Digital Commons Network^™

Combining Footprinting Mass Spectrometry And Molecular Dynamics Simulation For Structural Studies In Membrane Proteins, Fengbo Zhou

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Membrane proteins are essential in many cellular processes and represent ~60% of all current drug targets. Due to technical limits, membrane proteins of various types were not studied extensively in the past and the biochemistry and functionality of them remain unclear. The structural biology methodologies require pure isolated protein samples for us to resolve their structure and study their biochemical functions. For such in vitro studies, however, membrane proteins often become unstable when isolated from their native lipid bilayer environment. To overcome the challenge, I employed a novel methodology of solubilizing membrane proteins in solution without detergent. I reconstituted ferroportin, …

Intersecting Variables Of Second And Foreign Language Reading: Self-Assessment And Comprehension With Adolescents And Adults Across Languages, Haley Dolosic

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Today, more individuals are seeking to learn a second language (L2) or foreign language (FL) than ever before. These individuals are language learners who intend to use their growing L2 knowledge to traverse linguistic and national boundaries in order to achieve their personal and professional goals (Callahan & Gándara, 2014). To realize these goals in the digital era, L2 learners must be more prepared than ever to use their knowledge with written media, making L2 reading a central skill to successful use of their L2 knowledge. Yet, when language learners attempt to use their L2 skills in their daily lives, …

Decoding Complexity In Metabolic Networks Using Integrated Mechanistic And Machine Learning Approaches, Tolutola Timothy Oyetunde

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

How can we get living cells to do what we want? What do they actually ‘want’? What ‘rules’ do they observe? How can we better understand and manipulate them? Answers to fundamental research questions like these are critical to overcoming bottlenecks in metabolic engineering and optimizing heterologous pathways for synthetic biology applications. Unfortunately, biological systems are too complex to be completely described by physicochemical modeling alone.

In this research, I developed and applied integrated mechanistic and data-driven frameworks to help uncover the mysteries of cellular regulation and control. These tools provide a computational framework for seeking answers to pertinent biological …

Anodic Cyclization Reaction: Manipulation Of Reaction Pathway And Efforts To Radical Cation And Radical Intermediate, Ruozhu Feng

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, synthetic chemists have been expressing significant interest in electro-organic synthetic methods. This interest is being fueled by the existence of an increasing number of successful methods in the literature and the availability of new electrochemical equipment that removes the barrier to attempting an electrolysis reaction for the first time. Yet while these developments have fueled growth in some areas of electro-organic synthesis (the recycling of chemical catalysts for example), other areas remain underdeveloped. One such area is the exploration of reactions that can be triggered directly as an electrode surface without the use of any chemical reagent. …

A Tail Of Two Pancancer Projects: Somatic Variant Identification And Driver Gene Discovery Using Tcga, Matthew Hawkins Bailey

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The implementation of next-generation genomic sequencing has exploded over the past dozen years. Large consortia, such as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA); the International Cancer Genetics Consortium (ICGC); and the Pediatric Cancer Genome Projects (PCGP), made great strides in democratizing big data for the scientific community. These data sets provide a rich resource to build tools for somatic variant discovery and exploratory analysis. Public repositories hold the answer to many novel biological and clinical revelations i.e., the discovery of complex indels, splice creating mutations, alternative super enhancer binding sites, machine learning models to predict mutation impact, and cancer subtype classification …

Ming China As A Gunpowder Empire: Military Technology, Politics, And Fiscal Administration, 1350-1620, Weicong Duan

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the transformation of Ming China in the gunpowder age. Focusing on the relation between military technology, politics, and fiscal administration, it closely traces the change of the Ming state in association with the gunpowder revolution. Two aspects of institutional change receive special attention. The first aspect is the formation of an absolute authority in the Ming period, a development exhibiting many parallels with the absolute monarchies of other major gunpowder states in Europe and the Islamic world. The second is the modification of the Confucian bureaucratic government. The revolutions in gunpowder technology had a complex impact on …

Unsettling Geographies: Primitivist Utopias In Queer American Literature From Walt Whitman To Willa Cather, Benjamin Meiners

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

In “Unsettling Geographies: Primitivist Utopias in Queer American Literature from Walt Whitman to Willa Cather,” I argue that the colonial discourse of primitivism played a central role in the queer literary imaginaries of both canonical and non-canonical U.S. authors. Building on the work of historians of sexuality who trace the complex development of the twentieth-century homo-/hetero- binary, I show how literary works produced in this historical moment—roughly 1860 to 1925—explored and in some instances even advocated alternative queer modes of citizenship and erotic imagination and practice. Focusing on the works of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Willa …

España De La Guerra, By Brian Jeffery, Richard M. Long

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Brian Jeffery, España de la Guerra: The Spanish Political and Military Songs of the War in Spain, 1808 to 1814 (London: Tecla, 2017).

