College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Chemistry

"During pregnancy the body experiences physiologic demands secondary to a growing fetus. In order to accommodate for these demands, shifts in maternal physiology occur that is reflected in blood values. An example of this is mild anemia throughout pregnancy in humans secondary to expanded blood volume that occurs. In order to effectively interrupt blood work results during pregnancy, clinicians need to understand the normal expected changes that can occur during pregnancy to help make appropriate medical decisions.

This research retrospectively looked at health pregnancy in bottlenose dolphins to better understand the normal shifts that can be expected during pregnancy in this species. A number of interesting trends were revealed through this analysis. Most importantly, changes that would normally reflect an inflammatory state (potentially infectious process being present) in a non-pregnant animal are expected and regularly seen in healthy pregnant females during their third trimester. This finding can be used to help guide clinical decisions, such as the need for an antibiotic, in these late gestation animals. If the only indication for antibiotics is this inflammatory state seen in blood work, but the animal otherwise appears clinically health with a good appetite and attitude, antibiotics may not be necessary in these cases. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 15.4)"

11614

The Effects of Ketamine on Fetal Hemodynamics After Induction of Hypoxia By Umbilical Cord Occlusion (UCO)

"The Effects of Ketamine on Fetal Hemodynamics After Induction of Hypoxia By Umbilical Cord Occlusion (UCO)

During pregnancy, decreases in maternal blood, oxygen, and nutrients can stimulate fetal stress responses. Umbilical cord occlusion (UCO), a severe form of fetal hypoxia, causes global asphyxia and brain damage, which might influence fetal development and lead to clinical disorders later in life. The fetal response to UCO is characterized by an increase in blood pressure (BP) and a decrease in heart rate (HR), which will provide more blood supply to relevant organs (i.e. brain and heart) for survival. However, this response is temporary and fetal death can occur if the stimulus continues. We propose that ketamine, a common drug used in the hospitals, especially in the neonatal intensive care units, can modify and enhance the fetal response when exposed to UCO. We measured and monitor changes in fetal blood gases (oxygen and carbon dioxide), HR, and BP of ovine fetuses subjected to UCO 10 min prior and 30 minutes after the insult. The results show that the administration of ketamine improved the whole fetal response against UCO leading to a better oxygenation compared to a control group. Ketamine might play an important role in reducing fetal mortality and morbidity during UCO episodes in human pregnancy. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 14.3)" 11606

College of Public Health and Health Professions - Health Administration "The American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) is an international professional society of more than 40,000 healthcare executives who lead hospitals, healthcare systems and other healthcare organizations. I have been a member of the Health Administration Student Association (HASA) at UF since 2013 and currently I am the ACHE chairperson for HASA. ACHE's established network of 80 chapters (including 4 in Florida) provide access to networking, education and career development at the local level. As the UF ACHE chair, I have been involved in planning and coordinating several events for the North Florida chapter in Gainesville and Jacksonville. ACHE continuously strives to achieve its goal of being the premier professional society for healthcare executives. ACHE is dedicated to improving healthcare delivery and healthcare management excellence through education and research.

At the Congress on Healthcare Leadership, which draws more than 4,000 participants, I plan to attend several seminars which will contribute to my professional development. One such seminar is entitled “New Strategies for Risk Management and Medicare Bundled Payments”. By attending this seminar I will learn how to effectively plan, monitor and manage post-discharge patient flow so that there is better management of reimbursement risks. Another seminar I will be attending is entitled “Creating Operational Excellence: The Courage to Lead”. Here I will learn how to develop new leadership skills and to refine existing ones. This will help to enhance my leadership influence and authority both during my time as a student at UF and when I enter the workforce after graduation. After attending the Congress, I will be able to share the valuable tools and skills I learn with my fellow Master of Health Administration students at UF."

"Health Administration Student Association (HASA) is a professional organization which is led and maintained by Master of Health Administration (MHA) students. Several committees work together to develop a professional network and to foster a commitment to public service among MHA students at UF. These committees, including recruitment, alumni relations, community service and fundraising, carry out the mission of HASA and ACHE. As the ACHE chairperson of UF HASA, I have encouraged my fellow students to participate in events hosted by ACHE which give UF students the experience of personal development, networking opportunities with healthcare leaders, and a setting to apply what they learn in the classroom.

