Animal welfare is a field of animal science that focuses on evaluating and bettering animal lives by investigating biological functioning, affective states, and ability to live naturally. Animal welfare is a measure that is emerging as a key social concern in animal agriculture and as a result, is becoming more prevalent in industry practices. Nonetheless, […]

In the days leading up to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, Brazilian favelas were heavily sensationalized in international mainstream media as state surveillance, increased policing, and the criminalization of poverty practices were increasingly enforced in favelas for the preparation of the Olympic Games. Yet, from within favelas was the emergence of a very […]

Complexity of human brain is limiting our understanding about the mechanisms that dominate its spontaneous activity. An understanding about the architecture of the axonal fibers in the brain and how they support the functions is crucial when it comes to dealing with brain injuries. A mathematical model, was investigated to gain an understanding about the […]

The first part of this thesis project consist in a study of the structural behavior, mainly focusing on shear resistance, of concrete elements affected by alkali-aggregate reaction (AAR), an internal swelling reaction. Especially in the presence of moisture, this reaction causes the concrete to expand and form internal cracks. This expansion and formation of cracks […]

In 2010 and 2015, the cement industry produced approximately 3.3 and 4.1 billion tons of cement, respectively; hence almost 2 and 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) were emitted, respectively. Given this rapid growth of CO2 emissions together with the importance of cement in concrete strength development, research studies have focused on approaches to […]

Irrigated cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) in arid areas of China receive very high nitrogen inputs of up to 240 kg/ha-1. The crop also receives large inputs of irrigation water mostly under drip irrigation system. This system will be used to determine the contribution of processes of nitrification and denitrification (microbial processes involved in the production of […]

The purpose of the research project to be performed at the Zhejiang University of Technology is the study of the hydraulic characteristics associated with removal of ammonia nitrogen and chemical oxygen demand (COD) from wastewater treated in an anaerobic-aerobic fluidized bed. Most of the current biological denitrification processes are performed by some form of biological […]

Higher levels of income inequality is associated with poor mental and physical health. Often stress is considered the underlying factor creating poorer health outcomes in regions of higher inequality. Even with peaked interest in investigation of income inequality and health there has been no study of the association between income inequality and brain development. Moreover, […]

Rhodnius prolixus is a hemathophagous insect that has served for decades as a model to study insect physiology. Rhodnius prolixus is also a major vector of Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease that kills 45,000 people annually and affects over 8 million people worldwide. The genome of R. prolixus contains ~15,500 predicted protein-coding […]

High dimensional signals may arise in many fields of science. For example, biomedical signals such as EEG and EMG can be modeled by few latent processes measured by a large set of noisy sensors. In such applications the goal is to identify the latent intrinsic variables, which describe the true, intrinsic state of the system, […]

Local site conditions can strongly influence the amplitude and duration of ground motion during an earthquake. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze and understand the mechanical properties of soils. By testing the same samples with similar conditions in different devices we can obtain more accurate results for dynamic loading tests and imitate the stress history […]

Loss of skeletal muscle integrity arising from disease, injury, or genetic conditions is debilitating to human health and happiness. Efforts aimed at identifying drugs that improve skeletal muscle strength and form relies on assays of cells grown within two-dimensional culture dishes. While this format has served the community well for several decades, three-dimensional tissue models […]