Digital Commons Network^™

Synthesis Of Linear Oligo[N]Catenanes Via Orthogonal Metal Templation, Nathan Colley

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Structural Insights Into Host-Pathogen Interactions Of Alphaviruses, Katherine Basore

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Alphaviruses are arthropod-borne, single-stranded positive-sense RNA viruses of the Togaviridae family that infect various vertebrates worldwide in tropical and temperate areas, causing emerging and reemerging diseases in humans. Mature virions are 70 nm in diameter and contain a ~11-kilobase genome encapsidated within a nucleocapsid core, a host-derived lipid bilayer, and an envelope comprised of heterodimers of the glycoproteins E1 and E2 arranged into trimeric spikes with T=4 icosahedral symmetry. Alphaviruses are categorized into two groups based on their clinical symptoms: the arthritogenic alphaviruses, such as chikungunya (CHIKV), Mayaro (MAYV), Ross River (RRV), Semliki Forest (SFV), and O’nyong-nyong (ONNV) viruses, which …

The Decision Maker: Understanding The Role Of Ifrd1 In Urothelial Plasticity And Regeneration, Bisiayo Erionmwon Fashemi

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The bladder urothelium forms a highly specialized watertight barrier to urinary wastes. The urothelium offers an unusual example of tissue regeneration: although urothelial cells do not rapidly turn over under physiological conditions, they have an impressive capacity to regenerate tissue upon injury. Even more remarkable, depending on the modality of injury (sterile, infectious) there appear to be two distinctive modes of urothelial regeneration. We have previously shown that in response to a urinary tract infection (UTI), the urothelial stem cell niche becomes activated and induces rapid restoration of the urothelium, whereas, regeneration following sterile injury does not involve stem cell …

Advances In The Understanding Of Auxin Signaling Through Indirect Mechanisms, Ryan Joseph Emenecker

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The plant hormone auxin is remarkable in its capacity to seemingly regulate all plant growth and developmental processes. Because of this, plants have evolved numerous mechanisms to allow for specific responses to auxin dependent on tissue type and developmental stage. Despite the importance of this specificity, we understand very little with respect to the molecular mechanisms underlying it. In this work, we examine two mechanisms used by plants to modulate auxin response across different tissues. First, we describe our finding that auxin interactions with another plant hormone, abscisic acid, is used as a mechanism to regulate auxin responsiveness in the …

“White Skin By Color, French Canadian By Métissage: Heredity Knows No Color”, Paula Y. Wilson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract of the Thesis

“White Skin by Color, French Canadian by Métissage: Heredity knows no color”

Beta thalassemia (β-thalassemia) is one of the hereditary disorders unique to French Canadians (Braekeleer). This thesis argues for any correlations that may exist between the social and identity structures. These social and identity structures correspond with the close relationship between the French Canadians and β-thalassemia. The study reveals the specific cultural and linguistic isolation of these people and the principal cause of the distinguishing traits of this disorder as obscure amongst this ethnic group. French Canadians slowly but surely migrated from the French-speaking Providence …

Schisms And Boundaries: Islamic Organizations And Sectarianism Between South Asia And Spain, Guillermo Martín-Sáiz

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the September 11 attacks, numerous researchers—from security experts and political scientists to sociologists and anthropologists—have discussed how Islamic organizations establish within mosques across Europe and spread sectarianism among Muslims in the region. While these researchers have provided valuable insights, the dynamics that characterize the relationship between these mosques and organizations and the resulting sectarianism seem far from self-explanatory and remain rather unclear.

