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Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: December 2010, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2010

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates from December 3 and 17, 2010.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Description Of The Tadpole Of Proceratophrys Renalis (Miranda-Ribeiro, 1920) (Anura: Cycloramphidae), Filipe Augusto C. Do Nascimento, Barnagleison S. Lisboa, Gabriel O. Skuk, Rafael O. De Sá

Biology Faculty Publications

The tadpole of Proceratophrys renalis is described based on specimens from Maceió, State of Alagoas, northeastern Brazil. At stage 35 the body is slightly dorso-ventrally depressed, ovoid in lateral, dorsal, and ventral views. Oral disc is ventral with lateral emarginations, surrounded by a single row of marginal papillae with a large gap on the upper labium. Labial tooth row formula is 2(2)/3(1 ). The analysis of internal oral anatomy revealed two possible characters that readily distinguish P. renalis from P. boiei, supporting the recent resurrection of P. renal is. Comparisons with available descriptions of the larvae for other species in …

Elucidating Functional Roles For Myogenin In Adult Skeletal Muscle Metabolism, Exercise Capacity, And Regeneration, Jesse Flynn

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The four basic helix-loop-helix myogenic transcription factors, myogenin, Myf5, MRF4, and MyoD are critical for embryonic skeletal muscle development. Myogenin is necessary for the terminal differentiation of myoblasts into myofibers during embryogenesis, but little is known about the roles played by myogenin in adult skeletal muscle function and metabolism. Furthermore, while metabolism is a well-studied physiological process, how it is regulated at the transcriptional level remains poorly understood. In this study, my aim was to determine the function of myogenin in adult skeletal muscle metabolism, exercise capacity, and regeneration. To investigate this, I utilized a mouse strain harboring the Myogflox …

The Immune Inhibitor A1 Protease Of Bacillus Anthracis, Kathryn Pflughoeft

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Bacillus anthracis, an organism ubiquitous in the soil and the causative agent of anthrax, utilizes multiple mechanisms to regulate secreted factors; one example is the activity of secreted proteases. One of the most abundant proteins in the culture supernates of B. anthracis is the Immune Inhibitor A1 (InhA1) protease. Here, I demonstrate that InhA1 modulates the abundance of approximately half of the proteins secreted into the culture supernates, including substrates that are known to contribute to the ability of the organism to cause virulence. For example, InhA1 cleaves the anthrax toxin proteins, PA, LF, and EF. InhA1 also targets …

Stress-Induced Targeting Of Molecular Chaperones In The Yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, Hugo Tapia

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The eukaryotic stress response is an essential mechanism that helps protect cells from a variety of environmental stresses. Cell death can result if cells are not able to properly adapt and protect themselves against adverse stress conditions. Failure to properly deal with stress has implications in human diseases including neurodegenerative disorders and distinct cancers, emphasizing the importance of understanding the eukaryotic stress response in detail. As part of this response, expression of a battery of heat shock proteins (HSP) is induced, which act as molecular chaperones to assist in the repair or triage of unfolded proteins. The 90-kDa HSP (Hsp90) …

Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells Sense Skin Injury And Promote Wound Healing Through Type I Interferons, Josh D. Gregorio

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) are a rare population of circulating cells, which selectively express intracellular Toll-like receptors (TLR)-7 and TLR-9 and have the capacity to produce large amounts of type I IFNs (IFN-a/b) in response to viruses or host derived nucleic acid containing complexes. pDCs are normally absent in skin but accumulate in the skin of psoriasis patients where their chronic activation to produce IFN-a/b drives the disease formation. Whether pDCs and their activation to produce IFN-a/b play a functional role in healthy skin is unknown. Here we show that pDCs are rapidly and transiently recruited into healthy human and …

Tracking The Flow Of Information Through The Hippocampal Formation In The Rat, Joshua P. Neunuebel

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The hippocampus receives input from upper levels of the association cortex and is implicated in many mnemonic processes, but the exact mechanisms by which it codes and stores information is an unresolved topic. This work examines the flow of information through the hippocampal formation while attempting to determine the computations that each of the hippocampal subfields performs in learning and memory. The formation, storage, and recall of hippocampal-dependent memories theoretically utilize an autoassociative attractor network that functions by implementing two competitive, yet complementary, processes. Pattern separation, hypothesized to occur in the dentate gyrus (DG), refers to the ability to decrease …

