Janjira Intra
Pharmaceutics Pulsatile release of biomolecules from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chips with biodegradable seals.
We demonstrate, for the first time, a robust novel polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chip that can provide controlled pulsatile release of biomolecules without external stimuli. Poly(lactic acid-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) films of varying composition and thickness were used as seals to the wells. The composition, molecular weight and thickness of the PLGA films were all parameters used to control the degradation rate of the seals and therefore the release profiles. Transfection experiments in a model HEK293 cell line showed that plasmid DNA loaded in the wells was functional after pulsatile release. Thicker films degraded faster than thinner films and could be used to fine-tune the release of DNA over day length periods. Finally the PDMS chip was shown to provide sequential release of CpG and a model antigen, Ovalbumin, indicating significant potential of this device for vaccinations or applications that require defined complex release patterns of a variety of chemicals, drugs and biomolecules.
Hana Itani
Molecular & Cellular Biology Regulation of Renin Gene Expression by Oxidative Stress
Angiotensin-II (AII) is involved in the pathogenesis of hypertension and mediates its effects in part by causing oxidative stress. Since AII is known to inhibit renin gene (REN) expression by a negative feedback mechanism, we hypothesized that this feedback inhibition is regulated through oxidative stress. REN mRNA levels were measured in renin expressing As4.1 cells treated with varying doses of hydrogen peroxide (HP). HP caused a dose dependent decrease in the steady state REN mRNA levels while there was no difference in cyclophilin mRNA levels. Inhibition of transcription revealed that HP effect is transcriptional yet a post-transcriptional component may be involved. Also, HP caused a dose-dependent reduction in transcriptional activity of the REN promoter. REN mRNA levels significantly decreased in cells treated with xanthine/xanthine oxidase and TNFá. Furthermore, TNFá-induced decrease in REN mRNA levels correlated with increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels. These results suggest ROS downregulate REN transcription.
Christina Freisinger
Biological Sciences G-protein and Wnt/Calcium signaling in Cardiovascular Development
Cardiovascular development is a complex process requiring the coordinated differentiation of cardiomyocytes, morphogenesis and maintenance of the heart tube as well as integration into the developing vasculature. The requirement for G Protein Coupled Receptor (GPCR) signaling in cardiovascular development implicates critical roles for Regulators of G protein Signaling (RGS) proteins. In the zebrafish model, we have initiated a comprehensive analysis of the role of RGS proteins in vertebrate developmental processes. We have identified critical roles for RGS in organ formation and function, such as the heart and vascular systems. It is our goal to understand in some detail the signaling cascades that modulate cardiovascular development and function. Knowledge of these complex signaling cascades and their regulation will help us to understand the causes of congenital heart defects and systolic heart failure, thereby allowing for potential identification or treatm ent of these conditions.
Rania Hamed
Pharmaceutics Determining Key Factors that Control the Formation of Pathogenic Bioaerosols within the Upper Respiratory System
Airborne infectious diseases such as influenza and tuberculosis remain a major global health threat. The primary vector for the transmission of these airborne diseases is exhaled droplets known as bioaerosols. However, very little is known about how bioaerosols are formed in the human lungs. This lack of knowledge has hindered the development of novel strategies aimed at halting bioaerosol formation and thus the transmission of airborne pathogens. The purpose of this study was to determine the physicochemical fluid properties which control bioaerosol formation. Towards this goal, we have developed a physiologically-relevant model of the human trachea to allow quantification of bioaerosol formation. Data showed that altering the physical properties of lung mucus (bulk viscoelasticity and surface tension) results in variation in the geometric size distribution of the primary population of bioaerosols formed during cough. Future studies will focus on identifying substances that can safely halt bioaerosol formation in vivo.
Jenna Armstrong
Public Health India: Golden Rice, World Hunger, and Global Food Politics
New advancements in bio-technology and genetically engineered crops (GMOs) have lead to ideas about vitamin fortification and answers to the world hunger problem (Millennium Development Goal 1). Over the past few decades, crops have become heartier, bigger, and in greater yields. Yet developing countries such as India have failed to accept the new technology as part of their hunger and disease eradication programs. Through scientific literature search and economic review, this paper seeks to understand the pros and cons of genetically modified Golden Rice and its possible introduction into the sustainable development worldwide. It seeks out an agreement between multi-national agro-chemistry corporations, researchers, and local grassroots health activism. Through strengthened local efforts and international ethics, production of profitable, nutritious crops worldwide could lead to advancements in public health--thus putting an end to poverty.
Amber Goedken
Pharmaceutical Socioeconomics Effect of cost-sharing on prescription drug use by Medicare beneficiaries after Medicare Part D and adverse selection in the Medicare drug benefit
The objectives of the study were to analyze how prescription drug cost-sharing affects prescription use by Medicare beneficiaries after the Medicare drug benefit, compare prescription drug cost-sharing and benefit structures faced by Medicare beneficiaries before and after implementation of the Medicare drug benefit, and examine the extent to which adverse selection is occurring in the Medicare drug benefit. The longitudinal study was composed of two internet-based surveys administered by Harris Interactive®. Harris Interactive® maintains a panel of individuals who have opted to be invited to participate in online surveys. A convenience sample of Medicare beneficiaries was recruited from their panel to complete each survey. An ordinary least squares regression model was used to assess the impact of cost-sharing amounts on prescription use, and a logistic regression model was used to assess adverse selection. Before and after the benefit, seniors were enrolled in plans with a variety of benefit structures.
Carlos Sanchez Marin
Occupational and Environmental Health Prevalence of Hand Symptoms and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome among Dental Students
Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) of the upper extremities, such as carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), are common among dental workers. They are exposed to work-related risk factors including repetition, forceful exertions of the hand, and awkward wrist postures. As dental students learn new skills and procedures during dental school, they experience a gradually increasing exposure to these risk factors. The aims of this study are to compare the prevalence of hand and wrist musculoskeletal symptoms and nerve conduction measures across the wrist suggestive of CTS between first and fourth year dental students. Students (N=70) were asked to complete a demographic and hand questionnaires, and had nerve conduction measurements taken at the hand. Means of the nerve conduction velocity and latency will be compared with student's t-tests for statistical significance (p<0.05). The results will provide preliminary data for a more comprehensive study of MSDs among dental students and entry-level dentists.
Mi Ran Wang
Neuroscience The effects of exercise and music on the BDNF induction and episodic memory among human subjects
It is important to find preventive intervention of the Alzheimer s disease (AD) and induction of BDNF can be potential mechanism of those interventions. BDNF is necessary for neuronal survival as well as memory. BDNF levels were decreased in the hippocampus among elderly people and AD patients. BDNF has been demonstrated to be increased by exercise and listening music among animals and young human subjects. Until now there is no study to examine the effects of the exercise and listening music on the BDNF induction and the episodic memory among the middle-aged adults and subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This study will examine the effects of the exercise and music on the blood BDNF levels and the episodic memory between young adults, middle-aged adults, and the MCI. Because exercise and listening music have a variety of beneficial effects without side effects, this study may suggest effective preventive interventions of AD.
Xiaoyun Pan
Clinical and Administrative Pharmacy Effect of Reimbursement on G-CSF Treatment during First Cycle of Chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma Patients
G-CSF is an expensive drug to manage febrile neutropenia with uncertain benefits. The objective was to investigate the variation in Medicare claim-paying agents (carriers) reimbursement to physicians for chemotherapy and evaluate the influence of Medicare carrier chemotherapy reimbursement on G-CSF choice. Using the national SEER-Medicare linked database, we studied patients 66 years or older diagnosed as NHL in one of the 13 SEER registry areas from 1994-2002. F test from the OLS regression model showed Medicare physician reimbursement for chemotherapy varied across Medicare carriers. Multiple logistic regressions indicated this variation affected the decision of physicians to prescribe G-CSF. At low chemotherapy reimbursement levels, increases in chemotherapy reimbursements decreased G-CSF prescribing. Physicians appear to compensate for lower reimbursements by increasing the intensity of their services.
Carissa Philippi
Neuroscience The inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus mediates recognition of the facial expression of emotion
Lesion and neuroimaging studies have implicated multiple visual and emotion-related brain regions in the recognition of emotion from facial expressions. However, the mechanism by which visual representations of the face can be efficiently conveyed to emotion-related brain regions that associate the face with its emotional content remains unknown. To test the hypothesis that long-range association fiber tracts are critical for this process, we used a novel approach incorporating fiber tract information into lesion mapping. Disconnection of the right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF) significantly predicted an overall impairment in emotion recognition as well as disproportionate impairments for fear and anger. We found one subject with a white matter lesion virtually restricted to the IFOF with an emotion recognition impairment that supported the group level results. Our findings strongly implicate the right IFOF as a critical component of the large-scale neural system supporting the recognition of the facial expression of emotion.
Matthew Dickson
Genetics and Medicine Functional Regulation of Human Angiotensinogen Expression via Naturally Occurring Polymorphisms
Hypertension is a common disorder with a strong genetic component. Perhaps the strongest candidate gene for hypertension is angiotensinogen (AGT). Among naturally-occurring polymorphisms in human AGT, -20 and -217 have the strongest effects on expression and may affect transcription factor binding. The risk alleles (-20C and -217A) are common and support higher transactivation. We show that upstream stimulatory factor (USF) preferentially binds the -20C allele in vitro. In vivo assays confirm preferential association of USF1 with -20C and show that FOS-related antigen 2 (FRA2) preferentially associates with -20C. Cell culture experiments confirm that FRA2 preferentially activates -20C expression while shRNA-mediated knockdown of USF causes allele-specific attenuation of AGT expression. Knockdown of USF within transgenic mice results in markedly attenuated expression from -20C. We conclude that USF and perhaps FRA proteins functionally and differentially regulate AGT expression via the -20 polymorphism and that this may play an important role in hypertension.
Nicholas Ettinger
Molecular and Cellular Biology Genetic Admixture in Brazilians Exposed to Infection with Leishmania chagasi
Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a vector-borne infectious disease caused by the protozoa Leishmania chagasi, L. donovani or L. infantum. Infection leads to variable clinical outcomes ranging from asymptomatic infection to fatal disease. Prior studies suggest that the genetic background of the host contributes to the development of different outcomes. There has been a peri-urban endemic focus of VL surrounding the city of Natal, Brazil since the mid-1980s. The population of northeast Brazil is a mixture of distinct racial and ethnic groups. Therefore, we hypothesized that some sub-populations may be more susceptible than others to develop different clinical outcomes after L. chagasi infection. Analysis of 289 microsatellite markers across the genome demonstrated that there was no apparent genome-wide significant difference in population admixture proportions among clinical phenotype groups. However, several markers displayed Excess Ancestry in particular ethnic backgrounds, suggesting regions that may contribute to susceptibility to L. chagasi infection.
