beta-carotene bioaccessibility and lipid digestibility. In conclusion, heated WPI and pectin soluble aggregates can be utilized and optimized in designing the delivery and bioaccessibility of lipid and beta carotene.
Emulsification properties of heated whey protein-pectin formed at neutral pH
Authors:   , Wang Yeyang
Published: September 2024

Interactions between protein and polysaccharides could lead to improved protein functional properties including emulsification properties. Most studies focus on complex coacervates which are formed at pH [less than] pI. Much less attention has been given to interactions at pH [greater than] pI, especially when the mixtures are heated. The objective of this study was to investigate the emulsification properties of heated whey protein isolate (WPI) and pectin complexes formed at near neutral pH. This study demonstrates that heat complexation of whey protein with pectin at near neutral pH could improve emulsification properties at pH near pI of the protein. Heated WPI-pectin complexes could be utilized as emulsifier and stabilizer in food applications.
How syntactic structure and cue position affect working memory for connected discourse
Authors:   , Nguyen Anh Thuy
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI--COLUMBIA AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The current study explored working memory for connected discourse, as well as the potential roles of syntactic structure and cue position in such memory. Methods were adapted from a previous study (Jarvella, 1971) to control for potentially confounding factors. In two experiments, participants' main task was to listen to short passages of connected discourse and then immediately recall word for word the final portion of the speech, starting from a given cue phrase. Three major findings emerged. First, the most recent clause was recalled almost perfectly and more accurately than was any preceding clause. Second, the way syntactic structure influenced recall depended on the type of recall (i.e., verbatim versus gist) and on the position of the affected clause within the passage (i.e., the most recent clause versus preceding clauses). Third, and finally, recall was more accurate when cued by words from a more recent clause than when cued by those from a less recent clause, implying the presence of output interference. These results support some commonly accepted views on language while challenging others, thereby not only giving answers to several questions about working memory for connected discourse, but also offering new understanding of the topic.
Literature didactics : how to use literature in a foreign language classroom (with examples for the German Andenglish language classroom)
Authors:   , Bernstein Melanie
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI--COLUMBIA AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Literature plays an important role in people's lives, and it has an equally important function in language learning. Reading helps children, in their mother tongue, to broaden their knowledge of words, of linguistic structures, and their cultural awareness. The same applies for foreign language learning and therefore the inclusion of literature in a foreign language class is important. This thesis presents ideas and provides examples of how to incorporate a wide range of literature into the German and English language classroom; how to choose appropriate literature for the classroom; and will further reflect on what reading can do for students in a positive classroom environment. This thesis provides models for using literature in both English and German foreign language classrooms, for different learner ages and skill levels.
Habitat associations and distributions of endemic crayfish in the Meramec River drainage
Authors:   , Chilton Joe
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Freshwater crayfish are one of the most threatened taxa in the world. They are considered keystone or dominant species in freshwater ecosystems for their role in aquatic food webs and as ecosystem engineers; therefore, loss of crayfish diversity poses serious threats to aquatic ecosystem function. Understanding the habitat associations and distributions of rare species, including rare crayfish, is important to inform management and policy decisions. Cambarus maculatus (Freckled Crayfish) and Faxonius harrisonii (Belted Crayfish) are two of Missouri's narrowly endemic crayfish species. Both are listed as Vulnerable (S3) on Missouri's Species and Communities of Conservation Concern Checklist due to their limited range and the impact of anthropogenic activities within the Meramec River Drainage (MRD). During the summers of 2017 and 2018, we sampled 140 sites throughout the MRD for crayfish using kick-seines, drag-seines, and visual timed-searches. We also gathered habitat variables to associate with crayfish presence in an occupancy-modeling framework. We found C. maculatus occupancy was positively associated with larger stream orders, boulder substrate, and dolomite geology. Faxonius harrisonii occupancy was positively associated with boulder substrate and decreased in 3rd order streams. We expanded the known range for both target species within the MRD. Information provided by this study will inform conservation managers in future projects and policy decisions regarding these two species.
Bursting your (filter) bubble how personalization is changing the way you perceive reality from the information you consume on social media
Authors:   , Bishop Alexandra Celia
Published: September 2024

