Digital Commons Network^™

August-September 2009, Syracuse University Biology Department

BioLog

No abstract provided.

Population Ecology Of The Floodplain Herb Macbridea Caroliniana (Lamiaceae) With Investigations On The Species' Habitat, Breeding System And Genetic Diversity, Katherine Weeks

All Dissertations

The perennial herbaceous mint Macbridea caroliniana is known from 36 locations in discrete watersheds of the Carolinas and Georgia. It is one of relatively few conspicuously flowering herbs that occupy bottomland hardwood forests. The general project goal was to gain knowledge that is applicable to the species' conservation both at the Congaree National Park (CNP) where the largest known population of this species occurs and range-wide. Specific objectives were to (1) quantify the population size and describe the distribution of M. caroliniana within CNP, and determine the extent of co-occurrence with wild hogs and the non-native Murdannia keisak; (2) identify …

The Role Of Nitrogenous Nutrients In The Occurrence Of The Harmful Dinoflagellate Blooms Caused By Cochlodinium Polykrikoides In Long Island Estuaries (Ny, Usa), Amanda Merle Burson

Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions)

The harmful dinoflagellate Cochlodinium polykrikoides is well known for forming ichthyotoxic blooms in coastal regions of Asia and North America, but the nutritional factors supporting and promoting these blooms have not been well studied. To better understand the nutritional ecology of the harmful dinoflagellate blooms caused by Cochlodinium polykrikoides in Long Island estuaries (NY, USA), laboratory and field studies of this species were conducted. I documented the spatial and temporal dynamics of nutrients, C. polykrikoides cells, and co-occurring phytoplankton within two New York estuaries from 2006 - 2008. I quantified the growth response of C. polykrikoides and co-occurring phytoplankton during …

Microfluidic Cell Sorting Techniques To Study Disease Processes., William Neil White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Circulating nucleated cell populations found in whole blood, including both white blood cells (leukocytes) and endothelial cells, provide an ideal platform for studies seeking to understand the disease processes for development of drugs and treatments. This thesis presents an automated microfluidic device developed for leukocyte enrichment from peripheral blood. Briefly, the device allows for complete lysis of red blood cells and comprehensive analysis of nucleated cell populations in terms of quantity and activation status. The microfluidic lysis device was used in two Sickle Cell disease (SCD) studies to understand the effect of leukocytes in the initiation of vasoocclusive crisis. Findings …

Assessment Of Pre-Pcr Whole Genome Amplification Of Single Pollen Grains Using Flowering Dogwood (Cornus Florida), Candace Dillon

Theses and Dissertations

Studies of gene flow in natural plant populations often focus on either historical or abiotic dispersal methods (e.g. wind, water, gravity), but there is little information available on contemporary, animal-mediated pollen dispersal patterns. Emerging molecular laboratory techniques allow unprecedented insights into spatial patterns of pollen-mediated gene flow. However, to date, technical challenges have limited their widespread application. The genome of a pollen grain can be amplified via whole genome amplification (WGA) prior to traditional amplification via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to prevent the stochastic effects associated with low copy number amplification. Even still, WGA can suffer from low success rates …

Central Role Of Tau Protein In Alzheimer»S Disease And Related Tauopathies, Khalid Iqbal, Omar Chohan, Inge Grundke-Iqbal

Pakistan Journal of Neurological Sciences (PJNS)

No abstract provided.

Biology, Saint Mary's College Of California

Academic Catalog

No abstract provided.

Chemical Modification Of Reactive Multilayered Films Fabricated From Poly(2-Alkenyl Azlactone)S: Design Of Surfaces That Prevent Or Promote Mammalian Cell Adhesion And Bacterial Biofilm Growth, Maren E. Buck, Anthony S. Breitbach, Sonja K. Belgrade, Helen E. Blackwell, David M. Lynn

Chemistry: Faculty Publications

We report an approach to the design of reactive polymer films that can be functionalized post-fabrication to either prevent or promote the attachment and growth of cells. Our approach is based on the reactive layer-bylayer assembly of covalently crosslinked thin films using a synthetic polyamine and a polymer containing reactive azlactone functionality. Our results demonstrate (i) that the residual azlactone functionality in these films can be exploited to immobilize amine-functionalized chemical motifs similar to those that promote or prevent cell and protein adhesion when assembled as self-assembled monolayers on gold-coated surfaces and (ii) that the immobilization of these motifs changes …

On The Green Vol. 38 No. 9 June 5, 2009, Gallaudet University

2001-2010

On the Green is an internal publication of Gallaudet College, which later became Gallaudet University. It notified employees of updates around the campus and in the broader community, including new construction and the establishment of new academic programs. Running until 2010, it was supplanted by various forms of online mass communications across multiple audiences.

