Toxicology; Biology, Molecular

The first part of this dissertation focuses on thecellular antioxidant glutathione (GSH). In GSH de novo GSHsynthesis , the first and rate-limiting step is catalyzed byglutamate-cysteine ligase (GCL). In this step, glutamate isligated to cysteine to form Y-glutamylcysteine. GCL is aheterodimer composed of a 73-kDa subunit with catalyticproperties (GCLC), and a 31-kDa modifer subunit (GCLM) thatimproves the efficiency of the holoenzyme. Specifically, thisthesis focuses on the mechanisms of transc...

Psychology, Experimental

The purpose of the present thesis was to investigatethe relation between upright posture and perceptual performance.Some researchers have argued that the integration of multisensoryperceptual stimulation, which is required for postural control,may draw on central processing capacity. From this perspective,performing cognitively demanding tasks should negativelyinfluence postural control (i.e., induce higher levels ofpostural sway). This is because of competition for processingresources between t...

The growing demand for battery-operated portablesystems and power supply restrictions due to device scaling andreliability are major driving forces for development of lowvoltage/high current MOSFETs for VLSI technology. Reducing thepower supply is a very effective way to reduce power consumption,hence increasing the device operating lifetime and relaxing thereliability constraints. The biggest challenge is to maintainhigh performance characteristics of the device, i.e. to preventdegradation of t...

The thesis is a comparison of main thoughts of MartinHeidegger (1889-1976) and Michel Foucault (1926-1984). Foucaultis the philosopher of power but this theme is often overlooked inHeidegger´s work. In the first chapter these writer´sconceptions of power are compared and it is shown that both ofthem reject the idea of an autonomous human subject. Instead ofthis humanist perspective they consider the human being as partof a machinery of relations between people, institutions and...

Computer Science

Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee:ProfessorCarla Purdy Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering andComputer Science Many of the problems arising in electronicdesign automation are NP-hard and require heuristic algorithms,which can only be analyzed and compared through experiments.Unfortunately, it is often unclear to experimenters if enoughdata has been gathered, what statistics to run, and how tovisualize results. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate ageneral experimental...

Engineering, Environmental

This work explores a new approach to estimate lumpedparameters, taking into account their spatial distribution overthe catchment. The objective is to improve the accuracy of lumpedrainfall-runoff models applied to small watersheds. The newmethod uses a distance weighting function (WF) to map the weightof each cell along a flow path from the headwaters to the outletof the catchment. Cell weights are assumed to diminish withincreasing distance from the receiving water body. The proposedmethod is d...

The overall goal of this thesis is to design andfabricate optically activated Silicon Carbide high-powerswitching devices.Fly-by-Light systems that use optical signalsto actuate the flight control surfaces of an aircraft have beensuggested as a solution to the ElectroMagnetic Interference (EMI)problem in avionic systems. Current fly-by-light systems arelimited by the lack of optically activated high-power switchingdevices. Silicon Carbide is a wide-band gap semiconductor, whichoffers the potenti...

The characterization and modeling of the spatialvariability of soil moisture is an important problem for varioushydrological, ecological, and atmospheric processes. Thisdissertation proposes a compact representation ofinterdependencies among soil moisture distribution andenvironmental factors using two complimentary approaches. In thefirst approach, a stochastic framework is developed forcharacterizing the soil moisture distribution. The resultingmodel provides closed form analytical solutions f...

Computer Science

This thesis presents a performance study of the ISP(Internet ServiceProvider) mail servers. By using theSPECmail2001 benchmark to test a commercial mail service--MDaemonmail server, both the network and the I/O performance of mailservers with user populations between 200 and 10,000 werestudied. File system traces were collected for analysis. From thebenchmark results, trace-driven simulations and offline traceanalysis, several important conclusions for the ISP mail serverswere made and the techn...

With increase in CPU speed, the performance of manyapplications has become limited by Virtual Memory (VM). In thecase of large out-of-core applications, a portion of theiraddress space is kept in main memory and the rest is stored on aswap disk. The Operating System maintains free pages in RAM anduses the swap disk as an extension of main memory. It dynamicallymoves inactive pages to disk and maintains working sets ofprocesses in RAM. This activity is called VM paging. Thus, the VMsystem is limi...