Personalization filters work behind-the-scenes to curate the information users encounter online. This has influenced users' online information diets by uprooting traditional gatekeeping practices and socialization processes. Through the theoretical lenses of network gatekeeping identification and social construction, this study employs qualitative methodology, more specifically interviews, to answer how Facebook news consumers make meaning of the reality they receive through personalization filters on Facebook, to further understand how and why participants perform network gatekeeping at an individual level, how news content shapes participants' likes and beliefs, and how participants negotiate, understand, and potentially consume contradictory messages presented to them through Facebook. The findings indicate that online news consumers on Facebook prefer to remain within the confines of their individual "filter bubbles", through the constant consumption of information, that is tailored to pre-existing beliefs. The over-exposure to one-sided information further indoctrinates participants and limits their exposure to new ideas by prohibiting contradictory information from entering the gate. The effect personalization filters will have on the future of gatekeeping and socialization is unknown, but the findings suggest that changes should be made to prevent the rise of the already growing ideological divide in the United States. The 2016 Presidential Election in the United States is a prime example of the impending threat personalization filters have to the democratic process.
Region based object detectors for recognizing birds in aerial images
Authors:   , Carrion Castagnola Pedro Jesus
Published: September 2024

This project explores different types of deep neural networks (DNNs) for recognizing birds in aerial images based on real data provided by the Missouri Department of Conservation. The pipeline to identify birds from an image consist of two phases. First, region proposals are created by a DNN, where each region proposal is a sub-area of the image that possibly contains a bird. Second, a DNN is trained as a bird classifier using these region proposals. The bird detection performance is evaluated using the Precision, Recall and F1 scores on a separate test dataset. For the region proposal phase, a Region Proposal Network (RPN) has been implemented and tested, obtaining a Recall above 0.99, which means that the region proposal boxes cover almost all the birds. For the classification phase, a modification of Fast Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Fast RCNN), a simple Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and a Capsule Network, have been implemented and tested. For all of them, different hyper-parameters have been explored to increase the final F1 score. These models have been evaluated using two bird dataset variants: easy (with simple backgrounds) and hard (with complex background). Experimental results show that birds can be effectively recognized using the DNNs, especially in the easy dataset. Fast RCNN with a backbone architecture of ResNet50 and in conjunction with other techniques like Feature Pyramids Networks achieved the best results, with a maximum F1 score of 0.902. Simple CNN and Capsule Network achieved a score slightly above 0.8. The techniques used, datasets and results are analyzed to find the main causes of failures in some situations.
3D printing of energetic material
Authors:   , Countryman Andrew Michael
Published: September 2024

In the world of macro-scale energetics, the problems of cost effectiveness, scalability, and manufacturability are of prime importance. But with the advent of 3D printing, a solution for scalability is in reach. In this work, THV and GO are explored as candidate materials for printing. To avoid subjectivity, the materials have to pass a test of repeatability, control of geometry, and layer building. Moreover, a novel drop on demand 3D printing system was explored as the printing method. The overall goal is to take the material out of the lab room and into a scalable manufacturing technique. After initial testing, it was decided that THV is suitable for 3D printing while GO needs to be developed further to enable printability.
Emancipation of education through place
Authors:   , Hanson Bradford William
Published: September 2024

The purpose of education is to prepare students to address imperative concerns that face our communities and planet. Many ways exist to address these pressing issues we are confronted with. Regardless of what subjects students are studying, how they are educated is of critical importance. This is because the "how" of education will directly influence the way in which the important issues they are being trained for are addressed. Around the turn of the twentieth century experiential education (EE) came into use among scholars to address problems they saw in "traditional" or "mainstream" education. Between then and now much has changed in the educational landscape, and yet this dichotomy between "mainstream" and "alternative" pedagogies persists. This study explores the present-day realities of EE, place-based education, and significant learning (Fink 2013) within the context of the University of Missouri (MU). Grounded theory methodology was applied for this exploratory case study. The theory that emerged seems to have implications beyond the realms of education and the MU community.
PRO3DCNN : convolutional neural network for mapping protein structure into folds
Authors:   , Hong Yechan
Published: September 2024

