Digital Commons Network^™

Regulation Of Capsule By Cpsa And Global Regulatory Networks In Streptococcus Pneumoniae Type 2, Kanupriya Gupta

All ETDs from UAB

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major human pathogen that can reside asymptomatically in the nasopharynx before causing invasive disease by entering systemic sites. This involves regulation of colonization and virulence factors including capsule. cps2A, the first gene of the capsule (cps) locus has been proposed to regulate capsule, however its exact role and mechanism is not well understood. A complete deletion of cps2A resulted in enhanced capsule levels, with no alteration in the transcription levels of cps genes. Complementation of Cps2A restored wild type levels of capsule. Expression of the C-terminal tail alone was able to partially complement the deletion strain, …

High Frequency Resolution Terahertz Time-Domain Spectroscopy, Bagvanth Reddy Sangala

All ETDs from UAB

A new method for the high frequency resolution terahertz time-domain spectroscopy is developed based on the characteristic matrix method. This method is useful for studying planar samples or stack of planar samples. The terahertz radiation was generated by optical rectification in a ZnTe crystal and detected by another ZnTe crystal via electro-optic sampling method. In this new characteristic matrix based method, the spectra of the sample and reference waveforms will be modeled by using characteristic matrices. We applied this new method to measure the optical constants of air. The terahertz transmission through the layered systems air-Teflon-air-Quartz-air and Nitrogen gas-Teflon-Nitrogen gas-Quartz-Nitrogen …

Role Of Endothelial Mannose Residues In Monocyte Adhesion Under Flow, David Wayne Scott

All ETDs from UAB

Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the vessel wall and underlying cause of most cardiovascular disease. Much is understood about the nature of atherosclerosis development, including contributions from leukocytes that drive the disease process forward. The general process by which leukocytes are trafficked to sites of atherosclerosis development, and sites of inflammation in general, is understood and relies upon endothelial expressed protein adhesion molecules which serve as ligands for cognate leukocyte receptors. While these adhesion molecules share the post-translation modification of N-glycosylation, relatively little is known as to what functional role these modification plays in: i) interactions of leukocytes …

Determinant Of G-Chain Mediated Fc Receptor Signaling, Spandan Shah

All ETDs from UAB

Fc receptors provide an interface between humoral immunity and cellular immunity by binding to the Fc portion of immunoglobulin and mediating effector functions. Cells expressing Fc receptors play a major role in immune complex clearance via phagocytosis, leading to a context dependent pro- or anti-inflammatory environment. Signaling by multi-chain Fc receptor complexes, including FcgRI, FcgRIII, FceRI and FcaRI is mediated by the ITAM-containing common FceRIg (g-chain) subunit. However, despite the use of a common g-chain, different Fc receptor complexes elicit specific cellular programs, suggesting additional layers of regulation of tyrosine based signaling by g-chain. We hypothesized that the unique g-chain …

Determining Whether Sequence Differences In Gfa Gene Cause Alexander Disease, Lital Nehama Silverman Webster

All ETDs from UAB

Alexander disease (AxD) is a fatal astrogliopathy usually caused by mutations in the GFA gene, which encodes glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). In this document, two unusual sequence differences in GFA that are associated with AxD are characterized. The first difference is the only reported case of an AxD-causing mutation occurring in a non-coding region of GFA, c.(619-3C>G), resulting in the largest known in-frame deletion in GFAP due to abnormal splicing in a small fraction of the GFA transcripts. The second difference is the farthest reported C-terminal point mutation in GFAP, g.1277A-->T, which produces a Q426L coding change. …

Progressive Forming Of Thermoplastic Composite Laminates, John Robert Smith

All ETDs from UAB

Composite materials display excellent specific strength and stiffness, light-weighting benefits, and are effective replacements for metals which are typically heavy and susceptible to corrosion. Next generation transportation, military, infrastructure, and marine sectors are extensively using fiber reinforced composite materials for part replacement and structural applications. Producing these advanced composite structures can often result in extensive development time and material wastage. There is a need to understand composite laminate formability and implement predictive methodology during product design to minimize manufacturing costs. The overall objective of this research was to predict the formability of thick section, plain woven, thermoplastic matrix composite laminates …

Network Position: A Key Component In The Characterization Of Social Personality Types, Alexander D.M. Wilson, S Krause, Niels J. Dingemanse, J Krause

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

No abstract provided.

