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High School Influences On College Enrollment And College Graduation Of Dallas Independent School District 2002 Graduates, Linda K. Johnson Jan 2011

High School Influences On College Enrollment And College Graduation Of Dallas Independent School District 2002 Graduates, Linda K. Johnson

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

The overarching goal for American education under President Barack Obama has been to increase college enrollment and completion rates. The pressure to achieve this goal has been keenly felt in the postsecondary community, especially as federal and state funding have become increasingly tied to achieving higher college completion rates. Yet the adequate preparation of students lies primarily in the secondary system, and the literature contains many statistics that support the view that few students are adequately prepared, especially those who are educated in urban public school systems. The challenge was to determine actions that can be implemented by school districts …

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Executive Compensation And Idiosyncratic Risk, Hum Nath Panta Jan 2011

Executive Compensation And Idiosyncratic Risk, Hum Nath Panta

Finance and Real Estate Dissertations - Archive

Executive compensation is a very heavily researched area in finance, accounting and management over the last three decades. However, there are several inconclusive issues. One of them is the relationship between idiosyncratic risk and executive compensation. Prior research findings on this issue are inconclusive. In this context, this dissertation analyzes the effects of idiosyncratic risk on executive compensation. This research seeks to discover and document the role of idiosyncratic risk on all top executive compensation, CEO compensation and non-CEO executive compensation. This study will begin with an extensive review of prior studies on executive pay to identify the determinants of …

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Engaging Over-Age Participants In Urban Learning And Work Environments: An Empirical Demonstration Of Macro-Level Efficiency Through Effective At-Risk Student And Teacher Recovery, J. Randall Farmer Jan 2011

Engaging Over-Age Participants In Urban Learning And Work Environments: An Empirical Demonstration Of Macro-Level Efficiency Through Effective At-Risk Student And Teacher Recovery, J. Randall Farmer

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

This study reviews data-driven appraisals of No Child Left Behind (2001) as well as the nation's at-risk student- and teacher dropout problems. Little, if any, evidence is found that troubled, over-age teens or struggling, first-year educators are overly concerned with the enhancement of federal and state accountability measures, rigorous performance standards, college preparatory curricula, or formative or summative assessments - let alone the academic credentials, continuing education credits, or even combined years of work experience of their teachers and colleagues. Rather, at-risk students and teachers in the nation's urban learning and work environments are most concerned with their want and …

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Crisis In Police Recruitment: Public Service Motivation And Changes In Generational Preferences, G. M. Cox Jan 2011

Crisis In Police Recruitment: Public Service Motivation And Changes In Generational Preferences, G. M. Cox

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

The purpose of this research project was to determine if a downward trend exists in the number of people who are motivated to become police officers and to explore whether there has been a shift in motivational factors among the three major generational groups to serve as police officers. Furthermore, it hypothesized that incumbents in the police service, across generational lines, have changed in their public service motivation to serve as police officers.The research project utilized two survey instruments. The first survey focused on police chiefs and human resource directors. The primary objective for surveying this group was to determine …

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Too Big To Fail: Economic Voting And The 2008 Election, Aman Batheja Jan 2011

Too Big To Fail: Economic Voting And The 2008 Election, Aman Batheja

Economics Theses - Archive

The onset of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression just months before the 2008 presidential election is thought to have played a significant role in voting behavior. Yet the extent to which voters followed traditional economic voting patterns in choosing between Barack Obama and John McCain is less clear. Using exit poll data merged with state-level aggregate economic data, we search for evidence that negative shifts in economic status made voters more likely to support Obama. After controlling for various demographic, partisan, and geographic variables, we find that voters who believed that the economy was the top issue …

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Contracting Institutions And Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence From The U.S. Mulitnationals, Gregory Phelan Jan 2011

Contracting Institutions And Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence From The U.S. Mulitnationals, Gregory Phelan

Economics Theses - Archive

Development Economics studies have highlighted the importance of both property rights and contracting institutions for attracting foreign direct investment. However, to the best of our knowledge, none of the previous studies has examined the separate FDI impacts of these institutions. Using country level data, this thesis examines the effects that both contracting and property rights institutions have on United States multinationals' foreign direct investment decisions. We control for potential endogeneity by using indigenous population density and country latitude, along with a British legal origin dummy variable as instruments for property rights and contracting institutions, respectively. We find strong evidence that …

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The Integration Of The Economics Profession Across Countries : Evidence From Paper Citations, Minjie Guo Jan 2011

The Integration Of The Economics Profession Across Countries : Evidence From Paper Citations, Minjie Guo

Economics Theses - Archive

By relating country-level journal article citation patterns to country-level proxies for various policies, the current project attempts to uncover possible causal relationships between them. The paper measures patterns of knowledge flows across counties and over time using the citation information from the Social Sciences Citation Index for 174 Economics journals from 1975 to 2006. The results indicate evidence that economic openness and the adoption of the Internet have a positive effect on the spread of knowledge.