Motivation: SCOPe 2.07 is a dataset of 276,231 protein domains that have been partitioned into varying folds according to their shape and function. Since a protein's fold reveals valuable information about it's shape and function, it is important to fin d a mapping between proteins and their folds. There are existing techniques to map a protein's sequence into a fold [2] but none to map a protein's shape into a fold for the entire SCOPe 2.07 dataset. We focus on the topological features of a protein to map it into a fold. We introduce several new techniques that accomplish this. Results: We develop a 2D-convolutional neural network to classify any protein structure into one of 1232 folds. We extract two classes of input features for each protein: distance matrix and persistent homology images. Due to restrictions in our computing resources, we make sample every other point in the carbon alpha chain. We find that it does not lead to significant loss in accuracy. Using the distance matrix, we achieve an accuracy of 90 percent on the entire dataset. With persistence images of 100x100 resolution, we achieve an accuracy of 54 percent on SCOP 1.55.
Applying a "hypocrisy" strategy to improve food safety practices in restaurants
Authors:   , Huang Yidan
Published: September 2024

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of hypocrisy approach on improving restaurant employees' handwashing behavior and glove behaviors by using the completely randomized design (CRD) and also to provide recommendations on food safety trainings. Participants in this study were categorized into four groups based on the interventions assigned to them, including promoting food safety flyers and self-check survey. Attitudes and behavioral intention of conducting correct handwashing and glove practices were measured through implicit attitude measure, direct attitude measure and behavioral intention measure. The one-way ANCOVA was used to analyze and compare results among four groups. Results on this study showed that the "hypocrisy" strategy can influence participants' implicit attitudes towards handwashing and glove use behaviors and intentions of using gloves, which improved restaurant employees' food safety practices. In addition, the educational level, restaurant type and working positions were found to impact some outcome variables. Based on findings, some interventions guided by the "hypocrisy" strategy could be used to improve food safety practices in American restaurants
Integrated regional enstrophy and its correlation with regime transitions in the Northern Hemisphere
Authors:   , Klaus Emily Marie
Published: September 2024

Integrated regional enstrophy (IRE) is the enstrophy integrated over a portion of the globe at a specific level in the atmosphere. Previous work has shown this quantity is correlated to the positive Lyapunov Exponent for hemispheric flow, and as such is a measure of flow stability or predictability. In this study, IRE is calculated at 500-hPa over an area that encompasses 0[degrees] to 70[degree]s N in the Northern Hemisphere. The data sets used were the 500-hPa initial and forecast fields for the Global Ensemble Forecasting System (GEFS) (on a 1[degrees] 1[degrees] latitude-longitude grid) provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Prediction Center (WPC) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction / NOAA reanalysis (on a 2.5[degrees] x 2.5[degrees] latitude-longitude grid) archived in Boulder, CO. The GEFS forecast fields were provided every 24-h out to 240-h. By examining these forecasts over a year, we have found that significant changes in IRE values are a good predictor of flow regime transition, and several cases were found. We also found that the IRE forecasts identified these regime transitions reliably out to four days, and the skill decreased significantly after this time. Additionally, a threshold for changes in IRE was found for the cases studied here and this threshold varied by season.
Removal of hexavalent chromium and sulfamethazine by green zero valent iron nanoparticles (NZVI)
Authors:   , Peng Haiming
Published: September 2024

