Digital Commons Network^™

Making Africans And Indians: Colonialism, Identity, Racialization, And The Rise Of The Nation-State In The Florida Borderlands, 1765-1837, John Paul A. Nuño

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Florida Borderlands from 1765 to 1837 was a fluid space in which established colonial and Indigenous social, political, and economic systems were in dialogue with emerging discourses associated with the market economy, nationalism, and race. Utilizing British, Spanish, and United States government documents, diplomatic correspondence, and slave claims, this work traces the racialization of diverse Indigenous and African populations. Older colonial powers and nascent nation states sought to create political and social space between individuals within these categories in an effort to better control their labor, movement, and economic status. Consequently, Seminoles and Africans resisted and adapted, depending on …

Study Of Pbdes In Wastewater, Water And Sludge Of El Paso Del Norte Border Region Using Sbse Td/Gc-Ms, Beatriz Adriana Rocha-Gutierrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a group of brominated compounds widely used as flame retardants. PBDEs are structurally similar to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and appear to act similarly in the environment. Due to their persistence and lipophilicity, PBDEs are found to be bioaccumulated and biomagnified in the food chain. Current research in PBDEs is focused on their occurrences, concentration, fate and transport in the environment, and the impact in the ecosystem and human health. Since PBDEs are not regulated in the USA, large amounts of these harmful chemicals are being dumped indiscriminately into the drainage system. As a result, these …

The Effects Of Acculturation On Healthcare In The Mexican-Origin Community: El Paso County, Texas, Aurelio Saldana

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study was built around the understanding that there is complexity in the "Hispanic"¹ health care/acculturation phenomenon. The El Paso region provides an environment where an array of cultural influences produces an acculturation process whose dynamics appear to be unique but in fact are not dissimilar to other regions where cultures are coming into contact with each other. The way borderland acculturation manifests itself in local "Hispanic" healthcare behaviors contradicts the concept of the neat move from "traditional" to the "formal" biomedical paradigm. The actual behavior observed adds support to the more complex, segmented, multi-dimensional interpretations of healthcare behavior adaptation …

Coincident Visual Retinotopy In Simultaneous Slow Cortical Potentials And Fmri Recordings, Hugo Sandoval

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Slow Cortical Potentials (SCPs) and Evoked Potentials (EP) in combination with source reconstruction techniques can provide accurate and essential information about brain activity. Current techniques offer the necessary tools to study the human brain by providing detailed temporal and spatial information of the normal brain and its disorders. Human functional neuroimaging currently uses fMRI as the gold standard because of its high spatial localization and because of being non-invasive. This method's disadvantages are its high cost and unnatural environment. The purpose of this work was to determine if the combination of SCPs and traditional electroencephalography (EEG) provides a suitable technique …

School And Campus Characteristics Of Non-Graduating Seniors Due To Failure Of Taks Tests In The Western Independent School District, Patricia Silva

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study examined TAKS test scores of seniors that did not graduate with their cohort group due to failure of TAKS test. The data was for the 2007-2008, 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years and included students from ten traditional high schools. This researched focused on the relation between this senior cohort group and student and campus factors. The student characteristics included gender, ethnicity, at-risk status and students identified as economically disadvantaged and Limited English Proficient. The school characteristics included campus size, longevity of campus principal, teachers' classroom years of experience, and state and federal accountability factors. Through an observational and …

Function Point Analysis In Computer Science Capstone Projects, Evelyn Torres

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Capstone projects at the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at El Paso allow students to demonstrate their knowledge of software engineering. During the capstone project, students work on a project that simulates industry; students have a client and a supervising team. Before a project is implemented, professors must assess the project to ensure consistency with previous projects and a significant experience for the students. Currently, a project is assessed primarily on past experiences. In industry, agreeing to completing and delivering a project without assessing the scope and estimating the project cost is neither acceptable nor profitable. Similarly …

Phosphorylation Of The Glycine Transporter 1, Javier Vargas Medrano

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The extracellular levels of the neurotransmitter glycine in the brain are tightly regulated by the high-affinity glycine transporter 1 (GlyT1) and the clearance of glycine depends on its rate of transport and the levels of cell surface GlyT1. Over the past years, it has been shown that PKC activation diminishes the activity and promoted phosphorylation of several neurotransmitter transporters including the dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine transporters however, its role is unknown for the glycine transporter. To get insights into the role of PKC activation on GlyT1 regulation, we used three N-terminus GlyT1 isoforms stably expressed in porcine aortic endothelial (PAE) …

Preliminary Archaeological Investigations At The Sierra Diablo Cave Site: Paleoindian And Archaic Occupations In Hudspeth County, Texas, Jose Javier Vasquez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