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The Emergence Of Women City Managers In Texas In The Late 20th Century And The Early 21st Century, Helen Kay Godbey Jan 2011

The Emergence Of Women City Managers In Texas In The Late 20th Century And The Early 21st Century, Helen Kay Godbey

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

The first generation of women city managers in the late 20th Century and early 21st Century have one thing in common: all were initially mentored and promoted by men. Like survivors of a Texas tornado that huddle in the closet and then peek out to see what is left of the world around them, these few women who became the first generation of assistant or city managers began to look around for other women who had also done so. Even though there were just a few, they began to mentor each other. I would propose that an enlightened public administration …

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Cultural And Historic Preservation Planning In Small Cities And Suburbs: A Study Of A Cultural Asset Inventory Of Kennedale, Texas, Gregory S. Collins Jan 2011

Cultural And Historic Preservation Planning In Small Cities And Suburbs: A Study Of A Cultural Asset Inventory Of Kennedale, Texas, Gregory S. Collins

Planning Theses - Archive

This thesis examines how smaller communities, which often lack the financial resources and the so-called "high culture" or marketable culture found in larger cities, can overcome challenges and develop cultural and historic preservation programs that perform the social function of unifying a community while also providing economic development opportunities that are connected to the community. The paper discusses "authenticity," and how this stated goal of city planners is actually a complex and contested concept rather than an objective standard that can be used to evaluate cultural planning programs. The paper reviews a number of cultural planning methods discussed in the …

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Closing The Gap In Higher Education: African American Male College Students Perceptions Of Advising At A Two Year College, Terry L. Aaron Jan 2011

Closing The Gap In Higher Education: African American Male College Students Perceptions Of Advising At A Two Year College, Terry L. Aaron

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

The attrition of minority students is fast becoming a salient issue in higher education. Academic advising has long been viewed as a determinant of participation, persistence and success. Persistence focuses on retention. Participation and success are two objectives of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's initiative "Closing the Gap." This study used quantitative and qualitative methods to examine African American male college students' (AAMCSs) perceptions of advising center practices, advisor practices and affinity factors and their influence on participation and persistence. Data collected from a sample of 225 AAMCSs was analyzed to determine if academic advising was indeed a tool …

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Data Sharing Between Transportation Planning And Public Health: Issues And Opportunities Using A Regional Eco-Logical Framework, Michele Berry Jan 2011

Data Sharing Between Transportation Planning And Public Health: Issues And Opportunities Using A Regional Eco-Logical Framework, Michele Berry

Planning Theses - Archive

Transportation planning has been shown to strongly impact public health yet collaboration and data or information sharing between the two communities is lacking. The Eco-Logical approach is a potential solution designed to advance transportation planning through an integrated planning process that includes other stakeholders. However, since the Eco-Logical approach provides no guidance on forming collaborations, network theory will be used to fill this hole. Both the Eco-Logical approach and network theory place heavy emphasis on information sharing and data exchange. This study will examine the current status of data sharing between transportation planning and public health through an analysis of …

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Engaging Over-Age Participants In Urban Learning And Work Environments: An Empirical Demonstration Of Macro-Level Efficiency Through Effective At-Risk Student And Teacher Recovery, J. Randall Farmer Jan 2011

Engaging Over-Age Participants In Urban Learning And Work Environments: An Empirical Demonstration Of Macro-Level Efficiency Through Effective At-Risk Student And Teacher Recovery, J. Randall Farmer

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

This study reviews data-driven appraisals of No Child Left Behind (2001) as well as the nation's at-risk student- and teacher dropout problems. Little, if any, evidence is found that troubled, over-age teens or struggling, first-year educators are overly concerned with the enhancement of federal and state accountability measures, rigorous performance standards, college preparatory curricula, or formative or summative assessments - let alone the academic credentials, continuing education credits, or even combined years of work experience of their teachers and colleagues. Rather, at-risk students and teachers in the nation's urban learning and work environments are most concerned with their want and …

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Examining Income Polarization Indices In The Context Of `World City Thesis': An Analysis Of Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Chawana Mwangeka Jan 2011

Examining Income Polarization Indices In The Context Of `World City Thesis': An Analysis Of Large U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Chawana Mwangeka