A green and low-cost method for nZVI fabrication was developed in this thesis using FeCl3 as the source of iron and yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) extract as the reductant. The extract showed an impressive high content of polyphenols, up to 28.14 GAE (gallic acid equivalent), which is much higher than that in most of reported plants extract. We investigated the effect of iron to GAE ratio on nZVI, as well as optimize iron particles as a benchmark of zeta-potential and Cr(VI) reduction capacity. nZVI fabricated from molar ratio of 0.89 Fe(III)/GAE showed the best performance and was selected for further exploration of Cr(VI) and sulfamethazine removal. The optimized nZVI was studied with a series of characterizations, indicating that nZVI particles were amorphous, with high colloidal stability and spherical shape of 7.8 [plus or minus] 2.1 nm diameter. Several functional groups on iron particles surface were related to the phenol ligands cap of the iron particles. In this second part, several influential factors were explored. We concluded that there is higher efficiency for Cr(VI) removal at acidic solution, and the reaction was easily happed due to the low activation energy of 35.01 kJ/mol. The product was immobilized on the particles surface. In the third part of the thesis, nZVI was applied to catalyze H2O2 for degrading sulfamethazine. A series of experiments were conducted to find the optimal experimental condition, and the results indicated an excellent sulfamethazine removal efficiency for Fenton treatment process with minute H2O2 concentration.
Developing tools for making inferences from genomic data
Authors:   , Petrowski Paul
Published: September 2024

The central question that the King lab seeks to answer is, "What happens on the genomic level when phenotypes evolve?" To this end, the core focus of my work has been on developing software and analytical methods that facilitate the ability of other researchers working in this space to answer their questions of interest. ... In the second chapter, we describe the problem of inferring ancestral haplotype frequencies from pooled sequence data. We discuss five approaches to this problem that have already been developed, and we discuss a new genetic algorithm based approach that we designed. We perform a benchmarking test on a method developed by Burke et al. and we compare that method to the genetic algorithm by evaluating the performance of each on a simulated dataset. We find that the new method outperforms the existing one.
Comeback coverage : thematic content in the news media's reporting on Donald Trump's attacks
Authors:   , Spinella Sten Phillip
Published: September 2024

This thesis is informed by gatekeeping and frame-building theories. It uses straightforward textual analysis to determine what forms of thematic content are repeated in coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN of President Donald Trump's attacks on the outlets. The thesis applies the textual analysis of 24 stories responding to Trump's attacks -- eight CNN stories, eight Washington Post stories, and eight New York Times stories. The findings of this research show a multitude of reportorial strategies in covering Trump's hostile rhetoric toward the news media. This includes various types of repeated tones and narratives used throughout the 24 artifacts. The research also shows that neither The Times, The Post, nor CNN knows how, exactly, to cover Trump's combative relationship with the news media.
Axial load transfer in large scale physical model drilled shaft foundations
Authors:   , Wallace Martin Leonard
Published: September 2024

Drilled shaft foundations are a widely implemented type of deep foundation used to support heavy loads from superstructures such as buildings and bridges. Uncertainties exist in the axial load transfer behavior of drilled shafts subject to loading and unloading cycles. A better understanding of the changes in soil reload stiffness can lead to a better understanding of the load deformation response. A study was undertaken using a 16-inch diameter by 28-inch tall physical model drilled shaft foundation. A total of nine static load tests were performed in a five-foot diameter by five-foot deep calibration chamber where soil conditions could be controlled. Soils tested were a loose clean sand, dense clean sand and compacted silty sand. A bladder system was used to apply vertical effective stress to the soil to simulate depths of embedment up to 70 feet below the ground surface. Based on test results, a relationship between the reload stiffness and displacement was developed. The relationship indicates that the reload soil stiffness is initially large before decreasing to a constant value as displacement increases depending on soil configuration. Results from three different soil configurations were normalized based on the constant behavior observed at large displacements. A relationship between the normalized reload stiffness versus displacement was created. This relationship can be used to predict the reload stiffness for model drilled shaft foundations in coarse grained soils.
The institutionalization of the technology field with journalism
Authors:   , Siess Joseph Michael
Published: September 2024

