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Functional Metabolomics' Enhances Assessment Of Tissue Dysfunction As Demonstrated In A Rat Model Of Sub-Acute D-Serine Exposure, Isaie Sibomana

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We describe a methodology that combines urinary metabolomics with a tissue-specific stressor administration to enhance assessment of tissue function. Kidney function in rats was mildly compromised with a sub-acute dose of D-serine and stressed with furosemide. NMR-based metabolomics analyses showed no detectable effects due to D-serine alone; but furosemide or D-serine + furosemide groups, classified separately from each other, and from control. Furosemide alone caused a ca. 2-fold increase in glucose, lactate, choline, and a 30% decrease in TCA intermediates (p≤0.05). D-serine suppressed these effects and produced a 1.7-fold increase in a p-phenolic acid-derivative of tyrosine (PAdY) relative to control …

Distribution Of Cellular Interferon Beta (Ifn-Β) In Murine Fibroblast Cell Lines Upon Infection Of Hsv-1, Rachael E. Curtis

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The hypothesis for this study was: IFN-β expression differs between murine fibroblasts (A2R1 and L929) of different mouse strains upon infection of HSV-1. Fluorescent microscopy was used to examine localization of IFN-β in the different murine fibroblast and keratinocyte cell lines after 6 hours of infection with herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1). Because keratinocytes cell lines HEL-30 and PAM-212 grew in clusters, staining patterns in individual cells could not be determined. A notable difference in localization of IFN-β immune staining was seen between the two cell lines when infected with HSV-1. The A2R1 cell line showed perinuclear (PN) localization, while …

Multi-Locus Evidence Of A Late Pleistocene Divergence And Sex-Biased Dispersal In The North American Wood Duck (Aix Sponsa), Christopher T. Bigley

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The Pleistocene was characterized by fluctuations in climate causing repeated advances and retreats of glacial ice. The advancing ice sheets caused habitat fragmentation which initiated population divergence and speciation events between eastern and western avian populations within northern temperate forests. Based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region sequences, North American Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) populations fit this model of divergence. However, mtDNA is maternally inherited, and thus may not reflect the genomic history of this species, because of male biased-dispersal, selection, or stochastic lineage sorting. To test the "Late Pleistocene divergence" hypothesis, I sequenced 11 independent nuclear introns (nuDNA) for …

The Effect Of Mycorrhizal Inoculation Prior To Transplantation On Wetland Restoration Success In Sites Of Different Land Use Histories, Brett Joseph Fisher

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One factor used to determine wetland mitigation success is the establishment of native wetland plant species. Although mycorrhizal associations are known to be present in 70 to 95% of all plant species and have been linked to seedling establishment as well as nutrient and carbon flux within plant communities, the presence or absence of mycorrhizal fungi are not assessed or addressed during wetland mitigation work. Three experiments were devised to examine the effects of mycorrhizal fungi on the germination and growth of native wetland plant species in soils and field sites from natural, restored, and created wetlands.

Greenhouse experiment I …

Response Of Neuroinflammatory And Neurodegenerative Markers Following Sub-Lethal Sarin Exposure And Subsequent Treatment Via An In-Vivo Caspase Inhibitor, Douglas F. Chmura

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Organophosphorus nerve agents are amongst the most deadly chemical compounds ever synthesized. Sarin is an organophosphate (OP) ester that irreversibly forms a phosphoester bond at the active site of acetylcholinesterase and thereby induces a rapid and lethal cholinergic crisis. It remains an active threat to vulnerable civilian populations due to its ease of synthesis and known use by rogue nations and terrorist groups. Death is the most extreme consequence of sarin toxicity. Current treatments fail to provide protection against progressive cognitive impairments years after mild exposure. Q-VD-OPh is an in-vivo caspase inhibitor with potent anti-apoptotic and anti-inflammatory properties. In this …

Synthesis, Characterization And Manipulation Of Creighton Silver Nanoparticles For Future Cytotoxicity Studies, Sesha Lakshmi Paluri

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Nowadays, 24% of the nanomaterial-based consumer products contain silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and exploit the well-known antimicrobial properties of silver. Although AgNPs have a wide range of biomedical research and industrial applications, very little is known about their toxicity. The main goal of this study is to synthesize, characterize and manipulate Creighton colloidal AgNPs for future cytotoxicity studies. These "naked" AgNPs were free from chemically aggressive capping/stabilizing agents, reaction byproducts or organic solvents. To achieve this goal, colloidal AgNPs were successfully: a) synthesized in large volumes (5L) using a slightly modified Creighton method by the reduction of silver nitrate with sodium …

