Adapting health-risk communication to the specific cultural contexts of diverse populations : an assessment of malaria-treatment programs in Liberia

Drawing on theories of technical communication, rhetoric, literacy, language and culture, and medical anthropology, this dissertation explores how local culture and traditions can be incorporated into health-risk-communication-program design and implementation, including the design and dissemination of health-risk messages. In a modern world with increasing global economic partnerships, mounting health and environmental risks, and cross-cultural collaborations, those who interact with people of different cultures have “a moral obligation to take those cultures seriously, including their social organization and values” (Hahn and Inhorn 10). Paradoxically, at the same time as we must carefully adapt health, safety, and environmental-risk messages to diverse cultures and populations, we must also recognize the increasing extent to which we are all becoming part of one, vast, interrelated global village. This, too, has a significant impact on the ways in which healthcare plans should be designed, communicated, and implemented. Because communicating across diverse cultures requires a system for “bridging the gap between individual differences and negotiating individual realities” (Kim and Gudykunst 50), both administrators and beneficiaries of malaria-treatment-and-control programs (MTCPs) in Liberia were targeted to participate in this study. A total of 105 people participated in this study: 21 MTCP administrators (including designers and implementers) completed survey questionnaires on program design, implementation, and outcomes; and 84 MTCP beneficiaries (e.g., traditional leaders and young adults) were interviewed about their knowledge of malaria and methods for communicating health risks in their tribe or culture. All participants showed a tremendous sense of courage, commitment, resilience, and pragmatism, especially in light of the fact that many of them live and work under dire socioeconomic conditions (e.g., no electricity and poor communication networks). Although many MTCP beneficiaries interviewed for this study had bed nets in their homes, a majority (46.34 percent) used a combination of traditional herbal medicine and Western medicine to treat malaria. MTCP administrators who participated in this study rated the impacts of their programs on reducing malaria in Liberia as moderately successful (61.90 percent) or greatly successful (38.10 percent), and they offered a variety of insights on what they might do differently in the future to incorporate local culture and traditions into program design and implementation. Participating MTCP administrators and beneficiaries differed in their understanding of what “cultural incorporation” meant, but they agreed that using local indigenous languages to communicate health-risk messages was essential for effective health-risk communication. They also suggested that understanding the literacy practices and linguistic cultures of the local people is essential to communicating health risks across diverse cultures and populations.

AN ASSESSMENT OF FLOW REGIME MAPS AND A NUMERICAL HEAT TRANSFER CORRELATION FOR THE STRATIFIED/ANNULAR REGIME OF SHEAR-DRIVEN INTERNAL CONDENSING FLOWS

Several modern-day cooling applications require the incorporation of mini/micro-channel shear-driven flow condensers. There are several design challenges that need to be overcome in order to meet those requirements. The difficulty in developing effective design tools for shear-driven flow condensers is exacerbated due to the lack of a bridge between the physics-based modelling of condensing flows and the current, popular approach based on semi-empirical heat transfer correlations. One of the primary contributors of this disconnect is a lack of understanding caused by the fact that typical heat transfer correlations eliminate the dependence of the heat transfer coefficient on the method of cooling employed on the condenser surface when it may very well not be the case. This is in direct contrast to direct physics-based modeling approaches where the thermal boundary conditions have a direct and huge impact on the heat transfer coefficient values. Typical heat transfer correlations instead introduce vapor quality as one of the variables on which the value of the heat transfer coefficient depends. This study shows how, under certain conditions, a heat transfer correlation from direct physics-based modeling can be equivalent to typical engineering heat transfer correlations without making the same apriori assumptions. Another huge factor that raises doubts on the validity of the heat-transfer correlations is the opacity associated with the application of flow regime maps for internal condensing flows. It is well known that flow regimes influence heat transfer rates strongly. However, several heat transfer correlations ignore flow regimes entirely and present a single heat transfer correlation for all flow regimes. This is believed to be inaccurate since one would expect significant differences in the heat transfer correlations for different flow regimes. Several other studies present a heat transfer correlation for a particular flow regime - however, they ignore the method by which extents of the flow regime is established. This thesis provides a definitive answer (in the context of stratified/annular flows) to: (i) whether a heat transfer correlation can always be independent of the thermal boundary condition and represented as a function of vapor quality, and (ii) whether a heat transfer correlation can be independently obtained for a flow regime without knowing the flow regime boundary (even if the flow regime boundary is represented through a separate and independent correlation). To obtain the results required to arrive at an answer to these questions, this study uses two numerical simulation tools - the approximate but highly efficient Quasi-1D simulation tool and the exact but more expensive 2D Steady Simulation tool. Using these tools and the approximate values of flow regime transitions, a deeper understanding of the current state of knowledge in flow regime maps and heat transfer correlations in shear-driven internal condensing flows is obtained. The ideas presented here can be extended for other flow regimes of shear-driven flows as well. Analogous correlations can also be obtained for internal condensers in the gravity-driven and mixed-driven configuration.