The following analysis is the result of employing the constant comparative method to distinguish connections among data collected by way of semi-structured interviews with tech savvy individuals in the journalism field. The people interviewed came from a variety of educational backgrounds and experiences, and either work in newsrooms, or outside of newsrooms but employing technical skills in the service of journalism. Some of the participants came into journalism from the tech field, more specifically, computer science and computer engineering, and therefore do not have any formal educational or experiential background in journalism. However, the findings of this study indicate that certain elements from the tech field are being absorbed into the journalism field as the importance of tech skills become more important on an institutional level. The theoretical framework for this analysis is institutionalism given that the elements of tech being absorbed into the journalism industry are being abided on an institutional level.
The "existential challenge" : a new tool for enhancing goal attainment
Authors:   , Corcoran Michael John
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] We developed a novel goal intervention -- the existential challenge -- in an effort to help individuals achieve better goal outcomes and we also asked if certain factors may lead individuals to accept the challenge. Across four studies, we found that accepting the existential challenge is associated with higher goal expectancy, higher intended effort, and more goal autonomy; and longitudinal evidence suggests that accepting the existential challenge is associated with more goal progress and effort. In addition, we found that growth-orientation predicts higher acceptance of the challenge. In a fourth study, we sought to assess whether merely contemplating the existential challenge leads to more beneficial goal choice. While we did not find evidence to support this hypothesis, converging evidence across our studies suggest that the existential challenge is associated with positive goal outcomes.
Direct from sample phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility testing
Authors:   , Lee Aiden Joseph
Published: September 2024

To transition from broad-spectrum antibiotic therapy to a more effective "targeted" therapy, i.e. in order to determine whether the infecting strain is resistant or susceptible to individual candidate antibiotics, clinicians and clinical microbiologists need to determine both the pathogen identity (ID) and the Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of the candidate antibiotic(s). It is important to note that the pathogen ID or MIC alone is insufficient to yield clinically significant report for patient treatment. Traditionally, tests to determine both the ID and MIC required use of pure bacterial colonies (obtained by plating the patient samples on agar plates) for testing. However, with recent scientific advancement, there are a number of products developed to determine pathogen ID directly from positive patient samples therefore bypassing the need for colony isolation, and delivering results in approximately 6-8 hours after sample collection. However, doing so for the AST remains a challenge, and so improvements in patient outcome have been limited.
Indoor human activites recognition using audio signals based on support vector machines and convolutional neural networks
Authors:   , Zhang Weican
Published: September 2024

Indoor human activities recognition can be of great importance in our daily life, especially for surveillance and security purposes, such as informing elderly people affected in hearing capabilities about environmental sounds (door bells, alarm signals, etc.). This thesis will present two approaches using audio signal processing: support vector machines method and convolutional neutral networks method. In both methods, audio feature extraction is needed since the original audio signal contains undesired information which could cause difficulties in audio recognition. For the support vector machines method, melfrequency cepstral coefficients are extracted from the original audio signals. With melfrequency cepstral coefficients, histogram feature can be generated using the concept of bag of words, which to be past into support vector machines algorithm, then the recognition results are generated by the algorithm. For convolutional neutral networks method, multiple audio features are extracted from the original audio signal including melfrequency cepstral coefficients, mel-scaled spectrogram, chroma feature and spectral contrast. These audio features are fed into a 5-layer convolutional neutral network, and the recognition results are generated by the network. The support vector machine method focusing on implementing the algorithm into a single chip machine, with a good accuracy at 90 percent. The convolutional neutral network method yields a much higher accuracy at around 97 percent.
Chinese government's public health crisis response strategies on social media platforms : a comparison between 2016 expired vaccines crisis in Shandong and 2018 Changchun Changsheng fake rabies vaccine crisis
Authors:   , Wang Jingru
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI--COLUMBIA AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] A quantitative content analysis was conducted to study the crisis response strategies and stances adopted by the Chinese govrnment and its Party media over 2016 Shandong expired vaccine case and 2018 Changchun Changsheng fake Rabies vaccine case on the Sina Weibo which is the most popular social media in China. This paper compared the two vaccine crises to further explore the Chinese government's difference and evolvement in its crisis communication practice. A total number of 390 posts on Sina Weibo was obtained from four Chinese government official Weibo accounts and five state-run media Weibo accounts due to their relevancy to the crises. The findings of the study show that the Chinese government has been adopting Sina Weibo as a crisis communication tool more in 2018 Changchun Changsheng crisis than in 2016 Shandong crisis. The government adopted mostly ingratiation and corrective actions strategies in the two crises and its stances in handling the crisis had become more accommodative from 2016 Shandong expired vaccine crisis to 2018 Changchun Changsheng fake vaccine crisis. This research examined the CRS and stances reflected in the crisis communication practice of the Chinese government in the context of social media and provide implications and suggestions for the future research.
Framing the US-China trade war : a content analysis of news frames used in the United States and Chinese media
Authors:   , Li Heng
Published: September 2024

