Digital Commons Network^™

Applications Of Aerosol Technologies In The Silicon Industry, Miguel Vazquez Pufleau

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, the focus was on two unit operations that have the potential to significantly lower the cost and energy required for refining silicon. First, the removal of carbon from silicon kerf (sawing dust from wafering) was examined to enable its recycling. Second, silane pyrolysis was studied to better understand the dynamics of the initial stages of silicon aerosol formation and growth.

Discovery And Characterization Of A Novel Class Of Metabolic Regulators In The Malaria Parasite Plasmodium Falciparum, Ann Marie Guggisberg

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, infects hundreds of millions of people per year and causes hundreds of thousands of deaths. Within the host red blood cell, the parasite relies on glycolysis for energy and synthesis of essential biomolecules. One such anabolic fate of glucose is the synthesis of isoprenoids, a broad and essential class of compounds that participate in a variety of cellular functions. In the face of ever-evolving drug resistance, new inhibitors and better understanding of parasite metabolism are required. The antibiotic fosmidomycin (FSM) targets the methylerythritol phosphate pathway for isoprenoid synthesis and is a well-validated inhibitor of P. …

Novel Regulation Of The Nonsense-Mediated Rna Decay Pathway, Andrew Keith Nickless

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The nonsense mediated RNA decay (NMD) pathway maintains the integrity of cellular RNAs and controls gene expression. NMD is essential for vertebrate development and defects in NMD are associated with a variety of neurodevelopmental disorders and cancers. NMD activity is tightly regulated and is altered in response to environmental and developmental signals. To better study this dynamic pathway and to identify clinically relevant regulators of its activity, we developed a dual-color bioluminescent NMD reporter that rapidly and accurately quantifies NMD activity in mammalian cells. Using this reporter, we performed a chemical screen for small-molecule modulators of NMD activity and identified …

Neural Dynamics Tracking Subjective Cognitive Effort, John Andrew Westbrook

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

What patterns of brain activity reflect engagement with highly demanding cognitive tasks? How do these patterns relate to subjective, phenomenal effort? Answering these questions is critical to understanding what causes some people to experience cognitive tasks as more effortful than others. Subjective experience, in turn, is vital, with trait tendencies to exert effort having been linked to career and academic success. High subjective effort, as in schizophrenia and depression, can thus be extremely problematic. And yet, poor operational definitions have constrained research into basic questions about what neural dynamics track subjective effort. Here, a powerful, new behavioral economic operationalization is …

Ongoing And Visually-Evoked Cortical Activity Measured Across Multiple Spatial Scales, Nathaniel Caleb Wright

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The visual cortex is a densely-interconnected network of neurons, which receives sensory input from the early visual pathway, and represents information about the visual world in the resulting spatiotemporal activity patterns. These patterns are mediated by cortical interactions that span multiple spatial scales (i.e., neuron-neuron, neuron-population, and population-population). Such interactions are a fundamental property of cortical function, and capture the contribution of the cortex to sensory coding. Yet these interactions are only beginning to be understood, in part because of the challenge of recording ongoing and visually-evoked activity across multiple spatial scales in individual studies. In this thesis, we present …

Explicit Bases Of Motives Over Number Fields With Application To Feynman Integrals, Yu Yang

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Chapter 1 contains background material on higher Chow groups, KLM formula and Feynman integrals. In Chapter 2, we construct explicit bases for these extension classes mapping to zeta values. In Chapter 4, we study the Feynman integral of the three spoke wheel graph, reinterpret it as an image of regulator using higher Abel-Jacobi maps and theoretically prove that it is a rational multiple of zeta three. In Chapter 5, a reflexive graph polytope based on the graph polynomial is constructed. In Chapter 6, to generalize the results beyond wheel with three spokes, a criterion is given on the vanishing of …

The Human Arf Tumor Suppressor Regulates Drosha Nucleolar Localization And Rrna Processing Activity, Sree Chandana Sridhar Yaddanapudi

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Ribosomes are vital to the survival of a cell, as they are directly responsible for the synthesis of proteins, which perform critical cellular functions. As such, majority of the energy reserves in a proliferating cell are expended towards synthesis of ribosomes. Cancer cells, with their enhanced proliferation rates, tend to upregulate ribosome biogenesis in order to meet the demand for increased protein synthesis necessary to sustain rapid proliferation. Many of the oncogenes and tumor suppressors known to be deregulated in cancers are capable of positively and negatively regulating ribosome biogenesis, respectively. The ARF tumor suppressor strongly suppresses ribosome biogenesis, particularly …

Essays In Entrepreneurship And Household Finance, Yoosef Ghahreman

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation is focused on the relationship between financial and business decisions of households. The first essay examines how founders of new businesses changed their portfolios in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances 2007-2009 panel data, I find evidence that those who became entrepreneurs (entrants) reduced financial portfolio risk compared to those who remained paid employees. I identify a movement away from stockholdings as a result of entry, and provide support for a response to the background risk arising from privately held businesses. Business ownership was also associated with changes in the real …