Design, Fabrication, And Implementation Of A Single-Cell Capture Chamber For A Microfluidic Impedance Sensor, Joshua-Jed Doria Fadriquela

Master's Theses

A microfluidic device was created for single-cell capture and analysis using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) channels and a glass substrate to develop a microfluidic single-cell impedance sensor for cell diagnostics. The device was fabricated using photolithography to create a master mold which in turn will use soft lithography to create the PDMS components for constant device production. The commercial software, COMSOLTM Multiphysics, was used to quantify the fluid dynamics in shallow micro-channels.

The device will be able to capture a cell and sequester it long enough to enable measurement of the impedance spectra that can characterize cell. The proposed device will be …

Comparison Of The Shapiro-Wilk Test Jureckova Test Using Simulation And Multiple Distributions, Dejela I. Mahdi, Wafaa Jassim Mohammed

Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences

Goodness-of-fit tests are primarily designed to verify the null hypothesis, which asserts that the observations of a given sample conform to a specific probability distribution—a scenario frequently encountered in practical applications across various fields, particularly in genetics, medical research, and biological studies. In 1965, Shapiro and Wilk proposed an intuitive goodness-of-fit test that accounts for nuisance location and scale parameters, a method that has since garnered significant attention within statistical literature. This work was further advanced by Sen in 2002, who extended the Shapiro-Wilk test to accommodate cases involving nuisance regression and scale parameters. Sen’s approach developed a test based …

Temporal Shifts In Demography And Life History Of An Anadromous Alewife Population In Connecticut, Justin P. Davis, Eric T. Schultz

EEB Articles

Populations of anadromous alewives (Alosa pseudoharengus) are declining throughout much of their range, particularly in southern New England where fishery moratoriums have recently been instituted in three states. The alewife run at Bride Brook, a coastal stream in East Lyme, Connecticut, was studied from 2003-06 to assess shifts in demography and life history. Annual censuses of abundance, along with sampling for size, age, and spawning history structure were conducted. These data were compared to similar data in 1966-67 at this site. Recent alewife runs at Bride Brook featured lower abundance and younger, smaller fish that were less likely to be …

Asymmetric Synthesis Of Sl0101, Cyclitol And Jadomycin, Mingde Shan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The carbohydrate portion of natural products plays a crucial role in biology, such as target binding, solubility, tissue targeting, and membrane transportation. The O'Doherty group has developed a de novo methodology to build the desired functionality and stereochemistry within each sugar, in contrast to the traditional approach using known carbohydrates as starting materials. This methodology relies on a highly diastereoselective palladium(0)-catalyzed glycosylation reaction to control the stereochemistry at the anomeric center and post-glycosylation transformation to introduce the corresponding functionality in the sugar moiety.;Continuing our investigations on the utility of this strategy, we turned our attention to the syntheses of the …

Hair Identification: The Mammalian Fingerprint, E. Santana

Wildlife Damage Management Conference

Microscopic hair identification has been used as an analysis tool in a broad range of biological studies and has diverse applications in the fields of wildlife biology, anthropology, forensics, and natural resource management. Examining differences in cortex patterns, medulla characteristics, cuticular scale anatomy, shape, size, and color can be used to reliably identify mammalian guard hairs. Microscopic hair identification provides a diagnostic tool for identifying mammalian hair and has broad applications in the field of wildlife damage management. Hair collected from scent stations can provide presence confirmation and population density estimates on carnivores and ungulates, while hairs extracted from scats …

Investigations Into Earthworm Control On Airports, T. Seamans, G. Bernhardt, D. Steyer

Wildlife Damage Management Conference

Earthworms, though generally considered beneficial for soil conditioning, can become a hazard at airports. When found in large numbers on runways or taxiways after heavy rainfall, they create slippery conditions for aircraft rolling over them. Additionally, earthworms attract birds, especially gulls, thereby increasing the risk of bird strikes to aircraft that are landing or taking off. For example, during a 35-minute period on 3 September 2004 at Calgary International Airport (YYC), a B737 of Westjet and an A319 of Air Canada aborted takeoffs after multiple strikes with gulls attracted to the runways to feed on earthworms. The B737 had strikes …

Retrospective Barrier Placements For A Skunk Rabies Epizootic In Nw Wyoming, C. Ramey, K. Mills, R. Mclean, R. Engeman, J. Fischer

Wildlife Damage Management Conference

Striped skunks (Mephitis mephitis) are the most important reservoir of rabies on the Great Plains. In August, 1988 a skunk rabies epizootic proceeded from the "index case" west of Cowley, WY. By 1991, epizootic had reached nearly all areas in the Shoshone River Basin (SRB), and it ended in 1993. This area and the remainder of the SRB had been previously considered rabies-free. The USDA's Wildlife Services (WS) cooperated with state and local officials in a rabies monitoring and control program starting in 1990. Using information from the literature, signs, tracks, and radio-telemetry of normal and rabid skunks, …