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This current study explored a comparative analysis of how the United States and China media framed the US-China trade war. The United States and China media have the tendency to report the trade disputes from a completely different angle. A mix-method approach of quantitative content analysis was employed to examine the news frames and story valence in 225 articles from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, China Daily, and People's Daily. In addition, this study attempted to examine how the U.S. and China attribute responsibility of the trade disputes. Framing analysis has been used to investigate the international political crisis, but little research has been done on the trade frictions between the two largest countries in the world. The result showed conflict was the dominant generic frame in the US stories while the responsibility frame was most prevalent in the Chinese articles. The evenly distributed story valence in the U.S. stories indicated the existence of market logic. The American articles justified the tarif policy by emphasizing China's unfair trade practices and structural issues. By contrast, China media blamed trade confrontation by criticizing the U.S. unilateralism tarif policy. This study contributes to the framing pool of transnational economic conflict (including generic frames and issue-specific frames) and contextualization of results within the diplomatic relations and media system background.
Blackouts made visible : a visual-textual analysis of Sarah Glidden's comics journalism
Authors:   , Stewart Tynan
Published: September 2024

This thesis studies Sarah Glidden's largely unexamined book Rolling Blackouts as a significant contribution to the genre known as comics journalism. It argues that Glidden's work engages in a material struggle over the nature of journalism by using the comics form to intervene in an ongoing debate over the field's normative values. Glidden pictures how journalism can be done differently and challenges mainstream conventions by constructing (1) a model of journalistic authority that refuses to cover over deep epistemological uncertainties and (2) a complex ethics and aesthetics of listening. In addition, this thesis reads Rolling Blackouts through the lens of postcolonial theory, analyzing the way Glidden brings journalistic abstractions into contact with messy representational realities of transnational and interpersonal power imbalances. Glidden is particularly concerned with refugees created by American imperialism and how American journalists--working in comics or not--can position themselves to ethically represent these refugees. Ultimately, a close-reading of Rolling Blackouts suggests that comics journalism's documented concern with self-representation is less important than showing the intricacy of the embodied relationships between a comics journalist and her sources -- particularly when those sources are the world's contemporary subalterns.
Healing centered yoga : an adjunct clinical intervention pilot study : trauma and chemical dependency
Authors:   , Saxon Heather
Published: September 2024

Introduction: Healing Centered Yoga (HCY) is a multidisciplinary practice and program offered as an adjunct clinical intervention for individuals experiencing complex, acute, and/or treatment-resistant trauma and related stress. Research on the contemplative practices, including yoga and its relationship to trauma, physiologic regulation and overall wellbeing has grown exponentially. However, with poor reporting, colonization of yoga, lack of community-partnered studies as well as lack of understanding regarding the evolutionary, neurophysiological and neurobiological mechanisms of trauma and yoga, clinical applications have been difficult or limited. Methods: Facilitate Healing Centered Yoga (HCY): An Adjunct Clinical Intervention Program and Practice for Healing Trauma[copyright] as an academic-community partnership. Using a pre/post design, analyze: a) autonomic nervous system reactivity and body awareness; b) perception of choice and connection; c) involuntary and voluntary cognitive and neurophysiologic processes and coping strategies associated with stress responses; d) trends among individual and aggregate numbers of trauma exposure. Results: Adult female participants (n=25) experiencing residential-based treatment for chemical dependency recovery enrolled in the study. Trends in feasibility are low, acceptability is high, other results are mixed with data analysis in process for manuscript. Conclusion: The overall trends of this study reflect 1) high acceptability to the priority population; 2) low feasibility affecting therapeutic efficacy, but with opportunities to increase feasibility with changes to the program; 3) successful community-partnered study with mutually perceived co-learning and shared power; 4) trends in trauma and chemical dependency as comorbid.