Routes To Acylated Sydnone Esters, Amanda Marie Balaguer

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Various 4-acyl-3-[2'-(carboalkoxy)phenyl]sydnones were synthesized by reaction of the parent sydnone with the corresponding anhydrides and Montmorillonite K-10. In the Q-tube, the acylation using acetic anhydride, which normally took 1.5 days for complete conversion thermally, was complete in 8.5 hours. Use of bismuth triflate as catalyst reduced the reaction time to 5 hours and, in the microwave, reactions were complete in 30 minutes and provided comparable yields. New sydnones were synthesized with acetic, propionic, butyric, and isobutyric anhydrides. Extension to various homogeneous metal triflates (lanthanum, yttrium, scandium, hafnium, gadolinium, and indium) was explored. Reactions were performed with 3-phenylsydnone as reactant, initially …

Soil Moisture, Fire, And Tree Community Structure, William Patrick White

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My study was conducted to understand tree community structure and how soil moisture and fire frequency influence them. Eighteen plots were placed in the Edge of Appalachia Nature Preserve of unglaciated southern Ohio: nine within a prescribed burn site and nine control sites outside the burn. Sites were stratified in triplicate across GIS-derived integrated soil moisture index (IMI) classes. Burning was done in 1996. Overstory species dbh and sapling species were sampled 1997, 2001, and 2008. Overstory stems were located in 2009 using range finders. Stem locations were loaded into GIS using novel techniques to quantify individual stem IMI values. …

The Security Council As A Legal Hegemon, Daniel H. Joyner

Articles

This article will examine the United Nations Security Council's efforts to implement preserve and universalize the obligations of the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty This discussion will lead to questions regarding the Security Council's role and authority in the international legal system and ultimately to a consideration of how the international legal system can better guarantee that the Security Council does not exercise an unwarranted degree of legal power at the expense of the member states of the United Nations

Recent Developments In The International Law Regarding Nuclear Weapons Current Developments: Public International Law, Daniel H. Joyner

Articles

No abstract provided.

Introductory Note To The 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, Daniel H. Joyner

Articles

No abstract provided.

Novel Role Of Mecp2 In Developing Oligodendrocytes And Myelination, Daniel Moore

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Methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MeCP2 is) is an epigenetic regulator that binds to methylated DNA. Initially identified as transcriptional repressor, MeCP2 also binds to different proteins functioning as gene activator. Importantly, MecCP2 gene mutations and changes in MeCP2 levels are associated to several forms of mental retardation and autism-related disorders; including Rett, a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting primarily girls. While brain MeCP2 was considered to be exclusively neuronal, this regulator is also present in glia. We found that oligodendrocytes, the myelinating cells of the central nervous system (CNS), express particularly high MeCP2 levels at a developmental stage that precedes their final maturation. …

Strategies For Long-Term Renal Allograft Survival In Iga Nephropathy Patients, Erin E. Lintz

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IgA nephropathy is one of the most common kidney diseases worldwide. Most IgA nephropathy patients will undergo a kidney transplant as a treatment. Treatment currently includes the use of immunosuppressants which are necessary to prevent graft rejection but present harmful side-effects when taken long-term. This review focuses on strategies which have the ability to promote tolerance of both donor and recipient cells within a transplant recipient. Such strategies allow development of mixed chimerism and thereby alleviate the need for long-term immunosuppressant usage in allograft recipients. These strategies could be applied to IgA nephropathy patients to allow kidney allograft acceptance without …

The Development Of Silver Nanoparticles As Antiviral Agents, John Christopher Trefry

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Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have received tremendous attention for their antimicrobial properties; however, many gaps in knowledge exist. To address these issues, three research objectives were examined. The first objective hypothesized AgNPs can be size selected and concentrated via tangential flow ultrafiltration. The second objective hypothesized a high-throughput method could be developed to screen nanoparticle antiviral-activity and cytotoxicity simultaneously. The third objective hypothesized AgNPs inhibit viruses by preventing viral entry.

For objective one, a tangential flow ultrafiltration scheme was tested on AgNPs synthesized via the Creighton Colloid method. AgNPs were analyzed via transmission electron microscopy. In objective two, an HIV-1 vector …

Son Is Essential For Nuclear Speckle Organization, Cell Cycle Progression And Pre-Mrna Splicing, Alok S. Sharma

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Nuclear speckles provide important spatial organization and dynamic regulation for pre-mRNA processing factors in mammalian cells. While the nuclear speckle proteome is complex, little is known at the molecular level about how these factors are organized into nuclear speckles or how alterations in the organization of these factors impacts gene expression. We have discovered a new function for a large (2564 amino acid) nuclear speckle protein called Son in maintaining the organization of pre-mRNA processing factors in nuclear speckles. Depletion of Son by RNAi causes snRNP and serine-arginine rich (SR protein) splicing factors to undergo dramatic disorganization into doughnut-shaped nuclear …

The Effects Of Forest Fragmentation On The Reproductive Success Of Spring Ephemeral Wildflowers And Their Pollinators, Holly Lynn Schlotman

