Digital Commons Network^™

Developing A Biosensor For The Detection Of Bacteria: A Comparison Of Methods For Isolating Bacteria-Specific Antibodies, Scott Allen Walper

Dissertations

The antigen-antibody interaction is known to be a high affinity and highly specific interaction that can readily be used for the detection and identification of biological and chemical agents. These studies were conducted to develop an efficient and cost-effective method of obtaining bacteria-specific antibody molecules for integration into a fielddeployable biosensor. Antigen-binding molecules were obtained both as full-length IgG molecules from a hybridoma cell line and as recombinant single-chain Fv (scFv) antibodies isolated from naïve and immunize libraries. Monoclonal and recombinant antibody systems were compared on the effectiveness of producing new, target-specific molecules; the efficiency of production and purification of …

The Relative Value Of Online Learning Environments As Perceived By High School Teachers, Daryl Joe Scoggin

Dissertations

Online learning environments have become more popular for use in education from year to year. This medium for teaching and learning has been successfully used in higher education for years. Only within the past decade has this instructional platform made its way into the P-12 arena. With the expansion of online learning environments becoming more popular, this type of lesson delivery may eventually make its way to the building or site level. As in a face-to-face classroom, teachers have an effect on the success of the students. The perceptions of teachers regarding dimensions of implementation and use of online learning …

Differential Gene Expression And Protein Abundance Evince Ontogenetic Bias Toward Castes In A Primitively Eusocial Wasp, James H. Hunt, Florian Wolschin, Michael T. Henshaw, Thomas C. Newman, Amy L. Toth, Gro V. Amdam

Peer Reviewed Publications

Polistes paper wasps are models for understanding conditions that may have characterized the origin of worker and queen castes and, therefore, the origin of paper wasp sociality. Polistes is ‘‘primitively eusocial’’ by virtue of having contextdependent caste determination and no morphological differences between castes. Even so, Polistes colonies have a temporal pattern in which most female larvae reared by the foundress become workers, and most reared by workers become future-reproductive gynes. This pattern is hypothesized to reflect development onto two pathways, which may utilize mechanisms that regulate diapause in other insects. Using expressed sequence tags (ESTs) for Polistes metricus we …

Eastern, Spring/Summer 2010, Eastern Washington University. Division Of University Relations.

Alumni Publications

This issue contains articles about the women's basketball team, ESPN host Colin Cowherd, classroom technology, EWU grad Otto Guardado, the EWU Greek system, and EWU grads with "dirty jobs".

The Culling, Nikolos Sardos

Theses

The Culling is an animated, short film graduate thesis. It explores ideas of perception by examining an anthropomorphic tribal group of lobsters that live in the fish tank of a New England seafood restaurant. The story is told through the experiences of a new comer to this lobster tribe. It focuses on his reactions to the odd traditions and beliefs of his peers in this new and strange place. The film is a 2D animation that has been produced digitally using various video, audio and animation software. The goal of this paper is to outline the production of this thesis …

Testing Hypotheses For Exotic Plant Success: Parallel Experiments In The Native And Introduced Ranges, Jennifer L. Williams, Harald Auge, John L. Maron

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

A central question in ecology concerns how some exotic plants that occur at low densities in their native range are able to attain much higher densities where they are introduced. This question has remained unresolved in part due to a lack of experiments that assess factors that affect the population growth or abundance of plants in both ranges. We tested two hypotheses for exotic plant success: escape from specialist insect herbivores and a greater response to disturbance in the introduced range. Within three introduced populations in Montana, USA, and three native populations in Germany, we experimentally manipulated insect herbivore pressure …

The Internet Is A Semicommons, James Grimmelmann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The Internet is a semicommons. Private property in servers and network links coexists with a shared communications platform. This distinctive combination both explains the Internet's enormous success and illustrates some of its recurring problems.

Building on Henry Smith's theory of the semicommons in the medieval open-field system, this essay explains how the dynamic interplay between private and common uses on the Internet enables it to facilitate worldwide sharing and collaboration without collapsing under the strain of misuse. It shows that key technical features of the Internet, such as its layering of protocols and the Web's division into distinct "sites," respond …

Dust Bowl Dichotomy: Voting Trends In Morton And Osborne County During The Great Depression, Jodanna Bitner

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Morton County and Osborne County consistently held strong political affiliations with the Republican Party prior to the 1930s. This changed in the 1932 and 1936 presidential elections when Morton County changed political affiliation by voting for the Democratic candidate. Osborne County, however, did not switch political parties and instead voted once again for the Republican nominee. This thesis will examine why Morton County changed political affiliation during this time, whereas Osborne County stayed the same. In the 1932 presidential campaign, President Herbert Hoover was re-nominated on the Republican ticket and Franklin Roosevelt ran on the democratic ticket. When the Great …