This dissertation focuses on how the intersections between global and local phenomena—the so-called War on Terror and Clash of Civilizations on the one hand, and urban transformations and gentrification on the other—shape support for—and opposition to—Islamic organizations …

Engineering Natural Competence Into The Fast-Growing Cyanobacterium Synechococcus Elongatus Utex 2973, Kristen Elizabeth Wendt

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973 is the fastest growing cyanobacterium discovered to date. Using water, carbon dioxide, and light alone, this organism can double in 1.5 hours under optimal conditions. The accelerated doubling exhibited by Synechococcus 2973 makes it a prime candidate to serve as a model photoautotrophic system. However, Synechococcus 2973 lacks one highly desirable feature: it cannot undergo natural transformation. This thesis seeks to engineer this capacity into this fast-growing system in order to create an organism that is both fast growing and naturally competent. Synechococcus 2973 is a unique platform because it is >99% genetically identical to another …

A Mega-Analysis Of Personality Prediction: Robustness And Boundary Conditions, Emorie Danielle Beck

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Decades of research suggest that personality is an important and robust predictor of life outcomes. However, previous investigations of personality-outcome associations have not adequately accounted for reverse causality and selection bias nor have they examined the boundary conditions of the effects, which has left the robustness conditions of personality-outcome associations unknown. The present study examines the robustness and boundary conditions of personality prediction using 14 personality characteristics to predict 14 health, social, education/work, and societal life outcomes across eight different person- and study-level moderators in 10 longitudinal panel studies in a mega-analytic framework coupled with propensity score matching to control …

X-Rays From Warped Black Hole Accretion Disks, Quincy Abarr

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I present the results from my research to better understand accretion onto black holes and neutron stars based on spectropolarimetric X-ray observations.

I have developed a general relativistic ray-tracing code which simulates X-rays from warped accretion disks around black holes.

I used this to predict the polarization of the thermal X-ray emission and the energy spectrum the reflected power law emission.

Both of these can be used to measure properties of black hole systems, such as the spin parameter and the inclination of the observer to its spin axis.

My results enable the measurement of these parameters …

Sustainable Diets For Planetary Health: A Study Of Indigenous Based Agri-Food Systems In A Community Of The Central Highlands Of Ecuador, Carlos Andres Gallegos-Riofrio

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order to explore the psychosocial and agroecological dimensions of sustainable diets and their roles in the rural Andean community of Caliata in the Ecuadorian highlands, I conducted a community-centered participatory mixed-methods study. Thirty-nine focus groups and ten key informant interviews were conducted, recorded, translated, transcribed, and analyzed using three-stage coding. The information was triangulated using participant observation, local records, and descriptive statistics from a survey of 57 female household heads, which included a modified 48-hour dietary recall module. Rural appraisal research assessed agroecological dimensions. Ten purposively selected sites were studied alongside local informants in order to obtain diversity indexes …

The Role Of The Circadian Clock Protein Rev-Erba In Neuroinflammation & Synaptic Health, Percy Griffin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Circadian rhythms are cycles of physiological activity that are conserved across all of life’s taxa – ranging from cyanobacteria to humans - due to their importance. They are conserved to allow organisms to maximize their capacity to obtain resources in their environment. In mammals, light and dark input into the retina is the strongest synchronizer of circadian rhythms. On the molecular level, this tightly regulated transcriptional-translational feedback loop is orchestrated by proteins with cyclical expression. The loss of these proteins has functional consequences on human health and diseases.

Recently, associations have been made between circadian proteins and a host of …

On Staying Open While Seeing Red: Predicting Open-Mindedness And Affect In Politics, Emily Hanson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines whether people who claim to be dispositionally open-minded, do in fact, demonstrate such open-mindedness when they are actually presented with political opinions that run counter to their own. In Study 1, participants rated their partisan identity and dispositional open-mindedness prior to reacting to a series of fictional Facebook posts that varied in both their political ideology and political extremity. The results of this study demonstrated that the most consistent predictor of �open� reactions (operationalized in terms of both cognitive judgements and affective reactions) to each type of Facebook post was whether it was congruent with the participants� …

A Mechanistic And Genomic Analysis Of Molluscum Contagiosum Virus Immune Evasion, Ian Benjamin Harvey

