Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

The Role Of Metabolism In Embryonic Development: Mitochondria Determine The Fate Of The Spemann-Mangold Organizer, Alexandra Elizaberth Maccoll Garfinkel

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Carbon metabolism is critical for complex multicellular life. Therefore, mitochondria, and the aerobic metabolism that they perform, have long been a focus of developmental biologists. The discovery of the Spemann-Mangold Organizer, a powerful embryonic patterning center in the dorsal region of the vertebrate embryo, first inspired the idea that embryonic patterning and aerobic metabolism may be connected almost 100 years ago. However, the advent of modern molecular genetics overshadowed this work, and metabolism in development has only recently resurfaced as a focus in the field. A permissive role for mitochondria has been well studied in development. However, it remains unclear …

Religion And Contested Cultural Heritage: The Rotunda And Hagia Sophia As Church, Mosque, And Museum, Stephanie Machabee

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This project uses the fourth-century Rotunda in Thessaloniki, Greece and the sixth-century Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey as case study sites for exploring conflicts over religious heritage. These two sites have a shared history of repurposing, from pre-Christian sites, to churches, to mosques, to museums, and to hybrid religious/heritage spaces today. These transformations are the outcome of shifting political powers and changing religious priorities over the centuries. As a result of these complex histories, the Rotunda and Hagia Sophia are notable examples of “dissonant heritage” (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996). That is, they are loci of competing narratives and public representations …

Structural Analysis Of Complex Bacterial Secretion Systems, Donghyun Park

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

From the moment Anton van Leeuwenhoek saw bacteria for the first time to the modern era of the ‘resolution revolution’ by the Nobel prize-winning method single particle cryo-electron microscopy (EM), advances in microscopy have led to visual observations that enhance our understanding of life at a wide range of scales, from millimeters to angstroms. The increasingly popular imaging technique cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) is uniquely suited for visualizing protein complexes and cellular features at high resolution in their native environment. This technology presents great potential for visualizing host-pathogen interactions. The work within this dissertation utilizes cutting-edge cryo-ET technologies to visualize different …

Nonhistory: Slavery And The Black Historical Imagination, Xavier Lee

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation examines the theoretical significance of slavery in contemporary novels by black writers of English and French expression. I contend that black authors like Gayl Jones, Edouard Glissant, Léonora Miano, Sherley Anne Williams, Jean Métellus, and Fred D’Aguiar use literature to revise historical narratives and generate new histories of slavery. By reading novels as historical texts, I theorize nonhistory as a critique of the epistemological limitations of historiography. I argue that Black Francophone and Anglophone Atlantic writers of the postcolonial and post-Jim Crow era narrate the past as a nonhistory whose discursive and aesthetic afterimages expose the disjointed experience …

Targeted Nucleic Acid Delivery To The Endothelium, Melanie Reschke

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The human endothelium extends throughout nearly all tissues in the body, and has an estimated total surface area of up to seven thousand square meters [1]. This expansive monolayer of endothelial cells (ECs) serves as the interface between materials circulating in the bloodstream and the internal tissues of the body. Even in its quiescent state, the endothelium is actively signaling and reacting in order to support the basic functions of the vascular system – transporting oxygen, nutrients, and waste. A closer look reveals that the cells that make up this endothelial lining are diverse in their phenotypes and functions, dependent …

Phenol Exposure And Time To Pregnancy, Early Pregnancy Loss, And The Periconceptional Urinary Metabolome, Ana Katherine Rosen Vollmar

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Phenols are endocrine-disrupting chemicals that have been used in everyday consumer products for decades. Exposure is widespread, with detectable levels in populations worldwide. Studies suggest phenols can influence reproductive function through endocrine-disrupting mechanisms. This dissertation focuses on seven less-studied phenols: methyl paraben (MPB), propyl paraben (PPB), butyl paraben (BPB), triclosan (TCS), benzophenone-3 (BP-3), 2,4-dichlorophenol (DCP-24), and 2,5-dichlorophenol (DCP-25). These chemicals are found in a range of products including foods, personal care products, cosmetics, soaps, sunscreens, herbicides, and mothballs. Despite plausible mechanisms by which phenols could impact reproductive function, there are inconsistent results across limited epidemiologic studies. Though metabolomics is a …