With dramatic increase in processor speeds over thelast decade, disk latency has become a critical issue in computersystems performance. Disks, being mechanical devices, are ordersof magnitude slower than the processor or physical memory. MostVirtual Memory(VM) systems use disk as secondary storage for idledata pages of an application. The working set of pages is kept inmemory. When a page requested by the processor is not present inmemory, it results in a page fault. On a page fault, theOperati...

Engineering, Civil

There are many excellent 3D CAD, Virtual Reality andMathematical simulation system hardware and software systemsavailable today. Most suppliers sell basic tools for thesesystems. But they may not provide the expertise on how to use thetools or what to build with them. Without this expertise it isalmost impossible to know what is the most appropriate equipmentand software, or even whether these systems are really anappropriate solutions for a company. In this research, effort ismade to find state...

Sciences, Oncology

The anti-proliferative action of the retinoblastomatumor suppressor protein, RB, is disrupted in the majority ofhuman cancers by multiple mechanisms including: i) viraloncoprotein binding, ii) deregulated RB phosphorylation, and iii)direct mutation of the RB gene. Here we report disruption of RBsignaling in tumor cells through the loss of two criticalcooperating factors, and the potential impact of these events ontumor formation. Phosphorylation/inactivation of RB is typicallyrequired for cell c...

Chemistry, Biochemistry

Chronic infection with Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) is apredominant risk factor associated with development ofhepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Individuals who are chronicallyinfected with HBV are over 200-times more likely to develop HCCthan those who are not infected. Multiple studies have implicatedthe virally encoded X protein (HBx) as the candidate oncoproteinresponsible for cellular transformation. HBx forms a complex withcellular p53 tumor suppressor protein to result in modificationof p53-media...

Chemistry, Biochemistry

The mechanism of the photochemically induced,retro-Schönberg-Mustafa reaction was investigated. In thisreaction, a 2,3-dihydro-1,4-dioxin (DHD) undergoes photolysis tothe corresponding ortho-quinone and alkene from which the DHDoriginally was formed by a [4+2] photo-cycloaddition. DHDcleaving agents for DNA were synthesized from9,10-phenanthrenequinone and di- or tri-aryl-ethylenes. Themechanism of the photochemical quinone unmasking was investigatedin an effort to elucidate the nature ...

Engineering, Biomedical

The posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) is the primaryrestraint to posterior translation and is a secondary restraintto varus, valgus and external rotation.[12, 32, 43, 60] PCLinjuries increase posterior translation and impair a person sability to perform daily activities.[59, 67, 100] If leftuntreated, degenerative changes will appear earlier in theinjured knee than in the contralateral knee.[17, 79, 82] Avariety of surgical procedures have been used in an attempt torestore normal posterior trans...

Engineering, Aerospace

The performance of liquid fuel atomizer in gas turbinecombustor has direct effects on flame stability, combustionefficiency, and pollutant emissions. Therefore, furtherunderstanding of the underlying physics of these atomizers is oneof the primary requirements for advanced gas turbine combustordesign. Simplex atomizers are commonly used in air-breathing gasturbine engines because they produce good atomizationcharacteristics and are relatively simple and inexpensive tomanufacture. Internal flow c...

Computer Science

Analog and mixed-signal circuit simulation oftenemploys the use of the so-called LU decomposition method to solvea set of linear algebraic equations represented as Ax=b, where Ais a square matrix. The LU method requires the factorization of Ainto two tri-diagonal matrices. Factorization is of order `npower 3 time and dominates the execution time of the LUdecomposition method. A number of approaches have been developedfor reducing the execution time of LU factorization. One approachis to unroll t...

This study explored the impact of child age, race, andgender on the relationship between parent report of childinternalizing symptoms and child self-report of these symptoms.Participants were 573 children (aged 8 - 16 years) and theirparents (567 mothers, 347 fathers). Main effects and interactionsof these variables on parent-child discrepancy scores wereexamined using nonparametric regression and two-tailed t-tests.No significant main effects were found for any of the child agevariables (i.e., ...