James D. Lewis
Speech Pathology & Audiology Measurement of Hearing Aid Internal Noise Using Synchronous Averaging
The current industrial and clinical standard for quantifying the internal noise of a hearing aid (HA) is the equivalent input noise (EIN), as specified in ANSI S3.22. We question the value of the EIN because 1) it assumes the measured noise is dependent upon the gain of the hearing aid, 2) it is highly variable in clinical measurement, and 3) it does not predict a user s perception of a HA s internal noise. Our study proposes a new method for measuring the internal noise of a HA. Using a synchronous measurement paradigm, we calculated the variance of HA output across repeated presentations of a speech-like stimulus at various intensities. Results demonstrated that for the majority of HAs tested, measured noise was not dependent upon gain contrary to the EIN assumption. Our proposed method provides an accurate measurement of HA internal noise and reliably predicts a user s perception of that noise.
Lea Davis
Genetics/Psychiatry Using copy number variants to identify genes involved in autism
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by three core symptom domains: ritualistic-repetitive behaviors, impaired social interaction, and impaired communication and language. Karyotypically detectable chromosomal abnormalities account for ~5-7% of autism cases. With the exception of these patients, autism has traditionally been considered a complex genetic disorder with roughly 10-15 genes interacting, each contributing a small individual effect but having a large effect when combined. However, the identification of various dominant acting mutations in a small number of autism families is beginning to challenge that assumption. Recently, the advent of oligonucleotide micro-array technology has enabled identification of genomic variation termed copy number variants (CNVs) that was previously undetectable. These microdeletions and duplications are known to cause a number of single gene disorders, including Sotos syndrome, Prader-Willi/Angelman syndrome, Williams-Beuren syndrome, and Bardet-Biedl syndrome. Through careful identification of patients likely to harbor pathogenic CNVs we have discovered novel chromosomal abnormalities that include promising candidate genes for autsim such as syntaxin binding protein 5 and leucine rich neuronal repeat 1.
Matthew Schmidt
Medicinal and Natural Products Chemistry Total Synthesis of Ring-Opened Analogs of Salvinorin A, A Novel Hallucinogen from Salvia divinorum
Salvia divinorum, a type of sage endemic to the mountainous regions of Oaxaca, Mexico, has played an important role in native spiritual rituals for hundreds of years due to the intense hallucinations it is capable of producing. Salvinorin A, the major psychoactive component, is the most potent naturally-occurring hallucinogen, yet it binds selectively at kappa opioid receptors and not to any receptors traditionally associated with hallucinogenic activity (acetylcholine, NMDA, serotonin). Structurally, however, it does not resemble any known opioids or hallucinogens/dissociatives. Additionally, salvinorin A lacks a basic nitrogen previously thought to be essential for opioid activity. Collectively, these characteristics indicate that salvinorin A interacts with the receptor in a unique fashion. Ring-opened analogues of salvinorin A are being prepared to understand the importance of the molecule s overall confirmation and stereochemical configuration on affinity and activity. Progress in the synthesis of these compounds will be discussed.
Kanchna Ramchandran
Neurology The risky business of growing old: (aging effects on risk engagement)
Older adults face frequent and notable challenges regarding financial allocations and health related decisions, so much so that such decision-making may dominate their life space. In this study, we administered the Domain Specific Risk Taking Scale to a healthy sample of community-dwelling older adults. This scale evaluates how we perceive and take risks in various domains of our life, such as finance, health/safety, recreation, ethical, and social decisions. For the analysis, risk perception and risk taking were regressed on age. Significant interactions by age revealed that (1) as perceptions of risk decrease, risk taking behavior increases in the domains of health and safety, and finance; and (2) risk perceptions in these domains decrease with age, resulting in increased risk taking behavior. Contrary to standard intuition that the elderly are more conservative, our results suggested that older people (>71 years of age) perceive lesser health and financial risk and are more likely to take greater risk (p < .05) in these areas of their lives compared to the younger-old (<71 years of age).Possible explanations point to decision-making deficits, reduced temporal construal and frequency/familiarity bias. These findings point to the increased vulnerability of aging populations in the domains of financial and medical decision making.
Olayinka Oladimeji
Pharmaceutical Socioeconomics Risk Factors for Adverse Drug events among Medicare Enrollees before and after Medicare Part D
An adverse drug event (ADE) is an injury resulting from medical interventions related to the use of a drug. Medicare Part D began in 2006 and may have an impact on the problems of inappropriate medication therapy and ADEs. Objectives: Re-examine risk factors for self-reported ADEs in 2007 after the implementation of the program and determine if there were changes in reports of ADEs before and after the program. Design: Longitudinal Participants: Had to be 65 or older, US residents and enrolled in Medicare. Data used in the analysis included socio-demographic data, number of medications, symptoms experienced, concern and necessity beliefs about medicines, number of pharmacies, self-reported ADE and self rated health. Higher concern beliefs about medicines were significantly related to self-reporting an ADE. Patients who reported more symptoms were more likely to report an ADE. Older age was statistically associated with a higher risk for having an ADE.
Yin Wan
Clinical & Administrative Pharmacy cost-analysis of adverse drug reaction in two internal medicine units at a tertiary university hospital
Objectives: the study is to 1) identify the occurrence rate and characteristics of adverse drug reactions(ADRs); 2) assess the excess length of stay and minimum direct costs causing by suspected ADRs. Methods: All patients at two internal medicine units in a Chinese tertiary hospital were evaluated under an intensified spontaneous surveillance system. Kaplan-Meier method was used to estimate the time of occurring ADR. A regression model was used to estimate the excess direct costs with other influential factors controlled. Results: 16% of all patients admitted had ADRs. 10 serious ADRs were mostly involved in White cell and RES system and Urinary system. Cost of per ADR evaluated by doctors was £¤5055.5, lower than the result of £¤5659.2 estimated by model. Conclusions: Because of the predominantly predicable economic burden of ADR on health system, some effective measures are needed to reduce the rate of occurrence of ADR.
Alok Shah
Internal Medicine Loss of Bardet Biedl Syndrome Proteins Alters the Morphology and Function of Motile Cilia in Airway Epithelia
Mutations in a group of genes contributing to ciliary function cause Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS). Studies of BBS have focused on primary, sensory cilia. We asked whether loss of BBS proteins would also affect respiratory motile cilia. We found BBS genes were expressed in human airway epithelia, and BBS2 and BBS4 localized to cellular structures associated with motile cilia. Although BBS proteins were not required for ciliogenesis, their loss caused structural defects in cilia. The most common abnormality was bulges filled with vesicles. The structural abnormalities were accompanied by functional defects; ciliary beat frequency was reduced in Bbs-/- mice. Previous reports suggested BBS might increase the incidence of asthma. However, compared to wild-type controls, neither airway hyperresponsiveness nor inflammation increased in Bbs2-/- or Bbs4-/- mice. Instead, animals were partially protected from airway hyperresponsiveness. These results emphasize the role of BBS proteins in both the structure and function of motile cilia.
Andrea Laake
Medical Engineering Torque-velocity characteristics of the elbow and knee
Muscle strength has long been studied at various levels of detail, from muscle fiber to multiple muscle synergists. While it may seem reasonable to apply muscle fiber relationships to muscles acting together at a joint, due to the complexity of synergistic muscles, these relationships may not fully translate. The purpose of this study was to investigate the degree to which Hill s force-velocity relationship holds at the joint level, considering angle-specific torque at two different joints. Strength testing was performed on the knee and elbow joints of 52 subjects using an isokinetic dynamometer. While torque produced at the joint level generally followed the single muscle force-velocity relationship, the Hill equation couldn t be applied to the joint level uniformly across all angles, joint movement directions and between men and women. The Hill model does not accurately account for all gender, motion, and angle factors that are important at the joint level.
Man Su Kim
Pharmacology Mitochondria regulate activation of the transcription factor NFAT in DRG neurons
NFAT is a Ca2+/calcineurin-dependent transcription factor. Recent data demonstrate that NFAT plays important roles in nervous system. Here, I examined the mechanisms of NFAT activation by electrical stimulation. By simultaneously monitoring [Ca2+]i and nuclear import/export of GFP-NFAT4, I found that trains of action potentials, depolarization and capsaicin induced a rapid translocation of NFAT to the nucleus generating the characteristic long-lasting [Ca2+]i plateau phase. Blockade of mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake eliminated the [Ca2+]i plateau and reduced nuclear translocation of NFAT by 40-60%. The inhibitor of the mitochondrial Na+/Ca2+ exchanger CGP37157 produced similar effects. Importantly, disruption of mitochondrial Ca2+ cycling significantly reduced NFAT-dependent transcription activity. Therefore, I propose that by rapidly accumulating and then slowly releasing Ca2+, mitochondria produce a sustained elevation of [Ca2+]i that is required to maximally activate NFAT, suggesting mitochondrial Ca2+ cycling may represent a novel mechanism to potentiate excitation-transcription coupling in neurons.
Song Yi
Biological Sciences Identification and Characterization of Signaling Circuitry for Novel White Pheromone Response in the Human Pathogen Candida albicans
Candida albicans is the most prevalent human fungal pathogen. It is an opportunistic fungus existing in healthy human hosts as a commensal organism, but capable of causing more serious invasive and disseminated diseases in patients with compromised immune systems. C. albicans is heterozygous (a/á) for the mating type locus and must undergo homozygosis to a/a or á/á to mate. But to truly become mating competent, C. albicans must switch from white to opaque phase. Opaque cells release pheromones that induce opaque mating responses. Recently, it was discovered that the same pheromones induce mating-incompetent white cells to become cohesive, form an adhesive basal layer of cells on a surface and generate a thicker biofilm, which has been shown to facilitate mating between minority opaque cells. Through mutant analysis, it is demonstrated that the pathways regulating the white and opaque pheromone responses share the same upstream components, including receptors, heterotrimeric G-protein and mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase cascade, but use different downstream transcription factors to regulate the expression of genes specific to the alternative responses. This configuration, while common in higher, multicellular systems, is not common in fungi. The induction of the formation of a biofilm, a primitive tissue, and the unique configuration of the regulatory pathways, are consistent with the hypothesis that the sexual system in C. albicans may represent an evolutionary antecedent to multicellularity in higher eukaryotes, besides representing a pathogenic strategy for virulence.
