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(1 - 6 of 6)
- Title
- EXPRESSION OF AN EPITOPE TAGGED TARP EFFECTOR IN CHLAMYDIA TRACHOMATIS.
- Creator
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Nguyen, Brenda, Jewett, Travis, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Previous studies performed on Chlamydia trachomatis have demonstrated how these obligate intracellular microbes invade host cells through the utilization of secreted effector proteins. One secreted effector called Tarp (translocated actin recruiting protein) is implicated in cytoskeleton rearrangements that promote bacterial entry into the host cell. The focus of our study is to create a plasmid that carries the tarP gene that when transcribed and translated from within Chlamydia trachomatis...
Show morePrevious studies performed on Chlamydia trachomatis have demonstrated how these obligate intracellular microbes invade host cells through the utilization of secreted effector proteins. One secreted effector called Tarp (translocated actin recruiting protein) is implicated in cytoskeleton rearrangements that promote bacterial entry into the host cell. The focus of our study is to create a plasmid that carries the tarP gene that when transcribed and translated from within Chlamydia trachomatis will generate a c-Myc epitope tagged Tarp. The tag will be used in future studies to track the progression of the protein through the infectious process and will allow us to distinguish this protein from the Tarp effector expressed from the endogenous wild type gene. The epitope-tagged Tarp expression plasmid will be used as a template to construct Tarp deletion mutants. The mutant forms will be created in regions that have been biochemically characterized and predicted to be important to the invasion process of the pathogen. Observations on the potential phenotypes of these mutants and the possibility of allelic exchange will also be pursued in the future.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2013
- Identifier
- CFH0004385, ucf:45022
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004385
- Title
- XML: Beyond the Tags.
- Creator
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Meloy, Christopher, Applen, John, Kamrath, Mark, McDaniel, Thomas, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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XML is quickly being utilized in the field of technical communication to transfer information from database to person and company to company. Often communicators will structure information without a second thought of how or why certain tags are used to mark up the information. Because the company or a manual says to use those tags, the communicator does so. However, if professionals want to unlock the true potential of XML for better sharing of information across platforms, they need to...
Show moreXML is quickly being utilized in the field of technical communication to transfer information from database to person and company to company. Often communicators will structure information without a second thought of how or why certain tags are used to mark up the information. Because the company or a manual says to use those tags, the communicator does so. However, if professionals want to unlock the true potential of XML for better sharing of information across platforms, they need to understand the effects the technology using XML as well as political and cultural factors have on the tags being used. This thesis reviewed literature from multiple fields utilizing XML to find how tag choices can be influenced. XML allows for the sharing of information across multiple platforms and databases. Because of this efficiency, XML is utilized by many technologies. Often communicators must tag information so that the technologies can find the marked up information; therefore, technologies like single sourcing, data mining, and knowledge management influence the types of tags created. Additionally, cultural and political influences are analyzed to see how they play a role in determining what tags are used and created for specific documents. The thesis concludes with predictions on the future of XML and the technological, political, and cultural influences associated with XML tag sets based on information found within the thesis.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2011
- Identifier
- CFE0004138, ucf:49067
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004138
- Title
- TREEFROG (HYLA SQUIRELLA) RESPONSES TO RANGELAND MANAGEMENT IN SEMI-TROPICAL FLORIDA, USA.
- Creator
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Windes, Kathryn, Fauth, John, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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As urban areas expand, agricultural lands become increasingly important habitat for many species. Compared to some types of agricultural land-use, ranchlands provide vast expanses of minimally modified habitat that support many threatened and endangered species. Conservation biologists can promote ecologically sound management approaches by quantifying the effects of agricultural practices on resident species. I examined the effects of pasture management, cattle grazing, and landscape...