Polymer Micro-Grippers With An Integrated Force Sensor For Biological Manipulation, Re Mackay, Hr Le, S Clark, Ja Williams

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

The development of a novel micro-system integrating SU-8 polymer micro-grippers with a tensile force sensor for handling and characterizing the mechanical properties of delicate biological materials, such as fibrils, is presented. The micro-grippers are actuated by the electro-thermal effect and have gripping forces comparable to the common 'hot-and-cold-arm' grippers. A robust finite element model was developed to investigate system performance and validated experimentally. A new micro-mechanical calibration method using a piezoelectric manipulator with a micro-force measurement system was successfully applied to test the structure. Both FEA simulation and micro-mechanical testing results indicated that the system could fulfil the requirements for …

A ‘Whole-School/Community Development’ Approach To Preventing And Countering Bullying: The Erris Anti-Bullying Initiative (2009–2011), Stephen James Minton, Mahoney M O', Rose Conway-Walsh

School of Psychology

No abstract provided.

Humour Styles, Personality And Psychological Well-Being: What’S Humour Got To Do With It?, W Ruch, S Heintz

School of Psychology

The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) by Martin et al. (2003) measures four humour styles, namely affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive and self-defeating. In contrast to former humour instruments, the HSQ has strong relations to various measures of psychological well-being. However, its incremental validity in relation to basic personality traits has not been sufficiently studied. Two studies analysed how much unique variance the HSQ contributed to predicting psychological well-being over and above personality. While the affiliative, self-enhancing and self-defeating humour style were potent predictors of well-being in Study 1, the results also indicated that these humour styles had small effects when personality was …

Relative Sensitivity Of Two Marine Bivalves For Detection Of Genotoxic And Cytotoxic Effects: A Field Assessment In The Tamar Estuary, South West England., Lorna J. Dallas, Victoria V. Cheung, Andrew S. Fisher, Awadhesh N. Jha

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

The input of anthropogenic contaminants to the aquatic environment is a major concern for scientists, regulators and the public. This is especially relevant in areas such as the Tamar valley in SW England, which has a legacy of contamination from industrial activity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Following on from previous laboratory validation studies, this study aimed to assess the relationship between genotoxic and cytotoxic responses and heavy metal concentrations in two bivalve species sampled from locations along the Tamar estuary. Adult cockles, Cerastoderma edule, and blue mussels, Mytilus edulis, were sampled from five locations in the Tamar and …

Plasticity Of Visual Attention In Isha Yoga Meditation Practitioners Before And After A 3-Month Retreat, C Braboszcz, Br Cahn, B Balakrishnan, Et Al

School of Psychology

Meditation has lately received considerable interest from cognitive neuroscience. Studies suggest that daily meditation leads to long lasting attentional and neuronal plasticity. We present changes related to the attentional systems before and after a 3 month intensive meditation retreat. We used three behavioral psychophysical tests - a Stroop task, an attentional blink task, and a global-local letter task-to assess the effect of Isha yoga meditation on attentional resource allocation. 82 Isha yoga practitioners were tested at the beginning and at the end of the retreat. Our results showed an increase in correct responses specific to incongruent stimuli in the Stroop …

Fingerprints Of Apartheid Residual Effects Of The Former South African Government On Current Dna Legislation, Alex D'Amico

Fordham International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Emerging Face Of Lawfare: Legal Maneuvering Designed To Hinder The Exposure Of Terrorism And Terror Financing, Brooke Goldstein, Benjamin Ryberg

Fordham International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Keeping It In The Target Language, Aleidine Kramer Moeller, Amy Roberts

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article investigates how target language use can be optimized in the language classroom to enhance language development. Principles and guidelines for integration of the target language are extracted from empirical evidence and best practices demonstrated by teachers who maximize target language. Classroom tested strategies and examples are described and illustrated.

