Digital Commons Network^™

"For You There Are No Strangers": Albert Schweitzer And The Ethics Of Necessity In Pandemic America, Joel (J.T.) Young

Faculty Scholarship

Claiming millions of lives and affecting millions more, the Covid-19 pandemic has thrust humanity into a period of intense reflection on the fragility of life. However, in this time when people have been encouraged to care for their fellow human beings by taking the precautions necessary to protect one another, many have asked the same question as one of Jesus’ antagonistic opponents in the Gospel of Luke: “and who is my neighbor?” In addition to the virus, though, the United States has been plagued by another adversary: non-necessity toward the other. By claiming no responsibility for the well-being and care …

Songs, Safe And Sound: Children’S Educational Music In Interwar America, Alexandra Krawetz

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation examines how children’s music, children’s theater, and media (e.g., radio and film) contributed to safety education from 1918 to 1939. During this time, technologies such as automobiles radically changed everyday life, leaving death and tragedy in their wake. These hazards fundamentally challenged the safety of family life, recreation, and work. As deaths from preventable accidents rivaled the number of American soldiers who died in World War I, governments and trade associations created new safety initiatives to prevent death and injury. Scholars have examined the economic, engineering, and workplace aspects of safety. However, overlooked is the revolutionary role of …

Bacterial Metabolism Of Glucosinolates From Brassica: Association With Isothiocyanate Production, Stephanie Thomas, Jiaxuan Li, Michael J. Miller

PRECS student projects

Study Focus: To explore the alternative metabolic pathways of GSLs in bacteria, present on the surface of brassica vegetables.

Hypothesis: The alternative pathways used to metabolize GSLs in bacteria located on the surface of brassica vegetables, may contribute to the high variance of human gut GSL conversion to ITC.

How To Quantify Female Mate Preference In Threespine Stickleback, Kaithren Garcia, Megan Tucker, Meghan Maciejewski, Usan Dan, Alison M. Bell

PRECS student projects

Social behavior is diverse. For example, males from two stickleback ecotypes (whites and commons, Fig. 1) are highly divergent in courtship and parental care behavior [1]. Little is known about ecotypic differences in female behavior. In this study, we develop methods to quantify female preference in this system.

Santa Clara Review, Vol. 109, No. 2, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Review

No abstract provided.

Recovery As A Gift Of Blackness: Epistemic Justice In Community Engagement And Learning, James B. Lin, Isoke N. Femi, Barbara Lin, Lillian Mark

Experiential Learning & Teaching in Higher Education

The submission illuminates the use of Recovery Circles, a community-based practice developed in and by a San Francisco African American community, as a participatory methodology for on-site multicultural student reflection and growth.

Unlearning Your Colonial Course Description To Transform Your Learning Culture, Zen Parry

Experiential Learning & Teaching in Higher Education

Education has undergone multiple transformations with preset syllabi and modes of presentation to learners. Within the learning models utilized today, critical discussions on issues in higher education, social, economic, environmental, and racial justice settings have become important and at times, media headlines. Reading through course descriptions in an academic catalog or brochure will inform you about what the curriculum offers and what it does not. The course description wording brings into question two issues: whether the language used affects the understandability and relatability of the content by students of the course or, the course description represents the perspective of the …

Frequency Of Genetic Variants At The Mc1r Locus In A Student Population, Emmalea K. Dowdy, Grace C. Stubblefield, David K. Peyton

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The Melanocortin-1 Receptor gene (MC1R) encodes a protein that is associated with pigmentation in vertebrate animals. An extraordinary number of variations in this gene have arisen over time due to the importance of pigmentation in camouflage, photosensitivity, vitamin D production, and other evolutionary factors. Variations in the MC1R gene sequence became important to survival as humans migrated out of Africa and into cooler climates with less sun exposure, where lighter skin pigmentation (and therefore more vitamin D production) was key to survival. These genetic variations (alleles) continue to exist in modern humans. Recent research into the MC1R gene variations shows …