A Dynamical Synthesis Of Planetary Systems, Malena Rice

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Over the past three decades, complementary lines of evidence have each provided tantalizing hints about the underlying mechanisms driving the diverse set of planetary system architectures. This dissertation leverages dynamics to synthesize the various components of planetary systems, including stars, planets, and minor planets. My work progresses at the intersection of subfields, drawing evidence from both solar system and exoplanet studies to advance a cohesive picture of planetary system evolution. This dissertation is fundamentally focused on interactions between the components of planetary systems. As a result, it is organized into three segments detailing the relationship between these components. A brief …

Understanding Liberty: The Constitution’S Neoliberal Turn, Amanda Shanor

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The three major essays and two smaller pieces that form this dissertation focus on the recent deregulatory turn in U.S. constitutional law. They analyze changing, and often competing, understandings of liberty and its relationship to concepts of welfare, choice, democracy, and the purposes of the state. Over the past forty years plaintiffs have increasingly invoked the Constitution, and the free speech clause in particular, in efforts to avoid economic regulation. Areas of life that were once thought irrelevant to the Constitution have become the fodder of pitched litigation, circuit splits, top appellate practices, and United States Supreme Court review. This …

Hegel’S Institutional Enlightenment: A Study Of The Political Institutions In Hegel’S Philosophy Of Right, Darren King Zhuan Nah

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

“Hegel’s Institutional Enlightenment: A Study of the Political Institutions of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” examines how Hegel responded to Prussian feudal elites who employed the ideas of “liberty” and “parliaments” to advance their interests. In contrast to other scholars who argue that Hegel sought to moderate the radical individualism of bourgeois liberalism, this work finds that he is instead better understood as responding to aristocratic liberalism. This approach frames Hegel’s political thought as a response to feudal reaction and the rise of Junker-led agrarian capitalism rather than problems of bourgeois and industrial society per se. I demonstrate how Hegel had …

On The Evolutionary Ecology Of Microbial Metabolic Niche Construction, Jean Celestin Charles Vila

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

All organisms construct the shared environment in which they live. This is especially notable in micro-organisms as they secrete and uptake a diverse range of metabolites depending on their genotype and environment. Over the past few decades, systems biologists have developed computational tools to predict the nutrient uptake and secretions of microbes across environments, using metabolic networks inferred from whole-genome sequencing. These tools provide an opportunity to quantify eco-evolutionary dynamics at the genomic level, by combining genome-scale metabolic models mapping genotype to phenotype, with consumer-resource models predicting population dynamics from phenotype. By leveraging these new computational approaches and combining them …

The Formats Of Spatial Representations, Sami Yousif

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Mental representations are the essence of cognition. Yet, to understand how the mind works, we must understand not just the content of mental representations (i.e., what information is stored), but also the format of those representations (i.e., how that information is stored). If we want to understand how sensory information is translated into symbolic representations, if we want to know how the mind forms ‘cognitive maps’, if we want to know how the firing of neurons can lead to the emergent phenomenon of human cognition — all of these things require us to understand how information is organized in the …

Efferent Modulation Of Spontaneous Activity In Developing Sensory Systems, Yixiang Wang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Patterned spontaneous activity plays an instructive role in developing sensory systems. Before hearing onset, inner support cells release ATP and induce spontaneous firing of neighboring inner hair cells. This periphery-initiated spontaneous activity propagates throughout the auditory hierarchy via the afferent pathway, coordinating neural activity in distinct tonotopic zones in the central auditory system. Similarly, spontaneous retinal waves initiated in the retina by starburst amacrine cells (stage II) or bipolar cells (stage III) were observed throughout the visual system via the retinotopic visual afferent circuits. Deciphering the underlying mechanisms of patterned spontaneous activity is critical to elucidate its instructive role in …

Dissecting The Impact Of Clonal Hematopoiesis On Age-Related Disease, Seyedeh Maryam Zekavat

