Search results

Title: VIRUS INACTIVATION IN CONTAMINATED FRUIT PUREE AND JUICE VIA HYDROSTATIC PRESSURE PROCESS
Creator: Pan, Hao
Date: 2015, 2015-07
Description: The use of the high hydrostatic pressure process (HPP) of food allows for retention of many sensory qualities. However, it is not clear if the...
Show moreThe use of the high hydrostatic pressure process (HPP) of food allows for retention of many sensory qualities. However, it is not clear if the process is effective in inactivating viruses on contaminated produce. This study’s objective is to evaluate the factors that affect the survival of viral surrogates MS2 coliphage and murine norovirus MNV during HPP treatment of fresh fruit puree and juice. Fresh strawberries and frozen pomegranate arils were used to prepare separate puree or juice products which were inoculated with the viral surrogates for each trial. The inoculated juice or puree was prepared for treatment treated in an Avure QFP 24L-828-S HPP pilot system using process temperatures of 10 to 40⁰C, pressures ranging from 250 to 600 MPa, and holding times from 1.5 to 3 mins. After HPP treatments, MNV/MS2 inoculated sample matrices were eluted and quantified. Control samples were prepared in the same way, but did not receive HPP treatment. The recovery range in the control samples was 12 to 40% for MS2 or MNV from inoculated puree and juice. In treated samples, it was found that viruses (MNV or MS2) survived better in the semi-solid puree as compared to liquid matrices (juice or medium) regardless of pH. In general, higher pressures enhanced the virus inactivation with constant holding time and temperature. However, MS2 was found more resistant to HPP treatment than MNV, though the trend of their responses to HPP are consistent. The MS2 inactivation in strawberry puree was more efficient under the treatment with higher HPP temperature. Surprisingly, an opposite trend was observed for MNV inactivation. Among 11 HPP trials, the MNV inactivation in strawberry juice has no significant difference from that in pomegranate juice. Overall the results of this study provide valuable information on the effect of food matrix, holding temperature and pressure on virus survival during hydrostatic pressure process of fruit puree and juice. MS2 coliphage is somewhat resistant to HPP in fruit puree and juice, suggesting it could serve as an indicator for human enteric virus particularly hepatitis A virus in future studies.
M.S. in Food Safety and Technology, July 2015
Show less

Title: Pasteurization of milk by the use of ozone
Creator: Carnahan, G. C., Decelle, O. A.
Date: 2009, 1914
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/pasteurizationof00carn
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaf 38

Title: ANALYSIS OF MITOCHONDRIAL RE-LOCALIZATION IN CHLAMYDIA TRACHOMATIS INFECTION
Creator: Patel, Dhwani B.
Date: 2017, 2017-05
Description: Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular parasite that causes eye and genital tract infection in humans. C. trachomatis genital...
Show moreChlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular parasite that causes eye and genital tract infection in humans. C. trachomatis genital tract infection is one of the most prevalent sexually transmitted diseases in United States. This pathogenic bacterium depends on the host cell for essential metabolites for energy generation and ATP as readily available energy source. Several previous studies have established interactions between the chlamydial inclusion and various host cell organelles, including the Golgi complex, nutrient rich exocytic vesicles and the cytoskeleton for survival in the host cell. However, the data available for chlamydial interactions with mitochondria is limited. In order to gain proper understanding of the host- pathogen relationship, the chlamydial inclusion interaction with mitochondria were evaluated, using HeLa cells as host. Immunostaining technique was used to stain uninfected and C. trachomatis (serovar L2b) infected HeLa cells at 7 different time points post infection- 8, 10, 12, 16, 18, 24, 36 hour post infection (hpi) and analyzed by fluorescence microscopy. The data showed that the chlamydial infection disrupts the well-organized mitochondrial network found in uninfected HeLa cells. C. trachomatis infected HeLa cells showed re-localization of cellular mitochondria toward the bacterial inclusion. The mitochondria were observed to begin re-localization at 10 hpi with gradual increase in per cent re-localization with subsequent time points. Highest per cent mitochondrial re-localization was observed at 36 hpi (81.1%), displaying all most all mitochondria accumulated around Chlamydial inclusion. The results clearly indicated the close association between host mitochondria and Chlamydial inclusion. Moreover, re-localization of mitochondria in close proximity of inclusion also indicated potential acquisition of essential metabolites and energy in form of ATP by bacterial inclusion from host mitochondria.
M.S. in Biology, May 2017
Show less