Health Sciences, Nutrition

In the adult literature, Drewnowski et al. (1998)demonstrated that fifteen consecutive days of dietary intake wasnecessary to capture dietary variety. The objective of this studywas to determine if these same findings hold true for children.The subjects included children aged 11to 12 (n=33). A registereddietitian collected fourteen consecutive days of dietary datausing the 24-recall method. A variety score was derived bycounting total number of different foods consumed from the fruit,vegetable, ...

; Psychology, Social

Recent research suggests that organizational cynicismshould be interpreted as a reaction to the policies and practicesof an organization as opposed to a reflection of the generalattitudes and traits of its employees. However, no one hasinvestigated the underlying psychological factors that explainthe link between organizational actions and employee cynicism.The present study examined the role of organizational injusticeand explanatory style as precursors to organizational cynicism.Organizational...

Health Sciences, General

Participants completed an exposure questionnaire uponstudy entry and provided an urine, blood and hand wipe sample.The participants received hand-cleaning products during the studyand completed a hand washing frequency questionnaire at periodicvisits to the schools for the collection of urine and hand wipesamples. This group was followed for 2-6 months. Severalendpoints were measured including dermal exposure to PAHs, andsubsequent DNA adducts in leukocytes and 1-hydroxypyrene levelsin urine. Th...

; Biology, Animal Physiology

Insulin has long been recognized to play an importantrole in the regulation of energy balance. It is secreted from thepancreas in direct proportion to adipose stores and acts in thehypothalamus to decrease food intake and body weight. However,little progress has been made in elucidating the brain systemsthrough which insulin exerts these effects. The studies presentedhere identify the melanocortin system as a key mediator ofinsulin s actions in the brain. First, insulin receptors werelocalized t...

Peggy Seeger s family lineage is indeed impressive:daughter of composers and scholars Charles and Ruth CrawfordSeeger, sister of folk icons Mike and Pete Seeger, and widow ofBritish folksinger and playwright Ewan MacColl. Although thisintensely musical genealogy inspired and affirmed Seeger sprofessional life, it has also tended to obscure her ownremarkable achievements. The goal of the first part of this studyis to explore Peggy Seeger s own history, including but notlimited to her life within ...

Previous work performed in Noyes-Giannetras Laboratoryhas shown that mechanical alignment of undifferentiatedmesenchymal stem cells about a suture causes alignment of cellsand contraction of constructs in culture in a form that issuitable for implantation for tendon repair. With preliminaryproof of concept, it is now our goal to fine-tune this procedureto determine the various factors that will lead to the highestquality tissue from a biomechanical standpoint and the fastestcell proliferation ra...

Health Sciences, Speech Pathology

Corporate Speech-Language Pathologists work asconsultants with corporate employees in the areas of accentmodification and speech improvement. However, research in thisarea of service has been minimal. An examination of the two majorapproaches to pronunciation training (segmental andmulti-segmental) should be addressed when planning treatmentgoals. In addition, attention should be given to specifictechniques that will be utilized in order to promote improvementsin pronunciation, especially in day...

Health Sciences, Audiology

Objective: This thesis investigated the hearing statusof neonates born to mothers with either gestational diabetesmellitus (GDM) or preexisting diabetes mellitus (DM). Pastresearch has explored how metabolic alterations and othercomplications due to maternal diabetes affect neonates. However,few studies have examined the hearing status in infants born todiabetic mothers. Methods: Distortion product otoacousticemission (DPOAE) data were gathered, bilaterally, at thefrequencies of 2, 3, 4, and 5kH...

Education, Teacher Training

This longitudinal qualitative study followed fivepreservice teachers through the final two years of a five-yearteacher education program. The study investigated thesocialization process, as shown by changes in participants

Engineering, Mechanical

Single-phase periodically developed, constant property,laminar forced convection in sinusoidal corrugated-plate channelswith uniform wall temperature is considered. Newtonian, power-lawnon-Newtonian, and Herschel-Bulkley fluids are considered in thecurrent dissertation work. Numerical solutions are obtained usingthe control-volume method and the commercial code FLUENT. For theNewtonian fluids, a wide range of channel corrugation aspectratio (0 <=

The Standard Model is an accurate theory of thefundamental interactions and Constituents of nature. It is nothowever a complete theory. There are still many questions leftunanswered about its construction. In this paper, I will examinethe construction of the Standard Model and the construction ofit s supersymmetric extension, the MSSM. I will present theparameters that make up both theories and show that theintroduction of Supersymmetry to the standard Model introduces atremendous number of para...