It is generally rare to find archaeological sites in the Southwest that retain the type of contextual integrity that the Sierra Diablo Cave exhibits. Often times, cave sites such as the one currently studied offer excellent preservation of cultural materials due to the general lack of moisture and isolation from wind and water erosion. The research aimed to determine when the site was occupied as well as the types of activities that were occurring during those occupations. It exhibits an extensive stratigraphic sequence that contains a well pronounced Late Archaic Period assemblage (Strata A and B) and a Late Pleistocene/Early …

Systematics Of The Genus Ptychadena Boulenger, 1917 (Anura: Ptychadenidae) From Democratic Republic Of The Congo, Katrina Marie Weber

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis increases the scope of previous phylogenetic analyses that revealed high levels of genetic differentiation within the anuran genus Ptychadena. Herein, I increase sampling of Central African populations of Ptychadena by over six times to examine their relationships to other African populations and to search for cryptic species. This study represents the most comprehensive molecular phylogeny of Ptychadena to date. A total of three mitochondrial (12S, 16S, and cyt b) and two nuclear (RAG1 and rhodopsin) genes were sequenced for 67 specimens of Ptychadena. Maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian analyses were conducted. These analyses revealed …

Signature Matrices: The Eigenvalue Problem, Valeria Aguirre Holguin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Dealing with matrices can give us a hard time, especially when their dimension is too big, but we also well know how valuable information a matrix may carry, and that is why we study them. When a matrix has a significant number of zeroes we realize how much easier all calculations are. For instance, the product will be simpler to calculate, the determinant, the inverse and even the eigenvalue problem. This thesis provides the description and behavior of a very special kind of matrices which we call signature matrices. A particular feature of these matrices lies in the fact that …

Isolation, Characterization And Molecular Cloning Of Dnase Iiib From Drosophila Melanogaster, Brenda Cristina Anchondo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nucleases are enzymes that breakdown nucleic acids; they are classified by their biochemical properties into different groups (Evans et al., 2003). The ββα-Me finger family of nucleases are enzymes that combine structurally different groups but they are defined by a highly evolutionary conserved active site, a stretch of 22 amino acids composed by a β-hairpin (ββ) and α-helix (α) that anchor a catalytic metal ion (Sokolowska et al, 2009). Within this family is found the DNA/RNA non-specific nucleases. Nucleases that belong to the DNA/RNA non-specific group hydrolyze both ds and ss DNA, as well as RNA at equal or similar …

Experimental Study Of The Effects Of Green Tea, Alejandra Avila

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Background. Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease caused by an intracellular parasite belonging to the genus Leishmania. The cutaneous form of the disease causes often significant disfigurement, accelerates progression to clinical AIDS and tuberculosis, and is associated with a number of adverse economic, psychosocial, and nutritional consequences. An estimated 350 million persons are at risk for this globally distributed disease and 1.5-2 million new cases occur annually. Leishmaniasis is endemic in 88 countries on five continents. It is distributed throughout most of the Americas ranging from southern Texas to northern Argentina. It is also regarded as a threat to the readiness …

The Role Of Sumoylation Of Ledgf/P75 In Hiv-1 Infection, Murilo Tadeu Domingues Bueno

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The lens epithelium-derived growth factor (LEDGF) proteins p75 and p52 are transcriptional co-activators that protect cells from stresses through modulation of stress and heat shock-related genes. Besides regulating such genes, LEDGF/p75 is also important in the process of HOX gene expression and leukemia transformation driven by the MLL histone methyl transferase complex. By exploiting a similar mechanism of interaction between LEDGF/p75 and MLL, the HIV-1 viral protein Integrase (IN) associates with LEDGF/p75 in order to execute efficient viral DNA integration. This present work has identified that LEDGF proteins are posttranslationally modified by SUMO-1 and -3. SUMOylation was found to target …

Three Dimensional Collagen Gels As A Cell Culture Matrix For The Study Of Live Cells By Raman Spectroscopy, Franck Bonnier, Aidan Meade, S. Merzha, Peter Knief, Kunal Bhattacharya, Fiona Lyng, Hugh Byrne

Articles

Three dimensional collagen gels are evaluated as matrices for the study of live cells by Raman spectroscopy. The study is conducted on a human lung adenocarcinoma (A549) and a spontaneously immortalized human epithelial keratinocyte (HaCaT) cell line. It is demonstrated, using the Alamar Blue assay, that both cell models exhibit enhanced viability in collagen matrices compared to quartz substrates, commonly used for Raman spectroscopy. Using principal component analysis, it is shown that the Raman spectral analysis of cells in collagen matrices are minimally contaminated by substrate contributions and the cell to cell spectral variations are greatly reduced compared to those …

Unto Perfect Manhood: An Instrumental Case Study Of Leadership Formation In An African American Boys High School, Daniel Ivan Mackinney

Dissertations

This qualitative study investigates the influence of single-sex education on leadership formation at an all boys, urban Catholic high school where a majority of the students come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The researcher has found an association between graduation from a single-sex school and leadership attainment. In order to understand what it is about a single-sex education that might nurture leadership development the author completed an instrumental case study of the school seeking to identify those elements that might nurture leadership formation.