Epigenomics Of Cell Fate In Development And Disease, Rebecca Faith Lowdon

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Epigenetic features at regulatory elements provide instructive cues for transcriptional regulation during development. However, the particular epigenetic alterations necessary for proper cell fate acquisition and differentiation are not well understood. This dissertation explores the epigenetic dynamics of regulatory elements during development and uses epigenome annotations to document inappropriate transcriptional regulation in disease. First, I summarize my contributions to developing a new algorithm for detecting differential DNA methylation, M&M. I report the application of the M&M algorithm to identify distinct classes of DNA methylation dynamics in surface ectoderm (SE) progenitor cells and SE-derived lineages: epigenome alterations, and differential DNA methylation in …

How Do The Largest And Smallest Baboon Species Compete For Reproductive Success In A Natural Hybrid Zone?, Monica Mcdonald

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines hybridization between two of the most divergent baboons, the kinda baboon (Papio kindae) and the grayfooted chacma baboon (P. ursinus griseipes), which differ markedly in body size and in some social behavior. Preliminary research revealed hybridization between males of the smaller species (kinda) and females of the larger species (grayfoots), but not the reverse. Using behavioral, phenotypic, and genetic data collected from a single hybrid group in Kafue National Park from May 2012 to July 2013, I evaluated whether a similar asymmetry was borne out in this group and whether phenotypic markers of species assignation matched genotypic …

Pleasure In The Past: Queer Nostalgia In The Gay American Century, Elisabeth Windle

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I recover nostalgia—unpopular, too frequently dismissed, and presumptively conservative—as a generative emotional position from which to read queer texts. My archive assembles a group of post-Stonewall texts—literature, film, television, and advertising—that marshal the pre-Stonewall literary past to support reflection on the pressing issues of recent gay life: same-sex marriage, the myth of the down low, effemiphobia and anti-feminism, and HIV/AIDS. Shuttling critically between modernist literary history and contemporary culture, I propose nostalgia as a useful affective mode for negotiating our relationship to queer history. Against both the pervasive narrative of gay progress circulating in mainstream culture and …

39th Annual Chapman University Economic Forecast, Anderson Center For Economic Research

Anderson Center Press Releases

No abstract provided.

Health-Related Quality Of Life In Older Coastal Residents After Multiple Disasters, Katie E. Cherry, Laura Sampson, Sandro Galea, Loren D. Marks, Kayla H. Boudoin, Pamela F. Nezat, Katie E. Stanko

Faculty Publications

Objective: Exposure to multiple disasters, both natural and technological, is associated with extreme stress and long-term consequences for older adults that are not well understood. In this article, we address age differences in health-related quality of life in older disaster survivors exposed to the 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the role played by social engagement in influencing these differences.

Methods: Participants were noncoastal residents, current coastal residents, and current coastal fishers who were economically affected by the BP oil spill. Social engagement was estimated on the basis of disruptions in charitable …

Idealizing Patriarchy: Patterns Of Hierarchy And Patriarchal Values In English Household Literature, 1520-1600, Conor Howard

Honors Theses

This thesis examines English household literature of the sixteenth century to assess normative patterns of masculinity and patriarchy. Throughout that century, in spite of prolific changes having occurred in the realm of English material and intellectual culture, the patterns of masculinity observed in these texts show a remarkable pattern of consistency. This lack of change is in keeping with the works of other historians who have argued that the most salient feature of the norms of English masculinity throughout the early modern period was in fact continuity. Chapter one of this thesis shows how this body of literature prescribed access …

Future Historiographers: A Unit Plan For Progressive History Classrooms, Holli Sommerfeld

Honors Theses

It is this unit plans goal to introduce middle school students to historiography, which is the history of how history has been written across time. Within this unit plan, students are placed in an inquiry-based environment to dissect varying source materials; during this process, students will focus on three central components that are essential to understanding how history is told, these being content, perspective, and form of writing. Though this subject matter is rarely introduced to students at this age, through the use of an interdisciplinary approach incorporating the strengths of both English and History, careful scaffolding, a collaborative learning …

A Five-Year Integration Plan For Syrian Refugees Residing In Italian Refugee Camps, Megan Vander Boon

Honors Theses

The Syrian War is drastically affecting the European Migration Crisis and the number of misplaced people in the world. With nearly five million Syrians seeking asylum outside the country’s borders, neighboring countries are being pressured to find new ways to absorb the refugees. In the last two years, Italy has been challenged more than other countries because of entrance methods through the Mediterranean Sea. Italy has the ability to absorb the growing number of refugees if it implements integration plans. The purposed method suggests Syrian refugees, specifically children, will apply for Italian citizenship once they arrive to a refugee camp. …