Engineering, Civil

FRESIM is a well-known microscopic, time-stepping,stochastic simulation model for freeway corridor trafficoperations and incident detection. Literature indicates thatcalibration is the main deterrent against the use of simulationmodels. The objective of this research was to calibrate FRESIMfor work zone conditions using only field observable parameters.Identifying the macroscopic parameters that can easily becollected in the field either by observation or by usingdetectors, and limiting the cali...

Literature, General

This study investigates how realist fiction of the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries negotiates thetrichotomy of rule, hegemony, and reform. It isolates thehistorical issues of women in labor movements, socialism and theliterary establishment, race and the post-Reconstruction colorline, and utopian thought. It examines a broad range of texts,beginning with the novels of William Dean Howells, EdwardBellamy, Albion Tourgée, Charles Chesnutt, Thomas Dixon, W.E. B. Du Bois, and R...

This thesis investigated a hardware interpreter forsparse matrix LU factorization. LU factorization is one of themost commonly used methods for solving a system of linearequations representing an electrical network. In this method, asystem of equations {\bf Ax=B} is solved by factoring the matrixA into its Lower (L) and Upper (U) triangular matrices. L and Uare then used to obtain the unknown vector x by forward andbackward substitution. Factorization of A is O(n^3) time-complex,requiring techni...

The present case study investigated the process oftransformation in 5 nonnative English-speaking teachers

Chemistry, Biochemistry

Salt bridges between self-associating hen egg-white(HEW) lysozyme and bovine insulin molecules were converted tocovalent links by ethanedinitrile (cyanogen) and identified usingmass spectrometry. Peptides resulting from cyanogen-mediatedintermolecular cross-linking of HEW lysozyme were detected usingin-gel digestion and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionizationtime-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS). Sequence datafrom electrospray ionization quadrupole-time-of-flight massspectrometry (...

Environmental Sciences

This study investigates the potential forbiodegradation of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), a prevalentgasoline additive and groundwater contaminant, under varioussubstrate and oxidation-reduction (redox) conditions. Porous potreactors designed for biomass retention were operated aerobicallyunder the following conditions: MTBE only, MTBE and ethanol, MTBEand di-isopropyl ether, MTBE and diethyl ether, and MTBE withbenzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and p-xylene (BTEX). In allreactors, optimal perfor...

Engineering, Materials Science

The immense demand for communication systems world widehas created an enormous market for semiconductors devices invariegated applications. While scaled CMOS is consolidating itsstronghold in the analog and RF domains, the wide gamut ofmicrowave frequencies is being competed for by the various typesof III-V heterojunction based semiconductor devices, which weremade amenable to high-volume production, thanks to rapidimprovements in bulk-processing and fabrication techniques in thelast decade. Amo...

Computer Science

Previous studies have shown that disk I/O is one of themajor performance bottlenecks of Web proxy servers, one class ofInternet servers. Most conventional file systems and I/Oarchitectures do not work well because of high overheads. Thisdissertation makes several contributions to solve this problem.First, it studies Log-structured File System (LFS) as onepossible existing solution. We find two new ways to significantlyimprove LFS performance: one is a novel reordering write buffercalled WOLF, wh...

Philosophy

In BonJour

; Health Sciences, Pharmacy

n array of pharmaceutical compounds and impurities wereused to investigate the applicability of atmospheric pressureionization mass spectrometry (MS) to routinely detect coelutingimpurities in HPLC (i.e. peak purity). Four drugs wereindividually tested against their related impurity set utilizinga straightforward HPLC-MS peak purity strategy. For theinvestigated set, which represents 24 unique drug-impuritypermutations, 75% of the coeluting impurities were detected atlevels <1.0%, includi...

