Hemocyte-derived proteins from the lobster, \u3ci\u3eHomarus americanus\u3c/i\u3e: Changes in response to an LPS immune system challenge

[Abstract restricted.

The Forest Before Us: Storying the North Maine Woods

Grounded in the soil of the territory now known as the North Maine Woods (NMW), where for millennia Wabanaki peoples lived on and engaged with the land, this thesis explores how the longstanding history of human habitation in and around the Maine woods clashes with colonial narratives that depict the concepts of forest and civilization at complete odds with one another. Instead of offering a comparative look at Western and non-Western cosmologies through the lens of the forest, however, I strive to destabilize the concept of forest itself, foregrounding how multiplicities of meanings, irreducible particularities, and, ultimately, confusion make the forest into fecund insurgent space—ideologically and ecologically. While tidy forest narratives attempt to organize the chaotic matrices of our lives and others’, exploring narrative threads in the North Maine Woods, seeking out knots and loose ends, threatens to undo what we think we know about the stories, the worlds, and the woods enveloping us. Ultimately, my argument is simple: storytelling makes and unmakes how we understand and engage with the Maine woods. Storying the forest produces and reproduces historical yet constantly shifting networks of meaning that decenter any singular (human) perspective while maintaining the entanglements between human and non-human worlds. There is no telling the forest, but this thesis enacts forest kind of storytelling to focus on the relational aspects of getting lost in the Maine woods and reframe conversations about land use, history, and human imaginations of others

Activation of Hydrogen by Sterically Modulated Coinage Metal Catalysts via Mutual Quenching of Hard/Soft Acid/Base Mismatches

To mitigate the devastating environmental impacts of climate change in the coming decades, it is imperative that we replace the use of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric. As these renewable energy sources are inherently intermittent, there exists a need for sustainable mechanisms to store renewable energy for later use. While the direct use of dihydrogen (H2) as a combustible fuel would allow for energy storage without the harmful release of carbon dioxide (CO2) upon combustion, the practicality of H2 as a synthetic fuel is limited by its low volumetric energy density. Combining sustainable H2 production (e.g. electrolysis using energy from renewable sources) with subsequent carbon fixation (e.g. the hydrogenation of CO2) represents a promising pathway to the sustainable production of high-density synthetic fuels. We hypothesize that such a process could be catalyzed by an IPr**-supported catalyst containing a hard/soft acid/base (HSAB) mismatch, with a polarizable coinage metal acting as a soft acid. As such, the aim of our project is the construction of a catalogue of IPr**-supported copper, silver, and gold catalysts that we anticipate will facilitate the heterolysis of dihydrogen and subsequent hydrogenation of CO2. In the present paper, we report the synthesis and characterization of an IPr**-silver complex which will serve as a precursor to many of our proposed HSAB mismatch catalysts and discuss next steps as we construct our catalogue of catalysts

A phylogenomic approach to the blue-barred parrotfish (\u3ci\u3eScarus ghobban\u3c/i\u3e) complex across the Indian and Pacific Oceans

[Abstract embargoed.

Pathways: Montana Stories and Poems

Pathways: Montana Stories and Poems is a collection of five short stories and twenty poems written under the direction of Professor Anthony Walton. In these stories and poems, I contend with my hometown, Dillon, Montana and questions of legacy, responsibility, guilt, identity, and home. The first section, Circling, draws a sketch of Dillon, Montana, with a focus on the ways that the past and present inform each other. The second section, Dead Ends, tells the story of a toxic relationship, and the harm it does to the protagonist and members of the community. The third section, Turning, follows characters in two stories, “Settling” and “Tornado Watch,” as they make choices that will define their lives. The fourth section, To the Sea, describes a home-coming, and the forces that pull us back from destruction

The French Official Mistress: Fashioning Female Political Power in the \u3ci\u3eAncien Régime\u3c/i\u3e