The Return Of The Native American Soldier: Oral Storytelling And Healing, Theresa Kraisinger

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Native American healing focuses on curing all aspects (physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually) of a sick individual. Spiritual healing is unique to Native American cultures, often requiring unexpected healing techniques. Those who are spiritually ill are disconnected from their community and the world around them because of various obstacles that have thrown them off balance. Various ways exist to help heal the spiritual needs of a person; however, the most popular ways is through oral storytelling. Oral storytelling, a tradition passed down by hundreds of generations in Native American culture, is used to remind sick individuals where they come …

Spatial And Temporal Patterns Of Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus Leucocephalus) Winter Habitat Use Along The Upper Mississippi River Corridor, Ryan T. Schmitz

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

From March 1999 through February 2006, satellite transmitters were placed on 13 wild-caught individuals of the Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in southwestern Wisconsin. These individuals (6 males, 7 females, 11 adults, 2 immatures) were tracked along the Upper Mississippi River corridor during the winters of 1999 through 2006. The objectives of my study were to: 1) estimate winter home range size and to compare home range size between sexes, 2) characterize and quantify winter night roost habitat, and 3) identify spatial and temporal patterns of winter habitat use and behavior relative to temperature, wind speed, and ice-cover. Mean 95% fixed …

Xenobiotic Metabolism Genes And Clubfoot, Amy M. Sommer

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Idiopathic or isolated clubfoot is a common orthopedic birth defect that affects approximately 135,000 children worldwide. It is characterized by equinus, varus and adductus deformities of the ankle and foot. Correction of clubfoot involves months of serial manipulations, castings and bracing, with surgical correction needed in forty percent of cases. Multifactorial etiology has been suggested in numerous studies with both environmental and genetic factors playing an etiologic role. Maternal smoking during pregnancy is the only common environmental factor that has consistently been shown to increase the risk for clubfoot. Moreover, a positive family history of clubfoot and maternal smoking increases …

An Autobiography Of A Digital Idea: From Waging War Against Laptops To Engaging Students With Laptops, Diana R. Donahoe

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Grazing System On Livestock Performance, Botanical Composition, And Standing Crop In The Nebraska Sandhills, Mitchell B. Stephenson

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A 10-year study compared a 4-pasture deferred-rotation (DR) grazing system with an 8-pasture short duration grazing (SDG) system at the Barta Brothers Ranch near Rose, NE to determine differences in livestock performance, botanical composition, and standing crop. Pastures were grazed by 50 to100 cow-calf pairs with both single (DR system) and multiple (SDG system) grazing periods from 15 May to 15 October. Livestock performance data were collected from spayed heifers substituted into each grazing system during the last 3 years of the study. Botanical composition was collected on 275 frequency of occurrence transects in 1998, 2003, and 2008. Standing crop …

Time To Get Real: A Food Assessment Of Dining At Pomona College, Samantha Meyer

Pomona Senior Theses

Pomona College is an institution deeply committed to sustainability and student well being; however these commitments are not reflected in the College’s food purchases. Before this study, an assessment of purchasing had not been conducted at Pomona College. Using the Real Food Calculator – a metric designed to evaluate food purchasing at academic institutions – I tracked all food purchased by one of the College’s dining halls over the course of one month. Each food item was assessed based on the potential health concerns of its ingredients and whether the item was locally produced, ecologically sound and/or humane to determine …

Lightweight Composites From Biological Materials And Polypropylene, Yi Zou

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Biological materials (wheat straws (WS), switchgrass stems (SG) and hop bines (HB)), were used as reinforcing materials to make lightweight composites with polypropylene (PP) webs. The long WS, SG and HB (length up to 10 cm) with simple cut or split and without chemical treatment, were used directly in the composites. Utilizing biological materials for composites not only increases the values of wheat, switchgrass and hop crops, but also provides green, sustainable and biodegradable materials for the composites industry. Lightweight composites are preferred, especially for automotive applications due to the potential saving in energy. In this research, the effects of …

Inhabiting Modernism: Pernes, Portals, And Yeats’S Transitive Force, Daniel Gomes

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

W.B. Yeats’s tentative entry into modernist poetics is often ascribed to his residence with Pound, to the dynamism of Vorticism, and to the turbulent social upheaval in Ireland and abroad during the early decades of the twentieth century. Without denying that such events contributed to Yeats’s marked stylistic shift in Responsibilities (1914), this thesis examines how Yeats’s antithetical impulse is heavily informed by Blake and Nietzsche and has direct bearing for how we read Yeats’s poetics through change and “transition.” Concurrent with his passive adjustment to, and resistance against, external forces and change, Yeats’s affirmation of pre-subjective forces, apocalyptic …

