Digital Commons Network^™

Cellular Mechanisms Of Luteal Regression In The Bovine Corpus Luteum (Cl), Aritro Sen

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The corpus luteum (CL) is a transient endocrine gland that produces progesterone (P4) for the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy. In absence of pregnancy, timely regression of the CL is essential for normal ovarian cyclicity. Several factors are known to participate in luteal regression. In this study, two factors, PGF2 alpha and endothelin (ET-1) are being studied. Protein kinase C (PKC) and calcium are the two main intracellular mediators of PGF2 alpha. The role of ET-1 in the regulation of luteal regression is unclear. The early CL is insensitive to the luteolytic actions of PGF2 alpha and the cellular mechanism(s) …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of Descriptive And Experimental Analyses To Identify Variables Influencing Problem Behavior In Domestic Dogs, Susan D. Kapla

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Problem behavior in dogs is a concern for pet owners. Many contemporary approaches to intervention first involve a process of diagnosis and classification which is often structural in nature. An accurate diagnosis is considered essential for effective treatment, however, outcome data validating the efficacy of this procedure are dubious. The success of strategies used to assess and treat behavior problems that identify behavioral function in humans (functional assessment), however, suggests the potential utility of such techniques in the assessment and treatment of behavior problems in dogs. Therefore, two separate assessments were conducted to identify and manipulate variables affecting problem behavior …

The Design, Construction And "Optimization" Of A Binder Pitch Refining Unit, Kevin D. Whiteman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Pitches have been important to mankind for hundreds of years. One of the most important pitches used in industry today is binder pitch. Binder pitch is used to make anodes for the aluminum industry. The supply of high quality binder pitch has been steadily decreasing. A process has been developed to produce binder pitch from coal at West Virginia University, but this pitch in this process requires refining.;The focus of this thesis was to design, and construct a bench top wiped film evaporator system to refine that pitch. From the data collected in this thesis, the process was scaled up …

Learner Satisfaction And Learning Performance In Online Courses On Bioterrorism And Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Tatiana I. Solovieva

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study examined the relationships between measures of (a) learner satisfaction with online courses on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and bioterrorism intended to address the educational needs of responder Communities of Practice (CoP) and (b) degrees of accomplishment by the learner with those online courses. Provided that course design characteristics were similar between courses and that content was different, it was important to examine learner satisfaction with course common aspects in relation to learning outcomes and identify the predictors of effectiveness and relations between the learner satisfaction with the course characteristics and the learner achievement for potential design improvements …

Multiagent Autonomous Energy Management, Shilpa B. Ganesh

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The objective of this thesis is to design distributed software agents for reliable operation of integrated electric power systems of modern electric warships. The automatic reconfiguration of electric shipboard power systems is an important step toward improved fight-through and self-healing capabilities of naval warships. The improvements are conceptualized by redesigning the electric power system and its controls. This research focuses on a new scheme for an energy management system in the form of distributed control/software agents. Multiagent systems provide an ideal level of abstraction for modeling complex applications where distributed and heterogeneous entities need to cooperate to achieve a common …

Culvert Inventory And Effects On Fish Assemblages In A Central Appalachian Watershed, Ira O. Poplar-Jeffers

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

We surveyed 120 state-owned culverts within the upper Cheat River basin, West Virginia, and used a fish passage evaluation filter to quantify passage barriers. We quantified the length of stream and weighted potential brook trout recruitment area isolated by each culvert. We also sampled fish communities upstream and downstream of 24 culverts to quantify the impacts of culvert-related isolation on fish assemblages. We found 69% of culverts to be completely impassable. We determined that 17% of the stream length and 23% of weighted potential recruitment area in the study area were isolated by impassable culverts. We found that impassable culverts …

Functional Evaluation Of Cytochrome P450 2d6 Allelic Isoforms, Weiyan Zhang

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Human CYP2D6 is one of the most important human P450s based on the number of its drug substrates. It shows an extensive genetic polymorphism that influences its expression and function. There are more than 80 different CYP2D6 alleles and allelic variants that have been identified in human. However, only a part of alleles have been characterized with respect to enzyme activity and substrate specificity. In the first project, three alleles CYP2D6*24 (1297L), CYP2D6*27 (E410K) and CYP2D6*26 (I369T) were constructed and expressed. The enzymatic activities were evaluated by the metabolic rates for dextromethorphan O-demethylation and N-demethylation; codeine O-demethylation and N-demethylation. For …