Kinder Ready: Exploring The Role Of Technology In Promoting School Readiness Among Low-Income Parents In A Clinic-Based Setting, Brenda Lu

Master's Projects and Capstones

The Stanford Pediatric Advocacy Program advocates to improve the health status of children in Silicon Valley and the surrounding community. This summer, I worked on a project called Kinder Ready, with the goal of evaluating the feasibility of technology use in promoting school readiness in children ages zero to five. We used a variety of qualitative research methods, including focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and surveys to collect feedback from the community on what their children need to transition into schools. Our local participatory research approach has paved the way for many new partnerships with local organizations, while strengthening existing ones. …

Falls Program On An Acute Psychiatric Unit, Joseph Hunter Rose

Master's Projects and Capstones

In the metropolitan hospital’s acute psychiatric unit there has been an increase in falls incidence as well as need for evaluation of the effectiveness of Schmid Fall Risk Assessment tool in its ability to properly identify those at risk. In the last fiscal year there were 45 falls among 28 patients on the acute psychiatric unit.Falls are harmful to the patients and can cause prolonged hospital stays with non-reimbursable costs to the hospital. Falls amongst psychiatric patients is an even greater challenge to address due to the nature of the mental health disease process. This project addresses general costs of …

Distributed And Scalable Video Analysis Architecture For Human Activity Recognition Using Cloud Services, Cody Wilson Eilar

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

This thesis proposes an open-source, maintainable system for detecting human activity in large video datasets using scalable hardware architectures. The system is validated by detecting writing and typing activities that were collected as part of the Advancing Out of School Learning in Mathematics and Engineering (AOLME) project. The implementation of the system using Amazon Web Services (AWS) is shown to be both horizontally and vertically scalable. The software associated with the system was designed to be robust so as to facilitate reproducibility and extensibility for future research.

Utilization Of Harmonics Current In Single Phase System, H Al-Bayaty, M Ambroze, Mz Ahmed

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Development And Validation Of A Novel Bioassay To Determine Glucocorticoid Sensitivity, Emily L. Williams, Madeleine L. Stimpson, Peter L. Collins, Doyo G. Enki, Ashish Sinha, Richard W. Lee, Ashwin D. Dhanda

Peninsula Medical School

No abstract provided.

Real-Space Mean-Field Theory Of A Spin-1 Bose Gas In Synthetic Dimensions, Hilary M. Hurst, Justin H. Wilson, J. H. Pixley, I. B. Spielman, Stefan S. Natu

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

The internal degrees of freedom provided by ultracold atoms give a route for realizing higher dimensional physics in systems with limited spatial dimensions. Non-spatial degrees of freedom in these systems are dubbed "synthetic dimensions". This connection is useful from an experimental standpoint but complicated by the fact that interactions alter the condensate ground state. Here we use the Gross-Pitaevskii equation to study ground state properties of a spin-1 Bose gas under the combined influence of an optical lattice, spin-orbit coupling, and interactions at the mean field level. The associated phases depend on the sign of the spin-dependent interaction parameter and …

The Development Of A Higher Education Biblical Foundation Course Design Model, Cynthia Gettys, Ph.D., Elaine Plemons, M.A.

The Journal of Biblical Foundations of Faith and Learning

Every course at a Seventh-day Adventist (Adventist) institution of higher education should be qualitatively different from the same or similar course at a secular institution. They should also be different from a similar course taught at another Christian university. There are fundamental differences in Adventist beliefs that should influence the way Adventists view life and through which the disciplines are approached to form a unique and distinctive Adventist biblical worldview. Professors come to academia as experts in their discipline; however, because they are not generally educated in teaching theory, they often bring little understanding of course development, let alone course …

Fubar: A Historical Perspective On The Status Of Women In The Us Military, Liz Marsden

Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II

No abstract provided.

Japan Disarmed: The Symbolism And Rejection Of The Defeated Soldier In Japanese Social Media, Ian Ghows

Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II

No abstract provided.

Virile, Yet Feminine: Sport, Gender, And Representation In Fascist Italy, Andrea Dlugos

Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II

No abstract provided.

Tough On Black Asses: Segregation Ideology In The Early American Jazz Industry, Laurel Bettis

Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II

No abstract provided.

The Development, Impact, And Long-Term Significance Of Wartime Propaganda On The Doughboys In World War I: Personal Appeal Vs.Moral Imperative, Maggie Woods

Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II

No abstract provided.

Wicked California: Leisure And Morality During The Gold Rush, 1848-1860s, Michelle Khoury

Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Dead Or Protecting The Living? Above Ground Interment In Georgian (1714-1830) And Victorian Britain (1837-1901), Maxine Devincenzi

Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II

No abstract provided.