David Anderson
Medicinal and Natural Products Chemistry Mitochondria regulate activation of the transcription factor NFAT in DRG neurons
Parkinson s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects over a million patients in the U.S. The disease pathology is known to involve dopaminergic neuronal death. While the neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) itself is neurotoxic, neuronal death may be due to the inherent toxicity of certain dopaminergic metabolites such as 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetaldehyde (DOPAL). This aldehyde is several orders of magnitude more toxic than the parent amine. The ability of DA to auto-oxidize to an ortho-quinone is believed to contribute to its cytotoxicity due to resultant protein reactivity and oxidative stress through redox cycling, reactive oxygen species production, and thiol depletion. However, little is known about the ability of DOPAL to similarly undergo auto-oxidation to a reactive quinone. If confirmed, the formation of DOPAL-quinone species would help explain the high toxicity of this aldehyde metabolite. NaIO4 and Tyrosinase, which are known to induce DA-quinone formation, were investigated for their ability to oxidize DOPAL. Colorimetric and spectrophotometric evidence suggests that these methods induce oxidative rearrangement of DOPAL. Such species were found to be reactive toward glutathione and N-acetyl cysteine, which are good indicators of protein reactivity. Following oxidation of DOPAL to the suspected quinone species, it was then trapped with N-acetyl cysteine, analyzed by HPLC, and purified by solid phase extraction for NMR analysis. Such spectrometric and chromatographic methods were utilized for analyzing and characterizing the rearranged and adduct-formation products of oxidized DOPAL in order to eventually determine their biological and cellular relevance, and establish any potential involvement in Parkinson s disease.
Shawn Lesh
Biostatistics The Effect of Advanced Bionic s HiRes 120 CI on Listening to Music
This study tested the effect HiRes 120 Cochlear Implants (CI) have on music pleasantness and musical distinction measures over a three month period. Fifty subjects using an Advanced Bionics HiRes implant completed a baseline survey including measures of music training, music pleasantness, sound processing, and ability to comprehend and differentiate forms of music. Subjects were subsequently fitted with the Advanced Bionic s HiRes 120 CI and readministered the questionnaire one and three months after use. Data were analyzed using repeated measures ANCOVA, with musical training as a covariate, to evaluate the effectiveness of the new device. The HiRes 120 wearers reported significantly improved listening pleasantness and sound processing measures from baseline to 1 month and baseline to 3 months (all p<.03) with no change in these measures from 1 to 3 months. The study found no significant improvement in musical and lyrical distinction over the three month period.
Annalisa Jordan
Chemistry Phomactin Analogues from a Hawaiian Fungicolous Fungus
Mycoparasitic and fungicolous fungi have proven to be rich sources of biologically active secondary metabolites. In the course of our ongoing studies of such fungi, an unidentified grayish-black isolate of Mycelia sterilia (MYC-1969) was obtained from the surface of a white mycelial growth found on a dead hardwood branch collected in a Hawaiian coastal forest. The ethyl acetate extract of solid-substrate fermentation cultures of this isolate showed antifungal activity against Aspergillus flavus, and antiinsectan effects against the fall army worm Spodoptera frugiperda. Subjecting this extract to column chromatography, VLC, and HPLC afforded three new phomactin analogs. Details of the isolation, structure determination, and biological activity of these analogs will be presented.
Scott D. Maddux
Anthropology Allometric Scaling of Infraorbital Surface Topography in Homo
Infraorbital morphology is often included in phylogenetic and functional analyses of Homo. The inclusion of distinct infraorbital configurations, such as the canine fossa in Homo sapiens, or the inflated maxilla in Neandertals, is generally based on either descriptive or qualitative assessments of this morphology, or simple linear chord and subtense measurements. However, the complex curvilinear surface of the infraorbital region has proven difficult to quantify through these traditional methods. In this study, I assess infraorbital shape, and its allometric scaling, in fossil Homo (n = 15) and recent humans (n = 56) with a geometric morphometric method well-suited for quantifying complex surface topographies. The results indicate important aspects of infraorbital shape are significantly correlated with overall infraorbital size across Homo.
Jennifer Rees
Medicinal and Natural Products Chemistry Protein Modification by Dopamine Aldehyde, a Potential Neurotoxin of Parkinson's Disease
Parkinson s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by cell death of dopaminergic neurons. Current studies have indicated that cell death may originate from increased oxidative stress leading to augmented levels of an endogenous neurotoxin. This neurotoxin could inhibit the metabolism of dopamine causing detrimental effects to neurons. During metabolism, dopamine (DA) is first converted to 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetaldehyde (DOPAL) by monoamine oxidase and then oxidized to 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) by aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH). Previous work has established that upon addition of 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (4HNE), a product of increased oxidative stress, to rat striatal synaptosomes- ALDH is inhibited causing a decrease in DOPAC levels and a corresponding increase in DOPAL concentrations. Based on this information, it is hypothesized that DOPAL, generated at aberrant levels due to impairment of DA metabolism, will cause protein modification. The data establish the ability of DOPAL to modify proteins thus indicating its potential role in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases.
Unni Jensen
Neuroscience Investigating The Role of The Hippocampus In Episodic Event Construction In Different Time Frames
Hippocampal amnesics have been found to be impaired in the elaboration of newly imagined events (Hassabis, 2007). However, whether amnesics can construct (Schacter, 2007) episodic events in different time frames has not been characterized. Patients with hippocampal amnesia and healthy comparison participants were given neutral cue-words and then instructed to construct episodic (a specific time and place) events in two different time frames, past and future, and to elaborate on these events by describing 1) an overview of an event and 2) a specific contextual event scene. Amnesics were impaired in constructing episodic events in both time frames as compared to the comparison group. Specifically, the amnesic patients were unable to construct all the required episodic events, and their mental representations were impoverished. These findings converge with fMRI data (Addis, 2007), and support the idea that the construction of episodic events in different time frames is linked to the hippocampus.
James Jacobus
Human Toxicology The End Draws Near: Telemore Shortening Induced by a Quinone Metabolite of PCB3
Telomeres, which protect the ends of the chromosomes from damage, play an important role in carcinogenesis and senescence. They are damaged by oxidative stress. Our working hypothesis is that PCB3-quinone metabolites are carcinogenic by producing oxidative stress-related damage to the telomeres. Human keratinocytes (HaCaT cells) and primary fibroblasts were treated continuously for 12 weeks with 2-(4 -chlorophenyl)-1,4-benzoquinone (PCB3pQ). Telomere length was determined using the quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) method. Telomeric DNA levels decreased approximately 40% in HaCaT cells treated with PCB3pQ at 5 µM compared to solvent control-treated cells. The telomere signal of primary fibroblasts also shows a decreasing trend with PCB3pQ treatment, but this effect was not statistically significant and confounded by differences in cell doublings during the 12 week period. These preliminary results urge further mechanistic studies concerning the effects of PCB congeners and metabolites on telomeres. (Supported by NIEHS P42 ES013661 and an Iowa CHEEC Seed Grant.)
Ian Lai
Human Toxicology The Low Dose Effects of PCB126 on Rat Liver Metabolism in Rats given a Controlled Dietary Level of Selenium
PCB126 (3,3 ,4,4 ,5-pentachlorobiphenyl) is able to mimic dioxin and bind to Ah receptors and elicit numerous toxic effects including oxidative stress. We hypothesized that even at a low dose exposure this PCB congener will lower selenium levels in the rat liver. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were given a modified AIN-93 purified diet with a controlled selenium level, and receiving a single intraperitoneal injection of the corn oil (control) or PCB126 (1mol/kg body weight). We observed that PCB126-treated rats had a significant decrease in hepatic selenium and glutathione levels, correlating with a decrease in hepatic glutathione peroxidase (GPx) activity. This controlled dietary study shows that even a single low dose exposure to PCB126 may significantly perturb metal homeostasis and antioxidant and enzyme levels in the liver with yet unknown consequences.
Melanie House
Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science Wheelchair Seating Interventions Resolve Spinal Deformities and Pressure Ulcers: A Case Series
People with spinal cord injury are described in the research literature as having a characteristic posture of posteriorly tilted pelvis and kyphotic spine posture. In persons with complete motor and sensory paraplegia, pressure sores are the number one reason for re-hospitalization, at five years post-injury. Wheelchair seating prescription is critical to managing posture and pressure distribution over the seated area, however there is a paucity of information available as to how to identify and treat persons in need of prescriptive wheelchair configuration changes. This case series highlights specific guidelines which demonstrate that routine clinic-based wheelchair seating interventions can correct characteristic posture (flexible postural deformities) and facilitate healing of pressure ulcers thus decreasing morbidity and mortality in persons with complete SCI.
Fine and Performing Arts
Megan Berner
Intermedia - School of Art & Art History Daydreams
"Daydreams" is an animation that starts out with a small pencil line that grows into larger, more complicated representations, moving from a figure lying in the grass and transforming into a cloudscape, an undersea world, birds in flight, and other whimsical imaginings. As the title suggests, the video is about daydreaming and using one’s imagination. Daydreaming is also a metaphor for the process of creation. It starts out with a small, unformed idea and grows into something more. And it keeps on growing, transforming with each recycling, into something more, something new. Daydreams have the power to transform energy.
Jennifer Fawcett
Theater Arts Trigger - excerpts from a full length play
In September 2007, eleven theatre artists came together to create a play exploring the role of guns in the lives of Americans. While most plays are created in isolation by the playwright, Trigger has been born out of a collaborative process. Each person has contributed to both the content and the form, helping to structure the development of the work, to create characters, refine story lines, research specific populations and guide the creation process. Set in Iowa City, the play peaks into the lives of ordinary Americans including victims of gun violence, hunters, members of the military, children, and video gamers. Is there a disconnect between the action and consequences of pulling the trigger? Do you see a gun as a weapon or a tool? Are we safer armed? Do we need guns? Or maybe more importantly, do we want them? Trigger is an intimate look at a complex issue that affects us all.
Kelley Johnson
Music Transcendent Beethoven: The Late String Quartets in Paris (1827-1928)
In 1827, Beethoven's late quartets were among his least admired newly composed works. However, by the 1900's Beethoven's quartets were among the most frequently played and well know works in chamber music circles throughout Europe. Nationalist and Transcendentalist movements both in America and Europe found spiritual aspects in Beethoven's music that resonated the mythical and thus adopted Beethoven music as representational of their ideals. This paper focuses on the audience reception change in Paris and the dedicated performers who championed Beethoven through four generations from the Franco-Prussian war up to World War II. Many resources in this research especially on Lucien Capet are from the original French. This is a journey of taste from abhorrence to veneration and on to transcendence.
Elinathan Ohiomoba
Writers' Workshop A Keeper of Sheep
"A Keeper of Sheep" is part of a collection that grew out of my research into the life of Bernadette Soubirous. The piece is a modern retelling of the experience of visionary-hood.
