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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™

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DePaul University

Journal

2015

Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Fall 2015 Sep 2015

Fall 2015

Scientia

Prairie prep; Chicago Wildsounds listens for ecosystem health; Up, up and away; Fulbright Travelogue: Health care in Fortaleza, Brazil; New course explores the Pope's encyclical on the environment; A "scent-sational" career in the flavor and fragrance industry; Lab notes; Paying tribute

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Fall 2015 Sep 2015

Fall 2015

In The Loop

Five minutes with Dean Miller; Snapshot: Enrollment trends; Behind the scenes at MayDay 2015; From class to career and back again; The intern files; Comedy in the classroom; Study abroad program bridges technology and business; Seen and heard; Alumni advice from Bill Gloff; The multimedia afterlife of Sherlock Holmes and related pursuits

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Defining The Circumstellar Habitable Zone, Blake Cervetti, Joanna Mccall May 2015

Defining The Circumstellar Habitable Zone, Blake Cervetti, Joanna Mccall

DePaul Discoveries

The study of habitable exoplanets is a rapidly expanding field in astronomy. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars other than our own sun. One of the keys to knowing whether or not an exoplanet is habitable is by studying the circumstellar habitable zone, or CHZ. Over the past several years, the defined limits of the CHZ have become susceptible to change as new parameters and factors are found to affect a planets habitability. There are many factors that affect its habitability, including the composition of the star, the mass of the planet, the planets atmosphere, etc. Our focus is divided …

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Nanodiamond Extraction At A Potential Impact Location, Joel Kathan May 2015

Nanodiamond Extraction At A Potential Impact Location, Joel Kathan

DePaul Discoveries

Meteoritic or cometary impacts create the temperature and pressure conditions necessary to form nanodiamonds (NDs). The presence of extracted NDs from rocks of the time and locations of extinctions, fires, or known environmental changes are commonly used to confirm that a theorized cosmic impact occurred to trigger those events. Samples were obtained from an archeological site described in the Old Testament of the Bible as having been destroyed by the God of the Old Testament.† To see if the historical description of Biblical events might have been triggered by a cometary impact or explosion, an attempt was made to …

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Generation And Assessment Of Muscular Mutations In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Katie N. Reget May 2015

Generation And Assessment Of Muscular Mutations In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Katie N. Reget

DePaul Discoveries

A study of egg laying muscular mutations in C. elegans was conducted over a span of ten weeks. Parent (EGL-19) and wild type (N2) were exposed to mutagenesis and integration mutation techniques to generate genetic and physical different mutants. Overall, four genetic, physical and phenotypically unique worms were generated for the process of mutagenesis. The worms used in the process of integration were found to have shortened life spans, reduced size and decrease numbers of progeny.

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Predictors Of Money Spent On Drugs In Substance Users, Simona Ciobotaru May 2015

Predictors Of Money Spent On Drugs In Substance Users, Simona Ciobotaru

DePaul Discoveries

Financial need is a major stressor for individuals who are reentering the community after substance abuse and/or incarceration. Family members and friends make up a great majority the support networks from which reentering people can receive financial support. However, that financial support could possibly contribute to drug use when the individual is actively using. The goal of this study was to further understand the implications of material and financial support specifically being transmitted from family members. This study looks at psychosocial predictors in relation to money spent on drugs in the last 30 days of 270 individuals entering substance abuse …

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The Effect Of Hydrogen Peroxide On Leishmania Amazonensis Promastigotes, Debra Eluobaju May 2015

The Effect Of Hydrogen Peroxide On Leishmania Amazonensis Promastigotes, Debra Eluobaju

DePaul Discoveries

Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by the parasite Leishmania. The disease causes lesions to the skin and face; when visceral it becomes fatal to its host. Leishmanias are transmitted through the female blood-sucking sand fly into its mammalian host, where it infects macrophages. Within the macrophages, Leishmania differentiates from a motile, rod shaped, nonvirulent promastigotes to a non-motile, spherical shaped, virulent amastigotes. Differentiation is due to the high temperature of the mammalian host body, in addition to the low pH of the macrophage. In vitro, the cells are differentiated in Graces medium (pH 5.3) at 33◦C. I investigated whether …

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Knowledge Of Clinical Measures And Healthcare Adherence In Young Gay And Bisexual Men Living With Hiv/Aids, Harry A. Persaud, Douglas Bruce May 2015

Knowledge Of Clinical Measures And Healthcare Adherence In Young Gay And Bisexual Men Living With Hiv/Aids, Harry A. Persaud, Douglas Bruce

DePaul Discoveries

Knowledge of HIV/AIDS test results and adherence to healthcare interventions are two important outcomes that reflect proper HIV/AIDS management. This study aimed to determine which demographic and HIV acceptance measures were significantly associated with health literacy and adherence indicators in young MSM. 200 HIV/AIDS positive young MSM completed computer based surveys regarding demographics, HIV/AIDS health literacy indicators, and HIV/AIDS acceptance measures. It was found that young African American MSM, in comparison to young white MSM, had lower odds of knowing both viral load and CD4 measures; health literacy indicators. Further, participants who had a high school diploma were found to …

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The Effects Of Environmental Factors On Bromeliad Invertebrate Biodiversity, Maya E. Navarro May 2015

The Effects Of Environmental Factors On Bromeliad Invertebrate Biodiversity, Maya E. Navarro