A Preliminary Survey On The Biodiversity Of Wasps In Eastern Kentucky, Lorien Molstad, Zoe Baker, Julia Fitzpatrick, Bethany Lucio, Sean O'Keefe

2022 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Biodiversity is the measure of variability of interactions between living organisms within an area. Biodiversity contributes significantly to the production of different life sustaining resources and supports a diversity of ecological life. A greater biodiverse area can help maintain environmental balance and maintain ecological diversity and health. There are multiple economic, cultural, and scientific reasons as to why biodiversity is important. When assessing biodiversity, mammals and birds are commonly used as surrogates. The problem with mammals and birds is that there are relatively few species and relatively few individuals in an area, so quantitative assessment can be difficult. However, insects …

Human Engineered Pulsatile Conduits Using Engineered Heart Tissue Of Defined Composition And Fiber Orientation, Christopher William Anderson

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are relatively new fields that aim to combine principals of chemistry, physics and biology to recreate tissues of the body within lab settings. By utilizing these concepts, novel tissues can be created from entirely biologic material for use as therapeutic replacement tissues. The advent of stem cell technology has been an incredible enabling factor for tissue engineering as a field, especially that of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). hiPSCs are a class of stem cell that may be readily produced using non-invasively derived patient samples that are subsequently transfected with what are commonly known …

Evolutionary Dynamics Of Rapid, Microgeographic Adaptation In An Amphibian Metapopulation, Adam Zachary Andis Arietta

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Wild organisms can rapidly adapt to changing environments, even at fine spatial scales. This fact prompts hope that contemporary local adaptation may buffer some of the negative anthropogenic impacts to ecosystems. However, there are limits to the pace of adaptation. Understanding the adaptive potential—and limitations—of individual species at fine-resolution is an important task if we hope to accurately predict the repercussions of future climate and landscape change on biodiversity. My dissertation takes advantage of an uncommonly long-observed and closely-studied system to paint a comprehensive picture of evolution over time in association with shifts in ecological contexts. In this dissertation, I …

Opera As Statecraft In Soviet Armenia And Kazakhstan, Knar Abrahamyan

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation reconceptualizes Soviet music history by focusing on the artistic productions of ethnic and racial minorities under the Communist Party’s subjugation. According to communist propaganda, the Soviet state overthrew Russian imperialism and—as part of a cultural revolution—commissioned national operas to celebrate the diversity of each republic. I argue, however, that under the guise of modernization, the allegedly anti-colonial Communist Party used opera as a colonial technology of rule to negate difference. The Soviet national opera project thus pursued the age-old Russian imperial practices of assimilation and subjugation, which allowed communists to maintain rule over a multiethnic population. Each of …

Structural Basis Of Flagellar Filament Asymmetry And Supercoil Templating By Leptospira Sheath Factors, Megan Rose Brady

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The spirochete family of bacteria, including pathogens such as Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme disease), Treponema pallidum (syphilis), and Leptospira interrogans (leptospirosis), generates a unique, corkscrew-like form of motility that is crucial for pathogenicity. This motility is driven by flagella that are periplasmic rather than extracellular in nature and are composed of a FlaB core and a FlaA sheath. Purified Leptospira flagellar filaments form tight coils and contain the coiling proteins FcpA and FcpB, in addition to two FlaA isoforms. Loss of either the FlaA or Fcp proteins results in straighter flagella and bacteria that are non-motile and non-pathogenic. I have used …

Functional Profiling Of Human Commensal Metabolites In Colorectal Cancer And Pain Sensation, Yiyun Cao

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The gastrointestinal tract contains the largest number and greatest diversity of microbes which are referred to collectively as the gut microbiota. Alterations in microbiota dysbiosis are associated with diverse disease states, including colorectal cancer (CRC), inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). However, the causative mechanisms mediated by the gut microbiota are still to be illustrated. Particularly, the gut commensals encode ~150 times more genes than the human genome and thousands of metabolites that mostly lack functional annotations or structural identification. Therefore, the functional profiling of human commensal metabolites is promising to reveal the molecular mechanisms of the …