Nicole Pietrantoni
Printmaking "Beautiful Garden," a series of works on paper using traditional & experimental printmaking & digital media
“The Beautiful Garden” is a series of prints inspired by living and traveling in a rural American landscape. I am interested in how a sense of place shapes the stories and myths that create our identity. As a person who has resided only in major cities or sprawling suburbs, my recent move to Iowa offers a renewed perspective of nature and landscape. Imagery of fields and farms are digitally printed on black paper; then, a new series of imagery is silkscreened using a bleach solution, which eats away the pigment of the black paper, revealing the underlying digital print. The prints resemble negatives of photographs at once developing as they are disintegrating. My artwork provides a forum for both mapmaking and map reading I am encoding data from my experiences (i.e., photographs and drawings of the countryside) while simultaneously decoding new information that can only emerge in the creative process (i.e., abstract forms, drips, and spills that occur from printing, painting, and bleaching). The works weave a narrative about memory, place, and way finding, as well as the tension between reality and fantasy, loss and gain, holding on and letting go.
Deon Kay
Cinema and Comparitive Literature Abby
Part of an ongoing experiment in narrative collage, Abby is made up of documentary components, autobiographical text, and fictional narration. Stories are written over by other stories that are in turn partially redacted, or hidden behind the video s disruptive physical form. They cohere in the arena of passion, where fairytales and childhood fantasies shape our desires; but, perhaps allegorically, the video s formal characteristics disrupt our viewing pleasure in order to produce a more active audience as several threads are spun. Subtle games play with each other, hide and comment on each other; subtle games whose rules become more and more perceptible and rewarding the more the film is seen, and the harder one works as a viewer.
Nicole Donnelly
Painting and Drawing Light Enough to Illuminate
I have been painting from the source of rock faces and ice, the seemingly unchanging and that which shifts its state all too familiarly. Although they have the ability to act in very similar ways, perhaps it is merely the human perception of time that holds these substances so far apart. Ice has the startling ability to shift state under negligible temperature change; we conceive of ice with an expectation. Yet the earth and rock can erode beneath our feet. When we presume to know the nature of something, subtle and significant changes often go unnoticed or are taken for granted. Perception of the natural world can in some ways be seen as analogous to the dynamics of relationships and to consciousness itself.
Jessica White
Printmaking and The Center for the Book The Bad Sparrow
The Bad Sparrow is a hand-printed, handmade scroll that offers a squirrel’s-eye view of going into battle. Due to quick judgment, deficiency in diplomacy, and a lack of awareness, the woodland creatures gather to wage war against each other. The reason for the war is anyone’s guess, including many of the animals choosing to fight. They come prepared, with their catapults and balloon bombs, with no intentions of retreating. But it’s only the beginning; the battle has yet to begin, and there’s still a chance that they’ll come to their senses.
Cristina Iorga
Printmaking Blend Of Emotions
My work in the past two years at the University of Iowa is quite different from my previous artwork. The present I live in is at times so overwhelming that my art pieces have started to integrate in compositions a multitude of elements--none of which were part of my previous work. Most of these forms are spread chaotically and each one of them expresses a certain feeling I had in the moment of its creation. Meeting my future husband opened another new perspective in my life and exposed me to Asian art, to which I wasn't familiar with before.
Before coming to Iowa I was (and still am) fascinated by the universe of a line and by the different types of effects I could create with it. Even though I was deeply immersed in the universe of a line, I always felt a strong inclination to use color. Exposure to the Indian culture (my husband is from India) made this desire for it even more ardent. My need for color has been finally fulfilled through my encounter with Monoprint. I feel that Monoprint is a very important step in my artistic development because it helps me to express myself in new and fascinating ways which I wasn't aware of before. The combination of print and monotype allows me to follow my strong inclinations---the universe of lines and color.
Maggie McKnight
English - Non-Fiction Writing Swingin': A Study in Gender and Identity
Swingin’ is a graphic narrative, a combination of text and image in the comix tradition. In the story, a lesbian narrator reflects on gender representation and tradition as she and her partner prepare for and attend the narrator s sister s wedding. She recounts the ways her gender expression has swung wildly over the years, from feminine to decidedly boyish and back again. As she participates in the heteronormative traditions of a conventional wedding, she is reminded of the irony that her own committed relationship goes widely unrecognized.
Jane Munksgaard
Communication Orlan and the Visibility of the Performative Body: Utilizing Publicity and Parody as Effective Tactics for Resistance
This paper explores the corporeal body as a site for radical feminist interpretation and resistance. Specifically, it examines performance artist Orlan and her project, The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan. The project is composed of a series of twelve plastic surgeries during which the artist appropriated aspects of canonically celebrated Western paintings and sculptures. She marks the surgical act, as well as the results, performative. By performing what Butler would identify as a parodic double-inversion, Orlan uses contemporary surgical methods to achieve a series of standardized conceptions of beauty that collectively amass her grotesque appearance. This paper proposes that the publicity generated through Orlan’s tactical over-identification with conservative aesthetic ideals, by using her body as a site of improvisation and resistance, marks her politics as uniquely effective.
Andre Perry
English - Non-Fiction Writing Language and Other Weapons
Design essays re-map our preconceived notions about the different forms prose may take on the page. Through the use of formal constraints such as writing an essay in screenplay format or using the structural framework of legal document (like a divorce contract) design essays seek to package the author’s intellectual and emotional discoveries in progressive forms. It is my hope that such radical rethinking of the presentation and form of nonfiction prose will lead to new levels of intellectual and artistic insight for the reader. After all, if one of our goals is to understand life, then we must continually provide ourselves with new lenses through which to view it. My essay, Language and Other Weapons, addresses tensions between African-American identity and sexuality in American culture. I filter these ideas through a design essay that employs standard prose, elements of screenwriting, email writing, and teleplay writing.
Christopher Renaud
Cinema and Comparative Literture A Certain Frisson
Frisson - A moment of intense excitement; a shudder; an emotional thrill. From the Latin frigere, “to be cold”; and the French friçon, “a trembling”.
Ryan VanMeter
English - Non-Fiction Writing Specimen
I wrote Specimen out of a genuine need to discover answers. Quite simply, I had never understood why, at the age of thirteen, I suddenly developed a nearly paralyzing fear of being abducted by aliens. In this essay, I hope to demonstrate that the narrator’s realization of his own difference from his peers begins to disrupt all areas of his life at school and home. Parents are to be our protectors from the “dangers” we face as children; but what happens when the child feels so afraid about the truth in himself that he cannot ask for protection?
Humanities
Samantha Joyce
Communication Studies Representing the Other in the Television Program CSI-Miami: Rio
In a 2006 study, CSI: Miami was named the world's most popular TV show, with fifty million viewers around the globe. In that same year one episode took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This research examines how that country, commonly associated with stereotypes such as land of futebol, music, and violence, to mention a few, was portrayed. The major concern with the representation of stereotypes in television is that the result of these portrayals may be the acquisition of negative attitudes towards certain groups by the audience and the solidification of racial and sexual stereotypes. A semiotic analysis revealed how Brazilianess was portrayed in the episode: Three main themes were uncovered: Brazil as exotic and lawless ; the Us Vs Them Ideology ; and a Technologic Supremacy Ideology ; where the US s access to state of the art technology places it as modern and efficient against other primitive and retrograde countries.
Daniel Morris
Religious Studies John Dewey and the Inadequacy of Tolerance
Because religious pluralism is a characteristically American phenomenon, tolerance is critically important virtue for life in the United States. In this paper I turn to the work John Dewey perhaps the most quintessentially American thinker in search of a viable doctrine of tolerance. Setting Dewey’s position on pluralism of belief against that of John Locke, I argue that, despite obvious differences, Dewey’s pragmatic approach shares certain important commonalities with the classic Enlightenment conception of tolerance. Notably, both Dewey’s work and Locke’s canonical "Letter Concerning Toleration" regard the protection of dissent as a religious virtue. In the final analysis, though, I suggest that Deweyan pragmatism offers better resources to deal with pluralism in the modern world than does Locke’s Enlightenment stance.
Daigo Shima
Asian and Slavic Languages and Literature Songs My Mother Taught Me: The Intertwined Family Portraits in Mezon do Himiko
This essay seeks to evaluate the Japanese film entitled Mezon do Himiko (2005), which literally translates “The House of Himiko”, by focusing on the absence of a mother character, and the relationships between biological families and homosexual characters. Also, this essay consists of two sections, the first of which focuses on the depictions of homosexual people in Mezon do Himiko, trying to deepen our understanding of the uniqueness of this film. The second section mainly analyzes how the biological relationships are intertwined with the homosexual characters in this film. Biological family relations tend to be depicted to have nothing to do with homosexual relationships, but this film depicts their relationships as complexly intertwined, trying not to depict them as the simple binary oppositions. In conclusion, this essay will demonstrate that this film elevates a conventional love story into a unique story of human bonds.
Michael Baltutis
Religious Studies Imagined Community in Nepal: Royal Billboards, Temple Renovations, and the People’s Movement of 2006
In April 2006, a nation-wide series of peaceful demonstrations brought an effective end to Nepal’s monarchy, forcing the king to capitulate on national television. This paper will examine two Nepali-language texts composed towards the end of King Gyanendra’s reign that stake their claim to the religio-political field of modern Nepal. The first text is a volume of essays composed by local scholars commemorating the renovation of a temple to the deity Bhairav. The second is a series of billboards, installed by the royal government at major intersections throughout Kathmandu, proclaiming the king s support of multi-party democracy and his sympathy with the nation s struggling people. Though employing similar traditional South Asian rhetorical devices, they take quite different stances regarding the future of the Nepalese nation: whereas the king s messages work to support a moribund monarchy, these local authors provide an alternative vision to Nepal’s past and present.
Francesco Dalla Vecchia
Musicology Reading opera with the Enneagram: Metastasio's La clemenza di Tito
The Enneagram is a graphical device that summarizes a centuries-old theory about personalities. This theory is meant to reveal the essential qualities of a person and to help him/her find the most suitable path toward spiritual perfection. Allegedly, the Enneagram originated with the Sufi brotherhood in the Middle Ages; since the 1970s, the American Jesuits have revived it and used it as a helpful device for spiritual counseling. Like other theories in personality sciences the Enneagram is applicable to the study of opera characters. It indicates elements of the characters’ personalities, relations, and evolutions that are essential for performers’ interpretations and scholars’ hermeneutics. Pietro Metastasio s masterpiece, La clemenza di Tito (1734), in particular demonstrates the applicability of the Enneagram because Metastasio’s education was molded by Jesuits and because his work shows his concern with providing a model of Catholic morale.
Christine Darr
Religious Studies How Friends Can Combat Racial Injustice: Conceptions of Friendship and Selfhood
This paper argues that medieval ethicist Thomas Aquinas has articulated a model of what he calls the virtue of friendship, which holds great promise for combating racism in all its forms. First, we must examine how Aquinas understands the self and its relation to others. Then we will explore the qualities of this virtue in order to understand what responsibilities friends have to each other. Finally, we conclude that the enlarged perspective one gains in friendship can significantly contribute to the success of those working toward a racially equitable society.
