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Empire In The American West: A New Historicist Interrogation Of Narrative In Owen Wister's The Virginian, Willa Cather's Death Comes For The Archbishop, And Cormac Mccarthy's All The Pretty Horses, Brian Patrick Steinbach

Theses

This thesis explores the evolution of American Western narrative after the 1893 closing of the Western Frontier. Formerly representing a seemingly limitless fuel of symbolic growth, the frontier's closing threatened further national prosperity. Without new Western lands to conquer, narratives about the West began to be romanticized in a new way, selectively omitting non-Anglo narrative elements and presenting a more palatable West in the form of celebratory conquest. Ignoring its imperial roots, this new twentieth-century mythologization of the West became an increasingly ubiquitous narrative of America's honorable origins. Despite its ties to the perpetuation of empire, the pervasiveness of contemporary …

A Scale To Measure The Complexity And Perceptual-Cognitive Skills In Soccer, Maurici Abraham Lopez Felip

Theses

The complexity of dynamical systems (spanning brain, body and environment) can yield complex adaptive behaviors from non-linear interactions of individuals in space and time. A lack of reliable instruments to assess these varying behaviors results in inferences of how changes in behavior occurred over an extended period of time rather than being based on direct scientific measures. The aim of this study was to develop a scale of complexity and perceptual-cognitive skills' assessment in the sport soccer and to evaluate structural and criterion reliability. Based on the embodied cognition literature, the construct of this scale was identified with three dimensions …

Putting Men Back In The Menstrual Cycle: A Qualitative Analysis Of Men's Perceptions Of Menstruation, Katherine Fishman

Theses

Although menstruation is typically regarded as an indication of health (Kissling, 1996), strong cultural messages about menstruation perpetuate the belief that it is dirty, disgusting and a state that must be managed (Ussher, 2006). Many women internalize this belief and go to great lengths to hide their menstrual status (Chrisler, 2007). Negative attitudes toward menstruation have been linked to decreased body satisfaction (Schooler, Ward, Meriwether, & Caruthers, 2005), perceptions of decreased competence and likability (Roberts, Goldenberg, Power, & Pyszynski, 2002), and the belief that menstruating women are more emotional, less attractive, and more irritable than non-menstruating women (Forbes, Adams-Curtis, White, …

Interpretable Machine Learning And Sparse Coding For Computer Vision, Will Landecker

Dissertations and Theses

Machine learning offers many powerful tools for prediction. One of these tools, the binary classifier, is often considered a black box. Although its predictions may be accurate, we might never know why the classifier made a particular prediction. In the first half of this dissertation, I review the state of the art of interpretable methods (methods for explaining why); after noting where the existing methods fall short, I propose a new method for a particular type of black box called additive networks. I offer a proof of trustworthiness for this new method (meaning a proof that my method does not …

Vaccines To Combat River Blindness: Expression, Selection And Formulation Of Vaccines Against Infection With Onchocerca Volvulus In A Mouse Model., Jessica A. Hess, Bin Zhan, Sandra Bonne-Annee, Jessica M. Deckman, Maria Elena Bottazzi, Peter J. Hotez, Thomas R R. Klei, Sara Lustigman, David Abraham

Department of Microbiology and Immunology Faculty Papers

Human onchocerciasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by Onchocerca volvulus and an important cause of blindness and chronic disability in the developing world. Although mass drug administration of ivermectin has had a profound effect on control of the disease, additional tools are critically needed including the need for a vaccine against onchocerciasis. The objectives of the present study were to: (i) select antigens with known vaccine pedigrees as components of a vaccine; (ii) produce the selected vaccine antigens under controlled conditions, using two expression systems and in one laboratory and (iii) evaluate their vaccine efficacy using a single immunisation …

From Third Parties To Parents: The Case Of Lesbian Couples And Their Children , Nancy D. Polikoff

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.