Factors Affecting Reproductive Efficiency Of Cattle, Melanie J. Starbuck

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Four experiments were conducted to evaluate two measures of reproductive efficiency in cattle, conception rate and retention of pregnancy. In experiment I, the relationship between concentrations of progesterone and retention of pregnancy was examined. The corpus luteum (CL) was removed on day 29 of pregnancy in 40 suckled, beef cows, and pregnancy was supported with exogenous progesterone to day 53. Concentrations of progesterone (1.8 +/- 0.1 ng/mL between days 30 and 38), were below those normally recorded for pregnant cows. Retention of pregnancy (77%) was monitored frequently using ultrasonography until day 53 and was negatively associated with age of cow, …

The Behavioral Functions Of Stimuli Signaling Transitions Across Rich And Lean Schedules Of Reinforcement, Jessica B. Long

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The present experiment was designed to assess whether stimuli correlated with rich and lean fixed-ratio schedule components would function as conditioned reinforcers and conditioned punishers, respectively. Pigeons responded on a mixed schedule with fixed-ratio components leading to large or small food reinforcers. Pecks on either of two observing keys converted the mixed schedule to a multiple schedule by turning on a color associated with the current component. The stimulus consequences of the observing responses were manipulated across conditions. Pecks on one observing key produced the rich stimulus and the lean stimulus whereas pecks on the other observing key produced only …

The Influence Of Beaver Impoundments On Vegetative Composition, And Modeling Habitat Suitability As A Tool For Wildlife Management And Conservation, Jerry Leanne Bonner

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Beavers (Castor canadensis) can have dramatic effects on vegetative communities through impounding streams and wetlands. These alterations may influence rare plant species where beaver create ponds. We found that the youngest and oldest beaver ponds in Canaan Valley, West Virginia, USA had similar species richness. Rare plant species occurred most in oldest ponds, although no significant differences were detected. Species composition around ponds was found to be different between areas influenced by ponds versus those not affected, creating more obligate wetland communities when influenced by beaver. This information should be incorporated into management decisions when rare plant species conservation is …

An Ecological Study Of Panax Quinquefolius In Central Appalachia: Seedling Growth, Harvest Impacts And Geographic Variation In Demography, Martha E. Van Der Voort

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius L.) is a long-lived, slow-maturing understory perennial herb found in eastern North American forests. The economic value of P. quinquefolius on the world market has remained strong for nearly 300 years. It has high economic and social value in the central Appalachians as well. Persistent harvest of ginseng combined with habitat loss has reduced populations in the wild, threatening the future of the species and its continued harvest. American ginseng was placed on the CITES Appendix II list in 1973 due to population declines. These concerns led to a series of studies investigating the population dynamics …

Degree Of Sedentarization Affects Risks And Conflicts For The Waso Boran In Northern Kenya, D. Layne Coppock, Abdullahi D. Jillo, Mark N. Mutinda, Abdilla A. Aboud

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

The Waso Borana have lived for over a century in northern Kenya. In the last few decades, however, their ability to maintain their traditions has been severely challenged. Here we report survey results from 540 households in Isiolo District, stratified among three groups differing in terms of lifestyle: sedentary, semi-sedentary, and mobile. In some cases these groups vary with respect to important perceived risks, causes of natural-resource related conflict, and possible solutions to conflict. For example, sedentary respondents often noted concerns over land tenure problems, human diseases, and political incitement. Mobile respondents, in contrast, often noted primary concerns over drought, …

Intramuscular Tenderness Variation Within Four Muscles Of The Beef Chuck, G.A. Searls, R.J. Maddock, D.M. Wulf