Seasonal Variation In Terrestrial Insect Subsidies To Tropical Streams And Implications For The Diet Of Rivulus Hartii, David C. Owens

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Terrestrial invertebrates subsidize fish diets in lotic ecosystems. Seasonality strongly influences terrestrial invertebrate abundance in temperate regions and alters their delivery to streams. Seasonal changes in the tropics are characterized by distinct wet and dry periods, with marked variation in invertebrate abundance. However, little is known about how these seasonal changes affect invertebrate subsidies and their ecological consequences for tropical streams. We measured the effect of rainfall and canopy density on terrestrial invertebrate falling input, as well as seasonal variation in falling input, benthic and drifting invertebrate, and Rivulus hartii (Hart’s Rivulus) diet composition during both the wet and dry …

Unsaturated Fatty Acids Repress The Expression Of Adipose Fatty Acid-Binding Protein, Ap2, In Raw 264.7 Macrophage, Sara L. Coleman

Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Adipocyte fatty acid binding protein, aP2, present in macrophages has been implicated in the integration of lipid metabolism and inflammatory response, contributing to development of insulin resistance and atherosclerosis. We investigated the modulation of aP2 expression by inflammatory insults and fatty acids in RAW 264.7 macrophages. When the cells were incubated with lipopolysaccharides (LPS; 100 ng/ml) or 10 ng/ml of tumor necrosis factor α for 18 h, aP2 mRNA and protein levels were drastically increased. Unsaturated fatty acids (100 μM of 18:1, 18:2, 18:3, 20:5 in complex with BSA), but not saturated fatty acids (16:0), significantly repressed the basal aP2 …

Modulation Of Rankl And Osteoprotegerin In Adolescents Using Orthodontic Forces, Nathan Reed Hamman

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Orthodontic tooth movement is mediated by interactions between PDL cells and those of the alveolus. One protein--the receptor activator nuclear factor kappa B ligand (RANKL)--is critical for osteoclastogenesis, and osteoprotegerin (OPG) is a decoy ligand that competitively inhibits RANKL. A higher RANKL/OPG ratio is associated with areas of bone resorption, while a lower ratio occurs in areas of bone deposition and homeostasis. There has been almost no clinical study of RANKL and OPG expression in patients undergoing orthodontic tooth movement.

The purpose of this study was to quantify changes in the levels of RANKL and of OPG in response to …

Statins Regulate Il-1Β - Induced Rankl And Opg Production By Human Gingival Fibroblasts, Ivelina Jurkowski

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Three-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl-CoA (HMG-CoA) reductase competitive inhibitors, also known as statins, are widely used agents for lowering cholesterol and reducing the risk for a heart attack. Recent data suggest that statins influence bone metabolic activity by stimulating new bone formation both in vivo and in vitro. Bone resorption in periodontitis, an inflammatory disease, is orchestrated by the interaction of various cytokines in the inflamed tissue, produced by immune cells and also by resident cells such as human gingival fibroblasts (HGF) and periodontal ligament (PDL) cells. Three molecules, members of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) ligand and receptor superfamilies, regulate the process of …

Peripheral Taste System In Inbred Mouse Strains, William Wes Shelton

Theses and Dissertations (ETD)

Taster and non-taster mice strains have been used extensively in animal taste research. Inbred mouse strains C57 and FVB have been proposed to be tasters, where as strains 129 and Balb/C are classified as non-tasters. Therefore, evaluating the peripheral taste system in these mice is of great importance to determine if there are morphological differences that might explain the physiological classification. The purpose of the present study was to determine if inbred mice that have been shown to be tasters have a larger number of fungiform papillae, have larger fungiform papillae and have larger taste buds. My work in this …

“Made In Each Other:” John Scottus Eriugena’S Conception Of The Human Person As A Unifying Vocabulary For Trinitarian Metanarrative And Anticartesian Phenomenology, Carey B. Vinzant

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Vinzant, Carey B. “Made in each Other: John Scottus Eriugena’s Conception of the Human Person as a Unifying Vocabulary for Trinitarian Metanarrative and Anti-Cartesian Phenomenology.” Ph.D. diss., Concordia Seminary, 2010. 260 pp.

This study sets forth an account of the human person, drawn primarily from the thought of John Scottus Eriugena, which integrates the metaphysical account of personhood set forth by Trinitarian theology (especially John Zizioulas) with the phenomenological one set forth by certain Anti-Cartesian philosophers (especially John Macmurray, Martin Buber, and Gabriel Marcel). These two schools of thought have in common the conviction that uniqueness and relation to other …

Qubit, May 2010

Qubit (Cuban science fiction magazine)

The May 2010 issue of the Qubit.