The Role Of Mink1 In Congenital Heart Disease: Regulation Of Spemann Organizer Cell Fate And Multiciliated Cell Specification, Vaughn Colleluori

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) is the most common birth defect and leading cause of infant mortality, yet molecular mechanisms explaining CHD remain mostly unknown. Sequencing studies are identifying CHD candidate genes at a brisk rate including MINK1, a serine/threonine kinase. However, a plausible molecular mechanism connecting CHD and MINK1 is unknown. Here, we reveal that mink1 is required for proper heart development due to its role in left-right patterning. Mink1 regulates canonical Wnt signaling to define the cell fates of the Spemann organizer and the Left-Right Organizer, a ciliated structure that breaks bilateral symmetry in the vertebrate embryo. To identify …

Ecosystem Structure And Function In Semiarid Drylands: Exploring The Effects Of Water And Nitrogen Availability In The Great Plains Of The Western United States, Christopher Beltz

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The global soil carbon (C) pool contains more than twice as much C as the atmosphere, and a large portion of terrestrial C as a whole. Within the global soil C pool, drylands contain 20% of the soil C, in addition to covering 40% of the earth’s surface. Because they are both widespread and a significant reservoir of C, drylands are an important component of the global C cycle. Despite the importance of drylands, ecosystem function can be difficult to predict, with drylands switching from a C source to sink on an interannual basis. This uncertainty in net C flux …

Magel2 And Hypothalamic Pomc Neuron Modulation Of Infant Mice Isolation-Induced Vocalizations, Gabriela M. Bosque Ortiz

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Abstract The proper development of infant mammals depends on infant vocalization. Infants vocalize (i.e., cry) when isolated from their caregivers, attracting their attention to receive nurture. Impaired vocal behavior can lead to maternal neglect and even death in some species. Similar to humans and other mammals, infant mice vocalize upon isolation from their nest and decrease vocalizations when reunited with their mother or littermates. Mouse pups vocalize above the human audible range, emitting ultrasonic vocalizations (USV). My thesis investigated the effects of the imprinted gene, Magel2, on mouse vocal behavior (Chapter 2; published in Genes, Brain, and Behavior) and also …

Evaluating The Role Of The Alzheimer’S Disease Risk Factor Pyk2 In Tau Phosphorylation, Pathology And Related Dysfunction, Alex Harrison Brody

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia, is the 6th leading cause of death in the US and the 5th leading cause of death in individuals 65 and older. As the global population ages, current projections suggest that AD may overwhelm existing healthcare infrastructure in the 21st century, with cases in the US expected to surpass 13.8 million by 2060. The need for additional disease modifying therapies is paramount, though the development of novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of AD is limited by our current understanding of AD pathophysiology. The vast majority of AD cases are sporadic …

Sick Time: Medicine, Management, And Slavery In Louisiana And Cuba, 1763-1868, Liana Demarco

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Modern, capitalist ideas of productivity became central to medicine under slavery. They shaped how physicians treated enslaved patients, crafted a scientific basis for medicine, and conceived of themselves as a profession. Between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century, white male physicians in Louisiana and Cuba distinguished themselves from other healers: first, by aligning with Spanish colonialism, and then, by making themselves essential to a new form of plantation management that used clock-time discipline, hierarchical divisions of labor, and complex accounting systems. As these technologies became widespread in sugar and cotton production, they helped planters precisely interpret enslaved health …