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Aging is the strongest risk factor for a number of diseases. Despite current risk prediction, prevention, and therapeutic strategies, age-related diseases including coronary artery disease (CAD), cancer, and now COVID-19, are the leading causes of death in the US and worldwide. The aging hematopoietic system is characterized by increased prevalence of acquired somatic variants predisposing to clonal expansion. Carriers of somatic mutations predisposing to clonal expansion in hematopoietic stem cells (clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential, CHIP) are at increased risk for not only hematologic cancer but also atherosclerosis. Other classes of somatic variation besides CHIP, including larger somatic structural variants …

Statistical Methods For Genetic Prediction Of Complex Traits In Single And Multiple Populations, Geyu Zhou

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Genetic prediction of complex traits, also known as polygenic risk score (PRS), is constructed by combining the estimated effect sizes of genetic markers across the genome for an individual. PRS has shown great promise in biomedical and clinical research for disease prevention, monitoring and treatment. However, the development of accurate prediction models is challenging due to the wide diversity of genetic architecture, limited access to individual level data, and the demand for computational resources. The broader application of PRS to the general population is further hindered by the poor transferability of PRS developed in Europeans to non-European populations. In this …

Lcs 220 A: Creativity And The Arts Spring 2022, Ben Abladian, Brooke Blanche, Jillian Collingwood, Taylor Denuccio, Sarah Discepola, Cole Garvey, Allison Kostiw, Brittney Lucero, Daniel Mccormack, Luke O'Connor, Tori Priestley, Mike Roberts, Olivia Sales, Logan Salvatore, Megan Sevigny, Kelly Shea, Nate Sideris, Abigail Slavik, Sydney Stewart, David Sullivan, Jacob Sutton, Abby Trimble, V Velagapudi, Brady Waitze, Jackie Zeigler

Bryant Zines

Creativity is vital to achievement in many fields, from science, to business and the arts. This course will explore creativity both as a general process of engagement with the world around us and as an introduction to creative cultural expression in the Arts. It will engage students in thinking about creativity as an intrinsic part of their educational, personal and professional lives, as it engages them in creative practice and reflection upon creative process. As part of the class, students collaborated and created a zine.

Judicial Protection Of Medical Liberty, Deana Pollard Sacks

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Library News, Spring 2022, San Jose State University Library

Library News

No abstract provided.

Amjambo Africa! (April 2022), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In this Issue

Community updates .............2/3

Remembrance ....................... 4/5

Novruz celebration ...................7

Financial Literacy/Professional Development

Français ...................... 8/9

Iswahili ..........................9

Somali ......................9/10

Ikinyarwanda ........10/11

Português ...............11/12

Espanõl ...................12/13

English .........................33

Candidate Mana Abdi ........... 14

Legislative update ...................15

Skin bleaching ........................16

Paul Farmer .............................17

Jacob Lawrence at Colby .......18

Checking in with businesses .20

French renaissance .................21

Tips & Info

Covid 2 ................................2

Driving ........................30/31

Work permits ...................35

Health&Wellness ...............24-30

In 7 languages

Columns ............................32-37

New Voices columns ........34/35

Gashi/Roseline Souebele

Poems by Maya Williams

Setting The Oppressed Free: Ministry Among The Chin In Myanmar, Abby Wilson

People Group & Region Research (Capstone Papers)

Significant challenges for the Chin of Myanmar in a ministry context include the continued hostility of the Burmese government and military towards ethnic and religious minorities. They have many ministry needs that are currently being met by several nonprofit organizations. This includes both organizations that have sent workers from abroad and indigenous organizations comprised of Chin people themselves. By reviewing the strategies of these organizations as well as the religious history of the Chin, appropriate strategies for holistic outreach can be determined.

Comparing And Contrasting Therapeutic Drugs Vs. Lifestyle Changes That Combattype-Ii Diabetes, Alexander Cline Helmuth

Chemistry & Biochemistry Student Projects

In this thesis, I will be presenting various preventive approaches to combat type-II diabetes. The focus of this paper will be comparing and contrasting therapeutic drug targets such as Metformin and Sulfonylureas that are prescribed for type-II diabetic patients versus taking preventative steps such as making lifestyle changes including weight management, physical activity, and having a balanced diet that prevents onset of type-II diabetes or helps patients manage type-II diabetes. From this paper, one will gain insight on how there are multiple approaches to combat type-II diabetes that are not in the form of the pill.