The Congress on Healthcare Leadership will give me the opportunity to learn more about the ever-expanding field of health care, gather valuable leadership tools, and bring back what I have learned to my fellow MHA students at UF. One seminar that I will be attending is entitled “Principles of Ethical Leadership” which will help me identify ethical issues and unforeseen organizational challenges in the healthcare setting. This will help me to better inform my fellow students on how they can apply the lessons learned to ethically challenging situations they face as students at UF and when they are in professional settings. Another seminar that I will be attending deals with “Women in Leadership”. This will educate me about how some veteran women healthcare leaders achieved success and the obstacles they faced along the way. After attending this seminar, I will be able to empower my female cohort members to take charge of their future so they too can overcome obstacles and have successful careers in healthcare upon graduation from UF."

11600

College of Design, Construction, and Planning - Design, Construction, and Planning (Ph.D.)

"Access is commonly used word in discussion of health care delivery. Access to comprehensive, qualified health care services is important to achieve health equity and increasing quality of healthy life for everyone.

However disparities in access to health care services negatively affect individuals healthy life. Barriers to access includes: 1) limited availability of facilities, 2) long distance (or time) to the facilities 3) high cost, and 4) individuals socioeconomic characteristics.

To encourage the access to health care service, this study aims to identify access to health care in Florida. To measure access, access has defined in two ways; spatial access that emphasize the importance of geographic availability of health care provider; and non-spatial access that includes nongeographic barriers such as age, sex, ethnicity, income, education and language ability.

Consequently this study seeks to measure an unequal distribution of healthcare providers as a spatial health disparity and determines its correlation with non-spatial factors of accessibility. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 18.1)"

11598

Discourse strategies in the Dakar marketplace

As a result of research performed in summer 2014, my research discusses bargaining as a linguistic genre in the markets of Dakar, Senegal, in West Africa. In Dakar, bargaining is a fundamental part of marketplace discourse and an important aspect of the culture as a whole. As such, my research looks at bargaining within the cultural context as it is represented by the data I collected in 2014 from several hours’ worth of real marketplace transactions. In looking at these data, I discovered that the bargaining genre has very specific stages – namely, the greeting, investigation, inquiry, bargaining, and conclusion. During the course of this sequence, buyers and sellers use specific strategies both economic and cultural to gain bargaining power within the transaction. My research discusses the genre itself as well as these strategies as embedded within their cultural context. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 13.1)

11572

The Uneven Europeanization of Accession Countries: Domestic Political Interests in the Case of Turkey

Turkey is currently a candidate for full membership in the European Union (EU). However, Turkey is very different than many European countries. Reforming Turkish politics and changing Turkey to be more the like EU countries is a long process that remains understudied. In many Eastern European countries the prospect of becoming a full EU member provided the incentive needed for politicians to undertake changes at the domestic level ('Europeanize'). To test whether this is also the case with Turkey, I create my own dataset to measure Europeanization, credible prospects for full membership, and compliance with the formal demands of the EU membership criteria. I find that when Turkish politicians are interested in 'Europeanizing' change takes place even if there is not a credible prospect of joining the EU. However, when domestic actors are not interested in 'Europeanizing', it does not matter what the EU does, change will not take place. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 13)