Keeping It In The Target Language, Aleidine Kramer Moeller, Amy Roberts

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This article investigates how target language use can be optimized in the language classroom to enhance language development. Principles and guidelines for integration of the target language are extracted from empirical evidence and best practices demonstrated by teachers who maximize target language. Classroom tested strategies and examples are described and illustrated.

There is much debate about the use of the target language (TL) and first language (L1) in the foreign language classroom. How much TL will maximize language development? When should L1 be used and how often? Language teachers are receiving mixed messages that range from 100% exclusive use of …

The Roma And Wall Street/Ceos: Linguistic Construction Of Identity In U.S. And Canadian Crime Reports, Theresa Catalano

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Discriminatory practices against Roma (also known as Romanies) occur on a daily basis in many countries around the world through media discourse. This paper investigates the representation of Romanies in U.S. and Canadian online newspaper crime reports and compares this representation to Wall Street/CEOs in crime reports demonstrating how identity of both groups is constructed through a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic strategies. Drawing on Mayr and Machin’s (2012) critical linguistic analysis of the language of crime, this multimodal study incorporates a variety of tools such as Critical Discourse Analysis and Cognitive Linguistics in order to dig below the surface …

Race, Difference, Meritocracy, And English: Majoritarian Stories In The Education Of Secondary Multilingual Learners, Kara Viesca

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Urban Community Teacher Education, University of Colorado, Denver, USA In this study, empirical and conceptual scholarship (approximately 100 studies) regarding the education of secondary multilingual learners and their teachers are analyzed through the lens of critical race theory (CRT). Specifically, four common majoritarian stories are identified that are both challenged and endorsed in the research literature: there is no story about race, difference is deficit, meritocracy is appropriate, and English-is-all-that-matters. This article discusses the literature, the four identified majoritarian stories and the specific ways they are both promoted and countered throughout the literature. The implications of these four majoritarian stories …

Recent Publications

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Strategic Impact Of Medical Revalidation. Building An Evaluation Framework., Julian Archer, Samantha Regan De Bere, Nick Lynn, Nicola Brennan

Peninsula Medical School

Executive Summary.1. BackgroundOn 3rd December 2012, the regulation of medical doctors in the UK by the GMC underwent its most radical reform in 150 years with the introduction of revalidation. This initiative presents a unique and exciting opportunity to evaluate the design features of an innovative regulatory system; in order to assure and potentially further develop revalidation as a robust regulatory process.Aims & objectives The aim of this research was to develop a framework for evaluation for consideration by the GMC encompassing suggestions/recommendations which could capture information about the key design features of revalidation over which the GMC has jurisdiction. …

Self-Sensing Surface Plasmon Resonance For The Detection Of Metallic Nanoparticles, Nh Salah, D Jenkins, L Panina, R Handy, G Pan, Sa Awan

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is an established technique for label free sensing of bio-molecular species, including time-dependent reaction analysis. Unlike previous research by other workers, who have used gold or silver nanoparticles to enhance sensitivity by inducing LSPR, this study involves the theoretical development of a Localised SPR (LSPR) system where a glass prism is considered with multilayer films to enable the detection of metallic nanoparticles. Silver nanoparticles with a volume concentration 0.25 % can be clearly detected from both amplitude and phase, according to the results of these simulations. The model presented is rigorous in that it accounts for …

Recalibrational Emotions And The Regulation Of Trust-Based Behaviors, Eric Schniter, Timothy W. Shields

ESI Working Papers

Though individuals differ in the degree to which they are predisposed to trust or act trustworthy, we theorize that trust-based behaviors are universally determined by the calibration of conflicting short- and long-sighted behavior regulation programs, and that these programs are calibrated by emotions experienced personally and interpersonally. In this chapter we review both the main-stream and evolutionary theories of emotions that philosophers, psychologists, and behavioral economists have based their work on and which can inform our understanding of trust-based behavior regulation. The standard paradigm for understanding emotions is based on mapping their positive and negative affect valence. While Valence Models …

A Guided Tour To (Real-Life) Social Network, Pablo Brañas-Garza, Ramon Cobo-Reyes, Natalia Jiminéz, Giovanni Ponti