2010 A Digital Odyssey: Exploring Document Camera Technology And Computer Self-Efficacy In A Digital Era, Robert Joaquin Hoge

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Within the sphere of education, navigating throughout a digital world has become a matter of necessity for the developing professional, as with the advent of Document Camera Technology (DCT). This study explores the pedagogical implications of implementing DCT; to see if there is a relationship between teachers’ comfort with DCT and to the self-efficacy beliefs of teachers. The literature describes our educational system “at risk,” comprised of digital “natives” and “immigrants” each challenged by a culture of “disconnected” digital-kids (DOE, 1999; Prensky, 2001; Levin, 2002). Narrative inquiry thematically analyzes the experience of teachers on the cusp of Technology Integration (TI). …

Editing The Outcrowd, Alex Kish

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

My capstone project is the completion of two issues of The Outcrowd, a student run lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and ally magazine at Syracuse University. I served as editor-in-chief of the publication from fall 2009 to spring 2010. As a magazine journalism major, my leadership position on t this campus magazine helped improve my editorial skills, and taught me to become a more effective leader. Both issues were published toward the end of both semesters and were distributed across Syracuse University’s campus.

My reflective essay discusses the editorial vision behind the publication. Since its creation, The Outcrowd has …

Rna-Dependent Selenocysteine Biosynthesis In Eukaryotes And Archaea, Sotiria Palioura

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Selenocysteine (Sec), the 21st genetically encoded amino acid, is the major metabolite of the micronutrient selenium. Sec is inserted into nascent proteins in response to a UGA codon. The substrate for ribosomal protein synthesis is selenocysteinyl-tRNASec. While the formation of Sec-tRNASec from seryl-tRNASec by a single bacterial enzyme selenocysteine synthase (SelA) has been well described, the mechanism of Sec-tRNASec formation in archaea and eukaryotes remained poorly understood. Herein, biochemical and genetic data provide evidence that, in contrast to bacteria, eukaryotes and archaea utilize a different route to Sec-tRNASec that requires the tRNASec-dependent conversion of O-phosphoserine (Sep) to Sec. In this …

Countermeasures Against The Negative Effects Of Microgravity, Philys E. Johnson

Theses (Pre-2016)

Spaceflight exposes astronauts to a plethora of harmful environmental elements including microgravity. Exposure to microgravity has been demonstrated to have significant effects on the reproductive system, cardiovascular system and nervous system. One particular effect of exposure to a space environment is an increase in oxidative stress. This particular type of stress is known to activate the transcription factor Nuclear Factor - KB. This pro-inflammatory transcription factor regulates more than 200 genes. These genes are responsible for inflammation, cell proliferation and apoptosis. In addition, activation of this transcription factor has been linked to carcinogenesis, viral infections, diabetes, and arthritis. Due to …

Image And Identity In The Works Of Genet, Pirandello And Hwang, Neshon Jackson

Theses (Pre-2016)

In modem society individuals continually reshape and reinvent themselves rendering identity problematic. Regardless of myriad possibilities of accidental transformations, the person never ceases being essentially human. The power of myth provides a spiritual blueprint along which the deeper structures of the human consciousness activate to form an identity. The power of myth to reshape, re-invent and guide humanity is central to understanding the depths of modem -identity in the theatre of Jean Genet, Luigi Pirandello, and David Henry Hwang. The dominant themes of sacrifice, martyrdom, and ritualized death exemplify modernist tendencies toward stripping the veneer of tradition and prejudice from …

Teaching The Bill Of Rights In China, Kurt Mosser

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Recently, I was asked if I was interested in teaching a relatively short course on a topic of my choosing at Nanjing University in Nanjing, People's Republic of China. I agreed, and designed a course called "American Political Theory" to be taught three days a week for five weeks. Each class session would meet for two hours. China has changed a great deal over the last few decades, of course. That change continues, and the pace of that change continues to accelerate. While I was in Nanjing, the government announced China's seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit GDP growth; soon after, …

Early Herbals At The University Of Nebraska – Lincoln, Richard E. Voeltz, James R. Rosowski

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: White Papers

The essence of an herbal, one author has written, is the combination of the botanical classification of the plants, a description of their medicinal properties, and traditional plant lore. Since the books were meant to be used, illustrations and physical descriptions played an important role in helping the reader identify the plants included.

The great period for printed herbals was the late fifteenth to the seventeenth century. As medicine and botany developed in the early modern period, herbals were supplanted by more specialized books emphasizing medical uses of plants or botanical classification.

The herbals listed here include some of the …