cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-662382
title: Two faced coregulator: coactivation and corepression of transcription by histone methyltransferase G9a

description: Histone methyltransferase G9a has been primarily understood as a corepressor of gene expression, but we showed previously that G9a positively regulates nuclear receptor-mediated transcription in reporter gene assays. Here we show that endogenous G9a contributes to the estradiol (E2)-dependent induction of some endogenous target genes of estrogen receptor (ER) in MCF-7 breast cancer cells while simultaneously limiting the E2-induced expression of other ER target genes. Thus G9a has a dual and selective role as a coregulator for ER target genes. The ERα binding regions associated with the pS2 gene, which requires G9a for E2-induced expression, are transiently occupied by G9a at 15 min after beginning E2 treatment, suggesting that G9a coactivator function is by direct interaction with ERα target genes. Using transient reporter gene assays with deletion mutants of G9a, we demonstrated that domains previously associated with the corepressor functions of G9a (C-terminal SET domain, ankyrin repeat domain, and cysteine-rich domain) were unnecessary for G9a coactivator function in ERα mediated transcription. In contrast, our study shows that the N-terminal domain of G9a was necessary and sufficient for enhancement of ERα-mediated transcription and for E2-induced occupancy of G9a on ERα binding sites associated with the pS2 gene. In addition to a previously identified activation domain, we discovered a previously uncharacterized ligand-dependent ER binding function in this region, indicating how G9a is recruited to the target genes. Therefore, the coactivator and corepressor functions of G9a involve different G9a domains and different molecular mechanisms. ❧ We also show that G9a acts as a transcriptional coactivator of Runx2 mediated transcription. This activation of Runx2 transcription does not require the methyltransferase activity of G9a, and Runx2 is associated with G9a in vitro. In prostate cancer cells metastasized to bone (C4-2B), we depleted G9a and revealed that various Runx2 inducible genes displayed G9a dependence, G9a independence and G9a repression. We demonstrated Runx2 colocalization with G9a and the ability to mobilize formerly immobile fractions of G9a in the cell nucleus. However, the effect of G9a depletion did not appear to reduce Runx2 dependent invasion or migration of C4-2B cells. Occupancy by G9a on the Runx2 binding site of the CSF2 gene during Runx2 induction indicates a direct role for G9a in Runx2 mediated transcription.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-128356
title: A Comparison or Eighteen Participating and Non-Participating Mothers with Children Enrolled in the Head Start Program at Azusa Center
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-141138
title: A descriptive study of the licensed clinical social worker in California
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-149612
title: Perceptions of mothers regarding role performance of fathers in families where unusual working hours or conditions exist
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-332230
title: Leadership and implementation of 1:1 technology  at the secondary school level:  considering teacher self-efficacy in the implementation process

description: A case study of a southern California High School was conducted to understand the implementation process of 1:1 technologies and the role teacher self-efficacy plays in the implementation process. The role of school leadership was also analyzed to further understand how teacher self-efficacy is impacted by administrative decisions, actions, and plans throughout the implementation process. This paper reports from data collected through a survey of teachers at the chosen school site, interviews with school and district leaders, and a review of documents. Data were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative methods. The data revealed the following as factors, which heavily influence teacher self-efficacy during implementation of 1:1 technologies: (a) on-demand technical support, (b) training and one-on-one coaching, (c) reliable internet access, (d) quality instructional and implementation plans, (e) incorporation of staff in decision making, (f) communication of the vision for the program, (g) monitoring of the program’s goals, and (h) staff commitment to the 1:1 technology program and its primary objectives. Implications for the improvement of 1:1 technology implementation includes: (a) a focus on teacher self-efficacy, (b) inclusion of instructional goals in plans, (c) a reduction of administrative tasks for instructional leaders, (d) a commitment to instructional technology coaches, and (e) continued monitoring of program’s core instructional goals.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-628718
title: An analysis of co-construction and cultural models in an urban school: the year 2 study of a school-community-University partnership

description: The challenges surrounding urban education in the United States are seemingly insurmountable for some schools and school districts. As a result, many engage in partnerships for educational reform. Co-constructive school−community−university partnerships represent a new model for education that bring resources and support by each of these groups to create interventions and support that are sustainable and effective. Unfortunately, the complexity of each entity creates challenges within the partnership that thwart effectiveness and threaten the endurance of the partnership long enough to create the desired impact. ❧ The process of co-construction serves as a tool to create dialogic relationships and collaborative structures within these partnerships to engage all partners and stakeholders in the school transformation process. This study examines the use of co-constructive processes within the 2nd and 3rd years of a school-community-university partnership while the entities work together to transform an urban school. The study focuses on the processes, including co-construction, that are used to sustain the partnership in the first years of operation. The study also examines the capacity of partnerships to create settings that support a cultural model of high student achievement.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-632791
title: On good and 'good'