Genetic Variations In Two Seahorse Species (Hippocampus Mohnikei And Hippocampus Trimaculatus): Evidence For Middle Pleistocene Population Expansion, Yanhong Zhang, Nancy Kim Pham, Huixian Zhang, Junda Lin, Qiang Lin

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Population genetic of seahorses is confidently influenced by their species-specific ecological requirements and life-history traits. In the present study, partial sequences of mitochondrial cytochrome b (cytb) and control region (CR) were obtained from 50 Hippocampus mohnikei and 92 H. trimaculatus from four zoogeographical zones. A total of 780 base pairs of cytb gene were sequenced to characterize mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity. The mtDNA marker revealed high haplotype diversity, low nucleotide diversity, and a lack of population structure across both populations of H. mohnikei and H. trimaculatus. A neighbour-joining (NJ) tree of cytb gene sequences showed that H. mohnikei haplotypes formed …

Rorα Binds To E2f1 To Inhibit Cell Proliferation And Regulate Mammary Gland Branching Morphogenesis, Gaofeng Xiong, Ren Xu

Markey Cancer Center Faculty Publications

Retinoic acid receptor-related orphan nuclear receptor alpha (RORα) is a potent tumor suppressor that reduces cell proliferation and inhibits tumor growth. However, the molecular mechanism by which it inhibits cell proliferation remains unknown. We demonstrate a noncanonical nuclear receptor pathway in which RORα binds to E2F1 to inhibit cell cycle progression. We showed that RORα bound to the heptad repeat and marked box region of E2F1 and suppressed E2F1-regulated transcription in epithelial cells. Binding of RORα inhibited E2F1 acetylation and its DNA-binding activity by recruiting histone deacetylase 1 (HDAC1) to the protein complexes. Knockdown of HDAC1 or inhibition of HDAC …

The Apical Polarity Complex Protein, Pals1, Regulates Cell Fate In The Development Of Cerebellum And Neocortex, Jun Young Park

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Through their biased localization and function within the cell, polarity complex proteins are necessary to establish the cellular asymmetry required for tissue organization. Well-characterized germinal zones, mitogenic signals, and cell types make the cerebellum and neocortex excellent models to address the critical function of polarity complex proteins in the generation and organization of neural tissues. Here we report a focal distribution of Pals1, a central component of the apical complex, in progenitors. Our genetic analyses revealed that Pals1 deletion in the brain developed a remarkably undersized and disrupted layer structure of cerebral cortex and cerebellum. Furthermore we demonstrated that Pals1 …

Temperature Alters Food Web Body-Size Structure, Jean P. Gibert, John P. Delong

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The increased temperature associated with climate change may have important effects on body size and predator– prey interactions. The consequences of these effects for food web structure are unclear because the relationships between temperature and aspects of food web structure such as predator–prey body-size relationships are unknown. Here, we use the largest reported dataset for marine predator–prey interactions to assess how temperature affects predator–prey body-size relationships among different habitats ranging from the tropics to the poles. We found that prey size selection depends on predator body size, temperature and the interaction between the two. Our results indicate that (i) predator–prey …

The Mucosal Expression Pattern Of Interferon-Ε In Rhesus Macaques, Andrew Demers, Guobin Kang, Fangrui Ma, Wuxun Lu, Zhe Yuan, Yue Li, Mark Lewis, Edmundo N. Kraiselburd, Luis Montaner, Qingsheng Li

Qingsheng Li Publications

Type I IFNs play an important role in innate and adaptive immunity against viral infections. A novel type I IFN, namely IFN-ε, which can protect against vaginal transmission of HSV2 and Chlamydia muridarum bacterial infection, has been described in mice and humans. Nevertheless, the principle cell type and the expression pattern of IFN-ε in tissues remain uncertain. In addition, the expression of IFN-ε in Indian rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) has not been reported. Here, we analyzed IFN-ε expression in multiple mucosal sites of uninfected or SIV-infected Indian rhesus macaques using IHCS. We report for the first time the …

The Ontogeny Of Whistle Production In Infant Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops Truncatus) During The First Thirty Days Of Life, Brittany Leigh Jones