The Role Of Post-Translation Regulation Of Twist Expression In The Tumor Progression Of Squamous Cell Carcinoma Of Head And Neck, Ying-Wen Su

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck (SCCHN) is the tenth most common cancer in the world. Unfortunately, the survival of patients with SCCHN has not improved in the last 40 years. Therefore new targets for therapy are needed, and to this end we are studying signaling pathways activated by IL-6 which we have found stimulates cell migration and soft agar growth in SCCHN. Our data show that IL-6 increases TWIST expression in a transcription-independent mechanism in many SCCHN cell lines. Further investigation reveals TWIST can be phosphorylated upon IL-6 treatment. By computation prediction (http://scansite.mit.edu/motifscan_seq.phtml ), we found that TWIST …

Network To Pology In Human Protein Interaction Data Predicts Functional Association, Hua Li

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

High-throughput assays, such as yeast two-hybrid system, have generated a huge amount of protein-protein interaction (PPI) data in the past decade. This tremendously increases the need for developing reliable methods to systematically and automatically suggest protein functions and relationships between them. With the available PPI data, it is now possible to study the functions and relationships in the context of a large-scale network. To data, several network-based schemes have been provided to effectively annotate protein functions on a large scale. However, due to those inherent noises in high-throughput data generation, new methods and algorithms should be developed to increase the …

Characterization Of The Agrobacterium Tumefaciens Virb2 Pilin Of The Virb/D4 Type Iv Secretion System, Jennifer Kerr

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The Agrobacterium tumefaciens VirB/D4 type IV secretion system (T4SS) delivers oncogenic T-DNA and effector proteins to susceptible plant cells. This leads to the formation of tumors termed Crown Galls. The VirB/D4 T4SS is comprised of 12 subunits (VirB1 to VirB11 and VirD4), which assemble to form two structures, a secretion channel spanning the cell envelope and a T-pilus extending from the cell surface. In A. tumefaciens, the VirB2 pilin subunit is required for assembly of the secretion channel and is the main subunit of the T-pilus. The focus of this thesis is to define key reactions associated with the T4SS …

Agrobacterium Virb10 Contributions To Type Iv Substrate Secretion, T-Pilus Biogenesis, And Outer Membrane Pore Formation, Isaac Garza

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The VirB/D4 type IV secretion system (T4SS) of Agrobacterium tumefaciens functions to transfer substrates to infected plant cells through assembly of a translocation channel and a surface structure termed a T-pilus. This thesis is focused on identifying contributions of VirB10 to substrate transfer and T-pilus formation through a mutational analysis. VirB10 is a bitopic protein with several domains, including a: (i) cytoplasmic N-terminus, (ii) single transmembrane (TM) α-helix, (iii) proline-rich region (PRR), and (iv) large C-terminal modified β-barrel. I introduced cysteine insertion and substitution mutations throughout the length of VirB10 in order to: (i) test a predicted transmembrane topology, (ii) …

Analyzing The Role Of Αvβ8 Integrin In Glioma-Induced Angiogenesis, Jeremy H. Tchaicha

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

In this study we aimed to determine the functional roles for αvβ8 integrin in astrocytoma-induced angiogenesis. These studies originate from our analyses of αvβ8 integrin in developmental brain angiogenesis. αv and β8 knockout (KO) mice develop brain-specific vascular phenotypes that resemble vascular pathologies observed in the malignant astrocytoma, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Indeed, a murine xenograft model of astrocytoma suggested a role for the integrin in glioma-induced angiogenesis. Primary mouse astroglia were cultured from wild type (WT) and β8 KO neonates and were immortalized (HPV:E6/E7) and transformed (HRas:G12V). WT and β8 KO transformed astroglia were intracranially injected into athymic mice. WT …

Elucidating The Role Of Cd44 Expression On Mesenchymal Stem Cells Within The Tumor Microenvironment, Erika L. Spaeth

