School of PETM Mentoring Plan: Creating a Culture of Advancement

This poster describes the progress and lessons learned as a result of newly implemented Faculty Mentoring Program in the School of Physical Education and Tourism Management

First-Year Seminars Taxonomy

First-year seminars are designed to assist entering students as they form connections with the IUPUI community, including other students, faculty, and advisors in a prospective major. This First-Year Seminars High-Impact Practice Taxonomy seeks to clearly define the features of First-Year Seminars as a high-impact practice. The taxonomy describes four attributes of First-Year Seminars practice along three dimensions of impact—High-Impact, Higher-Impact, and Highest-Impact

Dact1, The “Super-Crosslinker”: Regulation Of Non-Canonical Wnt Signaling During Vertebrate Convergent Extension By Modulating Dishevelled Oligomerization

A broad spectrum of human birth defects arise from the disruption of morphogenesis, the critical process through which tissues and organs acquire their proper shape. Convergent extension (CE) is a universal morphogenetic engine that promotes polarized extension of diverse tissues and organs by regulating directional cell behavior, such as oriented cell intercalation. In vertebrates, CE is regulated by non-canonical Wnt/Planar Cell Polarity (PCP) pathway, an ancient signaling pathway that was originally discovered to coordinate the cellular polarity in the plane of the epithelium. Non-canonical Wnt/PCP signaling shares the Frizzled (Fz) receptor and cytoplasmic signal transducer Dishevelled (Dvl) with the canonical Wnt pathway, but also involves a set of distinct core proteins such as the tetraspanin protein Van gogh (Vang/Vangl) and Dishevelled-associated activator of morphogenesis 1 (Daam1). However, the mechanism of non-canonical Wnt signaling in mesodermal cells during CE has not been well elucidated. Utilizing Xenopus laevis, a well-established model for CE, our lab previously found that Vangl is required for plasma membrane recruitment of Dvl, a pre-requisite of non-canonical Wnt signaling. Sustained binding of Dvl to Vangl, however, inhibits Dvl interaction with Fz, thereby preventing signaling activation. To investigate how Dvl binding to Vangl or Fz may be regulated, I studied DACT1, a cytoplasmic scaffolding protein that interacts with both, Dvl and Vangl. My data revealed that DACT1 synergizes with Dvl2 but antagonizes Vangl2 function during CE, suggesting a clear role in non-canonical Wnt signaling during CE. Additionally, DACT1 disengages Dvl from Vangl, though not via competitive binding at Vangl2, but by inducing Dvl oligomerization. Intriguingly, DACT1-induced Dvl oligomers detach from Vangl2 but interact with Fz7 to form signalosome-like structures at the plasma membrane. Furthermore, in response to a non-canonical Wnt ligand, Wnt11, DACT1 promotes Dvl clustering in membrane patches at the Fz receptor. My results reveal the significant role of DACT1-induced Dvl2 oligomerization in regulating several aspects of non-canonical Wnt signaling during CE: 1) Dvl2 binding partner switch, 2) signalosome formation at Fz, and 3) clustering in response to a Wnt11 ligand. Taken together, my results show that DACT1 plays a novel role in regulating non-canonical Wnt signaling by inducing Dvl oligomerization

A Problem of Perception An Analysis of the Formation, Reception, and Implementation of National Socialist Ideology in Germany, 1919 to 1939

This thesis seeks to dispel the notion that Nazi ideology was merely an afterthought to numerous actions taken by the Nazis. The first chapter discusses how Nazism’s earliest adherents internalized notions from World War I into an ideology that would motivate the early Nazi Movement to launch the Beer Hall Putsch. The second chapter focuses on the Nazi Party’s electoral tactics and how those actions correlated with entrenched Nazi ideological notions of recognition and community. Finally, the third chapter will seek to demonstrate that the numerous repressive measures implemented by the Third Reich were part of a general plan to prepare a future generation of Nazi citizens for, the worldwide struggle for existence. This work exists as a counter to a considerable amount of literature in the historiography that, by maintaining Nazi ideology and Nazi actions were two separate entities, belittles the importance of Nazi ideology thereby fundamentally misunderstanding Nazism

The pathology of sponge orange band disease affecting the Caribbean barrel sponge Xestospongia muta