Nathan Dickman
Religious Studies Take Action: A Critique of the Concept of Practice in Recent Ethical and Ritual Theory
The fact that "practice" is one of the most widely deployed terms in academic rhetoric provokes suspicion. It abounds in discourse about such topics as Buddhist meditative practices, gender constructing practices in the workplace, and practice as the context for defending classical virtues. This surplus seems to indicate we have reached methodological consensus across disciplines about the advantages of interpreting human activities as practices. The increase of a term's circulation, however, correlates to a decrease in semantic coherence. The ambivalence of "practice" is reflected in the competing discourses of Alasdair MacIntyre's "After Virtue" and Catherine Bell's "Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice." These offer radically different approaches to practices. I do not seek to demonstrate that one captures practice more precisely, claiming practice is more a matter of ethics than power, or vice versa. Instead, I seek to consolidate their accounts to generate a more comprehensive concept for analyzing specific activities.
Alina Haliliuc
Communication Studies The Facebook Between Carnivalesque and Baudrillardian Obscenity: Or An Attempt to Answer the Question Who Are These People?
The Facebook is one of the largest networking website, and the number one site for photos with 2.3 million photos updated daily, which places it ahead of even photo-only websites such as Flickr. This essay looks at the photographs uploaded on Facebook in order to attempt an answer to the question: how are student identities written into being as a result of the special dynamics between The Facebook, as a virtual carnivalesque space, and the mundane non-mass-mediated reality of college students? I argue that the type of performances that one sees on Facebook combined with the everyday use of / access to this network erase the boundaries between public and private, original and copy, carnival and mundane. Indeed, in trying to explain a phenomenon that can no longer fit the binary logic of private-public, taboo-accepted, real-fake, this essay recommends Baudrillard’s notion of obscenity as a more appropriate framework for understanding the identities under construction of college students. It also points at potential implications of the loss of the previously mentioned distinctions.
Alina Haliliuc
Communication Studies Gadjo Dilo: (Sub/Supra)National Encounters in (Non)Translation
The (re)construction of European identity after the fall of Communism and in the context of European Union’s subsequent enlargement is a vivid research topic for many disciplines. Through a close reading of the polyglot film, Gadjo Dilo, this essay interrogates how national, sub-national, and supra-national identities are constructed in relationship to each other. The underlying premise is that the genre of the polyglot film has unique potential to articulate messages about sub/supra/national identities, a potential that comes from treating language not as a self-effacing, transparent medium, but as a central element of the film. Who translates whom, to whom, who is refused translation, who is constantly mistranslated are the questions that will direct the central inquiry: how is European identity imagined? I argue that this identity is constructed through an encounter with Balkan subject positions, through the mobilization of the discourse of Balkanism when talking about populations in the Balkans. Through the French character’s inhabiting of such discursive space, the film means to redeem the hegemonic European subject from his Orientalist sins; such redemption, though, commits the renewed European identity to a discourse of what some scholars call postmodern racism (Rathzel) or racism of hybridity (Zizek).
Chiemi Hanzawa
Second Language Acquisition Choosing the appropriate Japanese demonstrative KO, SO, and A: Importance of shared knowledge
Japanese demonstrative words (e.g. this in English) Ko, So, and A are used to indicate something physically present (deictic use), as well as to refer to something in a discourse (anaphoric use). Although deictic use has been explained by the distance and the notion of territory, consensus has not been reached on the anaphoric use. This study compares Kuno’s (1973) notion of shared knowledge and Takubo & Kinsui’s (1997) Mental Space Theory and investigates which one can better explain the choice of anaphoric demonstrative. The results of the acceptability judgment test show that the notion of shared knowledge is the strongest factor when choosing the appropriate anaphoric demonstrative, but the possibility is not limited to one demonstrative in some contexts. The results of the same test by learners of Japanese did not show the similar patterns. Learners relied on neither of the factors, but heavily on their knowledge on the deictic demonstratives.
Gary Jarvis
History Of Vegetables and Virility: Vegetarianism and the Rhetoric of Masculinity in Britain and the United States, 1890-1910
A century ago, vegetarian advocates in the US and Britain seemed to have had quite a bit going for them. Vegetarian societies were flourishing, vegetarian restaurants were opening in dozens of cities, and new rationales for a meat-free diet were emerging as a result of evolutionary evidence suggesting that humans and animals were far more closely related than previously thought. Despite this apparent progress for their cause, however, dietary reformers found their efforts thwarted by a frustrating and intractable obstacle: the deeply-rooted cultural constructions of gender that associated meat with manhood and vegetarianism with weakness and effeminacy. In an era when many saw the big-stick-carrying, big-game-hunting Teddy Roosevelt as something of an ideal man, this was of no small concern. Drawing on a variety of contemporary vegetarian publications, I argue that vegetarian reformers embraced this challenge, and deliberately sought to undermine or even replace existing constructions by providing an alternative discourse of masculinity and diet in which vegetarian men were athletic and masculine, and in which being truly manly meant not causing harm to other sentient beings.
Douglas Jones
Religious Studies "Oh Let Me Not Serve So": Mysticism, Love's Idolatry, and the Iconoclastic Act in Early Modern England
Starting with a few well-documented instances of iconoclasm following the success of the English reformation, this paper will examine both the theological and literary heritage of such responses in the brand of Pauline interiority articulated by the twelfth-century nun Heloise in letters to her former lover, Peter Abelard. At issue in the letters is the seeming reversibility of cardinal virtues and carnal desire, in which the line between the love of the bridegroom in the mystic tradition and the love of Abelard grows perilously thin. I hope to show that anxiety over this reversibility resurfaces in the destruction of images. The demand that the mysterious reveal itself as a simple artifice of popish superstition, that it be stripped of its intended meaning, will be shown to reveal a fear, not only of all things Catholic, but of intensely liminal, mystical experience.
Dauna Kiser
History The Gift of Caritas: Un-gendering Medieval Theories
Caritas, or charity, is an important expression of compassion for one another in our modern society. It was also an important concept in thirteenth-century religious circles. This invisible bond between the human soul and the divine mind carried more than material benefits to other people. Medieval women and men learned to connect to the divine and teach others to do the same, yet we know very little about women theorists in the records of our educational history. This paper presents the theories on caritas as a gift in the theories of two women and two men, discussing this form of love as itself a gift and a carrier of other gifts from the divine. This paper argues that when gender is set aside, medieval theorists (women and men) have a surprisingly common understanding of what caritas is and how it relates in regard to both the divine and the human soul.
Lynne Larsen
Art History Marking Royal Territory, Asserting Kingly Power: Spatial and Visual Legitimization in the Palace of Dahomey
The Kings of the pre-colonial West African kingdom of Dahomey were wealthy and militarily powerful. In the center of their administrative capital, Abomey, lay the palace complex, rich with art objects. The ceremonial display of wealth allowed the king to authenticate his rule symbolically and economically to the citizens who viewed it. Human remains also functioned within the palace complex as religious symbols of sacrifice and the political symbols of victorious war, economic prosperity, and royal power over life. The palace complex of pre-colonial of Dahomey included spatial designations and visual elements that legitimized the king politically, through boundaries which kept him separate from others, socially, through the presence of wives, their power, and his control over them, economically, through the display of wealth and art objects, and militarily, through the display and use of human remains, slaves, and a powerful army.
Michael Lawrence
Communication Studies Lists of Loss: The Names of the Dead of 9/11
The list of names of the dead of 9/11 has become a pervasive memorial text, recited yearly at commemorative ceremonies, widely disseminated through newspapers and websites, and ultimately carved in the stone of local and national memorials. Though the list itself is generally understood as a neutral fact of history, I argue that the list of names is a rhetorical object that functions to construct a particular vision of great loss as both private and public, individual and collective, on a scale at once intimate and massive. The public discourse about the list of names ascribes to it a certain purpose and power while all the while covering over this dimension to insist on its mere facticity and purely referential function.
Barbaranne Liakos
Art & Art History The Civil War and Women's Rights: F.O.C. Darley's 'Michigan Bridget'
Until recently, few publications about the American Civil War have acknowledged the numerous women who engaged in active combat. The collective memory of Civil War battlefield engagements remains focused on masculine actions. However, during the late nineteenth century, some of these little known female soldiers emerged in visual imagery and in text. One of the most interesting of these was a print entitled "A Woman in Battle 'Michigan Bridget' Carrying the Flag" immortalized both by an artist, Felix Octavius Carr Darley, one of the most popular and sought after American book illustrators in the nineteenth century, and an author, Mary Livermore, a writer and important wartime Sanitary Commission agent. An investigation of the iconography contained in this print, Darley’s other images of heroic women, and Livermore s political ideals suggests that this image embodies a strong appeal for gender equity in the guise of a battle image.
Jill Allison Miller
Art History The Role of Orpheus on the Underworld Painter s Munich Krater
Orpheus, the celebrated musician of Greek mythology, frequently appears in red-figure Underworld scenes on fourth-century South Italian vases to retrieve his deceased wife, Eurydice. However, his iconographic interpretation remains controversial on a monumental funerary volute krater by the Underworld Painter (ca. 330-310 B.C.), now located in Munich. Although the Underworld Painter includes Eurydice s apparition on a similar vase, the Munich krater portrays him either performing alone for the Underworld rulers, Hades and Persephone, or conducting a family of Orphic initiates to paradise. Consulting both ancient and modern sources reveals that the Underworld Painter s composition may hold Orphic cult significance and link the musician to other afterlife beliefs and shamanistic traditions in the ancient world.
Cheyenne Nimes
English/Nonfiction Writing Program Terrorism & Global Warming: Prose Meditations
Hybrid, cross-genre nonfiction, poetry and fiction as a valid approachable form to convey information (without the limitations of straight, staid narrative) on relevant contemporary topics via pre-apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic tone, mood, and setting more akin to the non-linear way humans think and experience the universe; a systematic attempt via the urgency of language in the piling of images and short phrases that jump-cut to build accretions of meaning. Use of the second person and guest appearances of a phantom third person cause a non-exclusionary open narrative presence that does not resist the notational accretions; instead, it allows for more of an entering in. Clarity, precision, and beauty of the language juxtapose with etherealness in these tiny discrete pieces to birth less traditional connections, allowing my reader an opportunity to arrive organically at her or his own thoughts and feelings… reactions and conclusions not handed to one from a news report.