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The tumor microenvironment is comprised of a vast array of heterogeneous cells including both normal and neoplastic cells. The tumor stroma recruitment process has been exploited for an effective gene delivery technique using bone marrow derived MSC. Targeted migration of the MSC toward the tumor microenvironment, while successful, is not yet fully understood. This study was designed to assess the role of CD44 in the migration of MSC toward the tumor microenvironment and to determine the implications of CD44-deficient MSC within the tumor stroma. Inhibition of MSC migration was evaluated through a variety of methods in vitro and in vivo …

14-3-3sigma Negatively Regulates The Stability And Subcellular Localization Of Cop1, Chun-Hui Su

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Mammalian constitutive photomorphogenic 1 (COP1), a p53 E3 ubiquitin ligase, is a key negative regulator for p53. DNA damage leads to the translocation of COP1 to the cytoplasm, but the underlying mechanism remains unknown. We discovered that 14-3-3σ controlled COP1 subcellular localization and protein stability. Investigation of the underlying mechanism suggested that, upon DNA damage, 14-3-3σ bound to phosphorylated COP1 at S387, resulting in COP1 translocation to the cytoplasm and cytoplasmic COP1 ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation. 14-3-3σ targeted COP1 for degradation to prevent COP1-mediated p53 degradation, p53 ubiquitination, and p53 transcription repression. COP1 expression promoted cell proliferation, cell transformation, and …

Dynamic Remodeling Of The Stressed Heart: Role Of Protein Degradation Pathways, Deborah Vela

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The heart is a remarkable organ. In order to maintain its function, it remodels in response to a variety of environmental stresses, including pressure overload, volume overload, mechanical or pharmacological unloading and hormonal or metabolic disturbances. All these responses are linked to the inherent capacity of the heart to rebuild itself. Particularly, cardiac pressure overload activates signaling pathways of both protein synthesis and degradation. While much is known about regulators of protein synthesis, little is known about regulators of protein degradation in hypertrophy. The ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) selectively degrades unused and abnormal intracellular proteins. I speculated that the UPS may …

Effects Of Combined Bevacizumab And Paclitaxel On Tumor Interstitial Fluid Pressure In A Preclinical Breast Cancer Model, Ricardo Hugo Alvarez

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Effects of Combined Bevacizumab and Paclitaxel on Tumor Interstitial Fluid Pressure in a Preclinical Breast Cancer Model by Ricardo H. Alvarez Several mechanisms of cell resistance are often accountable for unsuccessful chemotherapy against cancer. Another reason, which has received increased attention, is the inefficient transport of anticancer drugs into tumor tissue. These impaired transports of chemotherapy into the tumor have been attributed to abnormal microvasculature and to pathologically increased tumor hypertension also called: interstitial fluid pressure (IFP). The pathophysiological processes leading to elevated tumor IFP are poorly understood. Here, in a preclinical breast cancer model, it is argued that a …

Temozolomide And Bevacizumab Therapy In Advanced Hemangiopericytoma/ Solitary Fibrous Tumor, Min S. Park

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Tumors comprising the spectrum of hemangiopericytoma/ malignant solitary fibrous tumor (HPC/SFT) are thought to arise from fibroblasts and represent a small subset of soft tissue sarcomas. Surgery is typically the treatment of choice for localized disease, with reported 10-year overall survival rates of 54-89% after complete surgical resection. However, for the approximately 20% of HPC/SFT patients who eventually develop local recurrences and/or distant metastases, options for effective treatment are limited and are poorly defined. Alternative therapeutic options are therefore needed for improved palliation and disease control. We hypothesize that HPC/SFT are a spectrum of soft tissue tumors with unique clinical, …

Mcam/Muc18 Regulates Melanoma Progression By Modulating The Expression Of Id-1, Maya Zigler