Quantifying Membrane Topology At The Nanoscale, Zachary Ryan Connerty-Marin

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Changes in the shape of cellular membranes are linked with viral replication, Alzheimer's, heart disease and an abundance of other maladies. Some membranous organelles, such as the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi, are only 50 nm in diameter. As such, membrane shape changes are conventionally studied with electron microscopy (EM), which preserves cellular ultrastructure and achieves a resolution of 2 nm or better. However, immunolabeling in EM is challenging, and often destroys the cell, making it difficult to study interactions between membranes and other proteins. Additionally, cells must be fixed in EM imaging, making it impossible to study mechanisms of …

An Abundance Of Quenching: Comparing Observations And Simulations Of Low Mass Galaxies, Claire Dickey

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This thesis focuses on low mass, quiescent galaxies in the local universe, with the goal of providing meaningful constraints on the feedback mechanisms that drive quenching in low mass galaxies. We present an in-depth exploration of what may be the lowest mass galaxies still able to self-quench on galaxy-wide scales, using Keck/ESI long-slit spectroscopy (Dickey et al. 2019). Despite their overall passive appearances, nearly all low-mass quiescent galaxies host AGN, in contrast to denser environments, where we observe significant numbers of quiescent galaxies lacking AGN signatures. These results suggest that the presence of hard ionizing radiation (AGN-like line ratios) is …

The Role Of Γ-Secretase In Human Papillomavirus Infection, Mac Crite

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Human papillomaviruses (HPV) are important pathogens that cause 5% of all human cancers worldwide, including essentially all cases of cervical cancer. Prophylactic vaccines against HPV exist, however these are not widely utilized in all communities, cannot cure existing infection, and do not protect against all subtypes. Therefore, study of HPV infection may lead to important new therapeutics to reduce the spread of the virus and disease burden. In addition, thorough investigation of HPV infection is likely to provide new insights into many aspects of cell biology and biochemistry, as the study of viruses has in the past. HPV requires multiple …

Systematic Screen Of Histone H4 In Arabidopsis Thaliana, Emma Tung Corcoran

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Histones regulate diverse processes in eukaryotes and consequently, can have widespread effects on organismal fitness and development. Histones are a dynamic target for a variety of post-translational modifications (PTMs) and the assessment of histone function has typically been accomplished by mutating enzymes that catalyze and/or recognize these PTMs (i.e., writers and readers, respectively). Although considerable information has been gained in the past several decades by using this strategy, multiple issues such as writer/reader redundancy, unidentified writers/readers of histone PTMs, and writers/readers with additional non-histone targets can preclude the identification of new roles for histones and complicate the assessment of mutant …

Widespread Association Of The Argonaute Protein Ago2 With Meiotic Chromatin Suggests A Distinct Nuclear Function In Mammalian Male Reproduction, Kimberly Nicole Griffin

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

A variety of mechanisms in different compartments of the cell cooperate to regulate gene expression. Some mechanisms are specific to certain compartments, such as the regulation of transcription by changes in histone modifications in the nucleus or protein translation repression in the cytoplasm. Other mechanisms, such as gene regulation by Argonaute proteins, span multiple compartments. Argonaute 2 (AGO2) is the best characterized member of the Argonaute family. It is a ubiquitously expressed, key protein in the cytoplasmic regulation of RNA transcripts, vital to the development and homeostasis of organisms. Recent studies in lower organisms have implicated AGO2 function in the …

Inflammatory Stress Disrupts Endothelial Cell Cholesterol Homeostasis And Increases Srebp2-Dependent Gene Expression To Amplify The Acute Inflammatory Response, Joseph Wayne Montano Fowler

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Immunometabolism is a growing field that centers on a core paradigm:perturbations in metabolism alter a cell’s biological response in immunity and, likewise, inflammatory signals, such as cytokines and pathogens, can directly influence cellular metabolism. Although the carbons within cholesterol cannot be used for catabolic energy production, there is a growing appreciation that a similar relationship exists between cholesterol homeostasis and immunity. The majority of this literature is focused on cholesterol dynamics in the context of leukocyte immunobiology. However, the endothelium also plays an important role during the acute inflammatory response. Endothelial cells (ECs) rapidly respond to extrinsic signals, such as …