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Molluscum contagiosum virus (MCV) is a common human-specific poxvirus with a proclivity for

infecting children and the immune-compromised. A characteristic MCV infection is restricted to

the epidermal layers of the skin and can persist for weeks to years in an otherwise healthy

individual. The high clinical burden of MCV is at odds with our limited knowledge regarding how

it successfully evades the human immune response, which is in part due to the lack of an animal

model or cell line to propagate the virus. Through this dissertation, we have uncovered and

characterized a novel mechanism by which MC80, a protein …

Production Of Medical Radioisotopes Using Titanium Accelerator Targets, Christopher Shaun Loveless

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Theranostic radiopharmaceuticals enable diagnostic imaging and radionuclide therapy in patients using a single molecular agent labeled with a diagnostic-therapeutic pair (e.g., 68Ga/177Lu) or a theranostic radionuclide (e.g., 131I). This theranostic approach can help inform patient-specific treatment plans and improve clinical outcomes. Radionuclide pairs used in theranostic agents fall into two categories: pseudo matched-pairs (e.g., 68Ga/177Lu) and matched-pairs (e.g., 124I/131I). Pseudo matched-pair radionuclides have similar chemistries and pharmacokinetics when bound to the same bioconjugate molecule. In contrast, identical chemistries and pharmacokinetics can be obtained by using the matched-pair radionuclides.

The isotopes of Sc include two diagnostic radioisotopes, 43Sc & 44Sc, and …

Flux Variability In Gamma-Ray Blazars, Benjamin Groebe

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Blazars, among the most luminous objects in the sky, are extreme members of the class of active galactic nuclei featuring powerful outflows of relativistic particles in the form of jets pointed towards the observer. They display strong flux variability in all observed wavebands and on all observed timescales, with significant changes in flux observed in some sources over periods of as short as minutes. These remarkable observations have led to open questions regarding the nature of particle acceleration in the jets, location of the radiating particles along the jet, and the connection between jet emission and rate of accretion onto …

Pathophysiology And Proteogenomics Of Post-Infectious And Post-Hemorrhagic Hydrocephalus In Infants, Albert M. Isaacs

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Post-infectious (PIH) and post-hemorrhagic (PHH) hydrocephalus occur as sequalae of neonatal sepsis or intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) of prematurity, respectively. Together, PIH and PHH represent the most common form of infantile hydrocephalus, the most common indication for neurosurgery in children globally, and the leading cause of neurological morbidity and mortality worldwide. The lack of understanding of the pathophysiology of PIH and PHH, particularly with regards to the host central nervous system response to the antecedent infection and hemorrhage, perturbation of differentiating neural stems in the ventricular (VZ) and subventricular (SVZ) zones, and damage to periventricular white matter (PVWM) tracts carrying sensorimotor …

Genetic And Functional Characterization Of Novel Host Factors Regulating Virus Infection In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Luis Enrique Sandoval

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Viruses infect the majority of eukaryotic life on the planet and remain a global threat to human health. These pathogens are constrained to intracellular life cycles, as they exploit and rely on host factors and machinery throughout their entire reproduction process. While many of these viral life cycle factors have been reported and studied, our knowledge in the identity and function of these factors remains incomplete and a challenge in fundamental virology and the development of antiviral therapeutics. Caenorhabditis elegans offers an innovative approach for discovering novel host factors required for virus infection in a multicellular and simple model organism. …

Vocational Expectations From Adolescence To Early Adulthood: An Integrative Exploration Of Their Formation, Consistency, Change, And Predictive Value, Leah Hope Schultz

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Career expectations show predictive validity for future job selection and work outcomes above traditional vocational interest inventories, yet are rarely tracked longitudinally. The current study explored characteristics of adolescents’ freely reported career expectations by examining their formation, typical trajectories of their development, individual differences in their development, and their utility as predictors of life outcomes. Though some past research has examined longitudinal trends in adolescents’ career expectations, this was the first study to assign dimensional RIASEC scores to participants’ expected occupations rather than a single categorical code. Using data from 21,444 students in the High School Longitudinal Study (HSLS 09:16; …

New Physics With Ultra-High Energy Neutrinos, Yicong Sui

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ultra-high energy (UHE) astrophysical neutrinos are unique in the sense that they are the

only known particles that could travel through incredibly long distance unattenuated, with

TeV to EeV energy, much higher than the most powerful man-made collider could provide.