description: 7/18/2011 Many fundamental questions in Ethics concern the nature and structure of goodness. While investigations of goodness have often attended to the variety of ways in which we use the word ‘good,’ I take a distinctive approach by turning to recent results from theoretical Linguistics. Cross-linguistic evidence strongly suggests that ‘good’ has a single meaning. However, a close look at the formal grammar of ‘good’ suggests that there are indeed robustly distinct ways in which we use ‘good,’ which do not collapse into some fundamental or paradigmatic one (as some have argued). Hence, I motivate and defend the view that ‘good’ is highly contextually sensitive such that its interpretation is affected not only by the various contexts in which we use it, but also by the various sentences in which we use it. In light of these insights, I propose answers to fundamental questions such as “which of the various uses of ‘good’ are ethically significant?”…“what, if anything, do all good things have in common?”…“is goodness a property?” and “what relations does moral goodness bear to other sorts of goodness?”
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-647043
title: Missing covariates and high-dimensional variable selection in additive hazards regression

description: This dissertation addresses two challenging problems arising in inference with censored failure time data. The additive hazards model provides a unified framework for these problems to be discussed, not only because it is a useful alternative to the well-known Cox model and has significant practical implications, but also because its simple yet elegant structure allows one to explore some fundamental aspects of these problems. ❧ In the first part of this dissertation, we consider the estimation problem in additive hazards regression with missing covariates. We are interested in both the case where the observation probabilities are known and the case where they are unknown but can be parametrically modeled and estimated. By modifying the pseudoscore function with full data, we introduce some weighted estimators for the regression coefficients and the cumulative baseline hazard function. The proposed estimators are then shown to be consistent and asymptotically normal under mild conditions, with asymptotic variances that can be easily estimated. Our theoretical results and simulation studies indicate that using estimated weights in the simple weighted estimators may yield important efficiency gain and that the augmented weighted estimators are even more efficient. The proposed methods are further illustrated by a mouse leukemia data example. ❧ In the second part, we turn to the variable selection problem in the additive hazards model. Motivated by linking high-throughput genomic data to survival outcomes, we are particularly interested in the high-dimensional setting where the dimension of covariates may grow fast, possibly nonpolynomially, with the sample size. We propose to perform variable selection and estimation simultaneously by using a class of regularized estimators with a general family of concave penalties, including several popular choices such as the lasso, SCAD, MCP, and SICA. In a nonasymptotic framework where the model dimensions are allowed to vary freely, we rigorously investigate the weak oracle properties and oracle properties of the proposed estimators. Our theoretical results are essentially different from those in the existing literature, and provide new insight into the model selection properties of regularized estimators for survival models. We illustrate the proposed method by simulation studies and application to a diffuse large B-cell lymphoma data set. ❧ A common theme underlying the theoretical development in this dissertation is the use of modern empirical process theory. Indeed, we rely on the language of empirical process theory to establish our theoretical results for both problems considered here, and they serve as excellent examples for demonstration of the power and elegance of this mathematical tool, especially in the context of survival analysis.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-667536
title: Using mobile mapping for wildfire mitigation in Los Angeles county

description: Los Angeles County is home to devastating wildfires that burn hundreds of thousands of acres and destroy many homes every year.  There are a variety of reasons why some homes burn and others do not.  For example, homes located along a Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) usually means that the home is in what the Los Angeles County Fire Department calls a “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone” (VHFHSZ).  Homes can burn due to the defensible space of surrounding vegetation and the types of structural materials.  It is important to understand why certain homes burn and others remain unharmed. ❧ This thesis uses mobile mapping in GIS to capture different fire risk attributes of homes located in Los Angeles County’s VHFHSZ.  The purpose of this study is to determine which homes have the greatest risk of burning so that improved mitigation techniques can be implemented to prevent those homes from igniting during future wildfires.  The spatial video data is archived for post-wildfire analyses to conclude if a burnt home was damaged due to its building materials and surrounding vegetation. ❧ Results of the analyses have shown clusters of fire hazardous homes and have determined individual homes with high fire risk attributes.  Ultimately, this research provides the Los Angeles County Fire Department with timely relevant data to improve mitigation plans and conduct post-fire investigations if a wildfire burns in the studied areas.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-667648
title: Mapping trillions of short DNA reads to a reference genome and its applications