Animal Science Faculty Publications

The i.m. tenderness variation was examined within four beef chuck muscles, the infraspinatus (IF), supraspinatus (SS), triceps brachii (TB), and serratus ventralis (SV). The IF, SS, TB, and SV muscles were cut into 2.5 cm thick steaks perpendicular to the long axis of the muscle. An identification tag was placed on each steak, consisting of a muscle identification number, steak number, and orientation of the steak. Steaks were vacuum-packaged and stored at −22°C until subsequent analysis. Steaks were thawed at 1°C and cooked on electric broilers to an internal temperature of 71°C. One core was removed from each 2.5-cm × …

The Economic Impact Of Nonprofit Organizations In New Mexico, Jeffrey Mitchell

BBER Publications

Nonprofit organizations make a substantial contribution to the quality of life and economic well-being of New Mexicans. These organizations provide health care, social and educational services, advocate for social and environmental change, support businesses and communities, conduct research, support the arts and other cultural activities, and provide credit and basic utilities where the market does not. This report provides information on and analysis of the size, composition and geographic distribution of paid employment by the nonprofit sector in New Mexico for the year 2003.

Ozone Forming Potential Of Exhaust Emissions From Heavy-Duty Diesel Engines, Ravi Kaklasaria

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research aimed at determining the effect of exhaust aftertreatment devices and ultra low sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel on the reactivity of exhaust emissions from heavy duty diesel (HDD) engines. Specifically, the objective of this research was to determine the effect of two diesel particulate filters: Engelhard DPX(TM) and Johnson Matthey CRT(TM), and two ULSD fuels, ECD and ECD1 on the ozone forming potential (OFP) of exhaust emissions from HDD engines. To achieve this objective, data was obtained from the "ECD Study" performed in the Spring 2001 to chemically characterize emissions from trucks and buses operating on the two test …

Correlogram Method For Comparing Bio-Sequences, Gandhali P. Samant

Theses and Dissertations

Sequence comparison is one of the most primitive operations used in bio-informatics. It is used as a basis for many other complex manipulations in the field of Computational Molecular Biology. Many methods and algorithms were developed to compare and align sequences effectively. Most of these methods use linear comparison and some standard scoring schemes to calculate the similarity between sequences. We described an alternative approach to compare sequences based on the correlogram method. This method has already been used in the past for comparing images. By using the correlogram method, a sequence is projected on a 3-D space and the …

Smoke And Mirrors: Internalizing The Magic Lantern Show In Villette, Diane Hoeveler

English Faculty Research and Publications

With considerable historical background in mind, I would like to examine a number of the stock gothic tropes, including the mysterious nun, the paintings of women, the theater scene, and the fête in Villette as examples of not simply one of last gasps of high Victorian gothicism, but also of the internalization and critique of gothic theatrical technology. As Castle observes, the "phantasmagoria should [have] become a kind of master trope in nineteenth-century romantic writing," and certainly she applies the representation in provocative ways to the symbols and imagery in Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution. In a similar fashion, I …

A Detailed Sequential Extraction Study Of Selenium In Coal And Coal-Associated Strata From A Coal Mine In West Virginia, Mimi Roy

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study of the mode of occurrence and distribution of selenium in a rock core from southcentral West Virginia reveals that total selenium concentration varies by rock type. Rocks with total selenium >1 mg/kg were of circum-neutral pH based on acid base accounting data. No direct correlation was found between selenium concentration in the rocks and that of sulfur and/or total organic carbon. The distribution of total selenium was also controlled by stratigraphy. The amount of total selenium extracted from various rock types like coal, shale, sandstone, mudstone and "carbolith" materials ranged from 50%. Selenium extracted from coal was mostly …

State Punishment And Private Prisons, Sharon Dolovich

Duke Law Journal

To date, the debate over private prisons has focused largely on the relative efficiency of private prisons as compared to their publicly-run counterparts, and has assumed that, if private contractors can run the prisons for less money than the state without a drop in quality, then states should be willing to privatize. This "comparative efficiency" approach, however, has two significant problems. First, it is concerned exclusively with efficiency, despite the fact that the privatization of prisons arguably implicates more urgent values. Second, it accepts the current state of public prisons as an unproblematic baseline, thus failing to consider the possibility …

Tempest In A Teapot Or Tidal Wave - Cybersquatting Rights And Remedies Run Amok, H. Brian Holland