Michele Petersen
Religious Studies Absence as Presence: Silence, Reflexive Consciousness, and Transcendence in the Writings of Paul Ricoeur
Paul Ricoeur writes an elusive portrait of context as he constitutively forms the self through the movement of reflexivity. The relational realities of existence coincide in this interior space where reflexivity creates depth. By applying our moral creative capabilities in our interiorly lived reality, we can expand context which increases our ability to respond to others. I am phenomenologically thinking silence into our discourse as a communicative language of transcendence, a moral creative act whereby intentional silence is an action-intending action. As awareness of the non-coincidence of the finite and infinite poles of human existence heightens, a parallel unity occurs between finite opposites in realizing the one that I am here. And, in realizing the one that I am here, I am questioning myself as a thinking being.
Meryl Carlson
Communication Studies Vulnerability, Violence and Technology
As early as September 11, 2002, Time magazine’s Benjamin Nugent was asking, “Where’s the 9/11 Film?” With the premiere of United 93 at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 25 and the nationwide release on April 28, 2006, the counter-question became, “Are we ready for the 9/11 Film?” The emotional and communal response to the release of the film may open a renewed consideration of the status of 9/11 in collective memory, public discourse, and by extension public policy. Of particular relevance is the proposal by Judith Butler (2004) that melancholia can function productively rather than pathologically. I invoke Foucauldian technologies of power and signification to understand the work the film may accomplish towards recovery from collective trauma. Ultimately, I argue that in utilizing the sign system of the docudrama, and the disciplinary power of the theatre, the film is unlikely to foster the other-orientation needed for productive melancholia.
James Lambert
English Nick Bottom: Pyramus, Thisbe, Lion, Antitheatricalist, Ass
Critics date the first production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at around 1595, a time when the London pamphlet wars were raging. Antitheatrical prejudice had been granted a renaissance in the late sixteenth century, and several well-read tracts and treatises had recently denounced public playhouses. Antitheatric antics were especially proliferate just as drama itself was experiencing a surge of public interest and royal support. Many Elizabethan playwrights, Shakespeare certainly included, reacted with and against the sentiment. In my presentation, I will argue for a reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a direct response to many of the criticisms leveled against the stage in the late sixteenth century. I do this by presenting Bottom, who I consider to be the center of the play, as an embodiment of both the fears and the defenses of the stage. In several rigorous close readings of Bottom’s speeches, I will demonstrate his allegorical function as conflicted antitheatricalist.
Jeff Doty
English Shakespearean Popularity and the Early Modern Public Sphere
Post-revisionist historians Peter Lake, Steve Pincus, and others have recently turned to the sixteenth-century term "popularity" as an entry point into reconstructions of the public sphere in early modern England. They emphasize printed appeals to the public and the use of popularity as a pejorative for others’ appeals. This paper argues that Shakespeare’s representations of popularity enrich such a project by restoring the performative and performance aspects of cultivating popular affection. Rather than simply condemning or revering popularity, Shakespeare explores its instrumental use by politicians, its way of inviting the people to think of themselves as political agents, and its application as a rhetorical theme. The ambivalence of Shakespeare’s depiction of popularity stems from these threads, and it pushes his audiences toward cognitive rather than emotive reactions, foregrounding how players and playgoers might recognize themselves as a public and their own thought as being inherently political.
Claire Kovacs
Art History Luc-Olivier Merson's Je vous salue, Marie: Reading Tradition and Modernity in Religious Painting
Painter Luc-Olivier Merson approached his compositions through the manipulation of traditional Italian Renaissance constructs, coupled with the conscious insertion of these concepts into the milieu of contemporary society. In doing so, he invests his supernatural subject matter with a distinctly human quality. The possibility of creating authentic religious paintings in the nineteenth century was a point of contention, given voice by Hegel’s prediction that, in spite of the decline of religion in the general culture, painters would continue to paint religious pictures, but they will not force us to our knees. While it is impossible to state whether Merson recaptured the transcendental aura of the divine, Je vous salue, Marie (1892) expresses the work of a man attempting to combine two spheres of artistic influence: the impact of the religious paintings of the past and his desire to embody these influences in a contemporary Realist guise.
Sharon Meilahn Bartlett
French and Italian Haiti's Crisis of Masculinity and Rising Poto Mitan
Politicians like to describe Haitian women as the poto mitan of Haitian society after the central pole that holds the roof of Voodoo temples it also is an accurate description of the central role Haitian women play in Haiti’s society. Haiti’s Duvalier dictatorships, corruption, violence, and the arrival and exile of Jean-Bertrand Aristide all constitute what Kaja Silverman calls “historical trauma”. In the film Vers le sud (Heading South, Laurent Cantet 2006) the most apparent impact of the historical trauma is the destabilization of the male subject’s access to wealth. The purpose of my analysis is to establish the impact of wealth on the crisis of masculinity in this historical context, identify key instances of destabilized gender roles, and evaluate the claim of historians like Philippe Girard that Haitian women are assuming the prominent role in society as masculinity declines.
Matt Thomas
American Studies Moving Lips, Wagging Tails: The Dogville Comedies and Post-Synch Film Sound
The Dogville Comedies were a series of short films released by MGM between 1929 and 1931 featuring dogs walking upright, wearing clothing, and "talking." People dubbed the dialogue, their voices synched up with the dogs' moving lips. Film scholars have ignored these films, but I propose to take them seriously to ask how they might help us better understand Hollywood sound practices circa 1930. Sources from the period suggest that people were fascinated by their use of post-synchronous sound. Yet at the same time, people were highly suspicious of post-synchronous sound in general. My thesis is that the Dogville Comedies, in light of this dialectic, worked to allay people's anxieties about post-synchronous sound by transforming it into something to be laughed at. These films thus worked to pave the way for the acceptance of post-synchronous sound more broadly by transforming it into something that one could and should take pleasure in.
Erica Bazemore
English "A Different Kind of Jazz: Rereading the Skyscraper City as Visual Text"
In her essay, Skyscrapers, Airplanes, and Airmindedness: The Necessary Angel, Ann Douglass explores the influence of jazz culture in Manhattan during the decades of the 1920s and 1930s. This period came to be known as the “Aerial Age” because it was associated with the commodification of the air as a marketable product manifesting itself in the form of radio frequencies, airplanes, and skyscrapers (Douglass 196). What is largely missing from Douglass’s celebratory reading of the city is a discussion of the migration of African Americans during the Great Migration which was concurrent with the incipient stages of the Jazz Age and the Aerial Age. I would like to complicate Ann Douglas’s reading of the city by drawing upon other ways in which we can reconstruct the urban narratives during the emergence of both the rising skyline and the Jazz Age.
Heidi Bean
English The Hope and Failure of Amiri Baraka's Black Nationalist Poet's Theater
With its unusual mix of absurdist language, jazz aesthetics, and Black Nationalist politics, Amiri Baraka’s 1968 play Home on the Range baffles most contemporary critics. But in its own era, it seemed destined for an auspicious career, with several key performances and publication in the nation s top avant-garde theater journal. This essay explores both the promise and eventual failure of the play, linking its much-maligned textual aesthetics to Baraka’s larger political program of cultural performativity as well as to American theater history of the 1960s. More than most plays, this essay argues, Home on the Range is both product and victim of its historical and aesthetic moment--a clash of pro-textual experimental theater, 1960s anti-textual ritualism, Black Nationalist ideology, and the emerging sense of cultural performativity championed by the new social movements, all coming together at a particularly activist moment in African American cultural history.
Adam Bradford
English "Hard and Patient Labor:" Cable's "The Grandissimes" and the Problem of Social Progress
Without question, the 19th Century Republican ideology that wedded labor and social progress marked one of the key points of disagreement between the North and the South leading up to the Civil War. For many Northern individuals a social system based on “free” (as opposed to "slave") labor represented a mode of life that promised both a sense of personal nobility gained through one's actions as a laborer and opportunities for social mobility and economic growth. This presentation investigates why this distinctively Northern ideology of labor appears to have been ironically attractive to an affectively loyal Southerner, George Washington Cable, during the era of Reconstruction. Through a sustained reading of his novel The Grandissimes this presentation shows Cable's preoccupation with an ideology of labor that, like antebellum Republican discourse, intrinsically (if not anachronistically) tied labor to ideas of moral and social progress and promised to give back to the now “Silent South” a voice worthy of being heard, and a culture worthy of being celebrated.
Sarah Dees
Religious Studies Religious Studies Methodology (In 3-D!): A Descriptive Model of Approaches
Just as religious adherents may disagree on practices within their tradition, so may scholars of religion disagree on the proper way to approach their objects of study. The insider-outsider debate in religious studies has prompted representatives of some methodological and theoretical camps to vie for dominance, asserting that their particular approach yields superior understanding and explanation. However, rather than arguing for an elusive ideal, developing a descriptive model of contrasting approaches could allow scholars to locate themselves with regard to others, and more easily recognize how they may proceed with more productive arguments. Past attempts at categorizing scholarly perspectives have used a scholar’s position on the insider-outsider gradient as the sole item for comparison. I propose instead a model that takes into account scholars’ methods and goals in addition to their positions, which will provide a more comprehensive basis for the evaluation of scholarly approaches in religious studies.
Amber Griffioen
Philosophy The Irrational Project: Toward a Different Understanding of Self-Deception
Generally viewed as highly paradoxical, self-deception has emerged as a problematic concept from both an epistemic and a moral standpoint. In this paper, I attempt to construct an account of self-deception that avoids the epistemic paradoxes. I examine two philosophical accounts of self-deception that I take to be problematic, before developing an alternative account that does away with these problems. I propose that that self-deception properly refers to a process, rather than a state. I discuss this view in detail, and conclude by mentioning a few questions raised by such an account that stand in need of further discussion.
Hassman Benjamin
Philosophy Recapturing Reference for (Some) Sorites-Susceptible Predicates
The sorites paradox argues against the existence of many objects, including heaps of sand and bald heads (put precisely, nothing can be bald, nor a heap). This essay paves a path back to genuine property reference for certain sorites-susceptible predicates, which thereby escape the wrath of this knotty paradox. In the end, it argues two claims. First, the proper conclusion to draw from sorites is prima facie nominalism for susceptible predicates rather than the ultima facie nominalism many accept. Second, such predicates can refer to a genuine four-place relational property that escapes the accusation of vagueness inherent in sorites-susceptibility.
Mark Bresnan
English Chris Bachelder's Bear v. Shark and the Triumph of Fan Speculation
What, if anything, do sports fans do? Contemporary American culture pays close attention to the games that fans watch, the stadiums in which they sit, and the often outrageous costumes they wear. In this presentation, I argue that fan voices are much more articulate and nuanced than the cheers and jeers that seem to cohere into unitary roar. American sports fans are instead defined by the written and oral texts they author. These fan texts are the subject of Chris Bachelder’s 2001 novel Bear v. Shark, an allegory of contemporary sports culture that emphasizes the role of broadcast media in shaping fan discourse. I use Bear v. Shark’s fictional fan culture as a lens through which to examine a variety of real fan communities including the self-described Hawkeye Nation, a web forum devoted to University of Iowa athletics. Each of these examples demonstrates the increasingly important role of speculation in fan discourses. I argue that the changes in both sports culture and communication technology that have occurred over the last two decades have transformed speculation into the dominant mode through which sports fans express themselves.