11570

My attendance at the 2015 Congress on Healthcare Leadership will help strengthen UF's status among other Health Administration Master's programs. UF currently does not have a strong presence among leadership conferences which has seemed to hinder UF students when applying for post graduate fellowships and residencies. By attending this conference and representing UF's Master in Health Administration program I would be helping future students gain opportunities for prestigious positions. The conference has talks and seminars specifically for students on interviewing, research, and professional growth. These seminars are led by pillars in the healthcare community.These lead to opportunities to speak with healthcare professionals from around the United States which can lead to jobs, professional speakers at UF, and creating relationships with similar Masters programs. In past years students have refrained from attending the conference because of the high cost, because of this the UF MHA program is frequently questioned by alumni for not having a presence at the Congress on Healthcare Leadership. The Gator Nation is everywhere, but that is not enough to continue to stand out among the rest. It is important to have representatives from UF present to spread to good that comes from our university. In attending the 2015 Congress on Healthcare Leadership I will be able to emphasize to prominent healthcare professionals the greatness UF and specifically UF's Master in Healthcare Administration program. Frequently when speakers come to the UF MHA program they ask why we have not attended Congress, then go on about what students from other universities have told them about their programs. By attending Congress I will be able to explain to professionals and other students the good that is coming from UF. It is time that UF had a strong presence at the Congress on Healthcare Leadership!

11569

College of Engineering - Materials Science and Engineering

" My team is well chosen and I am sure that we will be able to achieve a respectable position in the competition which in turn affects the reputation of our university. The Materials Advantage student chapter of Materials department will receive an award of $500 if we can end up as winner or first runner up. This award will be used to support educational activities in the department or to financially encourage students to attend academic conventions. I will be able to drive others to attend conferences from my experience. I shall also be able to help in organizing future conferences/workshops of the department.

11567

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - Psychology

This research examined the relation between children’s temperament, in other words individual differences in their behavioral and emotional styles, and their mental health outcomes. The specific mental health outcome we examined was internalizing problems, which commonly include anxiety and depression related problems. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of two specific temperament styles, behavioral inhibition and effortful control, on children’s internalizing problems. Behavioral inhibition refers to a relatively stable tendency of some individuals to consistently respond to novel stimuli (e.g. strangers, novel toys, new classrooms) with heightened distress. Developmental research has shown that children with high levels of behavioral inhibition are at higher risk of developing internalizing problems, such as social anxiety and social withdrawal. However, another temperament style, effortful control, or the ability to effortfully regulate one’s initial response in order to respond in a more desirable way, is often shown to protect children against mental health problems. Therefore, the present study examined the potential interactive effect between behavioral inhibition and effortful control on children’s internalizing problems. In other words, we examined whether high levels of effortful control can buffer the risk effect of behavioral inhibition on internalizing problems. We collected survey data from parents of 101 children between the ages of 7 and 12 years. Our statistical analysis confirmed that, although in general, behavioral inhibition predicted higher internalizing problems, such association was much weakened among children with high levels of effortful control. In particular, children with better abilities to shift attention and to perform a task when initial reaction is to avoid had the lowest risk of being impacted by behavioral inhibition. We believe this research could contribute to the basic understanding of the relation between temperament and mental health during child development. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 16.5)

11565

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - Chemistry

Over the past 20 years, efforts in research have been directed to create nanoparticles with interesting physical properties. The discovery of single-molecule magnets (SMMs) directly result from this trend. The field of research on SMMs is growing with the increasing need for new data storage solutions. One of the best and most studied SMM known to date is the Mn12acetate and its family. Over the years, a lot of knowledge has been drawn from the crystal structures to understand the behavior of this molecule in the solid state. However, the behavior in solution is not yet fully understood. NMR spectroscopy is a powerful technique to access this knowledge. This project studies the dynamic processes of that molecule in solution. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 10.3)

11558

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - Physics

Gravitational waves - emanating from sources like black holes and neutron stars falling into each other - are one consequence of Einstein's theory of general relativity. However, no one has detected them directly yet; the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a constellation of spacecraft designed to do that. It uses lasers exchanged between three spacecraft to measure tiny distance changes of unimaginably expensive gold-platinum cubes which are caused by incident gravitational waves. Manufacturing the optical benches (where all of the laser components go) by the current method is difficult and time-consuming, so we have come up with an alternative. This presentation is about the current status of and future plans for the construction and testing of such an optical bench. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 17.1)