Master's Theses

The manner in which dolphin calves acquire their whistle repertoire is largely unknown. This paper focuses on whistle development in four bottlenose dolphin calves during the first thirty days of life in order to increase our understanding of the early emergence of whistles and whistle-like vocalizations. The acoustic parameters of whistle-type vocalizations (i.e., whistles and whistlesquawks) that coincided with a bubblestream emission from the focal calf and/or its mother were analyzed, as were the behavioral states of the mother-calf pair during the emission of such vocals. Mother and calf whistle rates are inversely related, with the mother whistling more often …

Selling Tradition: Impression Management And Draft Animal Agriculture Of A Mississippi Farmstead, Matthew Corbin Lance

Master's Theses

This thesis is a case study of a family of farmers in Mississippi’s Piney Woods who use horse-drawn equipment to grow crops. This practice is notable in the context of a larger agricultural system that prioritizes mechanization (particularly the use of tractors). The production style and their use of local direct selling via farmers markets allowed them to thrive economically because they were able to tap into a niche market of consumers desiring an alternative to the modern, conventional agricultural system.

Other literature on Alternative Food Networks (AFN) discusses the issues of alterity and appropriation—that is, whether AFN ventures are …

[Blip] And Other Noises, Jennifer Jacob Brown

Master's Theses

[Blip] and Other Noises is a collection of short stories that explores the illusory nature of identity, time, space, and our experience of reality. Its principal characters include a sea captain, an Elvis fanatic, a space alien, and some very confused children. Its principal settings include small town Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, the Indiana wilderness, and uncharted (by humans) outer space. This collection is accompanied by a critical introduction.

The Effects Of Varying Duration Of Reinforcement On Novel Selection-Based Mands Versus Topgraphy-Based Mands, Nicholas S. Acker

Masters Theses

In recent years, researchers have evaluated individuals' preferences for different mand modalities and its effects on the acquisition of novel mands during functional con1munication training (i.e., FCT; e.g., Falcomata, Ringdahl, Christensen, & Boelter, 20 I 0). In many of these studies, the modality of responding that Michael ( 1985) classified as selection-based responding, is preferred by participants (e.g., Falcomata et al., 201 0). Wraikat, Sundberg, and Michael (1991) suggest that topography-based responses may be preferable for the acquisition of complex language. However, selection-based verbal responses may have faster acquisition in learning initial verbal operants (Charlop-Christy, Carpenter, Le, LeBlanc & Kellet, …

The British Women’S Land Army: Gender, Identity, And Landscapes, Hilary M.K. Anderson

Masters Theses

The land girls who comprised the Women’s Land Army in Great Britain during the Second World War challenged cultural assumptions regarding gender and femininity. Through their work in agriculture, social anxieties were provoked regarding proper notions of femininity and separate spheres, which left these women in conflicting positions as they carved a spot for themselves in a war torn society. In order to carry out their work in the Women’s Land Army, land girls operated at the convergence of private and public spheres in a conjoined space. Living and operating in this conjoined space enabled them to blur the ideological …

A Comparison Of Two Variations Of A Stimulus-Stimulus Pairing Procedure On Novel And Infrequent Vocalizations Of Children With Autism, Andrew J. Bulla

Masters Theses

Despite the growth in a behavioral technology for the treatment of autism, a small population of individuals with autism fails to develop functional language. One procedure used for inducing vocalizations in non-verbal children is a stimulus-stimulus pairing (SSP) procedure. In an SSP procedure a vocalization is paired with a reinforcer over a period of time to establish the vocalization as a learned reinforcer, and any utterance of the target vocalization is believed to be automatically reinforced thus increasing the frequency of the vocalization. Past research has yielded mixed results with the SSP procedure, and more research is warranted to identify …

Because A Fire, A Lover's Quarrel: Poems, Clifton Clyde Ward

Master's Theses

This thesis comprises poems written and/or revised over the past two years. They mark the development of my aesthetic and writing ability thus far and are representative of the training and practice incited by my own efforts and those of my professors during my enrollment in the Master of Arts degree in English, Creative Writing emphasis. The majority of these poems are written in an open form, and all of them fall under three general categories: autobiographical, absurdist, or formal.