Education, Philosophy of

This dissertation is a philosophical inquiry thatintroduces a new approach to thinking about education. Thepurpose of this study is to invite readers as co-participants togenerate compassionate hearts with the intent of bringing forth avision of wholeness to benefit the Earth and all her creation. Isuggest that education is a metaphor for life while implementingthe metaphor of a tapestry weaving to create a sacred space andform for the practice of inquiry that seeks to understand therelationship...

Engineering, Mechanical

The automotive industry is increasingly competitive,and manufacturers are seeking even small advantages for theirproduct through innovative designs, lower cost parts, and moreefficient manufacturing. Low cost is important, and initiativesby the automobile manufacturer to reduce cost cascade down to thedifferent tiers of suppliers. In this process, durability ofcomponents is often considered before noise and vibrationharshness, especially on low-end vehicles. Also, noise controlexpectations from ...

Architecture

The subject of this research is the Constructivistmovement that appeared in Soviet Russia in the 1920s. I willpursue the investigation by analyzing the work of the architectIakov Chernikhov. About fifty public and industrial developmentswere built according to his designs during the 1920s and 1930sacross the USSR, although he is better known as a talentedgraphic artist, having created an endless number of suchcompositions. These include the series "Architectural Fantasies"and "Ind...

Middle school literature has long professed thebenefits of advisory programs, noting decreased drop out ratesand improved school climate as possible rewards. However,advisory programs are often the most difficult component of themiddle school program to implement, due to factors related toteacher resistance and a perceived lack of time for advisoryactivities. In fact, most advisories are unable to maintain thecommitment to student interaction necessary for advisory success.This study sought to a...

Computer Science

The use of the tablet and pen to input the ChineseCharacters into computer is no longer a dream. During the lastdecade, different researchers have tried to find the solution tothis problem. Although some results have been achieved, the useof tablet and pen is still not wide spread. In the introduction,I explain the Chinese character elements and their structuralcomposition. Through different methods applied in Chapter 2 ofthe thesis paper and the presentation of Handwritten ChineseCharacter Reco...

Electrical

Determining optical flow is a fundamental problem incomputer vision and image analysis. Optical flow is theprojection of three dimensional motion of objects onto a plane,estimated from a sequence of two dimensional images. However, asthis is an ill posed problem, i.e. has no unique solution basedon available information thus requiring additional constraints tomake the problem well posed. We propose an algorithm based onfeature matching using Hopfield Networks to determine the opticalflow field b...

Engineering, Industrial

The main goal in this research investigation was todetermine the effects of maintenance operations on the leanproduction system. In order to study this relationship severalvariables were defined to measure the leanness of a productionsystem and evaluate the maintenance operations within the samecompany. Then a questionnaire was designed to conduct a survey ingreater Cincinnati area and collect data. All data were checkedin and recorded on a computer database as they were received, inorder to ana...

Chemistry, Organic

Small cyclophanes containing hydrophobic pocket andhydrophilic dialkylammonium cations were created to investigatehow the proximity of the hydrophobic groups affects the chemicalproperties of the cations. This situation often occurs at proteinactive sites and allows them to attenuate the reactivity of theircatalytic groups. The shape of the cyclophanes was varied byincrements changing the substitution pattern of the benzenerings, which resulted in significant changes in the pKa values ofthe dial...

Political Science, General

In retrospect, the Sino-Soviet alliance of the 1950sbased on a shared communism ideology was actually very fragile.However, the end of Cold War brought a new era of Sino-Russianrelations. The two countries are heading toward the closestrelations they have had in decades. Ideology no longer permeatesSino-Russian bilateral relations, but a clear movement towardcooperation and coordination is occurring.In this thesis I havetwo objectives: First, I intend to demonstrate what forces(independent varia...

Chemistry, Inorganic

Gold-based drugs have been used in the treatment ofrheumatoid arthritis for over 60 years, yet the mechanism ofaction or these drugs is not understood clearly. This studyfocuses on an early step in the transport mechanism of golddrugs, namely the interaction of dicyanogold(I) (a commonbio-transformation product of gold drugs) with human serumalbumin (the most abundant protein in blood serum). These bindingstudies involve both qualitative and quantitativecharacterization of the binding interactio...