11556

College of Agricultural and Life Sciences - Animal Sciences

In the meat processing industry, a significant need exists to reduce bacteria at a substantial rate on carcasses. Due to the rules and regulations governing product safety and quality, identifying processing methods that reduce surface bacteria such as; Escherichia coli, coliform, and aerobic bacteria is very pertinent. There is limited research being conducted on pre-slaughter spray washing solutions. Goat was used as a model animal for this study because this meat is becoming more prevalent in the United States. The specific objective of this study was to investigate the efficacy of pre-slaughter spray washing treatment (tap water, salt water, electrolyzed water, and ozonated water) in reducing microorganisms on goat carcasses. The next phase was to determine the effects of such treatments on subsequent quality characteristics of goat meat. Instrumental color values, Warner-Bratzler shear force, and cooking loss were also determined. Pre-slaughter spray washing reduced the risk of microorganisms that were present on goat without significantly impacting the meat quality. This study aims to improve processing operation methods in small and very small meat plants to enhance meat product safety. It is very important and relevant to try to implement plans to achieve this outstanding goal. By implementing this preliminary step before the slaughtering of the goats, it is expected that the (pre-slaughter) treatments will cause the bacteria to be reduced by at least one log reduction. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 15)

11555

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - Physics

"Recent observations of distant galaxies have led modern scientists to conclude that about 1/4 of the universe is made up of matter that is almost completely undetectable. While no one has yet discovered this ""dark matter,"" one promising theory claims it is composed of axions, a theoretical particle conceived to resolve a phenomenon known as the strong CP violation. The Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) uses the world's most sensitive radio wave detector to search for signals given off by axion decay. Though the power of these signals is incredibly tiny, ADMX's ultra-sensitive amplifiers and large electromagnetic resonating microwave cavity, cooled to nearly absolute zero temperature, ensure that the experiment will be able to detect the decay of practically any existing axions.

ADMX is currently conducting searches for axion dark matter particles. The program will exhaust the scanning capabilities of the experiment’s detector by the end of 2015. In order to expand the search capabilities of the detector, novel microwave cavity technology must be developed. ADMX has been researching such advanced cavity technology for several years, and has multiple R&D projects underway. The talk will discuss the status of the projects, current test results, science developments, and the near term plans of the research. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 15.5)"

11529

USE OF TARGETED METABOLOMICS TO DETERMINE THE DIETARY PURINE CONTENT OF MANAGED AND FREE-RANGING COMMON BOTTLENOSE DOLPHINS, Tursiops truncatus

Managed bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) develop ammonium urate kidney stones, but wild dolphins do not. The cause of stone development in dolphins is unknown. Nevertheless, in other mammals there are several well-described contributing factors, including a diet rich in purines, like the whole fish diet of dolphins. Purines are a type of nucleic acid found in skeletal muscle and internal organs, and when consumed in the diet, purines are absorbed and metabolized by mammals to uric acid. Uric acid is excreted in the urine, and when concentrations rise above a solubility threshold, urate stones will form. Additionally, several purine metabolites have been reported to vary based on fish species, cold storage methods, and storage time. Managed dolphins are fed a few species of frozen and thawed cold-water fish species, whereas free-ranging dolphins consume a variety of live temperate water fish species. These dietary differences led to the development of this technique using high performance liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry to better identify and quantify the purines in the fish species fed to managed dolphins and common species consumed by free-ranging dolphins. Currently, the commercially available assay only measures 4 of the 8 important purine metabolites that contribute to urinary uric acid concentrations. Our assay accurately measures all 8 of those metabolites and with this technique, we will be able to better describe purine differences between managed and free-ranging dolphin diets. This will enable a better understanding of whether the purine rich diet may contribute to urate stone development in only managed dolphins. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 17.4)

11506

A 1H NMR-Based Approach to Investigate Metabolomic Differences in the Plasma and Urine of Young Women after Cranberry Juice or Apple Juice Consumption

Cranberry juice has known to have various health benefits. However, its mechanisms remain unclear. The present study was to investigate the metabolic changes caused by cranberry juice consumption. Eighteen female college students were given either cranberry or apple juice for three days. Plasma and urine samples were collected and analyzed. No metabolic difference was observed in plasma before and after juice consumption. However, metabolic changes were observed in plasma and urine after cranberry juice and apple juice consumption. The level of several metabolites were found out to be different in plasma or urine after drinking cranberry juice and apple juice. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 13.2)