The theoretical framework for this study is based on the research of Wolf-Wendel (1998) who relies on institutional characteristics …

Trauma, Dissociation, And Traumatic Stress At A Trauma Center Serving Low-Income Children And Adolescents, Krista Kohl

Dissertations

Exposure to trauma continues to be a pervasive and detrimental experience in the lives of children and adolescents in impoverished, urban communities. This study explored the relationships among trauma, dissociation, and posttraumatic stress in a clinic-referred sample of children and adolescents living in urban poverty. Trauma was investigated broadly, including a range of traumatic experiences, with particular attention given to different types, chronicity, multiple exposures, and severity of trauma. Dissociation was investigated as a mediator, or mechanism of the relationships among trauma and posttraumatic stress symptoms, internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Moderators included gender, age, and adverse experiences. Results confirmed that …

Laïcité In France - Contemporary Issues Panel Discussion, Nathalie Caron, Blandine Chelini- Pont, Rosemary C. Salomone, Emmanuel Tawil

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

No abstract provided.

Cover And Contents

Turkish Journal of Zoology

No abstract provided.

Cover And Contents

Turkish Journal of Zoology

No abstract provided.

Predatory Mite Fauna Of Phytoseiidae Of Northwest Iran (Acari: Mesostigmata), Hasan Rahmani, Karim Kamali, Farid Faraji

Turkish Journal of Zoology

To determine the predatory mite family Phytoseiidae associated with spider mites in northwest Iran, a survey was carried out during 2006-2007. Nineteen species from 7 genera of the family Phytoseiidae were collected and identified. Measurements are given and some morphological characters are discussed. A key is provided to identify the adult females of the known 27 species of Phytoseiidae of that area. The following new synonymies are proposed: Neoseiulus vardgesi (Arutunjan, 1968) as a junior synonym of N. zwoelferi (Dosse, 1957); Transeius caspiansis (Denmark and Daneshvar, 1982) and T. patellae (Karg, 1982) as junior synonyms of T. wainsteini (Gomelauri, 1968); …

Pattern Recognition In Cytopathology For Papanicolaou Screening, Jonathan Blackledge, Dmitriy Dubovitskiy

Conference papers

A unique space oriented filer is presented in order to detect and isolate the cell of a nucleus for applications in cytopathology. A classification method for nuclei is then considered based on the application of a set of features which includes certain fractal parameters. Segmentation algorithms are considered in which a self-adjustable sharpening filter is designed to enhance object location. Although the methods discussed and the algorithms developed have a range of applications, in this work we focus the engineering of a system for automating a Papanicolaou screening test using standard optical images

Effects Of Moist Chilling, Gibberellic Acid, And Scarification On Seed Dormancy In The Rare Endemic Pedicularis Olympica (Scrophulariaceae), Serap Kirmizi, Gürcan Güleryüz, Hülya Arslan, Fatma Selcen Sakar

Turkish Journal of Botany

We investigated the germination requirements of a rare endemic plant species, Pedicularis olympica Boiss. (Scrophulariaceae), which grows in wet habitats on Uludağ Mountain, Turkey. We studied the effects of scarification, moist chilling (+4 °C) for 15 days, different doses of gibberellic acid (GA_{3}; 100, 150, and 250 ppm) and combined hormone and moist chilling treatments under dark (20 °C) and photoperiod (20/10 °C; 12/12 h, respectively) conditions. GA_{3} was able to break dormancy. The highest germination rate was found in the seeds treated with 250 ppm GA_{3}; 64% of these seeds germinated when treated with moist chilling and incubated in …

Seed Morphology Of Ebenus L. Species Endemic To Turkey, Fatma Bayrakdar, Zeki̇ Aytaç, Zeki̇ye Suludere, Selami̇ Candan

Turkish Journal of Botany

In the present study, seed surface morphology of species of the genus Ebenus L. in Turkey, all of which are endemic, was studied. E. plumosa var. speciosa has the biggest and E. laguroides var. laguroides has the smallest seeds. The seed shapes are spheroid in E. reesei, orbiculate in E. pisidica, and oblong-spheroid in others. Ornamentation is striate in E. macrophylla, rugose in E. haussknechtii, and reticulate or multi-reticulate in others. Microphylle is subterminal in all Turkish Ebenus species.