DePaul Discoveries

Bromeliaceae is a family of Neotropical plants that retain water between leaves of a rosette arrangement. Each water-retaining tank is referred to as a phytotelma. This particular system is important to consider in the understanding of biodiversity because it creates an ecosystem of its own, providing a habitat for many invertebrates and larvae. In this study, the relationship between environmental factors such as water quality and the biodiversity of invertebrates in epiphytic bromeliads was examined in two different settings. Sample sizes of ten bromeliads were taken from the primary and secondary forests of the Las Cruces Biological Station in Coto …

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Effects Of Temperature On The Crystal Structure Of Lithium-Lanthanum Zirconate, Mir Iqbal May 2015

Effects Of Temperature On The Crystal Structure Of Lithium-Lanthanum Zirconate, Mir Iqbal

DePaul Discoveries

ABSTRACT Lithium-lanthanum zirconate (LLZ) can potentially be used as a solid electrolyte in lithium-metal batteries. Li-metal batteries offer superior charge capacities and higher energy densi-ties compared to currently used Li-ion batteries. Lithium is highly reactive, which can be dangerous in consumer electronics, but a layer of LLZ electrolyte inserted alongside the Li-metal electrode greatly stabilizes its reactivity. The cubic phase structure of LLZ (Li7La3Zr2O12) has the highest conductivity of its crystalline phases, making it the most promising crystal form of LLZ for this application. Samples of LLZ were doped with different amounts …

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Measuring Rates Of Atmospheric Phosphorus Deposition Into A Fresh Water Wetland, Cassandra Shah May 2015

Measuring Rates Of Atmospheric Phosphorus Deposition Into A Fresh Water Wetland, Cassandra Shah

DePaul Discoveries

No abstract provided.

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Detection Of Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations In The Matter Power Spectrum, Spencer Everett, Ian Johnson, Jon Murphy, Mary Tarpley May 2015

Detection Of Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations In The Matter Power Spectrum, Spencer Everett, Ian Johnson, Jon Murphy, Mary Tarpley

DePaul Discoveries

Using the spectra of 22,923 high-redshift quasars from the Baryon Oscillation Spectrosocpic Survey (BOSS) subset of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the authors detect evidence of the primordial baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAOs) in the matter power spectrum. The detection further endorses the currently accepted Lambda-CDM model of cosmology based upon the existence of dark energy (Lambda) and cold dark matter (CDM). Additionally, the use of the continuous wavelet transform to calculate the power spectrum has many advantages over traditional Fourier methods and independently corroborates previous detections.

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A High-Altitude Balloon Platform For Determining Regional Uptake Of Carbon Dioxide Over Agricultural Landscapes, Angela M. Bouche May 2015

A High-Altitude Balloon Platform For Determining Regional Uptake Of Carbon Dioxide Over Agricultural Landscapes, Angela M. Bouche

DePaul Discoveries

Interactions between the biosphere and atmosphere are an important part of the global carbon cycle, and quantifying the carbon dioxide exchanges between them is helpful in predicting the uptake of carbon dioxide from anthropogenic sources by the biosphere in the future. In the Midwestern United States, agricultural systems cover a large part of the landscape, so understanding their role in influencing the global carbon budget is crucial as anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide grow larger. Carbon dioxide exchanges can be measured by eddy covariance at the ecosystem level (bottom-up approach) or regionally by inversion techniques (top-down approach). Here we describe …

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Diol-Mediated Versus Water-Mediated Proton Transfer Reactions, Angela Moses May 2015

Diol-Mediated Versus Water-Mediated Proton Transfer Reactions, Angela Moses

DePaul Discoveries

The triple-proton-transfer reactions of 8H-1,8-naphthyridin-2-one (8H-naph) have been investigated by employing different ab initio quantum mechanical methods. The proton transfer reactions studied were facilitated through an adjacent 1,3-propanediol molecule or two adjacent water molecules. Identical proton transfer reactions were studied using a model system of 8H-naph to investigate the validity of computational approaches that use model systems to study more complex systems. The solvent effects on the structures were investigated for comparison to the initial gas phase calculations. The potential energy, reaction force, and work profiles were studied along the intrinsic reaction coordinate to monitor the developing proton transfer reactions.

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Do Oaks With A Provenance Related To Warmer Climates Emit More Isoprene?, Elizabeth Carter May 2015

Do Oaks With A Provenance Related To Warmer Climates Emit More Isoprene?, Elizabeth Carter

DePaul Discoveries

The hydrocarbon isoprene plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry, particularly in regards to air pollution and climate change. It is important to know why certain plant species emit isoprene and what factors affect its production in order to predict future air quality. Past research has indicated that isoprene aids in coping with heat stress, so it was hypothesized that source latitude (a proxy for climate) would significantly impact isoprene production by oaks grown in a common location. Twelve bur oaks collected from a latitudinal range (30-45˚) and raised at the Morton Arboretum were assayed for their isoprene emission rate …

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Spring 2015 Mar 2015

Spring 2015

Scientia

Dean Koocher reveals six key questions guiding strategic planning at the college; Alumnus turns passion for sports and psychology into rewarding career; Associate Professor Paula Kagan on nursing, health care and social justice; New facilities excite and invigorate students and faculty; Lab notes; Psychology students, faculty and staff provide mental health services for high-need populations

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Spring 2015 Mar 2015

Spring 2015

In The Loop

No abstract provided.

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