A Description Of Vocalizations And Their Association With Mouthing Behaviors And Social Context In Bottlenose Dolphins, Tursiops Truncatus, Christina Elyse Perazio

Master's Theses

Dolphin communication is multimodal and incorporates physical behaviors and vocalizations. Dolphins often exchange information with conspecifics using different types of vocalizations, and these vocalizations are sometimes associated with specific behaviors. However, the relationship of vocalization type and mouthing behavior type has not been investigated. This thesis examines simultaneous acoustic and visual recordings of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) to determine the relationship between type of mouthing behavior and type of vocalization (whistle, whistle-squawk, chirp, moan, burst-pulse type A, burst-pulse type B, and click trains). The role of the social context of a mouthing behavior is also evaluated. Data were obtained opportunistically …

The Effects Of The Nat Turner Slave Revolt On The Health And Welfare Of 19th-Century Slaves In Southeastern Virginia, Jeffrey Clifford Auerbach

Master's Theses

The Nat Turner Slave Revolt stands as a major turning point in the history of American slavery and represents a fundamental shift in the master slave relationship. This event shattered the previous paternalistic view and caused a fundamental reorganization of slave life. Included in this reorganization was a shift in the subsistence practice, moving away from morenutritious food grown by the slaves themselves to poor quality rations provided by the masters. This change in subsistence practices dealt a serious blow to the nutritional health of those living in the area surrounding the revolt.

By examining stature recorded in the County …

Public Water, Private Rights: All Are Not Equally Protected When The State Allows Some To Divert Small Quantities Of Ground Water Outside The Permitting System, Carolyn A. Sime

Montana Law Review

Public Water, Private Rights: All Are Not Equally Protected When The State Allows Some To Divert Small Quantities Of Ground Water Outside The Permitting System

Differentiation State-Specific Mitochondrial Dynamic Regulatory Networks Are Revealed By Global Transcriptional Analysis Of The Developing Chicken Lens., Daniel Chauss, Subhasree Basu, Suren Rajakaruna, Zhiwei Ma, Victoria Gau, Sara Anastas, Lisa A. Brennan, J. Fielding Hejtmancik, A. Sue Menko, Marc Kantorow

Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Cell Biology Faculty Papers

The mature eye lens contains a surface layer of epithelial cells called the lens epithelium that requires a functional mitochondrial population to maintain the homeostasis and transparency of the entire lens. The lens epithelium overlies a core of terminally differentiated fiber cells that must degrade their mitochondria to achieve lens transparency. These distinct mitochondrial populations make the lens a useful model system to identify those genes that regulate the balance between mitochondrial homeostasis and elimination. Here we used an RNA sequencing and bioinformatics approach to identify the transcript levels of all genes expressed by distinct regions of the lens epithelium …

Y-Chromosome Polymorphism In United Arab Emirates, Safa Yaqoub Yousif Alkhayyat Al Hammadi

Theses

Human Y chromosome is a specific male marker and it consists of the largest non-recombining segment in human genome that is the hallmark of Y chromosome population-based studies.This stud establishes an extensive Y poly-morph ism profile of the U A E Population and to our knowledge, this is the largest study carried out in the UAE.

DNA samples were for 1 7 polymorphic STR from 345 unrelated Emirate male. In UAE population, the analysis of the allele frequency clearly shows that each u ha a predominant allele. It is also apparent that alleles for most loci are clustered over a …

Power, Privilege, And Prayer: Christian Right Identity Politics And Mobilizing For School Prayer, Daniel Tagliarina

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is about how the political push for school prayer functions as an effort to retrench conservative social power and a conservative political worldview via identity-based politics. The New Christian Right (NCR) mobilizes secularized arguments of equality, victimhood and parental rights to advocate for school prayer. The NCR mobilizes to include religion in a unique cultural institution (public education) involved in the training of future generations of American citizens. The NCR’s mobilization aims at preserving Christian social power and privilege with little-to-no attention paid to protecting religion qua religion—not just Christian faith—in America.