The Application Of Biological Processes To Increase Energy Potential In Landfills, Ashlyn Eisenhart

Chemistry & Biochemistry Student Projects

There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of waste that we humans have created. This has been due to population growth, an increase in industrial manufacturing, along with urbanization and modernization.⁸ The number of tons of municipal solid waste entering landfills has increased from 82.5 million tons in 1960 to 146.1 million tons in 2018.¹⁷ However, thanks to recycling, composting, and energy recovery from combustion, the percentage of solid waste going to landfills has dramatically decreased, from around 93.6 to about 65.4 percent.¹⁷

Normothermic Ex Vivo Lung Perfusion (Novel) As An Assessment Of Extended Criteria Donor Lungs: A Prospective Multi-Center Clinical Trial, P. G. Sanchez, E. G. Chan, R. D. Davis, M. Hartwig, T. Machuca, B. Whitson, M. Daneshmand, F. D. Ovidio, J. Dcunha, M. Weyant, M. Jessen, C. Bermudez, M. Mulligan, T. Wozniak, W. Lynch, Hassan Nemeh, C. Caldeira, T. Song, D. Kreisel, P. Camp, D. Ramzy, B. Griffith, E. Cantu

Surgery Meeting Abstracts

Purpose: Ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) allows re-evaluation of extended criteria/marginal donor lungs. This can increase the number of lung transplants. However, the long-term outcomes of transplanting EVLP-screened lungs in a multicenter setting are unknown. We proposed to evaluate the short- and long-term outcomes of EVLP performed at multiple centers.

Methods: This is a prospective, nonrandomized clinical trial. Seventeen lung transplant centers in the United States. Adult patients with end-stage pulmonary disease requiring lung transplant from May 2011 to December 2017 were eligible. Lung allografts initially deemed extended criteria/marginal (n=216) were placed on EVLP and re-evaluated prior to transplant. Patients …

Persistence In The North Pacific: The Makah People And Their Fight To Protect Their Cultural Heritage, Jeff Cocci

Richard T. Schellhase Essay Prize in Ethics

In the Pacific Ocean, just off the coast of North America a whale swims blissfully unaware of its own significance. It is a Gray Whale; scientists would call it Eschrichtius robustus and at nearly forty feet long, it is large enough that it does not have to worry about sharks or other carnivorous animals. Yet there are those that are brave enough to hunt the whale. They are the Makah People of the Olympian Peninsula, in upper Washington state. By doing so, they place themselves at the center of a complex ethical debate amongst activists, scientists, and the general public. …

Clostridioides Difficile Spore Production In Response To Antibiotic And Immune Stress, Adenrele Oludiran, Erin B. Purcell

College of Sciences Posters

Clostridioides (Clostridium) difficile, an anaerobic, spore-forming Gram-positive pathogenic bacterium, is a major cause of hospital-acquired infections and can persist as surface-attached biofilms for protection from antibiotic and immune stress. C. difficile can form biofilms as a single species or with other anaerobic intestinal bacteria. The environmental signals that cause individual cells to secrete toxins, form biofilms, or develop into spores that can spread the infection to new patients are unknown. In these studies, we investigate bacterial responses to different stress. Antimicrobial host-defense peptides (HDPs) produced by animal immune systems are promising candidates to develop novel therapies for bacterial infection …

Taylor: A Magazine For Taylor University Alumni, Parents And Friends (Spring 2022), Taylor University

The Taylor Magazine (1963-Present)

The Spring 2022 edition of Taylor Magazine, published by Taylor University in Upland, Indiana.

Friends Of The Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum, No. 39, University Of Montana--Missoula. Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum

Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum (UMZM) Newsletters

From the Curator: 2022 Brings Two Major Anniversaries -- Our Students Are Going Places! -- Catching Up with the Wright Children -- Parasites: The Hidden World of Specimens -- Worms on the Web -- Spring 2022 Graslie Curiosity Interns -- Who's in the Museum -- Miscellany

Office Of Student Research Newsletter (Spring 2022), Csusb - Office Of Student Research

Office of Student Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.