New Chamber Music With Guitar: The Aleph Gitarrenquartett, Gubaidulina, And Plucking, Nathan Cornelius

Soundboard Scholar

Reviews of the following recordings:

• Aleph Guitar Quartet, Aleph Gitarrenquartett, vol. 2 (NEOS 11710, 2017)
• Bernard Lang, The Cold Trip, with Sarah Maria Sun, Juliet Fraser, Mark Knoop, and the Aleph Guitar Quartet (Kairos 0015018, 2017)
• Sofia Gubaidulina, Complete Guitar Works, with David Tanenbaum et al. (Naxos 8.573379, 2015)
• Tom Johnson, Plucking, with Just Strings (MicroFest Records MF9, 2017)

Alfabeto Falso (Vallerotondo, I Bassifondi), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Alfabeto falso, with Simone Vallerotondo (Baroque guitar) and I Bassifondi (Arcana A435, 2017), compact disc.

François Campion: Music For Baroque Guitar (Hofstötte), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of François Campion: Music for Baroque Guitar, with Bernhard Hofstötter (Brilliant Classics 95275, 2017), compact disc.

Ma Guiterre Je Te Chante: 16th Century Guitar Solos And Chansons (Nelson, Bartram), Ellwood Colahan

Soundboard Scholar

A review of Jocelyn Nelson (guitar) and Amy Bartram (soprano), Ma Guiterre je te chante: 16th Century Guitar Solos and Chansons (Nelson 5637610050, 2010), compact disc.

Elevated Temperature Progressive Damage And Failure Of Duplex Stainless Steel, Darren P. Luke

Civil Engineering ETDs

Ductile failure of metals has been the focus of research efforts within academia and industry for many years since it is tremendously important for understanding the failure of structures under extreme loading conditions. However, limited research has been dedicated to elevated temperature ductile failure, which is critical for evaluating catastrophic events such as industrial, structural or shipping vessel fires. A detailed investigation was conducted on the structural response of Duplex Stainless Steel at elevated temperatures. The temperature dependence of elastic modulus, yield strength, ultimate strength, and ductility was measured up to 1000°C and a continuum damage plasticity model was developed. …

Wrong In All The Right Ways, Charlotte Esplin

Children's Book and Media Review

Emma Ellenburg has the perfect life: her father is a retired famous baseball player, they live in an amazing house in California, and she is the perfect student. Nothing can pull her focus away from the thing that matters most, namely, getting into an Ivy League college. That is, until her parents bring home a new foster sibling, Dylan. The two find themselves in the same English class for the semester where they are studying Wuthering Heights. Quickly, it becomes obvious how the two feel about each other, and they become intertwined in a risky and secretive relationship. Things take …

Piecing Me Together, Emma Patton

Children's Book and Media Review

Jade wants her life to expand, but it seems like the doors that are open to others will always be closed to her. She is poor and black, so even though she attends a private school, her life is limited. But then she gets the opportunity to participate in a mentorship program called Woman to Woman. She knows she was only selected because she is “at risk,” but she decides to do it because it could mean getting money for college. At first, Jade just goes through the motions, but Woman to Woman quickly begins to make an impact on …

Selected Bibliography For The Study Of Belief In Contemporary Global Capitalism, Fu-Jen Chen, Su-Lin Yu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Decolonizing Adoption Narratives For Transnational Reproductive Justice, Sung Hee Yook, Hosu Kim

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article “Decolonizing Adoption Narratives for Transnational Reproductive Justice,” Sung Hee Yook and Hosu Kim examine narratives emerging from transnational adoption practices, focusing on how birth mothers’ narratives—in which a victim-mother makes choices to give a child for adoption in hopes of a better life for the child, and awaits that child’s return—develop alongside and deviate from the normative orders of motherhood. While birth mothers’ self-transformative narrative illuminates their subjectivities—apart from victimhood, simmering in the latent form of agency—Yook and Kim argue that a compelling narrative of self-mastery produces another discursive trap which renders the numerous less-masterful birth mothers …