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

For more than three decades, the `global city thesis' or the `world city thesis' has attracted scholarly contributions from urban planners, geographers, sociologists and urban political economists interested in socioeconomic and spatial polarization in mega cities. Although with limited empirical evidence, these scholars in general are in agreement that globalization is an underlying factor of growing income inequalities and socio-spatial polarization found in these urban areas. On the other hand, the field of welfare economics has traditionally associated income inequalities with factors that have attracted an avalanche of literature since 1950s. In the face of growing income inequalities which some …

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Crisis In Police Recruitment: Public Service Motivation And Changes In Generational Preferences, G. M. Cox Jan 2011

Crisis In Police Recruitment: Public Service Motivation And Changes In Generational Preferences, G. M. Cox

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

The purpose of this research project was to determine if a downward trend exists in the number of people who are motivated to become police officers and to explore whether there has been a shift in motivational factors among the three major generational groups to serve as police officers. Furthermore, it hypothesized that incumbents in the police service, across generational lines, have changed in their public service motivation to serve as police officers.The research project utilized two survey instruments. The first survey focused on police chiefs and human resource directors. The primary objective for surveying this group was to determine …

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Mitigating Climate Change At The Municipal Scale: American Urban Planning At A Crossroads, Kent L. Hurst Jan 2011

Mitigating Climate Change At The Municipal Scale: American Urban Planning At A Crossroads, Kent L. Hurst

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

The failure of international negotiations toward a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol to limit global greenhouse gas emissions has highlighted not only the problematic associated with a global agreement on such a scientifically and politically complex issue, but also the importance of sub-national action in lieu of such an agreement. This is especially true in the United States where any national climate protection framework seems unlikely in the foreseeable future. In the absence of any such policy leadership from Washington, it is increasingly falling to states, regional organizations, and municipalities to craft emissions reduction strategies that will contribute meaningfully …

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Closing The Gap In Higher Education: African American Male College Students Perceptions Of Advising At A Two Year College, Terry L. Aaron Jan 2011

Closing The Gap In Higher Education: African American Male College Students Perceptions Of Advising At A Two Year College, Terry L. Aaron

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

The attrition of minority students is fast becoming a salient issue in higher education. Academic advising has long been viewed as a determinant of participation, persistence and success. Persistence focuses on retention. Participation and success are two objectives of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's initiative "Closing the Gap." This study used quantitative and qualitative methods to examine African American male college students' (AAMCSs) perceptions of advising center practices, advisor practices and affinity factors and their influence on participation and persistence. Data collected from a sample of 225 AAMCSs was analyzed to determine if academic advising was indeed a tool …

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Evaluating Beat Structure And Truck Allocation For The Tarrant County Courtesy Patrol, Farzad Daneshgar Jan 2011

Evaluating Beat Structure And Truck Allocation For The Tarrant County Courtesy Patrol, Farzad Daneshgar

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

Non-recurring congestion poses a significant concern to urban freeway drivers. Effective incident management relies on many tools to lessen the overall impact of crashes, road debris, and stalled/disabled vehicles. While many of the tools are based in a region's traffic management center, many urban areas have adopted freeway service patrol (FSP) programs that patrol the freeway network searching for incidents, providing aid to motorists, and assisting with incident management and clearance. While FSP operations can be assessed in terms of response and clearance times, FSP management must consider the beat structure and fleet allocation. This investigation considers response time and …

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Characterization And Evaluation Of Gas Generation Potential Of Municipal Solid Waste From A Closed Section Of A Landfill, Sonia Samir Jan 2011

Characterization And Evaluation Of Gas Generation Potential Of Municipal Solid Waste From A Closed Section Of A Landfill, Sonia Samir

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

At present, there are more than 40 closed municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills around DFW and North Texas. A closed landfill might have potential benefits for gas recovery and utilization due to the presence of organic components in the MSW. The decomposition of organic components of MSW produces gas. The decomposition process after landfill closure may continue for 20 to 100 years depending on the operational practice of the landfill. However, to evaluate the methane potential of a closed landfill it is important to have the understanding of the characteristics of the existing or decomposed landfill wastes. The current study …

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Micromotion And Scarring Do Not Contribute To Failure Of Regenerative Peripheral Neural Interfacing, Nivedita Khobragade Jan 2011

Micromotion And Scarring Do Not Contribute To Failure Of Regenerative Peripheral Neural Interfacing, Nivedita Khobragade