Natural Ice-Nucleating Bacteria Increase The Freezing Tolerance Of The Intertidal Bivalve Geukensia Demissa, Alexander M. Mccorkle

Biology Honors Papers

Instead of avoiding freezing, freeze tolerant invertebrates actively initiate controlled ice nucleation at relatively high sub-zero temperatures in extracellular compartments. Most produce proteinaceous ice-nucleators in their hemolymph, however the intertidal bivalve mollusc Geukensia demissa lacks this ability. Instead it utilizes at least one strain of ice-nucleation active (INA) bacteria, Pseudomonas fulva, present in seawater, to induce crystallization in the pallial fluid that fills its mantle cavity. In this study, two additional INA bacteria strains were isolated from the palial fluid of Geukensia demissa: Psychrobacter sp. and Shewanella sp. The ice-nucleation activity of both strains was characterized and Psychrobacter was found …

Benchmarks 2009, May 29, The Rockefeller University

BenchMarks 2009

BenchMarks. Friday, May 29, 2009

The community newsletter of The Rockefeller University

BenchMarks is published monthly and is distributed on the campus of The Rockefeller University. It produced by the Office of Communications and Public Affairs

A Comparative Ecological Study Of Two Sister Species Of Darters In Kentucky, Etheostoma Kantuckeense And Etheostoma Lawrencei, Bjorn Victor Schmidt

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Etheostoma kantuckeense and E. lawrencei are former members of the wide ranging E. spectabile species complex. Etheostoma kantuckeense is endemic to the Barren River Basin in Southern Kentucky and Northern Tennessee, while E. lawrencei occurs in the Green River, Salt River, and Cumberland River Basins of Central and Eastern Kentucky. Isolation of populations within these drainages has allowed for a relatively recent evolutionary divergence, leading to slight differences in morphology. This study was conducted to address if geographical isolation has led to measurable differences in the ecology of these two species. In particular, habitat preference across three spatial scales and …

Fisheries Research Report No. 184 - Macroscopic And Microscopic Description Of Snapper (Pagrus Auratus) Gonads From Shark Bay, Western Australia, Michael C. Mackie, Gary Jackson, Nadia E. Tapp, Jeffrey V. Norriss, Adrian Thomson

Fisheries Research Reports

Since 1997, research on snapper (Pagrus auratus, Sparidae) in the inner gulfs of Shark Bay has focussed on providing biological information required for the management of the regionally important recreational fishery. A major component of this research has been a comprehensive investigation of snapper reproductive biology to determine size and age at maturity, the timing of the spawning season and to estimate batch fecundity. This research has necessitated a review of the macroscopic staging system used for P. auratus in Western Australian waters and the development of a more detailed microscopic system to allow accurate analyses of histological material. Based …

The Regulation Of Epithelial Sodium Channels In Mammalian Taste Receptor Cells, Arian F. Baquero Gonzalez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nutrient recognition is one of the main physiological roles of the gustatory system. In mammals, it is well established that the taste of sodium salts is primarily mediated by sodium influx through the epithelial sodium channel. The epithelial sodium channel is a sodium-specific ion channel that is expressed across a wide range of transporting epithelia such as colon, kidney, and taste. In addition to its role as a salt taste receptor, sodium influx through the epithelial sodium channel is important systemically for maintaining sodium balance and blood pressure. Following our earlier work on the endocrine regulation of salt taste at …

Application Of Electrified Fladry To Decrease Risk Of Livestock Depredation By Wolves (Canis Lupus), Nathan J. Lance

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wolf (Canis lupus) predation on livestock can cause economic and emotional hardships for livestock producers, complicating the balance of wolf conservation with other human interests. New management tools that decrease risk of predation may offer additional flexibility or efficiency for both livestock producers and management agencies. I examined 1) the efficacy of electrified fladry compared to fladry at protecting a food source from wolves in captivity, 2) the efficacy of electrified fladry for reducing wolf use of pastures and preventing depredations, and 3) the applicability of electrified-fladry. In captivity I tested the reaction from 15 groups (46 wolves) …

Site-Specific Deoxyribonucleic Acid Modifications For Use With Chemical Cages, John P. Casey Jr

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

52th University Of San Diego School Of Law Commencement Program, 2009, University Of San Diego School Of Law

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Development Of An In-Vitro Tissue Engineered Blood Vessel Mimic Using Human Large Vessel Cell Sources, Dimitri E. Delagrammaticas

