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An In Vitro Reporter Cell System For Analysis Of Functional Ly49 Receptor Binding Of Cognate Ligands In Cis And Tran, Benjamin Edmonds, Colleen Fullenkamp, Natalya V. Guseva, Jonathan W. Heusel

Science and Social Sciences

Activation of natural killer (NK) cells requires the integration of stimulatory and inhibitory signals mediated in part by members of the allelic Ly49 receptor family. Inhibitory Ly49 receptors bind cognate MHC class I ligands in trans (ITIM activation) and in cis (no ITIM activation). We have developed an in vitro reporter cell system for analysis of the functional interaction between the activating Ly49H receptor (C57BL/6 strain, B6) and its murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV)-encoded ligand, m157. Since m157 also binds inhibitory Ly49 receptors, including Ly49I from 129 mice, we exploited our reporter cell system to determine: 1) whether Ly49H^B6 and/or Ly49I …

In The Wake Of A Veto: What Do Oregon Psychologists Think And Know About Prescription Privileges For Psychologists?, Robyn A. Dolson, Tanya Tompkins, Emily R. Hopping

Science and Social Sciences

Clinical psychology continues to grapple with a contentious debate surrounding prescriptive authority. With over half of all states having considered legislating prescriptive authority, an immense amount of time and money has been invested. This study aims to assess knowledge and attitudes of licensed psychologists in Oregon following a veto that prevented it from becoming the third state with prescription privileges for psychologists. From a list of 1,318 licensed Oregon clinical psychologists, 60% were randomly selected to participate. Of the 130 participants invited thus far, 83 have completed the survey, yielding a respectable response rate (64%). Perceived familiarity with current training …

Hannah Floyd's Family Establishes Scholarship In Her Memory, Winthrop University

Winthrop News 2011

• Floyd, a double major in psychology and biology, distinguished herself as a bright and talented student and also worked as a research assistant.
• To honor Floyd’s Winthrop experience, her family plans to establish an endowed scholarship to honor her legacy at Winthrop and to support talented students who share her passion for psychology and biology.

Lawrence University Earns Fifth Straight National Community Service Citation, Lawrence University

Press Releases

More than 9,700 service hours to volunteer and service-learning programs provided by 786 students earned Lawrence University inclusion on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for the fifth consecutive year.

Lawrence is one of only two Wisconsin institutions named to the Community Service Honor Roll every year since the program was launched in 2006 to recognize commitment to volunteering, service-learning and civic engagement.

Announced by the Washington, D.C.-based Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a total of 641 colleges and universities were recognized for their impact on issues from literacy and neighborhood revitalization to supporting at-risk youth. …

Finding The Rhythm In Dance/Movement Therapy: The Use Of Tap Dance In Residential Treatment, Alexandria D’Aurio

Creative Arts Therapies Theses

This thesis project was inspired by this researcher’s passion and interest in rhythm and more specifically tap dance. There is currently no literature on the use of tap dance in dance/movement therapy. The project was guided by the research question: How can tap dance be used as a dance/movement therapy (DMT) technique? By combining tap dance and dance/movement therapy the purpose of this thesis is to provide the DMT community (clients and dance therapists) with more knowledge and tools to use for facilitation and to further deepen the process in DMT sessions. The research will be presented in a clinical …

2011 Commencement Program, Whittier College

Commencement Programs

Whittier College's One Hundred Eighth Commencement, May 13, 2011

Commencement Address: Judith and Bill Moyers

Supplement file includes the One Hundred Eighth Whittier College Baccalaureate, May 12, 2011

The Proliferation Of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells Depends On Thioredoxin 1 Protein In A Model Of Pulmonary Hypertension, Viktoria Nelin

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a disease which manifests itself in the lungs of both adults and children. Vascular proliferation and remodeling are the hallmarks of PH and are found mainly in the pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells (PASMC). The cause of PASMC proliferation and vascular remodeling in PH is poorly understood. Hypoxia, or low oxygen content, underlies many forms of PH. Hypoxia results in alterations in the redox balance of the PASMC. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the role of the thioredoxin system, an antioxidant system in the cell, in hypoxia-induced proliferation in PASMC. Protein was …

Assessing Social Benefits Of Domestic Rainwater Harvesting In Southern Kenya, Lindsey M. Filiatreau

