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2010

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Tandem, Oxidative Cyclizations By Anodic Electrochemistry And The Use Of Solar Power As An Alternate Energy Source, Laura Anderson Jan 2010

Tandem, Oxidative Cyclizations By Anodic Electrochemistry And The Use Of Solar Power As An Alternate Energy Source, Laura Anderson

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Cyclization reactions are a significant pursuit in organic synthesis. Unfortunately, many cyclization reactions are either reductive in nature or redox neutral. This can force post-cyclization manipulations to add functional groups and continue the total synthesis. These additional reactions create excess waste and decrease the efficiency of a synthetic scheme. In these cases, it would be nice to do the cyclization in an oxidative fashion. Oxidative cyclizations have been performed, but are currently limited in nature and scope. One way to address this issue is with the use of organic electrochemistry. Electrochemistry appears to be an ideal choice for initiating oxidative …

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Synthesis And Investigation Of Uv-Cured, Complex Amphiphilic Polymer Films For Use In Anti-Biofouling Applications, Jeremy Bartels Jan 2010

Synthesis And Investigation Of Uv-Cured, Complex Amphiphilic Polymer Films For Use In Anti-Biofouling Applications, Jeremy Bartels

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The overall emphasis of this dissertation research included the development of novel amphiphilic anti-fouling coatings having complex surface topography and compositional heterogeneity and a fundamental investigation of their properties. These films were cultivated as non-fluorinated or non-fluorinated/non-PEGylated analogs to the hyperbranched fluoropolymer-poly(ethylene glycol): HBFP-PEG) film system. The coating compositions consisted of the mixing and crosslinking of either two disparate polymers or a complex amphiphilic block copolymer with crosslinking agents. A variety of crosslinking methods was analyzed, including vulcanization and UV-promoted thiol-ene reactions. The coatings were analyzed using a variety of advanced methods, including thermomechanical techniques, tensile testing and surface analysis. …

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Synthetic Ion Transporters: New Analytical Approaches For The Investigation Of Ion Binding And Transport, Ionut Carasel Jan 2010

Synthetic Ion Transporters: New Analytical Approaches For The Investigation Of Ion Binding And Transport, Ionut Carasel

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Synthetic ion transporters: new analytical approaches for the investigation of ion binding and transport by Ionut Alexandru Carasel Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry Washington University in St. Louis, 2010 Dr. George W. Gokel, co-Chair Dr. Kevin Moeller, co-Chair The work reported in this dissertation focuses on synthetic ion transporters: SATs). SATs have a relatively simple chemical structure but they aggregate, self-assemble and insert in biological membranes much in the same way as their much more complex naturally occurring analogs. This makes SATs valuable tools for the investigation of these supramolecular and membrane related processes with the final goal of developing …

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Impact Of Second Messenger Modulation On Activity-Dependent And Basal Properties Of Excitatory Synapses, Chun Yun Chang Jan 2010

Impact Of Second Messenger Modulation On Activity-Dependent And Basal Properties Of Excitatory Synapses, Chun Yun Chang

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Cognitive processing in the central nervous system relies on accurate information propagation; neurotransmission is the fundamental mechanism underlying network information flow. Because network information is coded by the timing and the strength of neuronal activity, synaptic properties that translate neuronal activity into synaptic output profoundly determine the precision of information transfer. Synaptic properties are in turn shaped by changes in network activity to ensure appropriate synaptic output. Activity-dependent adjustment of synaptic properties is often initiated by second messenger signals. Understanding how second messengers sculpt synaptic properties and produce changes in synaptic output is key for elucidating the interplay between network …

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Quantitative Phosphoproteomics Through Β-Elimination And Michael Addition With Natural Abundance And Stable Isotope Labeled Thiocholine, Meng Chen Jan 2010

Quantitative Phosphoproteomics Through Β-Elimination And Michael Addition With Natural Abundance And Stable Isotope Labeled Thiocholine, Meng Chen

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The reversible covalent phosphorylation of cellular proteins is widely believed to be the most important mechanism for the regulation of multiple signal transduction pathways in cell growth, division, and death by acting as a molecular switch at multiple nodes in metabolic networks. In this dissertation, first, a novel mass spectrometric strategy is reported that exploited the unique chemical properties of thiocholine that was introduced into protein phosphosites through alkaline beta-elimination and Michael addition: BEMA), allowing the specific detection, identification and quantitation of phosphorylated serine/threonine containing peptides. Through replacement of the phosphate with thiocholine as the Michael donor, this strategy resulted …

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Light-Harvesting And The Primary Photochemistry Of Roseiflexus Castenholzii, Aaron Collins Jan 2010