Bioengineering Theses - Archive

Neuroprosthetics facilitate amputees with motor function restoration by interfacing nervous system with artificial limb and enabling control of the prosthetic device by volitional thought. Though such neurointerfacing provides dexterity nearly mimicking natural limb agility, the clinical viability of such prosthetics is limited by the lack of long-term reliability. In central nervous system, these implants fail due to foreign body reaction and glial scar formation around the implant. The cause of decrease in active sites of interfacing in peripheral nervous system, which is less invasive than central nervous system implantation, has not been established. Recently an open architecture, regenerative peripheral neural …

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The Last Planner System For Realiable Project Delivery, Alok Patel Jan 2011

The Last Planner System For Realiable Project Delivery, Alok Patel

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

The Last Planner System is a production planning system designed to produce predictable work flow and rapid learning in programming, design, construction and commissioning of projects. The Last Planner System (LPS) is developed by Glenn Ballard and Greg Howell as a production planning and control system to assist in smoothing variations in construction work flow, developing planning foresight, and reducing uncertainty in construction operations. The LPS challenges the old practices of developing schedules and pushing them from top management down to frontline people to execute. It advocates collaborative planning, performing collaborative constraint analysis, and learning from planning failures. The LPS …

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Determination Of Geotechnical Properties Of Clayey Soil From Resistivity Imaging (Ri), Golam Kibria Jan 2011

Determination Of Geotechnical Properties Of Clayey Soil From Resistivity Imaging (Ri), Golam Kibria

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

The use of resistivity imaging (RI) in the subsurface investigation has increased in recent years. RI is a non destructive method and provides a continuous image of the subsurface. Based on the electrical conduction phenomenon of soil, spatial and temporal moisture variation and he-terogeneity of subsurface can be evaluated from RI. However, only qualitative evaluation of sub-surface can be obtained from RI. The correlation between RI results and geotechnical engineering properties of soils has become an important issue for rigorous use of this method in site in-vestigation. The current study attempts to develop the relationship and correlations between geo-technical parameters …

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Framing The Flu, Jennifer Lynn Mcmillen Jan 2011

Framing The Flu, Jennifer Lynn Mcmillen

Marketing Dissertations - Archive

Since Tversky and Kahneman's article on prospect theory in 1979, there have been many articles published on framing with mixed success in finding preference shifts and in which frame subjects are most persuaded. Framing has been a source of much research and debate in extant literature, regarding whether the effect even exists and if it does, what accentuates or mitigates the effects found. Using the flu as the context, this article incorporates sad versus happy moods and emotional versus rational appeals to highlight when the most persuasive frame changes and to provide practitioners a more complete picture on the most …

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Methodology Of Citrate-Based Biomaterial Development And Application, M. Richard Tran Jan 2011

Methodology Of Citrate-Based Biomaterial Development And Application, M. Richard Tran

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Biomaterials play central roles in modern strategies of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Attempts to find tissue-engineered solutions to cure various injuries or diseases have led to an enormous increase in the number of polymeric biomaterials over the past decade. The breadth of new materials arises from the multiplicity of anatomical locations, cell types, and mode of application, which all place application-specific requirements on the biomaterial. Unfortunately, many of the currently available biodegradable polymers are limited in their versatility to meet the wide range of requirements for tissue engineering. Therefore, a methodology of biomaterial development, which is able to address …

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Accountability In Texas: Predicting District Ratings Based On Indicators, Sarah Fitzhugh Jan 2011

Accountability In Texas: Predicting District Ratings Based On Indicators, Sarah Fitzhugh

Educational Leadership & Policy Studies Dissertations - Archive

The major purpose for the study was to determine if a relationship existed between district ratings, as assigned by the Texas Education Agency, and population groups, funding, and class size. The variables utilized for this study included the following number of student ethnicity/ race (African American, Hispanic, and White) utilized in a district rating as well as, the Economically Disadvantaged group indicator. The groups were coded to indicate each district that had a particular student group applied towards the district's accountability rating. It was then determined how many race/ ethnicity indicators counted in a rating for each district. In addition, …

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Investigation Of Neural Correlates Between Perception Of Pain And Hemodynamic Response Measured In The Pre-Frontal Cortex Using Functional Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy, Venkatagiri Krishnamurthy Jan 2011

Investigation Of Neural Correlates Between Perception Of Pain And Hemodynamic Response Measured In The Pre-Frontal Cortex Using Functional Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy, Venkatagiri Krishnamurthy