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Low reproductive output has been shown in small, isolated populations of plants, and spring wildflowers in forest fragments may show a similar pattern. The goal of this study is to determine the impact of forest fragmentation on the reproductive success of three wildflowers: Cardamine concatenata, Delphinium tricorne, and Dicentra cucullaria. A secondary goal was to determine the impact of forest fragmentation on bumblebees (Bombus spp.) since they are important spring pollinators. Correlations and stepwise regression were used to determine the effects of forest fragment size on the reproductive success of each wildflower species, and also on the abundance and diversity …

Optimization Of Scientific Computation For Multicore Systems, Andrew B. Mcclain

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With the rapid growth of semiconductor technology, chip density has increased significantly. As the power exponent is setting hard limits to frequency increases, multi-core and chip level multi-processors have become prevalent in recent years to take advantage of the increasing chip density. In the new generation of processors, multi-core architecture design is becoming the major trend: IBM/SONY/Toshiba's Cell Broadband Engine processors contain nine cores; NVIDIA graphics processors contain more than 30 cores.

One of the biggest challenges is to efficiently utilize the computational power provided by multi-core systems. The second challenge to achieving high performance in a computer system is …

Amino Acid Substitutions Created In Reverse Transcriptase And Their Influence On Hiv-1 Mutation Frequencies, Amani Saud Alhejely

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As research has shown, a high mutation rate occurs during the reverse transcription RT process because HIV reverse transcriptase fails to correct erroneously incorporated nucleotides during the reverse transcription process. Based on various research articles, a series of amino acid substitutions created in RT were collected to find out their influence on virus mutation frequencies. Two tables were used; one for amino acid substitutions created in RT that increased the HIV-1 mutation rate and another for amino acid substitutions created in RT that decreased the HIV-1 mutation rate. The tables show which amino acid substitutions created in RT decreased or …

A Domain Specific Language Based Approach For Developing Complex Cloud Computing Applications, Ashwin Kumar Manjunatha

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Computing has changed. Lately, a slew of cheap, ubiquitous, connected mobile devices as well as seemingly unlimited, utility style, pay as you go computing resources has become available at the disposal of the common man. The latter commonly called Cloud Computing (or just Cloud) is democratizing computing by making large computing power accessible to people and corporations around the world easily and economically.

However, taking full advantage of this computing landscape, especially for the data intensive domains, has been hampered by many factors, the primary one being the complexity in developing applications for the variety of available platforms.

This thesis …

Predicting Vigilance Performance Under Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation, Nathaniel Reese Bridges

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A brain stimulation technology called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may potentially mitigate the vigilance decrement. To practically use such technology, however, a model is necessary that indicates vigilance performance, both when stimulation is being applied and not applied. To address this issue, the author developed models capable of predicting vigilance performance in real and control stimulation conditions using previous tDCS-study data. The "all possible combinations" regression method produced over 200 models, later screened to 10. The model with the best average %error (11.49 ± 0.10) used left hemispheric cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFVL) as its sole input term-accounting for …

Semi-Automated Dental Cast Analysis Software, Mathew Thomas

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Dental casts have been used extensively to study almost all aspects of the human dentition. These aspects varied from the study of tooth form and morphology, inheritance and genetics, growth and development, occlusion, arch alignment and crowding to mathematical determination of dental arch form.

The aim of this project was to develop a tool to semi-automate the measurement of dental casts that would be precise, accurate and efficient. Measurements include tooth widths, arch lengths and widths, angle of rotation and crown area for each tooth.

The task was divided into two different parts: first, the development of semi-automatic software to …

The Functionalization And Characterization Of Adherent Carbon Nanotubes With Silver Nanoparticles For Biological Applications, Adam A. Maleszewski

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The purpose of this project is to form silver nanoparticles (Ag-NP) attached to a hierarchical substrate for possible use in biological applications. The effectiveness of these Ag-NP-containing devices, including biofilters and biosensors, may be dramatically enhanced by the use of hierarchical structures such as carbon nanotubes (CNT), as they offer a high surface area surface suitable for cell-device interactions, while Ag-NP would be a suitable component in many such devices due to its plasmonic surface properties (e.g. in sensor and directed energy applications) and its anti-microbial properties (desirable for fluid filtration due to its low weight. Meaningful control over the …

Low Dose Nerve Agent Sarin Causes Dilated Cardiomyopathy And Autonomic Imbalance In Mice, Swapnil Vijay Shewale

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Sarin, a lethal chemical nerve agent, may be a causative factor in multifactorial syndrome implicated in the Gulf War and Tokyo terrorist attacks. While high dose results in seizure and death, low dose exposure may lead to autonomic imbalance and chronic cardiac pathologies. In the present study, echocardiography and electrocardiography were used to examine the late onset effects of a low dose sarin on cardiac structure and function in mice. Stress responsiveness of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis was also tested. Findings demonstrate changes consistent with a dilated cardiomyopathy, including left ventricular dilatation, reduced contractility, and altered electrophysiological and …