Light-Harvesting And The Primary Photochemistry Of Roseiflexus Castenholzii, Aaron Collins

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Photosynthetic organisms have evolved diverse antennas to harvest light of various qualities and intensities. Anoxygenic phototrophs can have bacteriochlorophyll Qy antenna absorption bands ranging from about 700-1100 nm. This broad range of usable wavelengths has allowed many organisms to thrive in unique environments. Roseiflexus castenholzii is a niche-adapted, filamentous anoxygenic phototroph: FAP) that lacks chlorosomes, the dominant antenna found in all green bacteria. Light-harvesting is realized only in the membrane with BChl a and a variety of carotenoids. Through biochemical and spectroscopic methods, a model for the size and organization of the photosynthetic antenna is presented. Despite the wide …

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Impossible Whiteness: Race, Gender, And American Identity In Early Twentieth-Century American Literature, Tarah Demant Jan 2010

Impossible Whiteness: Race, Gender, And American Identity In Early Twentieth-Century American Literature, Tarah Demant

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In Impossible Whiteness, I reveal whiteness--though oftentimes still an implicit critical assumption of normalcy--as a complex, shifting category in the literature of early twentieth-century America, and show how gender, particularly, disrupts American whiteness. I deconstruct the various ways in which whiteness is defined legally, culturally, and in the marketplace, and demonstrate how Edith Wharton, Anzia Yezierska, and F. Scott Fitzgerald trace these standards of whiteness and the inevitable failure of such racial: and implicitly gendered) refinement. Though critical literature has been slow to consider the role of race for these authors, I reveal them as actively participating in contemporary dialogues …

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Mitotic Cell Cycle Progression And Differentiation Of Germline Stem Cells In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Paul Fox Jan 2010

Mitotic Cell Cycle Progression And Differentiation Of Germline Stem Cells In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Paul Fox

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In the C. elegans germline, stem cells make a decision to retain the germline proliferative cell fate or differentiate by entering meiosis. Importantly, this decision must be coordinated with progression through the mitotic cell cycle. Previous work has shown that the conserved GLP-1/Notch signaling pathway promotes the proliferative fate while two downstream and redundant pathways are repressed by GLP-1 and promote entry into meiosis: the GLD-1 and GLD-2 pathways. To better understand how the switch to enter meiosis is coordinated with progression through the mitotic cell cycle, I investigated mitotic cell cycle progression among germline proliferative cells. Proliferative cells cycle …

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Mechanisms Of Copper-Dependent Notochord Formation In Zebrafish, John Gansner Jan 2010

Mechanisms Of Copper-Dependent Notochord Formation In Zebrafish, John Gansner

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The interplay of genes and nutrition during early development profoundly impacts fetal outcome. Copper is an essential nutrient required for the redox activity of many enzymes, and recent work in our laboratory has elucidated the phenotype of copper deficiency in zebrafish, which includes a strikingly distorted notochord. The studies described here establish the specific genetic etiology of this distortion and reveal a number of gene-gene and gene-nutrient interactions critical to notochord morphogenesis. We first demonstrate that the notochord distortion observed in copper-deficient zebrafish results from lysyl oxidase cuproenzyme inhibition. Four lysyl oxidase family members are expressed throughout the developing zebrafish …

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Psychosocial Problems Of Homeless Sexual Minority Youths And Their Heterosexual Counterparts, Maurice Gattis Jan 2010

Psychosocial Problems Of Homeless Sexual Minority Youths And Their Heterosexual Counterparts, Maurice Gattis

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Abstract The purpose of this dissertation was to better understand the psychosocial problems: mental health problems, substance use problems, and sexual risk behaviors) and the associated contextual risk factors by comparing homeless sexual minority youths with their heterosexual counterparts. This study used an ecological perspective: Bronfenbrenner, 1989) and a risk and protective factors framework: Hawkins, Catalano, & Miller, 1992) to identify contextual risk factors at the microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystem levels that are associated with the psychosocial problems of homeless sexual minority and homeless heterosexual youths. Individuals aged 16-24 were recruited from three drop-in programs serving homeless youths in downtown …

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Inbreeding Depression And Competition In The Square-Stemmed Monkey-Flower (Mimulus Ringens), Nicholas Griffin Jan 2010

Inbreeding Depression And Competition In The Square-Stemmed Monkey-Flower (Mimulus Ringens), Nicholas Griffin