The Parkinson’S Gene Vps13c Encodes An Er-Lysosome Lipid Transfer Protein Linking Lysosomal Lipid Homeostasis And Cgas/Sting-Mediated Innate Immunity, William Franklin Hancock-Cerutti

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Biallelic loss-of-function mutations in VPS13C cause early-onset Parkinson’s Disease (PD), and the VPS13C locus is a GWAS hit for sporadic PD risk. VPS13C is a member of the VPS13 family, which in humans contains three other proteins, VPS13A, VPS13B, and VPS13D, all with ties to neurological diseases. Mutations in VPS13A cause chorea-acanthocytosis a Huntington’s like syndrome with dysmorphic erythrocytes, mutations in VPS13B cause the neurodevelopmental disorder Cohen syndrome, and mutations in VPS13D cause spastic ataxia with varying presentation. The molecular function of these proteins, why their loss cause neurological diseases, and why they are each associated with distinct diseases despite …

Identification And Characterization Of Legionella Pneumophila Effector Proteins Important For In Vivo Pathogenesis And Persistence, Luying Liu

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Legionella pneumophila is a natural pathogen of freshwater protozoa and an opportunistic pathogen of humans. Legionella is the causative agent of Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially fatal atypical pneumonia. This bacteria lives a unique intracellular lifestyle that involves internalization via phagocytosis, rapid avoidance of endocytic degradation, and subversion of host pathways to decorate its compartment into an ER-like, replication-permissive vacuole called the Legionella-Containing Vacuole (LCV). This process is largely mediated by a special secretion machinery called the Dot/Icm type IVb secretion system. This system is predicted to secrete over 300 effector proteins into the host cytosol during intracellular infection and is …

Investigating The Impact Of Maternal Antiviral Responses On Pregnancy And Fetal Development, Alice Lu-Culligan

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The maternal-fetal interface during pregnancy is an underexplored environment rich in immunological factors that must propel developmental processes while simultaneously providing protection from invading pathogens such as viruses. Almost half of all cells in the maternal decidua in pregnancy are leukocytes, which are required for successful pregnancy, and the placenta has increasingly become recognized as an immunological organ. Viral infections during pregnancy are associated with significant mortality and morbidity, both for the pregnant female and the developing fetus. Notably, impacts on fetal development have typically been attributed to direct viral damage to cells and tissues during the course of infection, …

Spectroscopic Characterization Of Microhydration: Studying Molecular Properties, Acidity And Solvation In Ionic Water Clusters Using Cryogenic Infrared Vibrational Predissociation Spectroscopy, Sayoni Mitra

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Molecular level interactions give rise to the macroscopic chemical and physical properties of bulk electrolyte systems. A fundamental knowledge of these interactions facilitates understanding of this behavior and enables rational manipulation of the system at the molecular level. Among the experimental techniques, vibrational spectroscopy is widely used in several variations including linear absorption spectroscopy, ultrafast multidimensional spectroscopy, and interface specific spectroscopy. The advantage of using vibrational spectroscopy to study systems at the molecular level is its sensitivity towards structural information as well as relatively high time resolution. Standard solution phase and surface-sensitive spectroscopies, however, suffer from the drawback that the …

Light Microscopy Of Proteins In Their Ultrastructural Context, Ons M'Saad

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Fluorescence light microscopy is an essential tool in biomedical research. In immunofluorescence, fluorophore-conjugated antibodies are used to detect specific proteins of interest in a fixed biological sample. With recently developed nanoscopy techniques, whole cells can be imaged at an isotropic spatial resolution of ~10 nm, revealing accurate protein distributions on the nanoscale. However, most localized proteins are imaged against a dark background, which forbids seeing the overall subcellular compartments (ultrastructural context) that encompass them. Electron microscopy (EM), on the other hand, offers a complete cellular overview on the scale of a few nanometers. However, EM fails to reliably detect specific …