Digital Commons Network^™

Progress Toward The Synthesis Of A Truncated Ergoline, Ryan D. Enck, Matthew Hart

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

Many people are diagnosed with thyroid related disorders, and many more are unaware of their existing thyroid problems. T1AM, a naturally occurring metabolite of the thyroid hormone (TH), has been shown to activate the Trace Amine Associated Receptor 1 (TAAR1) and exhibits effects that oppose those of the TH. It is, therefore, likely that there is regulatory relationship between T1AM and the TH. In order to better understand this relationship, a compound must be developed that will effectively block TAAR1. Previously our lab has examined the two different mirror images of apomorphine. One of the mirror images inhibited and the …

Modeling Problem Solving: Creating And Evaluating, Kaitlin M. Downey, Nathan Barrows

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

The purpose of this project was to create novice-level screencasts and to investigate students’ perceptions and usage of them. A survey of 61 general chemistry students revealed polarity, Lewis structures, molecular geometry, and bond polarity to be topics of greatest concern. Over 25 screencasts were created using Camtasia Studio software and a Dell TabletPC. A blog (http://mi-chemed.net) was created to host the tutorials and monitor student usage. After students registered and logged in to the blog, their viewing patterns were recorded. They were encouraged to comment on the content and technical features of the videos (e.g. animations). Online comments and …

Water Evaporation From Atmospheric Aerosols, Patrick Louden, Christopher Lawrence

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

With the recent discovery of the ubiquity of organic material in tropospheric aerosols, it has been postulated that the rates of water evaporation and condensation into the aerosols could be affected by thin surfactant films, which could ultimately affect cloud formation. Nathanson et al. have begun to study the effect of water evaporation from sulfuric acid solutions through the short-chain surfactant, butanol. They have found that a nearly full monolayer of butanol fails to reduce water evaporation from the acid. This unexpected result raises many questions about the mechanism of water evaporation. We used molecular modeling to help answer some …

Capillary Electrophoresis Based Microbial Detection And Separation, Ryan Nelson, Andrew Lantz

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) represents a significant tool for the separation of microorganisms as well as the detection and isolation of Candida albicans (CA) fungus in human blood. There currently exists few rapid means by which biological pathogens can be tested, at low concentration, in blood, and other organic matrices. Other common chromatographic techniques, such as GC, HPLC, IR and MS do not have the capability of analyzing living microorganisms, nor the ability to separate them with any precision. CE offers the rare opportunity to separate individual cells by the charge to size ratio as well as their isoelectric focusing point …

Conversion Of Cellulose To Value Added-Chemicals, Shane Mcgrath, Dalila Kovacs, Jim Krikke

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

Biomass-derived feedstock is of growing importance in the development of new synthetic pathways for commodity and specialty chemicals. Utilizing basic catalytic concepts such as hydrolysis, dehydration, isomerisation, and other common transformations of sugar in biomass conversion has already produced significant advances in the fundamental understanding of biomass conversion.

Despite the progress that has already been made, very few studies are dedicated to understanding the fundamentals of cellulose conversion under heterogeneous catalytic conditions. This is due to the complexity of both the catalytic steps at the metal/support interface and the structure of cellulose itself, being a highly functionalized homopolymer, characterized by …