This thesis focuses on the French official mistress as a position of unofficial female political power under the French monarchy from the 16th to the 18th century. Centering on three case studies – Diane de Poitiers, Madame de Maintenon, and Madame de Pompadour – this thesis argues that the role of the official mistress extended beyond sexual companion to advisor, negotiator, diplomat, artistic patron, and cultural trendsetter. By taking a deep look at the epistolary and artistic record of these three official mistresses from across France’s modern history, the extent of their autonomy and political maneuvering becomes clear in the tactics they used to project and solidify their power. Diane de Poitiers, Madame de Maintenon, and Madame de Pompadour all existed in unique contexts of the French court and constructed their own methods of fulfilling the role of the official mistress, revealing both changes in the monarchy and their impacts upon it. Notably, the ways in which they projected identity through self-fashioning resulted in a reflection of this image back onto the monarch, expanding the extent of their impact on the monarchy. In striving to understand the political reality of women in France under Salic law and today, the position of maîtresse-en-titre is a crucial framework to recognize the significance of female power structures at court and in the monarchy, and the degree to which women were able to shape these structures themselves

Self-Censorsh** in the Classroom

Do we understand how often people self-censor? This paper examines self-censorship as a strategic choice based on beliefs about how others will interpret an opinion. Evidence to support theories of self-censorship is limited. This study compares the public and private beliefs of undergraduates students using public and private surveys. The hypotheses to be evaluated are (a) students will self-censor conservative beliefs; (b) students will underestimate the proportion of classmates who hold conservative beliefs and overestimate the proportion of classmates who hold liberal beliefs; (c) self-censorship within classes will vary by academic discipline; and (d) self-censorship will vary depending on which perspective (conservative or liberal) appears first in the survey questions. While evidence varies, there is statistically significant evidence that students self-censor conservative beliefs; “virtue signal” liberal beliefs they do not privately hold; and overestimate the proportion of students who hold private partisan beliefs. Further, changing the order of responses in questions affects self-censorship patterns in the public survey

\u3ci\u3eHe Mauka Teitei\u3c/i\u3e, \u3ci\u3eKo Aoraki\u3c/i\u3e, The Loftiest of Mountains: The Names of Aotearoa’s Highest Peak and Beyond

My thesis discusses the cultural, political, and social dynamics of mountains with separate Indigenous and Western names and identities. Centering on Aoraki/Mount Cook—the highest peak in Aotearoa New Zealand—I integrate personal experiences as ethnographic data through narratives, mainly of my time hiking while studying abroad in New Zealand and during the two recent summers I spent exploring Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Through its name, Aoraki/Mt. Cook maintains Indigenous Māori and Western perspectives: Aoraki being a Māori atua (god) and Captain James Cook being a significant colonial figure in the Pacific. The slash upholds both identities while ensuring that they exist together. These dynamics are explored in depth and extended to mountains in places including Colorado, Alaska, and Australia. While discussing Rocky I rely heavily on Oliver Toll’s Arapaho Names & Trails (2003) which contains a substantial collection of Arapaho knowledge of the area and I give strong attention to Nesótaieux (Longs Peak and Mount Meeker). Additionally, I look at Mount Blue Sky, Denali, and Uluru/Ayers Rock to discuss mountains that have had formal name changes and how legacies are maintained through toponyms. With discussing varying identities and perceptions of each example and the knowledge held in names I encourage readers to do research into local Indigenous knowledges to further their and others’ understandings of places. I emphasize the concepts of historical silences, the revealing of knowledge, and the importance of language to articulate that Indigenous knowledge might be difficult to find but is never truly lost

The Ethiopian Student Movement and the Dilemma of Eritrean Sovereignty

From the perspective of Ethiopian royalists, Pan-Africanists, Marxist internationalists, supports of union, and the broader international community, Eritrean nationalism revealed distressing fissures in many different arguments for preserving Ethiopian territorial unity– arguments not necessarily or explicitly problematic, but nevertheless in opposition to Eritrean demands for the right to national self-determination. For the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM) specifically, Eritrean sovereignty demanded a reconfiguration of Pan-African unity that conflicted with Ethiopian exceptionalist historiography. Through an analysis of student politics at Haile Selassie University, from 1960-1974, this thesis seeks to complicate existing historiography on the ESM by examining the periodically divergent experiences of Eritrean student activists

Are People Blaming Artificial Intelligence More or Less for Incorrect Advice?

[Abstract Restricted