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In the Kasigau location of the Voi District of Kenya, severe rainwater shortages closed fourteen water collection stations in 2008 and 2009, leaving ten water sources to service 15,000 people in the region. Few families in the area have domestic rainwater harvesting systems which are an easily implemented, low-cost means of water collection. I investigated the ability of rainwater catchment systems to modify family time budgets (by reducing water collection time) and lessen the severity of water scarcity (by supplying families a significant amount of water). Forty families participated in the research, 20 of whom received free installation of a …

Digeorge Critical Region 8 (Dgcr8) Is A Double-Cysteine-Ligated Heme Protein., Ian Barr, Aaron T. Smith, Rachel Senturia, Yanqiu Chen, Brooke D. Scheidemantle, Judith N. Burstyn, Feng Guo

Natural Sciences and Mathematics | Faculty Scholarship

All known heme-thiolate proteins ligate the heme iron using one cysteine side chain. We previously found that DiGeorge Critical Region 8 (DGCR8), an essential microRNA processing factor, associates with heme of unknown redox state when overexpressed in Escherichia coli. On the basis of the similarity of the 450-nm Soret absorption peak of the DGCR8-heme complex to that of cytochrome P450 containing ferrous heme with CO bound, we identified cysteine 352 as a probable axial ligand in DGCR8. Here we further characterize the DGCR8-heme interaction using biochemical and spectroscopic methods. The DGCR8-heme complex is highly stable, with a half-life exceeding 4 …

Reporter - May 13th 2011, Rit Reporter Staff

University Publications

No abstract provided.

Once On The Dark Continent, Katrina Alexandria Bidwell

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Set in the fictional village of Buguta in post-genocide Rwanda, Once on the Dark Continent follows the experiences of a young doctor working for the Doctors Without Borders Program. Dr. Erica Davis unwittingly finds herself in a country where the past has continued to repeat itself a decade after a devastating civil war, unbeknownst to most of the outside world. Their history isn’t the only thing plaguing the villagers like a parasite: Erica’s careful attention to the patients at the Buguta clinic leads her to diagnose them with toxoplasmosis, a revelation that has the potential to begin solving the myriad …

Memory, Presence, Emergence: Creativity In Time, Amy E. Frazier

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project is an exploration of the ways in which memory, present-moment awareness, and emergence support and are involved in our creativity. Our creative relationship to time is also explored. The project involved research and writing, and resulted in the script of a one-woman show, Creativity in Time, which was presented in two performances as a staged reading. The script synthesizes a portion of the research, and is loosely structured on a narrative framework of personal experiences. An additional theme is the nature of the “a-ha” moment of creative insight, and how it is linked to memory, present-moment awareness and …

Nogo-B Receptor Is Necessary For Cellular Dolichol Biosynthesis And Protein N-Glycosylation., Kenneth D Harrison, Eon Joo Park, Ningguo Gao, Andrew Kuo, Jeffrey S. Rush, Charles J Waechter, Mark A Lehrman, William C Sessa

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Dolichol monophosphate (Dol-P) functions as an obligate glycosyl carrier lipid in protein glycosylation reactions. Dol-P is synthesized by the successive condensation of isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP), with farnesyl diphosphate catalysed by a cis-isoprenyltransferase (cis-IPTase) activity. Despite the recognition of cis-IPTase activity 40 years ago and the molecular cloning of the human cDNA encoding the mammalian enzyme, the molecular machinery responsible for regulating this activity remains incompletely understood. Here, we identify Nogo-B receptor (NgBR) as an essential component of the Dol-P biosynthetic machinery. Loss of NgBR results in a robust deficit in cis-IPTase activity and Dol-P production, leading to diminished levels of …

Hardware Acceleration Of Inference Computing: The Numenta Htm Algorithm, Dan Hammerstrom

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

In this presentation I will describe the latest version of the Numenta HTM Cortical Learning Algorithm and why it is interesting for doing research into radical new computer architectures. Then I will discuss the hardware acceleration research we are doing, and briefly look at some preliminary applications development.