Adrienne Ho
Cinema and Comparative Literature Translating an Echo: Intersubjective Voices of Augustan Poet Sulpicia
In the European tradition, a translator of Classical verse relies on historical, archaeological and literary evidence as a biographical guide. However, with Sulpicia, the only extant female poet of Augustan Rome, we have no extra-textual biographical information, and philologists, literary critics, and commentators alike have rallied to the question, “Who is Sulpicia?” by representing Sulpicia’s corpus in multiplicitous, conflicting ways. This paper will show that translation, like commentary, is shaped by interpretive method. But, unlike in commentary, the hermeneutic choices facing any authorial translator extends into more difficult terrain than message. Sulpicia’s poems are a case in point where an authorial translator must recreate aspects like voice, which is often supplemented by biography. Because each translator’s answer to “Who is Sulpicia?” determines how Sulpicia’s corpus is represented, the primary concern of this paper is with the polyvocalic quality articulated by literary criticism and commentary, and the implications for a translator responsible to intersubjective voices. Instead of concluding that Sulpicia’s poems adhere to a strictly historical voice, this paper will consider Sulpicia’s poetry as an echo.
Tom Keegan
English
Making an entrance: At the threshold of the pub in James Joyce's Dubliners and Ulysses
A man walks into a pub. The doorstep of humor. That shopworn entrance for many jokes also freights a host of critical concerns for Irish literature. While the sentence orients the spatial terms of the joke, it can just as easily orient the reader to similar concerns in the narratives of James Joyce’s Dubliners and Ulysses. There, moments of entrance into the pub offer readers detailed geographies of both character and space that ask us to observe the pub's spatial and practice-oriented engagement with the art of storytelling. Joyce traces out a phenomenology of the pub that provides a more nuanced understanding of the Irish everyday than is often the case in a discipline dominated by post/anti/semi/colonial readings of the texts in question.
Chad Wriglesworth
English
Hydroelectric Development and the Columbia River: Accounts of Water and Work in Raymond Carver’s Poetry
In 1938, Richard Neuberger published Our Promised Land, an account of the Pacific Northwest that bolstered American nationalism and the production of hydroelectric dams along the Columbia River. The largest of these projects was the Grand Coulee Dam, a concrete mammoth designed to provide jobs, irrigate land, and provide cheap electricity for a surging number of western inhabitants. In an essay titled "My Father's Life," Raymond Carver locates his father among the thousands of wanderers who migrated west in order to build the dam. However, like many of the region's laborers, Carver's father was unable to locate the promises that lured him. As this paper suggests, paying attention to the documentary style of Carver's prose and poetry offers critics and historians some important insight into ways hydroelectric development shaped the social, economic, and spiritual experiences of people who inhabit this region.
The work presents three multiscale models, including sequential, invasive, and concurrent models, for fracture analysis of a crack in a two-phase, functionally graded composite. The models involve statistical description of the particle volume fractions, particle
locations, and constituent material properties; a two-scale algorithm including microscale and macroscale analyses for determining crack-driving forces; and two stochastic methods for fracture reliability analysis. Numerical results indicate that the sequential and invasive multiscale models are the most computationally
inexpensive models available, but they may not produce acceptable probabilistic characteristics of stress-intensity factors or accurate probability of fracture initiation. The concurrent multiscale model is sufficiently accurate, gives probabilistic solutions very close
to those generated from the microscale model, and can reduce the computational effort of the latter model by more than a factor of two.
Ming Yang
Biostatistics Computing shortest confidence interval from an indirect approach
The confidence intervals introduced in most statistical textbooks do not necessarily have shortest interval length. Plenty of work has been done to minimize interval length with coverage probability fixed in advance. Then optimization problem can be converted to solving two resulting equations, including an integral equation. However, solving those two equations simultaneously is difficult and that is why shortest confidence interval is seldom included in textbooks. This article presents an indirect approach to compute shortest confidence interval and we need only solve a single equation. An example is presented to compute the shortest confidence interval of normal variance. Since the computation is greatly simplified and does not rely on a high-speed computer, it is recommended the shortest confidence interval be covered in classroom presentation.
Interaction of Shocks with multi-material interfaces is an important phenomenon in several applications, including high speed-flows with droplets, bubbles and particles, detonations and hypervelocity impact and penetration. To simulate such complicated shock diffraction phenomenon, a fixed Cartesian grid approach in conjunction with level set interface tracking is attractive. In this framework, the challenge lies in accurately and robustly handling shock-interface interactions, particularly if the material is treated in a sharp fashion and is not diffused over the grid as in volume averaging approaches. In this regard, the Ghost Fluid Method (GFM) has been widely used to capture the interface conditions. However, the GFM results in severe over and under heating errors and hence must be supplemented with additional corrective measures to refrain these errors from growing. The Characteristic Based Matching (CBM) was found to be effective in significantly reducing these errors. However, the implementation of the CBM approach is more involved than the straightforward GFM approach. In this work, a simple, easy and an efficient approach is presented which is found to converge at least as fast as the CBM approach. This approach involves the use of a local Riemann solver to correct the over/under heating errors. In the case of the fluid fluid interfaces, it is relatively straightforward to setup the Riemann problem but it is not trivial for the case of solid fluid interfaces. Here, the method has been shown and tested for a wide range of problems and has been found to work effectively.
Martin Thuo
Chemistry pot-in-pot reactions: site-isolation of organometallic catalysts for versatile cascade reactions and recycling
We succesfully occluded Grubbs catalysts in polymeric membranes leading to new reactivities and Selectivities.1,2 Herein we report the macro-fabrication and application of PDMS in pot-in-pot reactions.3,4 These newly discovered tool exploits selective diffusion of small molecules across a polymeric barrier to site-isolate organometallic catalysts, solvents, and/or reagents. This efficient site-isolation allowed us to perform new cascade reactions based on well understood reactions. Our findings will be discussed.
Pradeep Mandapaka
Civil & Environmental Engineering Space-time Scaling Analysis of Rainfall Events over Central United States and Florida
Comprehensive statistical characterization of several rainfall events over central United States and Florida is carried out in terms of first order statistics (e.g., mean accumulation and intermittency), spatial dependence statistics (e.g., correlation and power spectrum), and time correlations for different spatial aggregations. In addition, the study also investigated the rainfall events for the presence of multiscale statistical structure. Rainfall fluctuations in all the events displayed multiscaling behavior, which is summarized in terms of generalized structure function and moment scaling function. For the analysis, customized high resolution radar-rainfall products based on Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) network Level II data are obtained from the Hydro-NEXRAD system at the University of Iowa. Only the summer season events from the year 2000 to 2007 are considered to avoid any seasonal effects on the results.
Brian Barry
Chemistry Low-temperature Solvothermal Synthesis of Single-phase, Phosphorus-rich Transition-metal Phosphides
Transition-metal phosphides (TMPs) are well-known for their capability to form a wide variety of binary phases with varying stoichiometries. These phases can range from metal-rich to phosphorus-rich, and in turn exhibit an extensive assortment of properties including semiconducting, ferromagnetic, catalytic and optoelectronic to name a few. When nanoparticles are produced, the properties can differ from their bulk counterparts and may even be tuned. Because of this, the synthesis of nanoparticles has recently received a great deal of attention. Of the reported TMP phases, only a small fraction have been reported as nanoparticles, nearly all of which are metal-rich or monophosphides. The synthesis and characterization of phosphorus-rich TMP nanoparticles is virtually unexplored. We have found that the reaction of some anhydrous metal chlorides with white phosphorus (P4) in superheated toluene can produce nano and sub-micron particles of CoP3, NiP2 and CuP2.
The paper discusses a probabilistic solution to the fault-containment problem for a class of distributed systems. The solution transforms a self-stabilizing distributed system into a system that is both weakly fault-containing and self-stabilizing, with a randomized scheduler. Weak fault-containment means that from all single failures, the expected recovery time of the transformed version is dependent only on the degree of the nodes. Furthermore, observable changes are confined to only the immediate neighbors of the faulty processes with a high probability. Why should anyone care about an algorithm that allows the neighbors to be contaminated? The answer lies in the small fault-gap. Most solutions to fault-containment that we know of achieve a fault-gap of O(n) or worse. Our solution guarantees that the fault-gap depends only on the degree of the nodes, and is independent of the size of the network.
Si-Chi Chin
Informatics (Information Science) Plural Analysis in Two Linguistic Copora
Text normalization, meaning the conversion of terms to the base forms, is widely applied as a method to cluster words with the same concepts. The conversion of plural forms into singular ones, namely depluralization, is used by many implementations of information retrieval as a minimal text normalization technique. Although some research indicates that such a normalization process would impede word sense disambiguation and text classification, truly thorough research on the distribution of plurals and singulars in a large corpus is absent from current literature. This paper analyzes the usage of plurals and singulars in a Reuters Newswire corpus and Supreme Court Opinion corpus and a to evaluate the potential information loss from depluralization process.
Arda Konik
Biomedical Engineering Development of an Automated [15O]Water Production/Injection System for Positron Emission Tomography
An automated radioactive water ([15O]H2O) production and injection system, controlled by a PC running LabView software, has been developed to minimize the radiation exposure to the PET personnel and to enable single subject studies in which a high number of injections are administered in rapid succession. The system is capable of producing [15O]H2O at desired radioactivity levels (up to 150-180 mCi at 10 µA deuteron beam current) in a very small volume (<2ml) and delivering it at various pump speeds. The system hardware mainly consists of computer controlled solenoid valves and syringe pump, a diffusion unit and a PMT (photomultiplier tube) detector mounted on it.
Zuhong Zhang
Biostatistics A Bivariate Survival Model for the Association of GB Virus Type C Persistence Time and HIV Survival Time
The motivation for this study is through the investigation of the association between infection with a virus, GBV-C virus Type C (GBV-C), and survival time of HIV-infected people. Several recent studies suggest that persistent co-infection of GBV-C is associated with prolonged HIV survival, while several other studies did not find any association and some even concluded that there is a negative association. All previous studies compared the Kaplan-Meier survival probabilities for HIV-infected subjects with or without GBV-C infection. However, the two-sample comparison method used in these studies does not adjust for GBV-C persistence time, which may vary from subject to subject due to its self-clearance nature. The model developed in this paper treats GBV-C diagnostic tests over time as providing interval censored data on the time of GBV-C persistence. An inference procedure is developed to study the association of HIV survival time and GBV-C persistence time in the existence of hybrid censoring. We established asymptotic properties of the association estimate and applied the method to a Muiti-center AIDS Cohort Study.