Faculty Scholarship

The conflict at the heart of cybersquatting is in many ways conceptual. To most of its early inhabitants, the Internet embodied a separate and distinct environment --a territory unto itself. As such, it was thought the online world would stand separate from existing governmental power structures premised on the idea of territorial sovereignty. This separateness placed online actors theoretically beyond the authority of established legal systems, whose validity appeared limited by territorial boundaries and the sovereign-subject relationships occurring in the off-line world. Indeed, what many envisioned was an opportunity to create a self-regulating community existing within the "territory" of the …

Online Support For Multivariate Integration, Shujun Li

Dissertations

In this dissertation, we present an online problem solving environment for multivariate numerical integration. To build an environment for users with various backgrounds, we address issues of Web interface support for end-users, remote application programming interfaces for distributed system programmers, visualization of multivariate integrand functions for problem analysis, and highly efficient integration methods. Compared to previous implementations, our new load balancing schemes increase the scalability of parallel integration and hence are suitable for large scale computations. A parallel integration service, called PI service, was implemented based on Web services technologies to support both remote integration and remote visualization. The multivariate …

Intensity Weighted Ranking: A Methodology For Understanding What Clients Tell Us, Natalie Carroll, Stephen Lovejoy

Journal of Extension

Although rank ordering of issues for needs assessment provides some information, this method does not capture the intensity of respondents concerns. This article presents a method of going beyond rank ordering to study both the intensity of response and uncover priorities for more than a few aggregated issues. Results from a survey of attendees of the Indiana State fair are utilized to illustrate the methodology.

Cultural Crossings Against Ethnocentric Currents: Toward A Confucian Ethics Of Communicative Virtues, Sor-Hoon Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite contemporary Confucianism's aspirations to be a world philosophy, there is an ethnocentric strand within the Confucian tradition, most glaringly exemplified in Han Yu's attacks on Buddhism. This paper re-assesses Confucian ethnocentrism in the context of contrary practices that indicate a more pragmatic attitude among Confucians toward cross-cultural interactions. It argues that while the ethnocentric tendency serves as constant reminder of the need for vigilance, and recognition of the difficulties of crossing cultural boundaries, there are nevertheless resources within Confucianism for constructing an ethics of communication that is urgently needed to deal with the moral problems of cultural pluralism. The …

Smooth Muscle Adherens Junctions Associated Proteins Are Stable At The Cell Periphery During Relaxation And Activation, Thomas J. Eddinger, Jessen D. Schiebout, Darl R. Swartz

Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

This study was performed to determine the stability of the adherens junction (AJ)-associated proteins at the smooth muscle cell (SMC) plasma membrane during relaxing and activating conditions. Dog stomach, ileum, colon, and trachea tissues were stored in Ca²⁺-free PSS or regular PSS or were activated in 10 μM carbachol in PSS before rapid freezing. The tissues were subsequently sectioned and immunoreacted using antibodies for vinculin, talin, fibronectin, and caveolin to determine their cellular distribution in these tissues under these conditions. In all four tissues and under all three conditions, the distribution of these four proteins remained localized to …

Mustang Daily, November 30, 2005

Cal Poly Student Newspaper

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.

The Cord Weekly (November 30, 2005)

The Cord

No abstract provided.

Cwu Faculty Senate Minutes - 11/30/2005, Janet Shields

Faculty Senate Minutes

These are the official Central Washington University Faculty Senate Minutes for the 11/30/2005 regular meeting.

Ists E-Newsletter, November 30, 2005, Iowa Academy Of Science

ISTS Newsletter

In this issue:

--Notes from Your President

--VIP Message IAS Executive Director

--ISTS News New Section Chairs Fall Conference News

--Announcements

--Your ISTS Leadership Team

Leadership In Turbulent Times (Kansas City, Mo), C. William Pollard

C. William Pollard Papers

Addressing the members of the Workplace Coalition of Kansas City, Pollard contends that the turbulent years in which we live require moral leadership oriented to cultivating purpose in people's lives.

Prospectus, November 30, 2005, Jon Volkman, Erik Pheifer, James Casey, Ellen Schmidt, Theresa Campagna, E. Clarkson, Larry V. Gilbert, Jake Mcgill

Prospectus 2005

No abstract provided.