The aim of this study was to examine sponge orange band (SOB) disease affecting the prominent Caribbean sponge Xestospongia muta. Scanning and transmission electron microscopy revealed that SOB is accompanied by the massive destruction of the pinacoderm. Chlorophyll a content and the main secondary metabolites, tetrahydrofurans, characteristic of X. muta, were significantly lower in bleached than in healthy tissues. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis using cyanobacteria-specific 16S rRNA gene primers revealed a distinct shift from the Synechococcus/Prochlorococcus clade of sponge symbionts towards several clades of unspecific cyanobacteria, including lineages associated with coral disease (i.e. Leptolyngbya sp.). Underwater infection experiments were conducted by transplanting bleached cores into healthy individuals, but revealed no signs of SOB development. This study provided no evidence for the involvement of a specific microbial pathogen as an etiologic agent of disease; hence, the cause of SOB disease in X. muta remains unidentified

Utilizing Wave Packet Molecular Dynamics to Study Warm Dense Matter

Warm Dense Matter (WDM) has emerged as a focal point of scientific intrigue, owed to its substantial implications across a diverse array of physical systems, spanning from the interiors of exoplanets and the pursuit of sustainable energy via inertial confinement fusion to the atmospheric conditions of neutron stars. WDM refers to ionized fluids at the intersection of condensed matter physics, plasma physics, and dense liquids. This nexus position in thermodynamic parameter space makes it incredibly difficult and complex to model because the electrons exhibit quantum behavior, and the ions are strongly coupled. Most methods used to model WDM employ the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, also known as the adiabatic approximation, which assumes that the electrons and ions do not exchange energy. The validity of the adiabatic approximation in WDM is ultimately unknown, though people have tried to investigate this with varying degrees of success. This thesis constitutes an exploration, encapsulating three distinctive studies based on three published manuscripts, investigating the intricate behaviors of non-adiabatic effects on ion dynamics in WDM. Each study is rooted in the paradigm of wave packet molecular dynamics (WPMD). The WPMD method, known for its computational efficiency in exploring dynamic processes beyond the Born-Oppenheimer (BO) approximation, relies on implementing simplified approximations for computational expediency.The first study concentrates on elucidating the behavior of aluminum through non-adiabatic simulations, utilizing the electron-force field (eFF) variant of wave-packet molecular dynamics. Validation efforts centered on comparing the ion-ion structure factor with density functional theory (DFT) across diverse temperatures and densities within the WDM regime, specifically targeting conditions of 3.5 eV and 5.2 g/cm$^3$. The comprehensive analysis of the dynamic structure factor and dispersion relation, employing both adiabatic and non-adiabatic techniques, revealed a notable alignment between the dispersion relation obtained through eFF and the robust Kohn-Sham DFT. The second study rigorously examined three prevalent approximations within WPMD-restricted basis sets, exchange approximations, and correlation omissions-focusing on their impact on atomic and molecular hydrogen and dense hydrogen plasma. Integrating a two-Gaussian basis with a semi-empirical correction derived from the valence-bond wave function demonstrated a significant improvement, enabling precise scaling of this correction to align with experimental pressures. These findings underscore the pivotal role of semi-empirical scaling parameters in rectifying primary WPMD approximations, emphasizing their role in enhancing accuracy and unveiling underlying physics insights. The third study investigates a novel model-independent method introduced to assess the impact of non-adiabatic electron-ion interactions on transport properties in WDM. The primary focus of this inquiry is how non-adiabatic electron-ion interactions influence equilibrium ion dynamics in warm, dense hydrogen. This unique method overcame previous difficulties of comparing adiabatic and non-adiabatic simulation, which generally suffered from the underlying approximations made by each model, by using a non-adiabatic simulation of electrons and ions to obtain a forced matched ion potential with the same level of approximations. The forced matched potential was implemented through classical molecular dynamics to serve as the adiabatic simulation method, as the system did not directly include electron-ion interactions. This method, applied across diverse conditions in warm, dense hydrogen, concluded that non-adiabatic effects exert minimal influence on the ion self-diffusion coefficient.This comprehensive approach to evaluating the necessity of non-adiabatic simulations offers critical insights in a research landscape marked by limited experimental data on WDM. These findings substantially validate the adiabatic approximation for simulations of extreme states of matter, significantly advancing our understanding of WDM phenomena