A Stereoselective Hydroxylation Step Of Alkaloid Biosynthesis By A Unique Cytochrome P450 In Catharanthus Roseus, Lesley Ann Giddings, David K. Liscombe, John P. Hamilton, Kevin L. Childs, Dean Dellapenna, C. Robin Buell, Sarah E. O'Connor

Chemistry: Faculty Publications

Plant cytochrome P450s are involved in the production of over a hundred thousand metabolites such as alkaloids, terpenoids, and phenylpropanoids. Although cytochrome P450 genes constitute one of the largest superfamilies in plants, many of the catalytic functions of the enzymes they encode remain unknown. Here, we report the identification and functional characterization of a cytochrome P450 gene in a new subfamily of CYP71, CYP71BJ1, involved in alkaloid biosynthesis. Co-expression analysis of putative cytochrome P450 genes in the Catharanthus roseus transcriptome identified candidate genes with expression profiles similar to known terpene indole alkaloid biosynthetic genes. Screening of these candidate genes by …

Identification Of Suitable Copulas For Bivariate Frequency Analysis Of Flood Peak And Flood Volume Data, Hemant Chowdhary, Luis A. Escobar, Vijay P. Singh

Faculty Publications

Multivariate flood frequency analysis, involving flood peak flow, volume and duration, has been traditionally accomplished by employing available functional bivariate and multivariate frequency distributions that have a restriction on the marginals to be from the same family of distributions. The copula concept overcomes this restriction by allowing a combination of arbitrarily chosen marginal types. It also provides a wider choice of admissible dependence structure as compared to the conventional approach. The availability of a vast variety of copula types makes the selection of an appropriate copula family for different hydrological applications a non-trivial task. Graphical and analytic goodness-of-fit tests for …

The Effects Of A Brief Mindfulness Intervention On Impulsivity In College Students, Myles Elgin Trapp

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This study investigated the impact of a brief, introductory mindfulness intervention on attention, executive control, and impulsivity. I randomly assigned forty-seven undergraduate students to a treatment group (TG) receiving mindfulness training and a waiting list control group (WLG). Participants completed a battery of self-report questionnaires and standardized neuropsychological tests before and after the intervention. Participants high in trait mindfulness suffered less interference on a Stroop task, were less impulsive on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task, but also evidenced less cognitive flexibility on a dual fluency test at baseline. The TG demonstrated greater improvement than the WLG from baseline to re-test …

The Echo: May 13, 2011, Taylor University

2010-2011 (Volume 98)

2015 class sets standards – Next stop Korea – Osama Bin Laden killed in secret raid – In Briefs – Deadly storms slam south – The Bubble – Terrorist’s death sparks diverse reactions – World Voices – Panel highlights recent revolutions in the Middle East – On This Day in History – Around the World in 30 Seconds – Breaching the Bubble – ‘Heart Strings and Soul Surgery’ – Mr. TU entertains Taylor community – How to be a cheap philanthropist – Stream of consciousness: An essay tee or an a see tee – Student directors take the stage – …

Chemistry - Acs Certification, Daniel Hinson

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Heterocyclic organic and organometallic compounds (e.g. polypyrrole, Figure 1A) and their derivatives have been of great interest for conductive polymers due to their novel properties, such as their versatile structure and ease of synthesis. In addition, these molecules have a great environmental stability compared to non-aromatic analogs (e.g. polyacetylene, Figure 1B). We have been interested in synthesizing organometallic pyridazyl (Figure 1C) complexes for polymer research. Figure 1. Structures of A–D. Pyridazyl complexes of rhenium were synthesized in three steps beginning from 1,2-diacylcyclopentadienes (aka, fulvenes, Figure 1D). Synthesis, characterization and molecular structure of [Mn(CO)3{1,2-C5H3(CC4H3ON)(CC4H3ON)}] (4A), [Re(CO)3{1,2-C5H3(CC4H3ON)(CC4H3ON)}] (4B), and their precursors are …

What They Wish They Would Have Known: Support For Comprehensive Sexual Education From Mexican American And White Adolescents' Dating And Sexual Desires, Heidi Adams Rueda, Lela Rankin Williams

Social Work Faculty Publications

Focus groups were conducted to assess what Mexican American and White male and female adolescents wished they had known about romantic and sexual relationships. Relevant gender and ethnic differences emerged in adolescents' desires and findings across all groups supported a need for comprehensive sexual education that contextualizes sexual activity within a framework that emphasizes socio-emotional skills and well-being. Adolescents' desires were emotional, relational, physical and interpersonal in nature. Youth preferred parents and school educators as key sources of information and support. Recommendations for prevention programming and policy are discussed.