Show moreAs urban areas expand, agricultural lands become increasingly important habitat for many species. Compared to some types of agricultural land-use, ranchlands provide vast expanses of minimally modified habitat that support many threatened and endangered species. Conservation biologists can promote ecologically sound management approaches by quantifying the effects of agricultural practices on resident species. I examined the effects of pasture management, cattle grazing, and landscape characteristics on both adult and larval treefrogs in a ranchland in south-central Florida. I experimentally determined optimal deployment of artificial treefrog shelters constructed of polyvinylchloride (PVC) pipe to efficiently sample adult treefrogs (Chapter 1). Seventy-two shelters were hung on oak trees (Quercus virginiana) and cabbage palm trees (Sabal palmetto) with smooth trunks or boots (residual palm fronds), at all possible combinations of three heights (2, 3, and 4 m), four compass directions (N, S, E, and W) and two water levels (with or without 10 cm). Shelter residence was completely dominated by the Squirrel Treefrog, Hyla squirella (N = 65). Significantly fewer H. squirella were found in shelters on palms with boots than on smooth palms or oak trees (0.29 ± 0.21 [mean ± 1 SE hereinafter] versus 1.3 ± 0.21 and 1.1 ± 0.21, respectively), and shelters with water had slightly more H. squirella than those without (1.5 ± 0.19 versus 0.88 ± 0.19, respectively). Orientation and height did not affect the number of treefrogs encountered; thus, the optimal protocol is to deploy shelters on either smooth palms or oak trees, with water, at 2 m height for easy sampling, and in random compass orientations. I used this protocol to sample H. squirella in woodlots surrounding twelve wetlands and examined how time, frog stage and sex, and landscape features influenced treefrog survival, recapture and site fidelity (Chapter 2). I deployed 15 shelters/ha of woodlot within a 100 m buffer around each wetland. I sampled shelters three times during the fall breeding season, removed all shelters to force frogs to overwinter in natural refugia, and replaced shelters for the final spring sampling. During sampling periods, I sexed, measured, and individually marked each frog using visual implant elastomer (VIE) tags. I used Program MARK to build linear models that included either gender group (female, male or juvenile) or life history stage (adult, juvenile) and either time (sampling interval 1, 2, or 3) or season (fall, spring). I used the most informative model as a null model to assess effects of landscape covariates on survival and recapture. Females had higher survival than either males or juveniles, for which estimates were similar (0.867 vs 0.741 and 0.783, respectively). Survival did not vary over time, although there was some support for an effect of season, with lower survival during the final over-wintering period than in the fall intervals (relative variable importance: group = 0.730; stage = 0.134; time = 0.200; season = 0.310). Adults had higher recapture rates than juveniles (average recapture 0.214 vs 0.102), and recapture for both stages varied over time, with highest recapture in sampling interval two (relative variable importance: group = 0.262; stage = 0.514; time = 0.513; season = 0.229). Hyla squirella was extremely site loyal; no individuals moved between sampling sites, and 95% of recaptured individuals were in their original shelter. Strong terrestrial site fidelity calls into question the traditional ÂÂ"ponds as patchesÂÂ" metapopulation view of treefrog population dynamics. Area of woodlot within 250 m was the most important landscape variable in explaining additional variation in both survival and recapture. Frogs had higher survival and lower recapture in larger woodlots, indicating that intact, contiguous woodlots are higher quality habitat than more fragmented woodlots. Neither survival nor recapture varied with wetland grazing treatments or between pasture types. Finally, I experimentally assessed the effects of cattle grazing and pasture management on larval H. squirella. I selected four wetlands: two in semi-natural pastures (SN) and two in intensively managed pastures (IM). One wetland in each pasture type was fenced so that it was released from cattle grazing (R). I collected three clutches of H. squirella eggs (Clutches A, B, and C) and reared tadpoles in the laboratory until Gosner stage 25. In each wetland, I deployed a total of 50 tadpoles from each clutch into 105 L pens constructed of plastic laundry baskets and mesh window screening. Clutch significantly affected tadpole survival, with Clutch A having the highest percent survival, followed by Clutch B and finally Clutch C (41.66, 32.11 – 53.95 [mean, 95% confidence limits hereinafter]; 9.00, 6.76 – 11.88; 2.89, 2.02 – 4.01, respectively). Wetland type also affected survival, with SN wetlands supporting significantly higher survival than IM wetlands (SN-R: 53.95, 32.88 – 88.13; SN-G: 18.95, 11.30 – 31.36 vs IM-R: 7.32, 4.13 – 12.49; IM-G: 1.09, 0.29 – 2.39). Genetic variation in survival confirms the potential for H. squirella to adapt to rangeland management, but extremely low survival of some clutches indicates that few clutches may be able to survive in low quality wetlands, such as IM-G wetlands. Higher survival in SN pasture wetlands suggest this is a superior habitat and future management objectives should conserve semi-natural pastures and limit further modification of intensively managed pastures, including removing woodlots near wetlands.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2010
- Identifier
- CFE0003178, ucf:48592
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0003178
- Title
- Describing Images by Semantic Modeling using Attributes and Tags.