Pollen Morphology Of The Genus Fritillaria L. (Liliaceae) In Turkey, Mehtap Tekşen, Zeki̇ Aytaç, Nur Münevver Pinar

Turkish Journal of Botany

Pollen grains of 39 taxa of the genus Fritillaria L. in Turkey were examined by light and scanning electron microscopy. Detailed pollen morphological characteristics are given for these taxa. Our investigation shows that the sculpturing of the exine provides valuable characters for separating species. In particular, sculpturing of the exine at the proximal face turned out to be taxonomically important. Six types of ornamentation were determined: reticulate, reticulate-perforate, suprareticulate, rugulate-reticulate, psilate-perforate, and perforate. On the basis of exine sculpturing, the sulcus membrane, and the apex sulcus, 5 main pollen types are recognised.

Numerical Ages Of Selected Rudist Bivalvia: Preliminary Results, Robert W. Scott

Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

The ranges of most biostratigraphically diagnostic fossils have been calibrated to the geologic time scale in mega-annums. Five methods for integrating fossil ranges with the numerical geologic time scale are currently used: (1) species in stratigraphic positions with radiometrically dated beds; (2) strontium isotopes of unaltered shell material; (3) cyclostratigraphic frequencies of enclosing strata; (4) integration with zones and sequence stratigraphy; and (5) graphic correlation. Preliminary studies show that rudist occurrences have been calibrated in numerical ages by Sr isotopes, zonal integration and graphic correlation. Where the same species are dated by two methods, a more complete range is the …

Classification Of Some Plant Species According To Grime’S Strategies In A Quercus Cerris L. Var. Cerris Woodland In Samsun, Northern Turkey, Mahmut Kilinç, Nesli̇han Karavi̇n, Hamdi̇ Güray Kutbay

Turkish Journal of Botany

This study was carried out on 2 permanent plots of Quercus cerris L. var. cerris woodland in the Kurupelit region of Samsun, northern Turkey. Grime's CSR strategies were determined for 85 plant species from the 2 study plots (61 and 50 species from plot 1 and plot 2, respectively) according to the method that was applied. Most of the plant species in both plots had secondary and tertiary strategies, and this suggests that plants were exposed to more than one pressure factor. In both plots, CR (competitor-ruderal) was the most common strategy.

The Diatoms Of Asartepe Dam Lake (Ankara), With Environmental And Some Physicochemical Properties, Tahi̇r Atici, Emi̇ne Olcay Obali

Turkish Journal of Botany

The shoreline benthic diatoms of Asartepe Dam Lake were identified from different habitats (epipelic, epiphytic, and epilithic) at 7 sampling stations between April 2003 and June 2004. In the investigation, a total of 93 taxa were identified. Of those, Cymbella affinis Kütz., Navicula radiosa Kütz., Ulnaria ulna (Nitzsch) Compère, Pinnularia borealis Ehrenb., Amphora ovalis (Kütz.) Kütz., Cyclotella ocellata Pant. and Nitzschia dissipata (Kütz.) Grunow were observed and abundant at all stations. Some physical and chemical water quality parameters were measured and correlated with biological parameters.

Pleiotrophin And Its Role In Regulating Haemopoietic Stem Cell Regeneration, Rebecca Smith

Masters

HSCs are cells that have the capacity to self renew, proliferate and differentiate, providing cells of the mature blood system throughout a lifetime. The concept of such a cell was first considered in 1961 subsequent to the injection of healthy marrow into a lethally irradiated recipient mouse which mediated the reconstitution of mature blood cells in the irradiated host(Till and Mc Culloch, 1961). This finding provided preliminary experimental evidence that all of the blood cells were derived from a single type of progenitor cell, also known as HSC. The majority of mature blood cells have a limited life span, red …

Differential Control Of Tgm2 Expression By Oestrogen Receptor/Serms., Damian Lally

Masters

Breast cancer is a malignancy of the epithelial cells comprising the mammary gland. As the ER is necessary for the growth of pproximately 70% of breast cancers, pharmaceutical efforts have focused on uncovering modulators of the ERα such as antiestrogens and Selective Oestrogen Receptor Modulator (SERMs). SERMs differ from pure ER antagonists in their capacity to display tissue-selective and C promoter dependent agonist-antagonist activities. Tamoxifen (TAM) is a SERM that is used in the treatment of hormonally responsive breast cancer. TAM is the most commonly used treatment for patients with ERα positive breast cancer. In this study we examined the …

Ecological Method Development For Detecting N-Nitrosodimethylamine In Water Using Hplc-Pdad, Jolisa Mcday

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Using ethanol, a sustainable reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method with photo-diode array detection (HPLC-PDAD) was investigated to detect sub-parts per billion concentrations of N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) in drinking water and environmental water samples. This presents a practical and “green” option to analytical methods that require laborious derivatization, expensive detectors and unecological solvents.

Mobile phase characteristics, instrument operating parameters, and sample preparation were investigated. Selectivity for NDMA was evaluated using three different C18 columns. Optimal peak resolution and detection were achieved at 231 nm. The limit of detection and quantitation for NDMA was 0.29 μg/mL and 0.96 μg/mL, respectively, with an ethanol …