Mindfulness And Heightened Consciousness In Phillip Zarrilli’S Psychophysical Approach To Acting, Tsu-Chung Su

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Mindfulness and Heightened Consciousness in Phillip Zarrilli’s Psychophysical Approach to Acting," Tsu-Chung Su intends to explore the significance of mindfulness and heightened consciousness in Zarrilli’s psychophysical approach to acting. Su first traces and discusses the Chinese and Indian sources, resources, and knowledge that have forged Zarrilli’s psychophysical acting techniques, theories, and approaches. Then, he critically examines and assesses the efficacy of Zarrilli’s approach which combines Western theatrical concepts and techniques with what he self-consciously borrows from Chinese qi and taijiquan, Indian ayurvedic medicine, Vedic philosophy, performing aesthetics, Hindu religion, kathakali, yoga, meditation, massage, and kalarippayattu …

Adopting The Unadoptable/Disabled Subject In The Posthuman Era, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Adopting the Unadoptable/Disabled Subject in the Posthuman Era,” Fu-Jen Chen first examines three memoirs that demonstrate prevalent features of today’s narratives by parents with adopted children of special needs and next offers a theoretical and ontological investigation of disability. He suggests that we have to change the way we relate to disability: to recognize it not as an external limitation but an internal as well as pre-existent division and to re-orient ourselves to the ontological truth that we are always already “disabled/otherized” especially in the posthuman era when the body is seen to exceed existing boundaries of …

A Sinful Reaction To Capitalist Ethics In No Quiero Quedarme Sola Y Vacía (2006), Celina Bortolotto

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “A Sinful Reaction to Capitalist Ethics in No quiero quedarme sola y vacía (2006)” Celina Bortolotto analyzes how Lozada’s characterization of the main character, La Loca, questions the ideals of free agency offered by consumerist capitalism and the urban gay male ideal under the promise of a liberating gay lifestyle in a social context defined by identity politics. The novel is a fictionalized autobiographical account of Puerto Rican author Angel Lozada’s misadventures in the early 2000s gay scene in New York. This essay plays with the punitive sense of the word “capital” in the seven capital sins …

Changez/Cengiz's Changing Beliefs In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Valerie Kennedy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, “Changez/Cengiz's Changing Beliefs in The Reluctant Fundamentalist” Valerie Kennedy analyzes the interrelation of individual subjectivity and global capitalism and the conflict between two belief systems in Mohsin Hamid’s novel. These are, first, a neoliberal system that sees individuals as rationally self-interested, mobile, economic units, and, second, a system based on a humanist definition of individuals as defined by nation, family, and tradition. Changez, the novel’s protagonist, initially endorses the first, but later rejects it for the second, due to his growing awareness of the impact on Pakistan of American geopolitics after 9/11. The essay also examines …

The Rise Of The Neoliberal Chinese Female Subject In Go Lala Go, Su-Lin Yu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Built upon feminist critique of neoliberalism, this paper will examine a prominent medium through which neoliberal feminist ideology is disseminated: Go Lala Go. By analyzing the film, I will show how it co-opts the discourse of neoliberalism, and reworks it to construct neoliberal female subjects. First, I will explore what kind of role neoliberalism has enacted in the formation of an emergent type of female subject in China. Then, I will demonstrate how the contentious process of neoliberal feminism affects young career women’s identities. More than career guides promoting different techniques for making women more successful at their workplaces, …

Innovation, Entrepreneurship, And The Spirit Of Digital Capitalism, Collin Chua

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article “Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and the Spirit of Digital Capitalism,”Collin Chua analyzes the myth of innovation and the fantasy of entrepreneurship. The article draws on foundational perspectives regarding the spirit of capitalism established by Max Weber, later extended by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello. The myth of innovation is interrogated, as innovation now operates as a rhetorical and managerial strategy that must be pursued in order to be competitive in today’s capitalist system. The fantasy of entrepreneurship is explored, as it serves as a coping mechanism for the fragmentation and erosion of traditional work arrangements and structures. The article …