- Creator
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Mahmoudkalayeh, Mahdi, Shah, Mubarak, Sukthankar, Gita, Rahnavard, Nazanin, Zhang, Teng, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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This dissertation addresses the problem of describing images using visual attributes and textual tags, a fundamental task that narrows down the semantic gap between the visual reasoning of humans and machines. Automatic image annotation assigns relevant textual tags to the images. In this dissertation, we propose a query-specific formulation based on Weighted Multi-view Non-negative Matrix Factorization to perform automatic image annotation. Our proposed technique seamlessly adapt to the...
Show moreThis dissertation addresses the problem of describing images using visual attributes and textual tags, a fundamental task that narrows down the semantic gap between the visual reasoning of humans and machines. Automatic image annotation assigns relevant textual tags to the images. In this dissertation, we propose a query-specific formulation based on Weighted Multi-view Non-negative Matrix Factorization to perform automatic image annotation. Our proposed technique seamlessly adapt to the changes in training data, naturally solves the problem of feature fusion and handles the challenge of the rare tags. Unlike tags, attributes are category-agnostic, hence their combination models an exponential number of semantic labels. Motivated by the fact that most attributes describe local properties, we propose exploiting localization cues, through semantic parsing of human face and body to improve person-related attribute prediction. We also demonstrate that image-level attribute labels can be effectively used as weak supervision for the task of semantic segmentation. Next, we analyze the Selfie images by utilizing tags and attributes. We collect the first large-scale Selfie dataset and annotate it with different attributes covering characteristics such as gender, age, race, facial gestures, and hairstyle. We then study the popularity and sentiments of the selfies given an estimated appearance of various semantic concepts. In brief, we automatically infer what makes a good selfie. Despite its extensive usage, the deep learning literature falls short in understanding the characteristics and behavior of the Batch Normalization. We conclude this dissertation by providing a fresh view, in light of information geometry and Fisher kernels to why the batch normalization works. We propose Mixture Normalization that disentangles modes of variation in the underlying distribution of the layer outputs and confirm that it effectively accelerates training of different batch-normalized architectures including Inception-V3, Densely Connected Networks, and Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks while achieving better generalization error.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2019
- Identifier
- CFE0007493, ucf:52640
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007493
- Title
- MODELING, DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF ORTHOGONAL AND PSUEDO-ORTHOGONAL FREQUENCY CODED SAW WIRELESS SPREAD SPECTRUM RFID SENSOR TAGS.
- Creator
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Saldanha, Nancy, Malcoha, Donald, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors offer a wireless, passive sensor solution for use in numerous environments where wired sensing can be expensive and infeasible. Single carrier frequency SAW sensor embodiments such as delay lines, and resonators have been used in single sensor environments where sensor identification is not a necessity. The orthogonal frequency coded (OFC) SAW sensor tag embodiment developed at UCF uses a spread spectrum approach that allows interrogation in a multi-sensor...