ESI Working Papers

Limited attention has been devoted on how (real-life) social networks are elicited and mapped, even less from the viewpoint of mechanism design. This paper surveys the few mechanisms that have been proposed by the experimental literature to this purpose. These mechanisms di er in their incentive structure, as well as in the means of reward they employ. We compare these elicitation devices on the basis of the estimated di erences in the characteristics of the induced networks, such as the number of (mutual) links, correspondence and accuracy. Our main conclusion is that the elicited network architecture is itself dependent on …

Divided Loyalties Or Conditional Cooperation? An Experimental Study Of Contributions To Multiple Public Goods, Matthew W. Mccarter, Anya C. Samak, Roman M. Sheremeta

ESI Working Papers

It is common in organizational life to be simultaneously involved in multiple collective actions. These collective actions may be modeled using public good dilemmas. The developing social dilemma literature has two perspectives – the “divided loyalties” and “conditional cooperation” perspectives – that give opposite predictions about how individuals will behave when they simultaneously play two identical public good games. The current paper creates consensus between these social dilemma perspectives by examining cooperative behavior of participants interacting in two public good games with either different or the same group members. In each round, individuals have a common budget constraint across the …

Assessment Of Potential Anti-Cancer Stem Cell Activity Of Marine Algal Compounds Using An In Vitro Mammosphere Assay, J De La Mare, J Sterrenberg, M Sukhthankar, M Chiwakata, D Beukes, G Blatch, A Edkins

Medical Papers and Journal Articles

Background: The cancer stem cell (CSC) theory proposes that tumours arise from and are sustained by a subpopulation of cells with both cancer and stem cell properties. One of the key hallmarks of CSCs is the ability to grow anchorage-independently under serum-free culture conditions resulting in the formation of tumourspheres. It has further been reported that these cells are resistant to traditional chemotherapeutic agents.

Methods: In this study, the tumoursphere assay was validated in MCF-7 cells and used to screen novel marine algal compounds for potential anti-cancer stem cell (CSC) activity in vitro.

Results: MCF-7 breast cancer cells were observed …

The Pringle Judgment: Economic And/Or Monetary Union?, Chris Koedooder

Fordham International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Systemizing The Fate Of The Stateless North Korean Migrant: A Legal Guide To Preventing The Automatic Repatriation Of North Korean Migrants In China, Jeanyoung Jeannie Cho

Fordham International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Our Place In The World: A New Relationship For Environmental Ethics And Law, Jedediah Purdy

Duke Law Journal

Forty years ago, at the birth of environmental law, both legal and philosophical luminaries assumed that the new field would be closely connected with environmental ethics. Instead, the two grew dramatically apart. This Article diagnoses that divorce and proposes a rapprochement. Environmental law has always grown through changes in public values; for this and other reasons, it cannot do so without ethics. Law and ethics are most relevant to each other when there are large open questions in environmental politics: lawmakers act only when some ethical clarity arises; but law can itself assist in that ethical development. This process is …

Digital Technology: The Modern Medium For The Art Classroom, Linda Sue Al-Hanna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Digital technology is an important tool teachers can utilize in the art classroom for the purposes of instruction, lesson planning and student interaction. The computer has been around for many years, and has been a key factor in globalization in the educational setting. More and more students are connecting with others around the world and learning with the computer in more diverse ways than ever. Digital art has been quickly expanding since `Sketchpad' was developed in the late 1960's by Ivan Sutherland. Students today have been born into a digital world and it has become imperative that teachers make the …

Integration Of Memristors With Mems For Dynamic Displacement Control, Sergio Fabian Almeida Loya

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In recent years the demand for high-speed, lower power consumption and large-capacity non-volatile memories has increased. Promisingly the memristor can be used due to its special characteristic of having memory through resistance change. The memristor behavior is not limited to digital applications but it can be used in analog application as well including: memristors in chaotic circuits, amoeba's learning, neural synaptic emulation, reprogrammable and reconfigurable circuits, and for neuromorphic computers. On the other hand Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) are small scale structures that can interact with the physical world due to their mechanical properties. These devices are widely used …