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Perception of pain is multi-dimensional, comprising three major psychological dimensions: sensory-discriminative, motivational-affective and cognitive-evaluative. This dissertation study investigates the cognitive evaluation of pain, by acquiring functional Near Infra-Red Spectroscopic (fNIRS) measurements from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) areas, during mechanical and thermal pain stimulation induced on the subject's volar forearm. Clustered-wise analysis on the oxy-hemoglobin (HbO) response from specific PFC areas was followed by categorizing the resulting HbO response into early (0.1-12sec) and late (12.1-25sec) phases. For each respective phase, regression analysis was carried between the HbO-derived parameters and behaviorally measured pain rating. The major findings of this study include: (1) …

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Novel Applications Of Compressed Sensing To Magnetic Resonance Imaging And Spectroscopy, Sairam Geethanath Jan 2011

Novel Applications Of Compressed Sensing To Magnetic Resonance Imaging And Spectroscopy, Sairam Geethanath

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

In this work, three novel applications of compressed sensing to MRI have been developed and implemented which accomplish reduction in acquisition time, thereby also enabling increased spatial and/or temporal resolution. The first application is for reducing the acquisition time of conventional 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI), which requires alongeracquisition time than conventional MRI. The implementation involved exploiting the inherent sparsity of the MRSI data in the wavelet domain by the use of Daubechies wavelet. This was demonstrated on an in vitro phantom, 6 healthy human brain MRSI data sets, 2 brain and prostate cancer data sets. The reconstructions were …

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Novel ¹H Mr Probes To Interrogate The Tumor Microenvironment, Praveen Kumar Gulaka Jan 2011

Novel ¹H Mr Probes To Interrogate The Tumor Microenvironment, Praveen Kumar Gulaka

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

The term "tumor microenvironment" usually refers to the description of the physiological and metabolic conditions within solid tumors (primary or metastatic), and is significantly different from that of normal tissues. Assessment of factors like pH, tissue oxygen tension (pO2) and gene expression in the tumor microenvironment and the ability to image them in vivo can provide useful prognostic information. For example, hypoxia (low pO2), typically distributed heterogeneously in solid tumors, is known to affect both radiation sensitivity and the development of metastases thereby influencing the response to treatment. This dissertation research focuses on the evaluation of novel probes to interrogate …

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Wireless Closed-Loop Feedback Systems For Automatic Detection And Suppression Of Nociceptive Signals, Aydin Farajidavar Jan 2011

Wireless Closed-Loop Feedback Systems For Automatic Detection And Suppression Of Nociceptive Signals, Aydin Farajidavar

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Chronic pain is an important public health issue. Several approaches have been implemented for management of chronic pain, including surgical implantation of neurostimulators. Neurostimulators have been used in clinics for spinal cord implantation and they have been suitable for relieving certain types of pains, such as neuropathic pain in leg or arm, complex regional pain, and refractory angina. The stimulation at spinal cord has little relieving effects on syndromes such as facial pain, cluster headache, phantom limb pain, and post stroke pain. For treating such syndromes, electrical stimulation of deep brain structures such as thalamic nuclei (e.g. ventroposterolateral (VPL) or …

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Cell Specific Guidance Of Nerve And Vascular Regeneration Through Sustained Growth Factor Release, Parisa Lotfi Jan 2011

Cell Specific Guidance Of Nerve And Vascular Regeneration Through Sustained Growth Factor Release, Parisa Lotfi

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Regenerative peripheral nerve interfaces have been proposed as viable alternatives for the natural control of robotic prosthetic devices. However, sensory and motor axons at the neural interface are of mixed submodality types, which difficult the specific recording from motor axons and the eliciting of precise sensory modalities through selective stimulation. Here we evaluated the possibility of using type-specific neurotrophins to preferentially entice the regeneration of defined axonal populations from injured peripheral nerves. Segregation of mixed sensory fibers from dorsal root ganglion neurons was evaluated in vivo by compartmentalized diffusion delivery of nerve growth factor (NGF) and neurotrophin-3 (NT-3), to preferentially …

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Photosynthetically Active Protoplasts For Power Scavenging, Absorbance And Optical Density Analysis, Ahmed Shahid Jan 2011

Photosynthetically Active Protoplasts For Power Scavenging, Absorbance And Optical Density Analysis, Ahmed Shahid

Bioengineering Theses - Archive

Plants and photosynthetic bacteria hold protein molecular complexes that can efficiently harvest photons. This paper presents fundamental studies to harness photochemical activities by converting photonic energy into electrical energy. The electrical behavior of protoplast extracted from Arabidopsis plants was characterized in the presence and absence of light. The photo-induced reactions of photosynthesis were measured using a patch clamp measurement system at a constant voltage. This research also reports the absorbance and optical density measurements showing very large bandwidth for extracted protoplasts. The optical measurements were performed on the protoplast Arabidopsis and showed absorption bands at a number of wavelengths. The …

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