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The acquisition of the metastatic melanoma phenotype is associated with increased expression of the melanoma cell adhesion molecule MCAM/MUC18 (CD146). However, the mechanism by which MUC18 contributes to melanoma metastasis remains unclear. Herein, we stably silenced MUC18 expression utilizing lentivirus-incorporated small hairpin RNA, in two metastatic melanoma cell lines, A375SM and C8161, and conducted cDNA microarray analysis. We identified and validated that the transcriptional regulator, Inhibitor of DNA Binding-1 (Id-1), previously shown to function as an oncogene in several malignancies, was downregulated by 5.6-fold following MUC18 silencing. Additionally, we found that MUC18 regulated Id-1 expression at the transcriptional level via …

Is Punishment Relevant After All? A Prescription For Informing Juries Of The Consequences Of Conviction, Jeffrey Bellin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The American jury, once heralded as "the great corrective of law in its actual administration," has suffered numerous setbacks in the modern era. As a result, jurors have largely become bystanders in a criminal justice system that relies on increasingly severe punishments to incarcerate tens of thousands of offenders each year. The overwhelming majority of cases are resolved short of trial and, even when trials occur, jurors are instructed to find only the facts necessary for legal guilt. Apart from this narrow task, jurors need not, in the eyes of the law, concern themselves with whether a conviction and subsequent …

The Alien Tort Statute And Federal Common Law: A New Approach, Ingrid Wuerth

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Federal courts faced with Alien Tort Statute cases have applied customary international law to some issues and federal common law to others. This binary approach is analogous in certain respects to a Bivens action, with federal common law creating the cause of action and international law providing the conduct regulating norms. A better approach, advanced and defended in this symposium article, is to view federal common law as applying to virtually all aspects of Alien Tort Statute litigation, although for some issues federal common law is tightly linked to the content of customary international law. This article defends a federal …

Policy Relevant Heterogeneity In The Value Of Statistical Life: New Evidence From Panel Data Quantile Regressions, W. Kip Viscusi, Thomas J. Kniesner, James P. Ziliak

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

We examine differences in the value of statistical life (VSL) across potential wage levels in panel data using quantile regressions with intercept heterogeneity. Latent heterogeneity is econometrically important and affects the estimated VSL. Our findings indicate that a reasonable average cost per expected life saved cut-off for health and safety regulations is $7 million to $8 million per life saved, but the VSL varies considerably across the labor force. Our results reconcile the previous discrepancies between hedonic VSL estimates and the values implied by theories linked to the coefficient of relative risk aversion. Because the VSL varies elastically with income, …

Impeachment And Assassination, Josh Chafetz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In 1998, the conservative provocateur Ann Coulter made waves when she wrote that President Clinton should be either impeached or assassinated. Coulter was roundly - and rightly - condemned for suggesting that the murder of the President might be justified, but her conceptual linking of presidential impeachment and assassination was not entirely unfounded. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin had made the same linkage over two hundred years earlier, when he noted at the Constitutional Convention that, historically, the removal of “obnoxious” chief executives had been accomplished by assassination. Franklin suggested that a proceduralized mechanism for removal - impeachment - would be preferable. …

The Determinants Of Entrepreneurial Income In South Carolina, Devin Swindall

All Theses

Supporters claim that entrepreneurship is critical to building and sustaining the economy of urban and rural areas across the nation. Proponents argue that economic development practices that enhance and support entrepreneurship are essential because they cultivate innovation which, in turn, provides the area with new jobs, new wealth, and a better quality of life. However, self-employment income growth in South Carolina in particular and in the United States in general has lagged growth in income from other sources. This fact raises the need to study the determinants of self-employed income. Using the literature as a guide, a conceptual model was …

Buffering Effects Of Positive Mentoring On Mentor Burnout: Generative Concern And Perceived Organizational Support As Moderators, Meline Schaffer

All Theses

Burnout among employees has personal and organizational consequences. Negative effects of burnout include lowered individual adjustment as well as disengagement from the organization. Given this, both psychologists and practitioners may benefit from understanding ways to decrease this factor among employees.
One organizational experience that has the potential to decrease burnout is mentoring. While the advantages of mentoring relationships for protŽgŽs are well-documented, this study examines the potentially beneficial effects of positive mentoring relationships for the mentor, focusing on the reduction of burnout as a dependent variable. While benefits of mentoring may lead to reduced burnout, recent research suggests that negative …