The NCR, as a social movement, …

Immigration Restrictions And The Right To Avoid Unwanted Obligations, Javier S. Hidalgo

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In a recent paper, Michael Blake (2013) presents a novel

argument for the claim that, if states have obligations to protect the human

rights of everyone in their jurisdiction, then some immigration restrictions

are morally justified. Blake argues that citizens acquire new obligations

to protect the human rights of immigrants once these immigrants enter

a state’s territorial jurisdiction. But he contends that people have rights to

avoid unwanted obligations and that citizens can permissibly restrict immigration

in order to prevent immigrants from imposing unwanted obligations

on them. In this paper, I will show that Blake’s argument for immigration

restrictions is …

The Kras/Mapk Pathway And Ligand Independent Activation Of Erα: Implications For The Treatment Of Endometrial Cancer, Kari Ring

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Hormonal therapy remains a first line option for the treatment of recurrent endometrial cancer (EC), however, many tumors demonstrate de novo or acquired resistance. Member kinases of the PI3K/AKT and Ras/MAPK pathways activate estrogen receptor α (ERα) independent of estrogen, however, few studies have evaluated the role of the Ras/MAPK pathway in predicting response to hormonal therapy in EC. The aims of this project were to evaluate the role of ligand independent activation of ERα in EC and to explore therapeutic implications for the treatment of recurrent EC.

A xenograft model for recurrent EC was used to evaluate the effect …

Role Of Macrophages In Adaptive Resistance To Anti-Vegf Therapy, Heather Dalton

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Background: The clinical implementation of therapies targeting the VEGF pathway in cancer has been limited by acquired resistance; yet, the mechanisms by which this occurs is unclear. We investigated the role of macrophages in the development of acquired resistance to anti-VEGF antibody (AVA) therapy.

Materials and Methods: We first established a murine ovarian cancer model of resistance to anti-VEGF therapy. Using this model we investigated changes in macrophage infiltration during AVA sensitive and resistant phases. We also investigated the in vivo effects of macrophage depletion at the emergence of anti-VEGF resistance and in upfront combination with AVA therapy. In vitro …

Multiple Myeloma And Its Treatment Alter Peripheral Nervous System Structure And Function, Alyssa K. Kosturakis

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

MULTIPLE MYELOMA AND ITS TREATMENT ALTER PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION

Alyssa Katarina Kosturakis, BA

Supervisory Professor: Patrick M. Dougherty, PhD

Peripheral neuropathy is among the most deleterious side effects of frontline chemotherapeutics used to treat prevalent cancers. Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) refers to the collection of symptoms (e.g. pain, paresthesias and dysesthesias) that develop in distal, glabrous (non-hairy) skin of 20 to 100% of patients treated with chemotherapy. Peripheral neuropathy negatively impacts quality of life in cancer patients and survivors, is refractory to treatment, and is the impetus for dose-reduction and/or cessation of chemotherapy, thereby limiting treatment. Proteasome …

Regulators Of Bacterial Cell Division: Investigations Of Min Oscillation And Ftsa Activity, Jennifer R. Herricks

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Cytokinesis is a fundamental process that is essential for bacterial proliferation. The cytokinetic machinery in bacteria is termed the “divisome”. The divisome is a complex of proteins that forms a ring at midcell over dividing nucleoids. In order for daughter cells to form, the divisome must constrict. As constriction occurs, two new cell poles are formed, one for each daughter cell. The first step in divisome formation is the assembly of FtsZ into a Z ring. The work presented in this dissertation focuses on two proteins that regulate the Z ring: MinD, which is a part of the Min system …

Potential Roles Of Peroxidases In Caenorhabditis Elegans Innate Immunity, George R. Tiller, George R. Tiller

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

The production of ROS (reactive oxygen species) in response to pathogen detection is a rapid, nonspecific response that is evolutionarily conserved from nematodes to humans. ROS serve as direct and indirect effectors of innate and adaptive immunity. In Caenorhabditis elegans, a ROS burst is observed during infection and is mediated by the dual oxidase BLI-3, which produces H₂O₂. RNAi (RNA interference) to reduce the amount of BLI-3 results in a significant increase in susceptibility to pathogens, suggesting BLI-3 has a role in the immune response. However, H₂O₂ by itself is not a …