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Matings between biologically related individuals often produce offspring with reduced fitness, a phenomenon known as inbreeding depression. The magnitude of inbreeding depression can play an important role in determining the overall fitness, and persistence, of populations, and is often considered one of the key factors driving the evolution of mating systems and their associated traits. Recent research has shown that the strength of inbreeding depression is often highly sensitive to environmental conditions, such as the availability of abiotic resources or variation in the strengths of ecological interactions between organisms. In plant populations, drought, plant density, herbivory, and infection by pathogens, …

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Hermann Hesse As Ambivalent Modernist, Theodore Jackson Jan 2010

Hermann Hesse As Ambivalent Modernist, Theodore Jackson

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

This dissertation asserts that the Hermann Hesse approaches the themes and techniques of literary Modernism with ambivalence. The first chapter outlines the role of philosophical and literary walking in Hesse's work in general as well as how these depictions differ from those produced by his predecessors. The second chapter takes Hesse's reinterpretation of Nietzsche and Rousseau and applies it to three of Hesse's early novels, Unterm Rad, Peter Camenzind, and Knulp. The third chapter examines Der Steppenwolf as an ambivalently Modernist autobiography, using Eugene Stelzig's notion of Seelenbiographie. The last chapter examines Hesse's two final novels, Die Morgenlandfahrt and Das …

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Parallelization Of Dynamic Programming Recurrences In Computational Biology, Arpith Jacob Jan 2010

Parallelization Of Dynamic Programming Recurrences In Computational Biology, Arpith Jacob

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The rapid growth of biosequence databases over the last decade has led to a performance bottleneck in the applications analyzing them. In particular, over the last five years DNA sequencing capacity of next-generation sequencers has been doubling every six months as costs have plummeted. The data produced by these sequencers is overwhelming traditional compute systems. We believe that in the future compute performance, not sequencing, will become the bottleneck in advancing genome science. In this work, we investigate novel computing platforms to accelerate dynamic programming algorithms, which are popular in bioinformatics workloads. We study algorithm-specific hardware architectures that exploit fine-grained …

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Novel Algorithms For Structural Alignment Of Non-Coding Rnas, Diana Kolbe Jan 2010

Novel Algorithms For Structural Alignment Of Non-Coding Rnas, Diana Kolbe

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Non-coding RNAs are biologically important molecules, with a variety of catalytic and regulatory activities mediated by their secondary and tertiary structures. Base-pairing interactions, particularly at the secondary structure level, are an important tool for identifying and studying these structural RNAs, but also present some unique challenges for sequence analysis. Probabilistic covariance models are effective representations of structural RNAs, with generally high sensitivity and specificity but slow computational speed. New algorithms for dealing with structural RNAs are developed to address some of the practical deficiencies of covariance models. A new model of local alignment improves accuracy for fragmentary data, such as …

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The Role Of Tcr Specificity In The Regulation Of The Immune Response To Self And Commensal Antigens, Stephanie Lathrop Jan 2010

The Role Of Tcr Specificity In The Regulation Of The Immune Response To Self And Commensal Antigens, Stephanie Lathrop

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Role of TCR Specificity in the Regulation of the Immune Response to Self and Commensal Antigens by Stephanie K. Lathrop Doctor of Philosophy in Biology and Biomedical Sciences: Immunology) Washington University in St. Louis, 2010 Dr. Chyi-Song Hsieh, Chairperson The immune system must be able to fight potentially pathogenic microbial invaders without mounting an attack on its own tissues, food antigens, and harmless or beneficial commensal species. Despite the elimination of many self-reactive T cells in the thymus, some T cells with the ability to recognize self and potentially cause autoimmune disease are present in …

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Mechanisms Of Copper Deficiency In The Zebrafish Embryo, Erik Madsen Jan 2010

Mechanisms Of Copper Deficiency In The Zebrafish Embryo, Erik Madsen

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Proper maternal nutrition is critical for early embryonic development. Despite overwhelming epidemiologic data indicating the benefits nutrient supplementation for the developing organism we do not fully understand the genetics of predisposition to abnormal developmental phenotypes when faced with suboptimal nutrient levels. Copper is an essential nutrient required for critical biochemical processes. Severe defects in copper homeostasis lead to significant disease typified by the X-linked recessive disorder Menkes disease. Patients with Menkes disease have cutis laxa, bone deformities, hypopigmentation, arterial malformation, and neurodegeneration due to copper deficiency caused by loss-of-function mutations in ATP7A, a copper transport protein. Despite the critical requirement …

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The Impact Of Interferon Regulatory Factor 3 On The Immune Response To Herpes Simplex Virus Type I Infection, Vineet Menachery Jan 2010

The Impact Of Interferon Regulatory Factor 3 On The Immune Response To Herpes Simplex Virus Type I Infection, Vineet Menachery