The detection of these UHE neutrinos has ushered a new era in neutrino astrophysics, as they

carry important information directly from the inside of energetic astrophysical objects. On the

other hand, from the particle physics point of view, the UHE neutrinos also offer a new window

of opportunity for studying beyond the Standard Model (BSM) phenomena. This is the main …

Mechanisms Of Cross-Presentation By Cdc1s, Derek James Theisen

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Classical dendritic cells (cDCs) are specialized antigen presenting cells that can be divided into distinct subsets based on the types of pathogens they respond to and the type of immune response they generate. The cDC1 subset is specialized in priming CD8 T cell responses through the process of cross-presentation. During cross-presentation, exogenous protein antigens are taken up by cDC1 and presented on MHCI molecules, allowing for the priming of CD8 T cells during conditions when DCs themselves are not directly infected. The ability to cross-present in vivo is unique to cDC1, and is essential for anti-viral responses and rejection of …

“Managing Errors” In The Perception Of Workplace Social Networks: The Case Of Workplace Cooperation, Patrizia Vecchi

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exchanging help with one’s coworkers is essential to survive the demands and pressures of modern organizational life. But individuals have a limited amount of resources to trade for others and thus necessitate to identify reliable exchange partners with whom the exchange can be beneficial. At the same time, individuals have reputations for cooperation to protect that they need to consider in deciding whether and to what extent they should make themselves and their resources available to colleagues. I argue that these evaluations are informed by the structure of the informal exchanges as the individual perceives it, and I examine the …

Safekeeping: Slavery, Capitalism, And The Carceral State In Washington, D.C., 1830-1863, Brandon Wilson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By the 1830s, incarceration emerged as a two-pronged solution for racial control and economic expansion. Local and federal government built jails around the District of Columbia to detain "rowdy negro boys," men, and women, as a means to stymie their rapid movement and fuel a burgeoning domestic slave trade. People were jailed, fined, and often sold to the Deep South, providing a wellspring of capital for enslavers, justified through the lens of criminality. For the crime of petty theft, missing free papers, or in at least one case "using foul language," black people of the Washington region could find themselves …

Peer-Led Team Learning In Calculus-Based Introductory Physics: Implementation And Evaluation, Siera Maia Stoen

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Robust evidence shows that Peer-led Team Learning (PLTL) improves the academic success of college students in introductory Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses. However, further research is needed to gain a fuller understanding of the benefits of PLTL and the aim of this dissertation is to explore two key and understudied questions surrounding the effects of PLTL. First, does deviating from the optimal implementation of PLTL change its effectiveness? Second, what specific outcomes, in addition to academic success (e.g., exam scores), does PLTL improve? This dissertation will provide a fuller picture of the impact of PLTL by examining its …

Regulation Of Yolk Microtubule Dynamics By Dachsous Cadherins, Gina Danielle Castelvecchi

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The process of epiboly, or the thinning and spreading of a tissue, is a well-conserved morphogenetic process. As one of four conserved gastrulation cell movements, epiboly is important to help organize the overall body plan. Epiboly in zebrafish involves the thinning and spreading of the blastoderm originating from the animal pole to completely enclose the yolk. It is driven by a multitude of physical processes that involve the three cell types comprising the embryo: the yolk syncytial layer (YSL), enveloping layer (EVL), and deep cells. These physical aspects can be broadly described as involving cell-cell interactions through adhesion proteins, actomyosin …