Title: CONTROLLED AND EXTENDED RELEASE OF ANTIANGIOGENIC AGENTS FOR THE ENHANCED TREATMENT OF CHOROIDAL NEOVASCULARIZATION
Creator: Osswald, Christian R.
Date: 2015, 2015-07
Description: Current U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drug therapies for choroidal neovascularization (CNV) secondary to age-related...
Show moreCurrent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drug therapies for choroidal neovascularization (CNV) secondary to age-related macular degeneration (AMD), also known as wet AMD, require monthly or bimonthly intravitreal (IVT) injections of bolus antiangiogenic agents such as anti-vascular endothelial growth factors (anti-VEGFs) [1]. Less-frequent administration of anti-VEGFs via controlled and extended release is needed to lower the socio-economic impact and lessen the potential side-effects associated with frequent IVT injections. While a controlled delivery system is beneficial, the challenges of initial burst (IB), maintenance of drug bioactivity, and understanding the drug distribution in the diseased eye must be addressed to design an optimal system to address this need. The main goal of this study was to develop a drug delivery system (DDS) capable of delivering anti-VEGF for six months. Additionally, we propose that controlled and extended release of anti-VEGF will yield a greater reduction in CNV growth compared to bolus administration of the same drug. Thus, the current monthly/bimonthly treatment regimen could be replaced by, say, a semi-annual treatment. To accomplish this goal, three specific aims were performed: 1) Development of an injectable microsphere-hydrogel DDS with minimal IB and prolonged release of bioactive anti-VEGF; 2) Verification and validation of the efficacy of said DDS in vivo; and 3) A proof-of-concept finite element analysis comparing the drug distribution throughout a diseased eye to that of a healthy eye.
Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, July 2015
Show less

Title: OPTION PRICING AND HEDGING UNDER JUMP DIFFUSION MODEL WITH DIFFERENTIAL INTEREST RATES
Creator: Fang, Hui
Date: 2014, 2014-07
Description: Classical option pricing schemes have an ideal assumption that a single interest rate is used as risk free discounting rate. This assumption...
Show moreClassical option pricing schemes have an ideal assumption that a single interest rate is used as risk free discounting rate. This assumption has been already relaxed due to deteriorating credit market. In this paper, we assume that risk free lending and borrowing rates are di erent. Under di erential interest rates setup, a no-arbitrage price band rather than a unique price is calculated. We extend this scheme to a jump di usion model. Under mild conditions, option prices can be calculated explicitly. We illustrate the pricing scheme through a European style call option. Numerical results show that funding spread between lending and borrowing interest rates has signi cant impact on the length of the option's no-arbitrage price band.
M.S. in Applied Mathematics, July 2014
Show less

Title: DEFORMABLE MESH MODEL OF CARDIAC MOTION FROM MRI DATA
Creator: Parages, Felipe M.
Date: 2011-04-25, 2011-05
Description: Estimation of myocardial motion from medical images is an important problem in several fields such as computer-aided diagnosis of cardiac...
Show moreEstimation of myocardial motion from medical images is an important problem in several fields such as computer-aided diagnosis of cardiac lesions, development of cardiac simulators, and cardiac image processing in general. Tagged Magnetic Resonance Imaging (tagged MRI) is an image modality in which magnetic markers (taglines) track true deformation of heart tissue, thus being a valuable tool to analyze cardiac motion. Although several methods to analyze cardiac motion from tagged MRI have been proposed in the past, many of them rely somewhat on manual intervention to correct loss of tagline contrast towards the end of the cardiac cycle. Likewise, some of these methods are based on tagged MRI only, failing to include motion information from untagged (cine) gated cardiac MRI. We present in this thesis a model that overcomes these limitations by using a regularized non-rigid Deformable Mesh Model (DMM) to track pixel-intensity variations over combined datasets of gated tagged and cine MRI. DMM performs motion estimation directly over MRI pixel intensities, and proved to achieve motion analysis results comparable to other methods in which manual fine-tuning of tagline tracking is required. In addition, incorporating information from gated cine MRI into DMM proves to be helpful into capturing cardiac motion more efficiently. Finally, we show in this work the capacity of DMM to accurately estimate geometric and mechanical properties of the myocardium, such as strain and ejection fraction. We conclude that DMM method has a great potential for cardiac motion modeling, and may constitute a good alternative to other techniques in the future.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, May 2011
Show less

Title: DYNAMIC MEASUREMENT OF EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND THE RELATIONSHIP WITH JOB PERFORMANCE
Creator: Paruchuri, Samantha
Date: 2017, 2017-07
Description: Employee engagement originally gained popularity among practitioners in their efforts to improve organizational measures of performance. The...
Show moreEmployee engagement originally gained popularity among practitioners in their efforts to improve organizational measures of performance. The attention has turned to employee engagement as a means of facilitating improvement in individual performance outcomes, with the expectation that individual performance improvements will also improve organizational performance. However, with conceptual and definitional inconsistencies between practitioners and researchers, the construct of employee engagement requires further study to refine the construct and its relationship with job performance. This study provides a review of the literature to clarify the construct of employee engagement. Next, a dynamic measurement of the change in employee engagement and its relationship with outcome variables is tested. Evidence supporting a curvilinear relationship between employee engagement and job performance is presented. Specifically, similar employee engagement scores between two time points corresponded to higher job performance ratings and dissimilar scores corresponded to lower job performance rating. Change in employee engagement scores also corresponded to intentions to leave the organization. Contributions to existing literature, implications for research and practice, and directions for future research are discussed.
M.S. in Psychology, July 2017
Show less

