HspB2 was discovered as a chaperone of muscular dystrophy protein kinase (DMPK) and originally named, DMPK binding protein (MKBP) and presently called HspB2. Functionally, MKBP binds to DMPK and stabilizes its kinase activity, thereby accelerating the progression of muscular dystrophy. Although other binding partners of HspB2 have been found, the...
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is the cause of infectious mononucleosis and is associated with the etiology of several human cancers of lymphoid and epithelial cell origin, including Burkitt's lymphoma and nasopharyngeal carcinoma. It is an extremely prevalent virus in human populations worldwide. All herpesviruses, including EBV, infect cells by fusing the...
Conventional perfusion magnetic resonance imaging with dynamic susceptibility using a contrast agents has been playing a dominant role on diagnosing a variety of cerebral nervous system disease due to lack of radiation and widespread availability. However, reliable quantification of cerebral perfusion has been elusive and challenging.
The bookend method is...
After nearly 100 years of research, the function of sleep is unknown, prompting the desire to examine its regulation in a simpler model organism. In 2000, <em>Drosophila</em> was described as a novel model system to investigate sleep. These early studies defined features of normal sleep in <em>Drosophila</em>, and presented evidence...
Interfaces and surfaces are ubiquitous in the environment. Heterogeneous binding events and reactions control the transport and speciation of dissolved pollutants in groundwater. Many heterogeneous processes occur at mineral oxide/water interfaces, and can be controlled either by the mineral oxide, or organic molecules bound to the surface. The prevalent natural...
Child maltreatment and violence are two major public health concerns in the United States. The relationship between maltreatment and subsequent violent behavior, also referred to as the "cycle of violence", is not well understood. The present study examines whether a history of maltreatment predicts violent behavior in a sample of...
Packaging of DNA into nucleosomes and chromatin not only enables DNA to fit within the nucleus, but it also protects and organizes DNA. However, the wrapping of DNA around histones occludes DNA from binding proteins in solution. Proteins that regulate, express and repair DNA are able to function only when...
This work investigates children's early semantic representations of gradable adjectives (GAs) and proposes that infants perform a probabilistic analysis of the input to learn about abstract differences within this category. I first demonstrate that children as young as age three distinguish between relative (e.g., 'big', 'long'), maximum standard absolute (e.g.,...
Nelson and Staum derived ranking-and-selection procedures that employ control-variate (CV) estimators instead of sample means to obtain greater statistical efficiency. However, control-variate estimators require more computational effort than sample means, and effective controls must be identified. In this dissertation, we present a new CV screening procedure to avoid much of...
This thesis contains four essays on the organization (both internal and external) of health care in the US. The first essay examines a mechanism through which individual workers acquire (or maintain) competence, namely that of experience. Specifically, I analyze whether cardiac surgeons who perform more procedures experience an improvement in...