Master's Theses

Tissue engineering is an emerging field that offers novel and unmatched potential medical therapies and treatments. While the vast aim of tissue engineering endeavors is to provide clinically implantable constructs, secondary applications have been developed to utilize tissue-engineered constructs for in-vitro evaluation of devices and therapies. Specifically, in-vitro blood vessel mimics (BVM) have been developed to create a bench-top blood vessel model using human cells that can be used to test and evaluate vascular disease treatments and intravascular devices. Previous BVM work has used fat derived human microvascular endothelial cells (EC) sodded on an ePTFE scaffold. To create a more …

Sonication Assisted Synthesis Of Oligomannosides, Christabel Tomla Tanifum

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Oligomannosides prevalently exist as cell surface antigens. They play important roles in diseases such as viral infection and cancer, and they have been shown to be useful as candidates for vaccines. HIV, one of the most devastating modern diseases, has a high content of mannose sugars on its envelope glycoprotein gp120. Oligomannosides of the HIV virus, also called Man9, which are found on the glycoprotein gp120, have been shown to play a protective role for the HIV virus, shielding highly conserved protein domains of gp120 from proteolytic attacks. Thus gp120 plays an important role in HIV infection of cells, being …

Engineering An Anaerobic Derivative Of The Obligately Aerobic Thermophile Thermus Thermophilus Hb27 For The Purposes Of Studying Thermophilic Aerobic Respiratory Chain Proteins, Prajit Limsirichai

Biology Honors Theses

The thermophilic bacterium Thermus thermophilus (Tth) is an obligate aerobe with many important biotechnological applications and products. Thermostable proteins isolated from Thermus species have proven important in understanding adaptation to thermophilic environments. Thermophilic adaptations of respiratory electron transport chains (ETC) are not well characterized. Conventional homology-based, genetic, and biochemical techniques are limited in their ability to identify thermophilic Tth homologues of mesophilic respiratory ETC proteins due to the lack of a mutable facultative platform. We are attempting to generate this platform by increasing glycolytic flux through metabolic engineering techniques. Based on physiological studies, Tth HB27 demonstrates a low affinity for …

Bioanalytical Development Of Charged Cyclodextrin Capillary Electrokinetic Chromatography And Microperfusion Sampling To Study Endogenous D-Serine And L-Glutamate Efflux In Brain, Daniel L. Kirschner

Chemistry and Biochemistry

A multitude of studies have revealed specific biological mechanisms that contribute to D-amino acid action and regulation in the mammalian central nervous system. The remarkable increase in our understanding of D-amino acid function and distribution in mammals is in many ways a result of the development of sensitive enantioselective separation strategies that allow for quantification in real biological samples. In capillary electrokinetic chromatography (cEKC) the most powerful chiral resolving agents are anionic cyclodextrins (CDs), yet these have not previously been investigated for chiral bioanalysis of amino acids. The focus of this dissertation research was to investigate for the first time …

Joint Multiple Testing Procedures For Graphical Model Selection With Applications To Biological Networks, Houston N. Gilbert, Mark J. Van Der Laan, Sandrine Dudoit

U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series

Gaussian graphical models have become popular tools for identifying relationships between genes when analyzing microarray expression data. In the classical undirected Gaussian graphical model setting, conditional independence relationships can be inferred from partial correlations obtained from the concentration matrix (= inverse covariance matrix) when the sample size n exceeds the number of parameters p which need to estimated. In situations where n < p, another approach to graphical model estimation may rely on calculating unconditional (zero-order) and first-order partial correlations. In these settings, the goal is to identify a lower-order conditional independence graph, sometimes referred to as a ‘0-1 graphs’. For either choice of graph, model selection may involve a multiple testing problem, in which edges in a graph are drawn only after rejecting hypotheses involving (saturated or lower-order) partial correlation parameters. Most multiple testing procedures applied in previously proposed graphical model selection algorithms rely on standard, marginal testing methods which do not take into account the joint distribution of the test statistics derived from (partial) correlations. We propose and implement a multiple testing framework useful when testing for edge inclusion during graphical model selection. Two features of our methodology include (i) a computationally efficient and asymptotically valid test statistics joint null distribution derived from influence curves for correlation-based parameters, and (ii) the application of empirical Bayes joint multiple testing procedures which can effectively control a variety of popular Type I error rates by incorpo- rating joint null distributions such as those described here (Dudoit and van der Laan, 2008). Using a dataset from Arabidopsis thaliana, we observe that the use of more sophisticated, modular approaches to multiple testing allows one to identify greater numbers of edges when approximating an undirected graphical model using a 0-1 graph. Our framework may also be extended to edge testing algorithms for other types of graphical models (e.g., for classical undirected, bidirected, and directed acyclic graphs).

The Perfect Match, Rachel Hatch

Illinois Wesleyan University Magazine, 2002-2017

The combined talents of Professors Bruce and Norma Criley breathed new life into biology studies at Illinois Wesleyan.