5 research outputs found
Architectural Design of The University Honors Oasis
As the University Honors Program continues to expand, a need for a new space has developed. In working with the faculty and students of the UHP, I have designed a new Honors building for campus. Included are architectural design drawings, renderings, and a design description
LSST Science Book, Version 2.0
A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint
magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science
opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field
of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over
20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with
fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a
total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic
parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book
discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a
broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and
outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies,
the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local
Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the
properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then
turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to
z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and
baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to
constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.Comment: 596 pages. Also available at full resolution at
http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sciboo
Ablation of MEKK4 Kinase Activity Causes Neurulation and Skeletal Patterning Defects in the Mouse Embryo
Skeletal disorders and neural tube closure defects represent clinically significant human malformations. The signaling networks regulating normal skeletal patterning and neurulation are largely unknown. Targeted mutation of the active site lysine of MEK kinase 4 (MEKK4) produces a kinase-inactive MEKK4 protein (MEKK4(K1361R)). Embryos homozygous for this mutation die at birth as a result of skeletal malformations and neural tube defects. Hindbrains of exencephalic MEKK4(K1361R) embryos show a striking increase in neuroepithelial cell apoptosis and a dramatic loss of phosphorylation of MKK3 and -6, mitogen-activated protein kinase kinases (MKKs) regulated by MEKK4 in the p38 pathway. Phosphorylation of MAPK-activated protein kinase 2, a p38 substrate, is also inhibited, demonstrating a loss of p38 activity in MEKK4(K1361R) embryos. In contrast, the MEK1/2-extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1 (ERK1)/ERK2 and MKK4-Jun N-terminal protein kinase pathways were unaffected. The p38 pathway has been shown to regulate the phosphorylation and expression of the small heat shock protein HSP27. Compared to the wild type, MEKK4(K1361R) fibroblasts showed significantly reduced phosphorylation of p38 and HSP27, with a corresponding heat shock-induced instability of the actin cytoskeleton. Together, these data demonstrate MEKK4 regulation of p38 and that substrates downstream of p38 control cellular homeostasis. The findings are the first demonstration that MEKK4-regulated p38 activity is critical for neurulation