The Good, The Brown, And The Healthy: Understanding Non-Thermogenic Brown Adipose Function In Obese Mice, Caryn Nicole Carson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Genetic and environmental factors heavily intertwine to affect metabolic homeostasis. To tease out the exact interactions between these two realms of influence, researchers often compare how one or multiple different inbred mouse strains react to various diets. An observation consistently seen across multiple strains on the same diet can reasonably be considered a general dietary effect, whereas an observation seen only in one strain of mice is more likely to result from a genetic cause or gene-by-environment interaction. Similarly to humans, a high fat diet causes many mouse strains to develop obesity and poor metabolic health, with varying degrees of …

Mechanisms Of Sting-Associated Vasculopathy And Immunodeficiency, Brock Gordon Bennion

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

STING N153S in mice and STING N154S in humans cause spontaneous autoimmunity. Specifically, these mutations reduce the numbers of T cells and NK cells, and cause lung disease. However, mice develop perivascular lung inflammation that is distinct from the pulmonary fibrosis observed in human patients. Viral infections are known to exacerbate autoimmunity and foment pulmonary fibrosis. Therefore, we hypothesized that exposure to a virus may influence STING N153S disease in mice. To test this, we infected STING N153S animals with the gammaherpesvirus family member, gHV68, and found that 14 days post infection pulmonary fibrosis was readily observed by histological staining. …

The Role Of Escrt-Iii-Like Subunit Ist1 In Membrane Trafficking Pathways, Amy Kate Clippinger

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ESCRTs (Endosomal Sorting Complex Required for Transport) are a modular set of proteins with membrane remodeling activities that include the formation and release of intralumenal vesicles (ILVs) to generate multivesicular endosomes. ESCRT-III filaments have an established role in membrane fission for ILV formation and the topologically related processes of viral budding and cytokinesis. Among the 12 ESCRT-III proteins most have established roles in ILV formation, but the cellular roles of IST1 remain elusive. We found that IST1 and another ESCRT-III subunit CHMP1B form filaments that spiral around the outside or cytoplasmic surface of membrane tubules. Consistent with a role in …

The Role Of Cdx4 During Patterning Of Definitive Hemogenic Mesoderm, John Philip Creamer

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current standard of treatment for a variety of hematopoietic malignancies and genetic disorders is allogenic bone marrow transplantation, where donor hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) engraft within the host and give rise to all of them hematopoietic lineages necessary for homeostasis. In many cases, finding a compatible human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matching donor is not possible, due to the large amount of genetic variation at those loci, but with the advent of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), unlimited sources of patient matched cells can be derived. Hematopoietic differentiations of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) have been shown to recapitulate the …

Wavelet Coherence Analysis With An Application Of Brain Images, Yiqian Fang

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Wavelet analysis has become an emerging method in a wide range of applications with non-stationary data. In this work, we apply wavelets to tackle the problem of estimating dynamic association in a collection of multivariate non-stationary time series. Coherence is a common metric for linear dependence across signals. However, it assumes static dependence and does not sufficiently model many biological processes with time-evolving dependence structures. We explore continuous wavelet analysis for modeling and estimating such dynamic dependence under the replicated multivariate time series settings. Wavelet transformation provides a decomposition of signals that localizes in both time and frequency domains, hence …

Modeling Her2 Mutations In Colorectal Cancer Using A Her2 Transgenic Mouse Model And Gastrointestinal Organoids, Elisa Murray

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Amplification or mutations in members of the epidermal growth factor receptor family, such as HER2, have been identified in several human diseases. In particular, mutations in the intracellular kinase domain have been identified in breast, colon, and lung cancers. The Cancer Genome Atlas has identified HER2 mutations or gene amplification in seven percent of colon cancer patients. These mutations are well known to promote enhanced cell growth and transformation of colon cancer cell lines. Previous studies have found HER2 mutations to confer anchorage independent growth and activation of downstream signaling pathways such as MAPK. Although HER2 mutations have been extensively …