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The type I interferon: IFN) cascade is critical in control of herpes simplex virus type I: HSV-1) infection and relies on specific recognition molecules to rapidly signal viral infection via interferon regulatory factor-3: IRF-3) -dependent pathways. The absence of these recognition molecules or the loss of IRF-3 would be predicted to render early recognition pathways inoperative and thus impact viral infection. However, previous results had produced contradictory results in terms of the role of IRF-3 during HSV-1 infection. In this study, infected IRF-3-/- immune cells were found to support increased HSV-1 replication compared to control cells. In addition, IRF-3 deficient …

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Brain-Based Learning Theory: The Incorporation Of Movement To Increase Learning, Eva Patrice Pennington Jan 2010

Brain-Based Learning Theory: The Incorporation Of Movement To Increase Learning, Eva Patrice Pennington

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This study investigated the use of kinesthetic movement as a vehicle by which to teach grammar to high school students. Brain-based theorists believe that, since the anatomical parts of the brain that coordinate basic physical movement are also the physical components used to coordinate the movement of thought, movement is necessary for optimal learning to occur. While purposeful incorporation of movement in the classroom is a popular and increasingly important aspect of brain-based theory, little empirical evidence exists to support the experiences, conjectures, and evidence across multiple disciplines and neurological findings when applied to the high school student. The study …

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Psychometric Comparisons Of The Reasons For Living Inventory For Young Adults And The College Student Reasons For Living Inventory In A College Sample, Ashley A. Heck Jan 2010

Psychometric Comparisons Of The Reasons For Living Inventory For Young Adults And The College Student Reasons For Living Inventory In A College Sample, Ashley A. Heck

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of the present study was to examine and compare the psychometric properties of two self-report measures designed to assess suicide-related behaviors in college-age populations. Screening for suicidality is important to identify and support individuals who may be at risk for suicide-related behaviors (Joe & Bryant, 2007). Both the Reasons for Living Inventory for Young Adults (Osman, 1998) and the College Students Reasons for Living Inventory (Westefeld, Cardin, & Deaton, 1992) were developed to assess the reasons that young adults may have for refraining from self destructive acts. These measures were analyzed in terms of their factor structure and …

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Biology I Lab, Todd Schraw Jan 2010

Biology I Lab, Todd Schraw

Syllabus Repository

No abstract provided.

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Biology 1 Lab, Todd Schraw Jan 2010

Biology 1 Lab, Todd Schraw

Syllabus Repository

No abstract provided.

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Microbiology, Steelman Library, B Mcconchie Dr. Jan 2010

Microbiology, Steelman Library, B Mcconchie Dr.

Syllabus Repository

No abstract provided.

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Eugenic Sterilization In 20th Century Georgia: From Progressive Utilitarianism To Individual Rights, Stephen Michael Smith Jan 2010

Eugenic Sterilization In 20th Century Georgia: From Progressive Utilitarianism To Individual Rights, Stephen Michael Smith

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The science of human breeding, known as eugenics, flourished in America in the first half of the 20th century. The movement's chief proponents included wealthy philanthropists, politicians, doctors, and young middle-class reformers. Sterilization for the purposes of removing defective genes from society was a critical part of the eugenics movement. Progressive reformers used eugenic doctrines combined with utilitarian political philosophy to divest individuals of the natural right to procreation. Involuntary sterilization legislation spread throughout the United States after the 1927 Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision that gave judicial approval to involuntary sterilization, regardless of due process and equal protection …

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Mediating Moore: Uncertain Origins And Indeterminate Identities In The Work Of C. L. Moore, Jennifer Jodell Jan 2010

Mediating Moore: Uncertain Origins And Indeterminate Identities In The Work Of C. L. Moore, Jennifer Jodell

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

C.: Catherine) L.: Lucille) Moore, one of the earliest female science fiction writers, is widely regarded by SF writers, editors, and fans as one of the field’s most influential founding mothers, with female SF writer Marion Zimmer Bradley claiming Moore as the "mother" of all women who write science fiction. Yet, feminist science fiction criticism has yet to embrace its "mother" fully, and mainstream SF critics have not yet conducted general studies of Moore's work. In some circles, Moore's "value" to SF criticism and genre histories seems limited to Moore's ability to serve as a symbol for what are believed …

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The Design And Implementation Of An Extensible Brain-Computer Interface, Scott Burns Jan 2010

The Design And Implementation Of An Extensible Brain-Computer Interface, Scott Burns