Comparison Of Geochemical And Biological Characteristics Of Natural And Constructed Wetlands In Western Ny, Katrina Scheiner

Theses

To protect wetlands and the critical ecosystem functions and services they provide, federal law mandates creation of new wetlands for wetlands that are destroyed. However, we don't yet fully understand if created wetlands are functionally equivalent to their natural counterparts. In this study of two natural (N1, N2) and two created (C1, C2) wetlands in western New York state, interdependent biological and geochemical characteristics were measured to assess equivalency of ecosystem function. With the exception of Typha sp, all wetlands contained unique vegetation zones. We sampled within these vegetation zones during the growing season of 2010. Overall cover of plant …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2011, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

Model-Guided Systems Metabolic Engineering Of Clostridium Thermocellum, Christopher Gowen

Theses and Dissertations

Metabolic engineering of microorganisms for chemical production involves the coordination of regulatory, kinetic, and thermodynamic parameters within the context of the entire network, as well as the careful allocation of energetic and structural resources such as ATP, redox potential, and amino acids. The exponential progression of “omics” technologies over the past few decades has transformed our ability to understand these network interactions by generating enormous amounts of data about cell behavior. The great challenge of the new biological era is in processing, integrating, and rationally interpreting all of this information, leading to testable hypotheses. In silico metabolic reconstructions are versatile …

Quick Xlthlx Fish, Andrew Brehm

Theses and Dissertations

A sequence of short stories both fact and fiction leading to, resulting from, or having nothing to do with the three sculptures that comprise The Crescent Club, an installation for the Anderson Gallery.

Scaling-Up In Estuaries: The Feasibility Of Using Small Scale Results To Draw Large Scale Conclusions, Christopher Scheiner

Theses

Estuarine ecosystems are dynamic, heterogeneous ecosystems that are increasingly impacted by human activities, particularly excess nutrient loading and the resulting eutrophication. Much of the descriptive research investigating large-scale eutrophication is performed using field surveys and small-scale, manipulative microcosm experiments. To investigate confounding effects of scale and heterogeneity, we conducted a large-scale field survey of benthic conditions in West Falmouth Harbor (WFH), Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and compared our results to those observed in microcosm studies that utilized sediments and macrofauna from WFH. We used geographic information systems to estimate field condition heterogeneity and design an appropriate sampling strategy, and geostatistical interpolation …

Transcriptional Regulation Of Nitrogenase And Identification Of A Fructose Transport System In Anabaena Variabilis, Justin Lynn Ungerer

Dissertations

Little is known about the regulation of nitrogenase genes in cyanobacteria. Transcription of the nifH1 and vnfH genes, encoding dinitrogenase reductases for the heterocyst-specific Mo-nitrogenase and the alternative V-nitrogenase, respectively, was studied using a lacZ reporter. Two promoters were found to be responsible for expression of nifHDK; a weak promoter within nifU1 and a strong promoter upstream of nifB (the nifB1 promoter). The region immediately upstream of vnfH did not drive expression of lacZ, however the region that included the promoter for the upstream gene, ava4055 did. Characterization of the previously reported nifH1 and vnfH transcriptional start sites by 5' …

Mustang Daily, May 12, 2011

Cal Poly Student Newspaper

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.

Avian Abundance And Diversity In Crep And Fescue Fields In The Summer And Winter Related To Vegetation Structure In The Upper Green River Watershed, Ky, Thomas A. Hulsey

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Grassland bird populations have been undergoing dramatic declines in the last fifty years due to loss and degradation of habitat. The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) was initiated in the upper Green River Watershed of south-central Kentucky to improve water quality and provide wildlife habitat. Many studies have previously examined how similar programs in other states have contributed to grassland bird populations; in this study we are examining how the Kentucky CREP program is influencing bird populations, particularly grassland birds, and contributing to the conservation of these species. Bird and vegetation surveys were conducted during the summer of 2008 and …

Dna Sequence Variation In The Wingless Gene Product In Buckeye Butterflies (Genus Junonia), Bonnie Mccullagh

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Wingless is a highly conserved gene important to cell determination in development. In Drosophila, the wingless gene product has been identified as responsible for wing patterning. In Bicyclus anynana and Junonia coenia, wingless gene product is expressed in a fashion that suggests that it is involved in butterfly wing color pattern development. The wingless gene product has been implicated as a potential focal signal for patterning the eyespot of Junonia butterflies. I have shown that extensive DNA sequence variation (26.04% of the sequenced region) exists in 402 bp of wingless coding sequence among 338 specimens of Junonia from …

College Senate Minutes May 12, 2011, Bronx Community College Senate

BCC Governance Archives

Minutes for the meeting of the College Senate on May 12, 2011.