Title: EVALUATION OF COMPUTER ALGORITHMS FOR THE ANALYSIS AND RECONSTRUCTION OF CARDIAC IMAGES
Creator: Parages, Felipe M.
Date: 2017, 2017-05
Description: In the medical imaging field, image processing algorithms must be evaluated by measuring performance at some clinically-relevant task of...
Show moreIn the medical imaging field, image processing algorithms must be evaluated by measuring performance at some clinically-relevant task of interest (i.e. task-based quality assessment). This dissertation relies on the task-based paradigm to evaluate motion-estimation and image-reconstruction methods, respectively, for two cardiac-imaging modalities, namely: cardiac-gated tagged Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and Single Photon Emission Computerized Tomography for Myocardial Perfusion Imaging (SPECT-MPI). First, a task-based approach is followed to evaluate three motion-estimation methods for clinical cardiac-gated tagged MRI, namely: non-rigid registration using a Deformable Mesh Model (DMM), Strain from Unwrapped Harmonic Phase (SUPHARP), and Feature-Based (FB) algorithms. More specifically, the goal is to quantify and rank their performances at both detection and estimation tasks. For detection, methods are evaluated per their ability to discern between normal and abnormal motion patterns in known cardiomyopathies (e.g. hypertension and mitral regurgitation). For estimation tasks, methods are evaluated per their accuracy at estimating several rotation/twist and strain features of clinical interest; since true values for these features are generally unknown, a statistical Regression Without Truth (RWT) model is adopted, which does not assume the existence of a “gold-standard” method to use as a ground-truth reference. Moreover, the RWT model provides with an objective figure-of-merit that allows ranking methods in absolute fashion. Second, a novel anthropomorphic Model Observer (MO) is proposed for optimization of SPECT-MPI reconstruction algorithms such as Filtered Back-projection (FBP) and Ordered-subsets Expectation Maximization (OSEM). MOs are computer models that aim to mimic the performance of human readers (typically radiologists) at some clinically relevant task of interest. The proposed MO is based on supervised machine-learning classification, for the diagnostic tasks of detection, localization and assessment of perfusion defects. The MO is trained using an ensemble of synthetic cases whose perfusion were scored (i.e. labeled) by human specialists. The trained MO is subsequently applied on images not read by humans (both synthetic and clinical), aiming to predict their diagnostic scores. Results show that the proposed MO accurately predicts human diagnostic performances. Furthermore, it generalizes well to new images not used during training, not only from different reconstruction algorithms, but also from synthetic to clinical cases.
Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, May 2017
Show less

Title: The preparation of zinc nitride and its alloy with zinc
Creator: Bentley, Walter J, Stern, Paul L
Date: 2009, 1920
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/preparationofzin00bent
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology, 1920 Bibliography: leaves 81-85 B.S. in...
Show morehttp://www.archive.org/details/preparationofzin00bent
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology, 1920 Bibliography: leaves 81-85 B.S. in Chemical Engineering, 1920
Show less

Title: Production of alcohol from whiskey slop
Creator: Kahn, Sidney, Hoehn, J. C.
Date: 2009, 1912
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/productionofalco00kahn
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology, 1912 B.S. in Chemical Engineering, 1912

Title: The preparation of thoria
Creator: Wilson, Robert L, Lauletta, Joseph R
Date: 2009, 1915
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/preparationoftho00wils
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology

Title: A process for the production of soluble potash from insoluble igneous rock
Creator: Perlstein, G. B., Wilkens, H. B.
Date: 2009, 1916
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/processforproduc00perl
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaves 41-43

Title: The preparation of benzoic acid by oxidation of toluol
Creator: Grigsby, D. W., Mcclung, E. E.
Date: 2009, 1919
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/preparationofben00grig
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology

Title: Preparation of aluminium nitride
Creator: Wilbor, J. B.
Date: 2009, 1919
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/preparationofalu00wilb
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaf 28

Title: The preparation of anthrarufine
Creator: Podolsky, David H, Mead, Walter E
Date: 2009, 1920
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/preparationofant00podo
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaves 61-62

Title: The preparation of salicylic aldehyde
Creator: Clark, C. B., Maitre, A. E.
Date: 2009, 1919
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/preparationofsal00clar
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaves 45-46

Title: The preparation of salicylic acid from phenol
Creator: Markham, J. H., Lewis, B. W.
Date: 2009, 1919
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/preparationofsal00mark
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaf 41

Title: Proposed hydro-electric development on the west branch of the Penobscot River in Maine
Creator: Walsh, Raymond L., Ehrman, Joseph S., Lill, Arthur C.
Date: 2009, 1913
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/proposedhydroele00wals
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaf 41

Title: Proposed hydro-electric development on North Platte River, Wyoming
Creator: Abrahamson, O. F., Armstrong, R. C., Armstrong, G., Graham, F. A.
Date: 2009, 1912
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/proposedhydroele00abra
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology;Bibliography : leaf 63

Title: Proposed hydraulic power development on East Canada Creek at Ingham Mills, New York
Creator: Buck, G. W., Deveney, W. J., Lettermann, G. D.
Date: 2009, 1910
Publisher: Armour Institute of Technology
Description: http://www.archive.org/details/proposedhydrauli00buck
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology

repository.iit

Search the repository

Pages

Pages