description: The breakthrough of second-generation sequencing has opened the door for many applications. In these applications, mapping massive amounts of short DNA reads to a reference sequence is a key step. This thesis proposes novel periodic seed algorithms to perform the mapping tasks. New seed design algorithms are also proposed for various mapping criteria. Compared with other read mapping algorithms, the proposed algorithms better balance speed, memory usage, and various sequencing platforms under reasonable settings. The algorithm is implemented as two short read aligners: PerM and Clippers. PerM is capable of performing rapid general-purpose un-gapped alignments for Illumina and SOLiD reads. Clippers is designed to align 75-bp or longer Illumina reads with one gap and multiple mismatches. The discovery of alignments with a long gap is integral for two tasks: finding splicing events in gene expression and locating structural variations in genomes.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-103472
title: Knowledge, use, and attitude of Catholic Priests and Catholic elementary school principals regarding Orange County Catholic Community Agencies: A descriptive study
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-123525
title: An attitudinal study of social workers in community mental health centers
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-127801
title: An inquiry into the private practice of social work in the Los Angeles area: With special reference to referral sources
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-137499
title: How do social workers update their knowledge? A survey of the dissemination and use of applied knowledge by Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services Children's Services workers and staff
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-143659
title: The revolving door---a follow up study of referred patients
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-150281
title: Long term male homosexual relationships: A descriptive study
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-331088
title: Facial identity recognition and attribute classification using machine learning techniques

description: Robust face recognition plays a central role in biometric and surveillance applications. Although the subject has been studied for about four decades, there still exist quite a few technical challenges and system design issues in deploying it in a real-world video surveillance environment. Nowadays, the raw face images and their associated meta data are stored in a remote cloud storage system in a distributed face recognition platform. One key challenge in the overall system design is to ensure the security of stored data. In this research, we first conduct a survey on this technology and then, study the problems of cross-distance/environment face recognition and facial attribute classification with machine learning techniques. ❧ The problem of long distance face recognition and attribute classification arising from surveillance applications impose major challenges. The captured face from the surveillance system can be low resolution and quality, which is further degraded by an uncontrolled outdoor environment such as long distance during daytime or nighttime. In addition, human age/gender inferred by face images are fundamental attributes in our social interactions. This research has many applications such as demographics analysis, commercial user management, visual surveillance, and even aging progression. Despite the rapid development in automatic face recognition, there is far less work on automatic age/gender classification in an unconstrained environment. ❧ Research in this dissertation provides effective solutions to three topics: 1) cross-distance/environment face recognition, 2) cross-distance/spectral face recognition and 3) age/gender classification. For Topic 1, a two-stage alignment/enhancement filtering (TAEF) method is proposed to achieve the state-of-the-art performance. For Topic 2, a locally linear embedding (LLE) method is developed to restore low quality near-infrared (NIR) images so as to enhance the face recognition performance. For Topic 3, a new framework based on the convolutional neural network (CNN) is presented to achieve efficient age and gender classification using the information from full face and facial components.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-347814
title: The three-dimensional era of orthodontics: the past, present, and future of digital technology

description: Background: Dentistry and orthodontics in particular has undergone a major shift over the past decade. Three-dimensional diagnostic tools and treatment planning modalities have changed the field drastically as orthodontists are incorporating new materials and innovative technologies into their practices and everyday procedures. The use of digital technology also meets the demand of patients’ preferences towards more technologically advanced treatment approaches. Objective: The objective of this article was to review the three-dimensional innovations used in dentistry, especially orthodontics. Various intra-oral scanners and extra-oral scanners are described in depth, with explanations of the technology used in each. Three-dimensional printing or additive manufacturing is also explained, especially focusing on 3D printing in orthodontics as used with orthodontic study models and clear aligner treatment. The future of orthodontics as it pertains to 3D technology is also depicted. Conclusion: Three-dimensional technologies have changed diagnosis and treatment planning in orthodontics, allowing increased patient comfort and more efficiently run orthodontic practices. In the future, 3D technologies will continue to evolve and most orthodontic practices will phase out their 2D diagnostic techniques while fully adopting 3D technology.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-392975
title: Health care for Native American communities