The Molecular Basis Of The Interaction Between The Coxsackievirus And Adenovirus Receptor (Car) And Magi-1, Abimbola Olayinka Kolawole

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A major factor in virus entry into cells is localization and abundance of the primary receptor. The Coxsackievirus and adenovirus receptor (CAR) is the primary receptor for group B coxsackievirus and many serotypes of adenovirus. In most epithelia, a seven exon isoform of CAR (CAR^Ex7) is exclusively localized at the basolateral surface where it behaves as a homophilic adhesion protein and is inaccessible for viral infection. However, in well-differentiated human airway epithelia, we recently discovered an alternatively spliced, low abundance isoform of CAR (CAR^Ex8) that is apically localized where it may initiate apical viral infection. The …

Developing A Quantitative Pcr Assay For Detecting Viral Vector Shedding From Animals, Swathee Chinnasamy

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Replication deficient viruses have been used widely for replacing, repairing, and deleting target genes. These recombinant viruses are tested on research animals or patients in clinical trials. Although viral vectors distribute in the body, they are also disseminated into the environment through secretion and excretion processes. By studying the extent of shedding, a proper risk assessment can be performed and appropriate biocontainment can be achieved. Adenoviral and lentiviral vectors were produced from commercially available kits. The transgene present in both vector systems was the lacZ reporter gene encoding for β-galactosidase. Primers and probes were designed for the encapsidation region of …

Structural And Functional Alteration Of Full Length Pparα And Lxrα By Fatty Acids And Their Thioesters, Madhumitha Balanarasimha

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Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPAR) and liver X receptors (LXR) are known to play important roles in fatty acid metabolism, interact with each other, and function as heterodimeric partners. Although previous studies indicate that PPARα is activated by long chain fatty acyl-CoA thioesters (LCFA-CoA) and polyunsaturated fatty acids, little is known about the effects of these ligands on the function or interaction of PPARα and LXRα. In this study, hPPARα and hLXRα were shown to directly interact by circular dichroism, fluorescent binding assays, and co-immunoprecipitation. Further experiments suggested that although fatty acids resulted in small structural changes, they significantly altered binding …

Reconstructing Autism: A Phenomenological Study Of The Relationship Between Parents And Their Children Diagnosed With An Autism Spectrum Disorder, Laura Elizabeth Solomon

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This study aims to serve as a deconstruction of the experience of parenting a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The increasing number of families with children affected by ASDs has led to many questions about the impact of ASDs on the family unit; however, the voice of parents is sorely missing in the extant research. The history of ASDs and disability in general continues to impact the ways families, society, and professionals treat families affected by ASDs, and particularly the ways they view and value the parent-child relationship. Six mothers of children with ASDs were interviewed about their …

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (Pcit) & Maternal Depression: A Proposal For The Application Of Pcit With Mothers Who Are Depressed And Their Children, Seema Jacob

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Maternal depression is often a prevalent disorder in society, which has far reaching effects on the psychological well being of both the mother as well as her child(ren). Research has indicated that maternal depression impacts the parenting skills of a woman and thereby puts her children at risk for maladaptive ways of behaving. Children of mothers who are depressed are at a higher risk of developing externalizing and internalizing problems. Many of the empirically supported treatments for depression focus on the individual aspects of the person, without considering the roles and stress of being a parent. Many treatments for children …

Sexual Satisfaction In Women With Physical Disabilities: Results Of An Online Survey, Jessica Rose Heschel

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The study of sexual satisfaction and pleasure in Women with Disabilities (WwD) represents a significant gap in the current literature. The present study, using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, attempted to explore several areas of the sexual satisfaction of WwD. An internet-based survey was used to gather information in five specific areas: the messages WwD had received about sexuality and disability, their personal feelings about sexuality and disability, the specific elements that contribute to their sexual satisfaction, the amount of useful education and information they had received from mental and physical healthcare providers regarding their sexuality as WwD, and …

Growth Attenuation, Sterilization, And Cochlear Implants: Ethical, Legal And Social Themes, Jenna Nicole Mercadante

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Individuals with disabilities have been the subject of invasive medical procedures throughout history, violating their bodily rights and integrity. Because of a history of abuse, medical procedures performed on individuals with disabilities, especially those who cannot consent, require close scrutiny and analysis. This paper explores three controversial medical procedures performed on individuals with disabilities, which include sterilization, cochlear implants, and growth attenuation. Embedded in each medical procedure mentioned above are social, legal, ethical, and psychological variables that influenced the emergence of each procedure and the receptiveness of society. This project explores each of these variables in detail as it relates …