Production of Recombinant Trichoderma Reesei Endoglucanase Protein CEL7B by Using Kluyveromyces Lactis

This research is about producing recombinant Trichoderma reesei endoglucanase Cel7B by using Kluyveromyces lactis, transformed with chromosomally integrated Cel7B cDNA, as a host cell (K. lactis Cel7B). Cel7B is one of the glycoside hydrolyze family of proteins that are produced by T. reesei. Cel7B together with other endoglucanases, exoglucanases, and â-glucosidases hydrolyze cellulose to glucose, which can then be fermented to biofuels or other value-added products. The research objective of this MS project is to examine favorable fermentation conditions for recombinant Cel7B enzyme production and improved activity. Production of enzyme on different types of media was examined, and the activity of the enzyme was measured by using different tools or procedures. The first condition tested for was using different concentrations of galactose as a carbon and energy source; however galactose also acts as a potent promoter of recombinant Cel7B expression in K. lactis Cel7B. The purpose of this method is to determine the relationship between production of enzyme with increasing sugar concentration. The second culture condition test was using different types of media: a complex medium-yeast extract, peptone, galactose (YPGal); a minimal medium-yeast nitrogen base (YNB) with galactose; and a minimal medium with supplement-yeast nitrogen base with casamino acid (YBC), a nitrogen source, with galactose. The third condition was using different types of reactors or fermenters: a small reactor (shake flask) and a larger automated bioreactor (BioFlo 3000 fermenter). The purpose of this method is to determine the quantity of the protein produced by using different environments of production. Different tools to determine the presence and activity of Cel7B enzyme were used. For the presence of enzyme, sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) was used. Secondly, to detect enzyme activity, the carboxymethyl cellulose- 3,5-dinitrosalicylic acid (CMC- DNS) assay was employed. SDS-PAGE showed that the enzyme band was at 67 kDa, which is larger than native Cel7B (52 kDa.), likely due to over glycolylation during post-translational processing in K. lactis. For the different types of media used in our fermentation, recombinant Cel7B was produced from yeast extract peptone galactose (YPGal), and yeast nitrogen base with casamino acid (YBC), but was not produced and no activity was detected from yeast nitrogen base (YNB). This experiment concluded that the Cel7B production requires the amino acid resources as part of fermentation medium. In experiments where recombinant Cel7B net activity was measured at 1% galactose initial concentration in YPGal and YBC media, higher enzyme activity was detected for the complex medium YPGal. Higher activity of recombinant Cel7B was detected for flask culture in 2% galactose compared to 1% galactose for YBC medium. Two bioreactor experiments were conducted under these culture conditions at 30°C, pH 7.0, dissolved oxygen of 50% of saturation, and 250 rpm agitation (variable depending on DO control) K. lactis-Cel7B yeast growth curves were quite reproducible with maximum optical density (O.D) at 600 nm of between 7 and 8 (when factoring dilution of 10:1). Galactose was consumed rapidly during the first 15 hours of bioreactor culture and recombinant Cel7B started to appear in the culture at 10-15 hours and increased thereafter up to a maximum of between 0.9 and 1.6 mg/mL/hr in these experiments. These bioreactor enzyme activity results are much higher than comparable experiments conducted with flask-scale culture (0.5 mg/mL/hr). In order to achieve the highest recombinant Cel7B activity from batch culture of K. lactis-Cel7B, based on this research it is best to use a complex medium, 2% initial galactose concentration, and an automated bioreactor where good control of temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen can be achieved.