description: Health care for Native American populations presents a unique combination of challenges, from delivering care to rural areas to reconciling cultural differences. Severe cases of type 2 diabetes are highly prevalent among Native Americans as a result of low income and thus poor diet; limited access to medical care, in part because of a shortage of doctors; and community culture, which makes it a challenge for patients to build relationships with and trust their physicians right away. Health care providers at the Riverside-San Bernardino County Indian Health, Inc., consortium of Indian health clinics are dedicated to changing the narrative of Native American health by empowering the community to overcome physical and mental barriers to a healthy lifestyle.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-645321
title: The effects of whole body vibration exercise on metabolic systems in overweight Latino boys

description: With an increasing childhood obesity epidemic, efficient methods of exercise are sought to improve health.  Vibration training has been in use for decades to improve strength and flexibility, however little is known about the metabolic effects from whole body vibration (WBV) exercise.  We sought to determine if WBV exercise can improve insulin/glucose dynamics, lipid profile, body composition, leg strength and power in sedentary overweight Latino boys. Twenty overweight prepubertal Latino boys 8-10 years of age were randomly assigned to either a control (CON = 9, 9.1±0.9 yr, 57.8±18.5 kg) or 3 days per week WBV exercise (VIB = 11, 9.0±0.9 yr, 45.7±7.8 kg) for 10 weeks.  Assessments were performed at baseline and 48 hours post last training session to avoid any confounding acute effects of exercise.  Glucose/insulin indices were determined through an oral glucose tolerance test.  Body composition was assessed using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry.  Physical performance was assessed using a Keiser leg press machine for strength and the Bassey Leg-extension Rig for power. Comparisons of changes within and between groups for variables of interest were conducted using t tests and general linear model (p&lt;0.05).  Interestingly, there was a significant decrease in fasting glucose (p=0.04), triglycerides (p=0.02), and VLDL cholesterol (p=0.02), while leg press (p&lt;0.05) and power (p&lt;0.05) increased for the CON group.  Significant increases in total lean mass (p&lt;0.05), bone mineral density (p&lt;0.05), leg press (p&lt;0.05) and power (p&lt;0.05) were observed for the VIB group when compared to baseline values.  Between groups analyses revealed the CON group significantly lowered VLDL cholesterol (p=0.02) and triglycerides (p=0.02) compared to the WBV exercise group.  The VIB group significantly increased total lean mass (p&lt;0.01) compared to the CON group. These data suggest a controlled 10 wk WBV exercise program may not be effective for altering fasting insulin and glucose, insulin resistance, or lipids in prepubertal Latino boys. However a 10-week intervention may alter body composition in overweight boys primarily by increasing total lean mass.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c127-652255
title: An experimental and numerical investigation of fundamental combustion properties of biofuels

description: Presently, there is broad world interest in advancing the characterization, understanding, and use of biofuels, which are produced from a variety of cellulosic sources or organic matter, as they constitute one of the most viable and affordable partial solutions to reduce dependence on conventional petroleum. Additionally, they are more environmentally friendly as their use produces significant savings in net CO₂ emissions. Biofuels encompass many distinct classes of chemical species, such as alcohols, ethers, and esters. In this study, the oxidation of several selected biofuels, namely the two isomers dimethyl ether (DME) and ethanol, as well as a group of alkyl esters, ranging from C₂ to C₁₁, that can act as surrogates of actual biodiesels, were investigated in both premixed and non-premixed flames. The experiments were conducted in the counterflow configuration at ambient pressure and elevated temperatures generally over a wide range of fuel/oxidizer ratios. Fundamental flame properties such as laminar flame speeds and local extinction limits were determined by measuring flow velocities using digital particle image velocimetry. The alkyl ester data were compared against those derived for flames of n-alkanes of similar carbon number, in order to assess the effects of saturation, the length of carbon-chain, and the presence of the ester group. A number of detailed chemical kinetic models were tested against the experimental data, and insight was provided into the high-temperature oxidation kinetics and controlling physico-chemical processes in flame environments. Several pertinent issues, including the accuracy of the Lennard-Jones potential parameters assigned to fuel species in the transport databases and the effect of discrepancies in the rate constants of several pertinent reactions, among different models, on the predictions of flame propagation and extinction, were addressed. Overall, this study constitutes part of a larger effort to study the fundamental combustion and emission characteristics of biofuels and to understand the chemical differences that are at the root of their different combustion performance.
DOI: 10.25549/usctheses-c40-105260
title: Comparative study of drinkers and nondrinkers in a high-risk suicide group