The effect on isometric strength of the shoulders and limbs while biting in habitual occlusion, on a bite-elevating appliance and on a placebo appliance was analyzed. Twenty female volunteer patients, presenting with temporomandibular pain dysfunction syndrome and obvious loss of vertical dimension, served as subjects. All were weaker to the manual application of the isometric Deltoid Press (ID...

In large corpus-based concatenative Text-to-Speech, unit selection is critical for the quality of synthetic speech. Dynamic programming algorithms have been used for unit-searching by minimizing a total cost (1) between target specification and candidate units and (2) between candidate units for concatenation. The cost function is often a weighted sum of sub-costs, which are the costs for each ...

the effects of priming treatment using five osmotic solutions (peg, manitol, kno3, kh2po4 and combination of two salts) in six osmotic potentials (-1 to -1.5 mpa) was studied on germination percentage, rate and uniformity of melon seeds. the best results were obtained with high concentrations of kno3 and lower concentrations of manitol. mean germination time of melon seeds in 19°c was preceeded...

We investigated the effect of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) on hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) and cognitive functions after global cerebral ischemia in the rat. After four-vessel occlusion, BDNF was administered via an osmotic minipump continuously over 14 days intracerebroventricularly. Electrophysiological experiments were performed 14 days after cerebral ischemia. Test s...

Diel vertical migration by zooplankton is thought to allow manne animals to exploit the more abundant food resources in the upper water strata at night while minimizing predation from optically orientating predators. Contrary to this, consistantly shallower dives at night made by marine reptiles, mammals, and birds have been attributed to enhanced feeding conditions as predators exploit prey th...

This thesis is organized into two parts which focus on the studies of the dynamic structure factor and static inter-particle structure factor respectively. In the first part, we have measured and analyzed the dynamic structure factors of aligned 40 wt% calfthymus Na-DNA molecules with the inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS). In the second part, we have developed a new efficient method to calculate...

STUDY DESIGN  Retrospective diagnostic feasibility study and clinical review. OBJECTIVES  To evaluate the feasibility of making an initial atlanto-occipital dissociation (AOD) diagnosis from four radiological measurements of the craniocervical relationship on lateral cervical spine x-rays and to assess the AOD patients' clinical outcomes relative to their magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) find...

iii To my wife, Renee iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have been priveledged to work and study under engineers of the highest caliber during my five years at Vanderbilt. I am grateful for and amazed by the consistantly insightful vision with which my advisor, Dr. Michael Goldfarb, has directed our lab. His integrity and humility inspire me. My gratitude also extends to Hugo Quintero for his exceptional en...

approved: Redacted for Privacy William D. Hohenboken In two cattle populations; dairy and beef, the relationship between a bull's average spermatozoan midpiece length and production traits of economic importance was studied. In the first population involving 39 Holstein sires, variation in midpiece length between bulls and between ampules of semen from the same bull collected at least six month...

BACKGROUND The management of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is limited by the lack of adequate screening biomarkers and chemotherapy. In response, there has been much interest in tumor metabolism as a therapeutic target. PCSK9 stimulates internalization of the LDL-receptor, decreases cholesterol uptake into hepatocytes and affects liver regeneration. Thus, we investigated whether PCSK9 expressi...