Show moreSurface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors offer a wireless, passive sensor solution for use in numerous environments where wired sensing can be expensive and infeasible. Single carrier frequency SAW sensor embodiments such as delay lines, and resonators have been used in single sensor environments where sensor identification is not a necessity. The orthogonal frequency coded (OFC) SAW sensor tag embodiment developed at UCF uses a spread spectrum approach that allows interrogation in a multi-sensor environment and provides simultaneous sensing and sensor identification. The SAW device is encoded via proper design of multiple Bragg reflectors at differing frequencies. To enable accurate device design, a model to predict reflectivity over a wide range of electrode metallization ratios and metal thicknesses has been developed and implemented in a coupling of modes (COM) model. The high coupling coefficient, reflectivity and temperature coefficient of delay (TCD) of YZ LiNbO3 makes it an ideal substrate material for a temperature sensor, and the reflectivity model has been developed and verified for this substrate. A new concept of pseudo-orthogonal frequency coded (POFC) SAW sensor tags has been investigated, and with proper design, the POFC SAW reduces device insertion loss and fractional bandwidth compared to OFC. OFC and POFC sensor devices have been fabricated at 250 MHz and 915 MHz using fundamental operation, and 500 MHz and 1.6 GHz using second harmonic operation. Measured device results are shown and compared with the COM simulations using the enhanced reflectivity model. Additionally, the first OFC devices at 1.05 GHz were fabricated on 128o YX LiNbO3 to explore feasibility of the material for future use in OFC sensor applications. Devices at 915 MHz have been fabricated on YZ LiNbO3 and integrated with an antenna, and have then been used in a transceiver system built by Mnemonics, Inc. to wirelessly sense temperature. The first experimental wireless POFC SAW sensor device results and predictions will be presented.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2011
- Identifier
- CFE0003594, ucf:48888
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0003594
- Title
- Chlamydia trachomatis Transformants Show a Significant Reduction in Rates of Invasion upon Removal of Key Tarp Domains.
- Creator
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Parrett, Christopher, Jewett, Travis, Roy, Herve, Moore, Sean, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligate, intracellular bacterium which is known to cause multiple human infections including nongonococcal urethritis (serovars D-K), lymphogranuloma venereum (serovars L1, L2, L3) and trachoma (serovars A-C). The infectious form of the bacterium, called the elementary body (EB), harbors a type III secreted effector known as Tarp (translocated actin recruiting phosphoprotein) which is a candidate virulence factor and is hypothesized to play a role in C....
Show moreChlamydia trachomatis is an obligate, intracellular bacterium which is known to cause multiple human infections including nongonococcal urethritis (serovars D-K), lymphogranuloma venereum (serovars L1, L2, L3) and trachoma (serovars A-C). The infectious form of the bacterium, called the elementary body (EB), harbors a type III secreted effector known as Tarp (translocated actin recruiting phosphoprotein) which is a candidate virulence factor and is hypothesized to play a role in C. trachomatis' ability to invade and grow within epithelial cells in a human host. C. trachomatis L2 Tarp harbors five unique protein domains which include the Phosphorylation Domain, the Proline Rich Domain, the Actin Binding Domain, and two F-Actin Binding Domains. Tarp has been biochemically characterized in vitro, but it has yet to be characterized in vivo due to a lack of genetic tools in C. trachomatis. Through the recent generation of a chlamydial transformation system, we have created transformants which express epitope tagged wild type or mutant Tarp effectors. In this thesis, C. trachomatis transformants expressing Tarp lacking one of the five biochemically defined protein domains were used to examine both bacterial invasion and bacterial development within mammalian host cells. Our results demonstrate that those EBs which harbor mutant Tarp missing either its Phosphorylation Domain or its Actin Binding Domain were less capable of host cell invasion. However, these transformants, once internalized, were capable of normal development when compared to wild type C. trachomatis or C. trachomatis harboring an epitope tagged wild type Tarp effector. These results suggest that transformant expressed Tarp lacking the Phosphorylation Domain or Actin Binding Domain may be acting as a dominant-negative effector protein. Ultimately, these results support the hypothesis that Tarp is a virulence factor for Chlamydia trachomatis. Furthermore, this data indicates that through the manipulation of the Tarp effector, C. trachomatis pathogenesis may be attenuated.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2016
- Identifier
- CFE0006159, ucf:51142
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006159