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

An implantable brain computer interface: BCI) includes tissue interface hardware, signal conditioning circuitry, analog-to-digital conversion: ADC) circuitry and some sort of computing hardware to discriminate desired waveforms from noise. Within an experimental paradigm the tissue interface and ADC hardware will rarely change. Recent literature suggests it is often the specific implementation of waveform discrimination that can limit the usefulness and lifespan of a particular BCI design. If the discrimination techniques are implemented in on-board software, experimenters gain a level of flexibility not currently available in published designs. To this end, I have developed a firmware library to acquire data sampled …

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Computational Intelligence Methods In Wireless Sensor Networks, Raghavendra V. Kulkarni Jan 2010

Computational Intelligence Methods In Wireless Sensor Networks, Raghavendra V. Kulkarni

Doctoral Dissertations

"Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are networks of autonomous nodes that sense, compute and communicate in order to monitor an environment collectively. Ad hoc deployment, dynamic environment and resource constraints in nodes need to be considered while addressing WSN challenges such as deployment, localization, routing and scheduling. Adaptive mechanisms that exhibit intelligent behavior in complex and dynamic environments are desirable to address these challenges. The potential of computational intelligence ( CI) based approaches for addressing WSN challenges is investigated in this study. Contributions of this dissertation are in the following three areas: critical literature analysis, new architectures and approaches, and new …

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Nmr Investigations Of Biomass-To-Fuel Conversions By Hydrothermal Processes, Wenjia Zhang Jan 2010

Nmr Investigations Of Biomass-To-Fuel Conversions By Hydrothermal Processes, Wenjia Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

"Biofuels have gained significant attention as the most promising alternative energy and fuel supply for the near future because of two dominant reasons: first, biofuels are environmentally friendly; and second, they afford a sustainable technology. Biofuels can be synthesized from biomass by several different processes, among which, hydrothermal conversion is considered to be more energy efficient. However, scientific efforts to improve hydrothermal biomass-to-fuel (HT-BTF) conversion efficiencies are severely limited because little is known about the salient reaction mechanisms and intermediates. This study is aimed at a better understanding of the hydrothermal biomass degradation kinetics by advanced NMR spectroscopy and, accordingly, …

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High Temperature Tolerant Optical Fiber Inline Microsensors By Laser Fabrication, Tao Wei Jan 2010

High Temperature Tolerant Optical Fiber Inline Microsensors By Laser Fabrication, Tao Wei

Doctoral Dissertations

"Fiber sensors are particularly attractive for harsh environment defined by high temperature, high pressure, corrosive/erosive, and strong electromagnetic interference, where conventional electronic sensors do not have a chance to survive. However, the key issue has been the robustness of the sensor probe (not the fiber itself) mostly due to the problems stemmed from the traditional assembly based approaches used to construct fiber optic sensors. For example, at high temperatures (e.g., above 500°C), the thermal expansion coefficient mismatch between different composited parts has a high chance to lead to sensors' malfunction by breaking the sensor as a result of the excessive …

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Protein Secondary Structure Prediction Using Blast And Relaxed Threshold Rule Induction From Coverings, Leong Lee Jan 2010

Protein Secondary Structure Prediction Using Blast And Relaxed Threshold Rule Induction From Coverings, Leong Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

"Protein structure prediction has always been an important research area in bioinformatics and biochemistry. Despite the recent breakthrough of combining multiple sequence alignment information and artificial intelligence algorithms to predict protein secondary structure, the Q₃ accuracy of various computational prediction methods rarely has exceeded 75%; this status has changed little since 2003 when Rost stated that "the currently best methods reach a level around 77% three-state per-residue accuracy." The application of artificial neural network methods to this problem is revolutionary in the sense that those techniques employ the homologues of proteins for training and prediction. In this dissertation, a different …

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Optimal Excitation Controllers, And Location And Sizing Of Energy Storage For All-Electric Ship Power System, Chuan Yan Jan 2010

Optimal Excitation Controllers, And Location And Sizing Of Energy Storage For All-Electric Ship Power System, Chuan Yan

Doctoral Dissertations

"The Navy's future all-electric ship power system is based on the integrated power system (IPS) architecture consisting of power generation, propulsion systems, hydrodynamics, and DC zonal electric distribution system (DC-ZEDS). To improve the power quality, optimal excitation systems, and optimal location and sizing of energy storage modules (ESMs) are studied. In this dissertation, clonal selection algorithm (CSA) based controller design is firstly introduced. CSA based controller design shows better exploitation ability with relatively long search time when compared to a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based design. Furthermore, 'optimal' small population PSO (SPPSO) based excitation controller is introduced. Parameter sensitivity analysis …

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