Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Student-Faculty Collaborative Research Grant Report, Megan Bestwick Feb 2019

Student-Faculty Collaborative Research Grant Report, Megan Bestwick

Post-Grant Reports

Mitochondria are essential organelles in most eukaryotic cells because of their role in metabolism and the production of ATP by the oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) pathway, as well as other key cellular processes. Metal cofactors, such as copper (Cu) and iron (Fe), are incorporated into OXPHOS protein complexes of yeast located within the inner membrane of the mitochondria. Misincorporation or modulation of these available metals in mitochondrial enzymes leads to the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS are reactive molecules containing oxygen such as peroxides, superoxide, and hydroxyl radicals. Yeast are a good model for studying aging and the effect …


Betting & Hierarchy In Paleontology, Leonard Finkelman Jan 2019

Betting & Hierarchy In Paleontology, Leonard Finkelman

Faculty Publications

In his Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences, Adrian Currie argues that historical scientists should be optimistic about success in reconstructing the past on the basis of future research. This optimism follows in part from examples of success in paleontology. I argue that paleontologists’ success in these cases is underwritten by the hierarchical nature of biological information: extinct organisms have extant analogues at various levels of taxonomic, ecological, and physiological hierarchies, and paleontologists are adept at exploiting analogies within one informational hierarchy to infer information in another. On this account, fossils serve the role …


Crossed Tracks: Mesolimulus, Archaeopteryx, And The Nature Of Fossils, Leonard Finkelman Jan 2019

Crossed Tracks: Mesolimulus, Archaeopteryx, And The Nature Of Fossils, Leonard Finkelman

Faculty Publications

Organisms leave a variety of traces in the fossil record. Among these traces, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontologists conventionally recognize a distinction between the remains of an organism’s phenotype (body fossils) and the remains of an organism’s life activities (trace fossils). The same convention recognizes body fossils as biological structures and trace fossils as geological objects. This convention explains some curious practices in the classification, as with the distinction between taxa for trace fossils and for tracemakers. I consider the distinction between “parallel taxonomies,” or parataxonomies, which privileges some kinds of fossil taxa as “natural” and others as “artificial.” The motivations …