Yan Feng
Physics and Astronomy Accurate particle position measurement from images
The moment method is an image analysis technique for subpixel estimation of particle positions. The total error in the calculated particle position includes effects of pixel locking and random noise in each pixel. Pixel locking, also known as peak locking, is an artifact where calculated particle positions are concentrated at certain locations relative to pixel edges. We report simulations to gain an understanding of the sources of error and their dependence on parameters the experimenter can control. We suggest an algorithm, and we find optimal parameters an experimenter can use to minimize total error and pixel locking. For a dusty plasma experiment, we find that a subpixel accuracy of 0.017 pixel or better can be attained. These results are also useful for improving particle position measurement and particle tracking velocimetry using video microscopy in fields including colloids, biology, and fluid mechanics.
Nicole Kallemeyn
Biomedical Engineering Toward Patient-Specific Finite Element Mesh Development and Validation of the Spine
Finite element (FE) analysis is a useful tool to study spine biomechanics; an accurate model, once validated, has the potential to yield clinically relevant results which will aid in the treatment of spine pathologies. The anatomy of the spine is very complex, making it difficult and time consuming to create a geometrically accurate FE mesh. Most current models are based on simplified or generalized geometry, and are not created on a patient-specific basis, which is of importance. Using an extension of existing multi-block techniques, we propose novel methods for patient-specific FE mesh development of the spine, which enable the user to create spine FE models much more quickly than traditional methods. We have created a CT based cervical spine functional spinal unit (C45) FE model that to date has been validated by comparison to experimental data in the literature. Future work will include specimen-specific validation of our models.
Piotr Domaszczynski
Civil and Environmental Engineering Hydro-NEXRAD: System Overview
Hydro-NEXRAD is a prototype system that allows hydrologists to obtain user-specified rainfall data for their research. These data are based on observations collected by the national network of WSR-88D radars, known as NEXRAD. Users interact with Hydro-NEXRAD through a web-based interface that has map-based components for spatial navigation, calendar- and time series plot components for temporal navigation and a menu-based component for selection of processing options. Through the interface, users browse the Hydro-NEXRAD metadata and select data of interest. As the system is approaching the point of being fully operational, the authors and a group of test users have evaluated several aspects of the system. Metadata remains very important for the system functionality. Radar-based, basin-based and point (for selected set of rain gauge locations) metadata serve multiple purposes: 1) enable users to efficiently search for subsets of data (SQL query, visual inspection), 2) provide information on quality of the collected data archive (missing or corrupt data), 3) and have a scientific value (basin-based metadata has a potential to be used as a precipitation input to hydrologic models). Author provides an overview of the Hydro-NEXRAD system.
Gary Pierce
Biomedical Engineering Isokinetic 3D Shoulder Strength Assessment: Preliminary Internal External Rotation Strength Surfaces
This work experimentally measures maximal shoulder joint torque at several isometric positions and angular velocities to develop 3D surfaces of peak torque as a function of position and velocity. We will specifically focus on internal and external rotation strength, as this is important for rotator cuff stability at the shoulder joint. This testing is being conducted using both isometric (static) and isokinetic (dynamic) contractions. The testing is currently ongoing; preliminary results will be presented. We hypothesize that the resulting 3D internal rotation strength surface will differ from that of external rotation: peak torques will occur at different angles, the shapes of the strength surfaces will vary due to the differing muscle biomechanics of the shoulder rotators; and internal rotation torque will be greater than external rotation torque, based on previous research. Currently, shoulder strength data is only available in 2D as torque-velocity or torque-position curves, without considering their potential interactions. This study will provide the first 3D surface of torque, as a function of joint position and velocity, for the shoulder joint.
Debra Ely
Biomedical Engineering Study of Microvolt T-wave Alternans as a Predictor for Sudden Cardiac Death
Heart disease is the number one killer among men and women in the United States. Microvolt T-wave alternans (MTWA) has been identified as a precursor to ventricular arrhythmias (VT) and ventricular fibrillation, which are predecessors of sudden cardiac death (SCD). MTWA is a noninvasive and inexpensive risk assessment used to identify a patient at risk for SCD. We looked at the effect of drugs, VT, and ligation in regards to alternans ratio to help identify mechanisms related to MTWA. Data showed that an hour after occlusion infarct size stabilized as a result of ligation and endothelin consistently increased alternans ratio when administered.
Srinivas Tadepalli
Biomedical Engineering Cervical Laminoplasty Construct Stability: A Finite Element Study
Cervical laminoplasty is a widely used surgical technique to treat spinal cord compression caused by cervical spondylotic myelopathy, ossification of the posterior longitudinal ligament, congenital spinal stenosis, or a combination thereof. Cervical laminoplasty permits extensive canal decompression while maintaining cervical alignment and stability. The single-hinge laminoplasty technique consists of opening the lamina from either the left or right side, with the contra lateral side acting as a hinge. It still remains unclear as to what extent the lamina must be opened so that the spinal canal is widened for good results. The finite element (FE) method is an ideal tool to determine the biomechanical response of the instrumented cervical spine. A FE model of the fifth cervical(C5) vertebra was created to study the biomechanical stability of a posterior single-hinge cervical laminoplasty via a plating system. Our novel modeling techniques provide a means to capture the complex irregular geometry of cervical spine on a patient-specific basis that will ultimately allow the surgeons to plan patient-specific care. Thus they can better evaluate alternate surgical procedures and treatments thereby contributing to improved surgical outcome.
Poonam Kaushik
Chemistry A sacrificial approach towards the synthesis of reactive targets via template-directed solid-state synthesis
We are involved in developing a synthetic method that utilizes templates to direct the reactivity of molecules within hydrogen-bonded assemblies in solids. We have shown that co-crystallization of resorcinol with trans-1,2-bis(4-pyridyl)ethylene produces hydrogen-bonded assemblies that undergo photochemical [2+2] reaction to produce the corresponding cyclobutane product with a controlled stereochemistry, namely rctt-1,2,3,4-tetrakis(4-pyridyl)cyclobutane. This approach has been used to construct biologically-relevant ladderanes as well as cyclophanes. Owing to the architecture of molecular assemblies in our studies, the molecules constructed via template-directed solid-state syntheses are pyridine derivatives. Although templates have been shown to provide a general means to control bimolecular reactivity in the solid state, the stability of pyridines toward chemical modification can limit the products in downstream synthetic applications. To explore a possible alternative to pyridines, we have investigated benzothiazoles as hydrogen-bond acceptor groups. The benzothiazole ring has been used as a formyl group equivalent in solution-phase organic synthesis. This presentation will illustrate our results in using the benzothiazole functionality as a functional group alternative to pyridines in template-controlled solid-state synthesis to obtain easily-modifiable targets.
Soojeong Kim
Applied Mathematics 4-string tangle analysis of DNA-protein complexes based on difference topology
Difference topology is a methodology to derive the number of DNA crossings trapped in an unknown protein complex. By this method, Pathania et al revealed the topological structure within the Mu protein complex which consisted of three DNA segments containing five nodes. In their experiments, they used a site-specific recombinase which is known as Cre. Cre mediates DNA exchange by rearranging target sites of the DNA segments. The initial DNA conformation is unknotted. After Cre recombination, the products are knots or catenanes. Recently, Darcy et al. proved that the five-noded conformation is the only biologically reasonable structure of the Mu protein DNA complex. We address the possibility of protein complexes that binds four DNA segments. By the property of Cre, we can assume that after Cre recombination, the topology of a DNA-protein complex would be a knot or catenane. The latest results of the mathematical tangle model for this case will be discussed.
Xuefeng Zhao
Mechanical Engineering Pointwise Identification of Elastic Properties in Nonlinear Hyperelastic Membranes
We present an innovative method for characterizing the distributive elastic properties in nonlinear membranes. The method hinges on an inverse elastostatic approach of stress analysis that can compute the wall stress in a deformed convex membrane structure using assumed elastic models without knowing the realistic material parameters. This method of stress analysis, in conjunction with a suitable method for strain data acquisition, lays a foundation for pointwise identification of stress-strain properties in membranes of general convex shape. Based on this inverse method, an experimental methodology is developed to characterize the pointwise property of nonlinear elastic membrane. The results show that the method can effectively delineate the distributive elastic properties in membranes.
David Rotsch
Chemistry Synthesis of Polynuclear Eu(II) Complexes: MRI Contrast Agents for the Detection of Reactive Oxygen Species
There has been an imperative need in the field of medicine for a noninvasive method for the detection and study of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Some ROS have been implicated in aging, cancers, and reperfusion injury in acute myocardial infraction. The incorporation of redox active contrast agents (CA) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may prove to be an effective and noninvasive way to measure ROS levels. Current CA do not possess the ability to change their oxidation states. It is the purpose of this research to synthesize stable redox active CA. Europium, a lanthanide has similar MRI detectability as gadolinium (the active site in current CA) and is redox active. Europium has two accessible oxidization states and each state demonstrates a different MRI signal strengths and thus present potential ROS MRI CA. Herein we discuss the synthesis, findings, hopes and setbacks of high nuclearity clusters as MRI CA.
Dongsu Kim
Civil and Environmental Engineering Three Dimensional Representation of River Hydrodynamics using Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler
The objective of this paper is to highlight the applications of recent Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) for measuring three-dimensional river channel variables. In order to conveniently process, store, and visualize this abundant ADCP information a customized visualization and processing software, labeled AdcpXP, was developed. The present paper also describes initial efforts for developing a multi-dimensional geospatial and temporal data model for representation of river geometry and flow characteristics. The developed Geo-data model, labeled Arc River, is a customized data repository to assimilate various types of three-dimensional hydrodynamic datasets acquired with ADCPs into geodatabase schema on the top of any available relational database management system (RDBMS).
Natalie Ulrich
Chemistry Synthesis of D-Ring Analogues of the Schweinfurthins
The schweinfurthins comprise a small family of natural products isolated from the African tree Macaranga schweinfurthii at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the late 1990s. Most of these compounds exhibit both potent and differential cytotoxicity in the NCI s 60-cell line assay. Of particular interest is the schweinfurthin's unique pattern of cytoxicity toward specific cell lines, a pattern which shows no significant correlation to the profile of any known anticancer agent. This pattern may be indicative of a novel mechanism, a novel molecular target, or both. For the purpose of elucidating the mechanism of action and molecular target of the schweinfurthins, a number of new D-ring analogues have been synthesized. Progress on the synthesis of several schweinfurthin F analogues featuring D-ring modifications, work aimed at biotinylated derivatives for affinity bioassays, and preliminary data from in vitro testing will be presented.
Karna Barquist
Chemistry Amino functionalization of silicious zeolite materials
Zeolite materials were functionalized with amine groups and used for adsorption of chromate anions out of aqueous solutions for use in possible en