Introduction To Belief In Contemporary Global Capitalism, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This special issue addresses the broad and complex nexus among three topics: belief, subjectivity, and contemporary global capitalism. It explores the intersection of material practices, ideational dimensions, and the subjective dynamics of global capitalism. The interdisciplinary contributions in this special issue come from authors in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, and the United States. And the articles gathered in this issue are to explore a wide range of topics, varying from entrepreneurship and digital capitalism to neoliberalism and postfeminism; from fundamentalism and terrorism to Protestantism and contemporary homosexual identity; from body and ableism to mind and New Age …

Screening Religiosity In Contemporary Polish Films. The Role Of Religious Motifs In Visual Communication., Mariola Marczak

Journal of Religion & Film

In the paper the Polish contemporary cinema has been explored as a vehicle through which films can reflect and communicate social issues, such as religiosity of Polish society, the character of it, the ways of expression and values promoted by it. The main components of modern Polish religiosity are shown as they are exhibited in film works perceived as part of modern visual culture. The examination also comprises most frequently and typically tools used for communicating or revealing the transcendent sphere in the contemporary Polish films, such as Christ-figures - including apocryphal ones and parables. They are considered as a …

Visual Grandeur, Imagined Glory: Identity Politics And Hindu Nationalism In Bajirao Mastani And Padmaavat, Baijayanti Roy

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper examines the tropes through which the Hindi (Bollywood) historical films Bajirao Mastani (2015) and Padmaavat (2018) create idealised pasts on screen that speak to Hindu nationalist politics of present-day India. Bajirao Mastani is based on a popular tale of love, between Bajirao I (1700-1740), a powerful Brahmin general, and Mastani, daughter of a Hindu king and his Iranian mistress. The relationship was socially disapproved because of Mastani`s mixed parentage. The film distorts India`s pluralistic heritage by idealising Bajirao as an embodiment of Hindu nationalism and portraying Islam as inimical to Hinduism. Padmaavat is a film about a legendary …

‘Love-Jihad’ And Bollywood: Constructing Muslims As ‘Other’, Nadira Khatun

Journal of Religion & Film

In the postcolonial nation state that is India, cinema has become an important tool for propagating the idea of nationalism. In recent times, one of the most controversial components of Hindu nationalism has been the hate campaign against what is termed as ‘love-jihad’, which is deployed as a weapon to mobilize, polarize, and communalize citizens. The Indian Hindi-language film industry, popularly known as Bollywood, has also become a controversial site. In this paper, I argue that if ‘Indian nationalism’ is to be represented as ‘Hindu nationalism’ and ‘Indian culture’ as ‘Hindu culture,’ it logically follows that this majoritarian construction needs …

Myth And Monstrosity: Teaching Indigenous Films, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

The past few times that I have taught my course on religion and film I have included a number of Indigenous movies. The response from students has been entirely positive, in part because most of them have rarely encountered Indigenous cultural products of any kind, especially contemporary ones. Students also respond well to the way in which many of these films use notions of the monstrous to explore, and explode, colonial myths. Goldstone, for example, by Kamilaroi filmmaker Ivan Sen, draws on noir tropes to peel back the smiling masks of the people responsible for the mining town’s success, …

Trickster Ambivalence In Kwaw Ansah’S Praising The Lord Plus One, Adwoa Opoku-Agyemang

Journal of Religion & Film

Kwaw Ansah’s film Praising the Lord Plus One revolves around a crooked charismatic preacher. This paper examines him as one of the manifestations of the West African trickster. Though the figure of the trickster is bound to West African folktales, his familiar, contradictory and ultimately funny features transcend the oral tale to manifest in other media. The article examines Gabriel’s self-transformation into a miracle-maker, his utilization of that identity, and his unmaking. It looks at how biblical exegesis and Christian rites, while apparently major aspects of the film, are reduced to marketing tools for sustaining the trickster ethos. The paper …

Solidarity Beyond Obligation: Three Billboards Outside Of Ebbing, Missouri, Grace Chiou

Journal of Religion & Film

In his film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, writer-director Martin McDonagh creates a compelling parable regarding suffering, justice and solidarity. This unfiltered and witty, dark comedy examines the interlaced connections between humans and non-human agents during periods of anguish. Frequently, the ensuing communication includes abusive or belittling language and violent physical attacks. These extraordinary assaults are then contrasted with small gestures of kindness. While the film has faced various critiques, this piece of cinema creates a dynamic narrative to consider the human experience of grief and experiencing grace from one’s enemies. In doing so, Three Billboards paints an inclusive …