Optimizing The Mechanical Properties Of Partially Yttria Stabilized Zirconia With Alumina Additions, Ramanaganapathy Kandaswamy

All Theses

Zirconia is one of the extensively studied solid oxide ceramics with respect to its use in various industrial applications like electrolyte in fuel cells, sensors, refractories and exhaust chamber in automobile industry. It can be found from the literature 1-4 that are contradictory results on the mechanical properties when alumina is added. There are several factors like microstructure, phase composition and method of processing that affects the mechanical properties of the material. The focus of this research is to examine how hardness, tensile strength and other properties varies with alumina content and deduce the optimal amount of alumina that is …

A Ptas For The Uncertain Capacity Knapsack Problem, Matthew Dabney

All Theses

The standard NP-hard knapsack problem can be interpreted as a scheduling problem with n jobs with weights w₁ . . .w_n and processing times p₁ . . . p_n, where our goal is to order the jobs on a single machine so as to maximize the weight of all jobs completing prior to a known common deadline d. In this paper, we study the uncertain capacity knapsack problem (UCKP), a generalization of this problem in which the deadline d is not known with certainty, but rather is provided as a probability distribution, and our goal …

Response Of Warm Season Turfgrasses To Reduced Light Environments, Jeffrey Atkinson

All Theses

Shade or low light tolerance is an increasingly important issue to turf managers as they are often expected to grow turf in less than ideal agronomic conditions. As permanent structures such as residential buildings add to already problematic shade caused by trees, and other barriers, new solutions are needed to help turf managers provide acceptable turf conditions. The plant growth regulator trinexapac-ethyl (TE) can lessen negative responses of turfgrass to shade.
Two experiments were conducted during the summers of 2008 and 2009 to evaluate various grasses under a reduced light environment (RLE). In the first study, performance of `Diamond' zoysiagrass …

Chemical Composition And Antioxidant Properties Of Maya Nut (Brosimum Alicastrum), Hatice Kubra Tokpunar

All Theses

ABSTRACT
Maya nut was investigated in term of its moisture, ash content, antioxidant activities, phenolic components by high pressure liquid chromatography-ultraviolet detector (HPLC-UV) and fatty acid composition by gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC-FID). The results showed that Maya nut was mainly composed of 55.06% linoleic acid (C18:2 n6), 27.2% palmitic acid (C16:0), 6.26% stearic acid (C18:0), 9.9% linolenic acid (C18:3 n3), and 3.36% Cis-11-Eicosenoic (C20:1). Maya nut possesses a higher content of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) (linoleic and linolenic acid), but lower content of monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) than canola oil and olive oil. The antioxidant capacities and total phenolic …

In Vitro Boosting And Expansion Of Tumor Infiltrating Killer T Cells, Chunlei Mei

All Theses

Immune cell tumor infiltration represents one of the mechanisms that the immune system responds to tumor cells. The tumor infiltrated immune cells include lymphocytes (TIL), dendritic cells (DCs), macrophages, and natural killer (NK) cells. Although TILs have been extensively studied in order to develop adoptive transfer based immunotherapies, how to effectively isolate, culture, and in vitro boosting the killer cells from TILs remains a challenge. Meanwhile, OK-432, a heat and penicillin-treated lyophilized preparation of the low-virulence strain of Streptococcus pyogenes, has been shown to exhibit immunomodulatory activities and potential antitumor therapeutic function, including the activation of DCs, neutrophils, macrophages, lymphocytes, …

The Dependence Of Electrical Resistivity, Saturation And Saturation Exponent On Multi-Phase Flow Instability, Zuolin Liu

All Theses

Multiphase flow channeling in oil reservoirs during water floods reduces oil recovery. Electrical methods may be used to monitor reservoirs and detect the onset of channeling, but the dependence of electrical resistivity on reservoir flow conditions is complex. The present study is directed toward understanding how the parameters of Archie's law, a commonly assumed relationship between electrical resistivity and water saturation in a porous medium, depends on multiphase flow instability leading to flow channeling. In this research a series of 34 flow experiments were conducted in a thin, two-dimensional tank (55cm x 55cm x 3.75cm) packed with 2mm glass beads …