The Tempest

This Creative Project in Creative Writing consists of an original feature-length screenplay titled The Tempest, which follows the story of a boy, Jax, who the night before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, watches a US Army General hand off secret intelligence to Japanese soldiers on US soil. Silenced by the death of his friend, Jax hides the evidence, which his granddaughter, Miranda, uncovers seventy years later. Miranda is a 14-year-old wallflower struggling to come to terms with the death of her mother when dementia threatens to take away her O\u27Pa Jax. She grew up listening to his wild stories, but the journal she uncovers supports his story and may prove, once and for all, that Jax isn\u27t losing his mind. As she pieces together the story of that night she begins to unravel a bigger cover-up that someone is willing to kill to keep buried, and Miranda becomes the target. Facing her painful past and To prove Jax\u27s innocence and save her family\u27s future, Miranda must break the constraints and gender limitations placed on her by her family. While on the surface, The Tempest, is an plot driven adventure about a teen girl playing detective, at its core it is about the relationship between love and loss, and the crippling affect dementia has on family. Much like Shakespeare\u27s The Tempest, the screenplay also explores how the lies and betrayals of one generation can destroy those of the next. The relationship between structure and character play an important part in The Tempest and its non-linear approach is utilized on several different levels. First, this idea of generational secrets influences the structure of the screenplay with regard to timeline and space. The non-linear approach is more conducive in following two separate protagonists in two different time periods, and affords the story an ample foundation on which to build. Secondly, it provides the room necessary to explore character and movement in different ways, contrasting Jax in the first decade of his life dealing with the loss of his friend, with him in his last decade mourning the loss of his memories. In addition, it showcases Miranda\u27s struggle to maintain her two roles; a carious teenager wanting freedom is hampered by her position as Jax\u27s caretaker. Finally, the screenplay\u27s imbrication of structure and character highlights their symbiotic nature by maintaining the emotional integrity of the story

Molecular Cluster Fragment Machine Learning Training Techniques to Predict Energetics of Brown Carbon Aerosol Clusters

Density functional theory (DFT) has become a popular method for computational work involving larger molecular systems as it provides accuracy that rivals ab initio methods while lowering computational cost. Nevertheless, computational cost is still high for systems greater than ten atoms in size, preventing their application in modeling realistic atmospheric systems at the molecular level. Machine learning techniques, however, show promise as cost-effective tools in predicting chemical properties when properly trained. In the interest of furthering chemical machine learning in the field of atmospheric science, I have developed a training method for predicting cluster energetics of newly characterized nitrogen-based brown carbon aerosols that can undergo tautomerization. By creating a training dataset of cluster fragment and functional group DFT calculations, I can effectively train machine learning models to predict overall energetics of previously unknown brown carbon clusters while improving computational efficiency

Use of the PP phase to study the earthquake source

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95154/1/grl2955.pd

An Improved Model for Dynamin Assembly Revealed by Cryo-EM

Continua com: Avaluació de la qualitat de l'aire a la ciutat de Barcelon

Effects of suspended solids and dissolved organic carbon on nickel toxicity

Nickel (Ni) is a common and potentially toxic heavy metal in many fluvial ecosystems. We examined the potentially competitive and complementary roles of suspended sediment and a dissolved organic ligand, humate, in affecting the partitioning and toxicity of Ni to a model organism, Daphnia magna , in both batch and stream-recirculating flume (SRF) tests. Sediments included a fine-grained deposit, montmorillonite, and kaolinite. Survival of D. magna was unaffected by the range of suspended solids used in the present study (8–249 mg/L). However, exposure to suspended solids that were amended with Ni had a deleterious effect on test organism survival, which is attributed to partitioning of Ni into the aqueous phase. At comparable levels of dissolved Ni, survival of D. magna was reduced in tests with Ni-amended suspended solids compared to Ni-only aqueous exposures, suggesting potentiation between these two aquatic contaminants. Addition of humate attenuated toxicity to D. magna in both Ni-only and Ni-amended suspended sediment exposures. These results indicate that organic ligands and suspended solids have important functions in affecting the bioavailability and toxicity of Ni to aquatic organisms and should be incorporated into predictive models to protect ecosystem quality. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2010; 29:1781–1787. © 2010 SETACPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77536/1/226_ftp.pd

Analysis of the Variable Geometry Effect in Radial Turbines

The influence of variable geometry stators on the stage behavior is analyzed from both theoretical and experimental points of view. A theoretical analysis of the trajectory of some pressure-ratio lines in a loading-to-flow-coefficient diagram leads to the definition of a specific dimensionless parameter: the reduced section. This parameter is representative of the stator geometric configuration and is thus expected to be a good candidate to describe the variable geometry problem. From a theoretical point of view, this parameter is no less than the formal expression of the link between the geometric configuration of the stator and the behavior of the stage. An experimental approach decomposed in three phases is then led to evaluate this assessment. The results clearly demonstrate the crucial influence of the reduced section in the operating point definition. It leads to the conclusion that from a theoretical point of view, the two solutions mainly used in the industry for variable geometry stages (variation of the height or of the opening position of the stator blades) are equivalent provided that they are sanitized of their respective technological drawbacks. It has also been shown that the geometric configuration of the stator chosen to reach a specific value of the reduced section has some incidence on the efficiency of the stage. This observation gives some opportunities for optimization, for which some axis of reflection is given

An intramolecular salt bridge drives the soluble domain of GTP-bound atlastin into the postfusion conformation

Before ER tubule fusion, the atlastin GTPase undergoes a “prefusion” to “postfusion” conformational change that is mediated by an intramolecular salt bridge

Crystal structure of nucleotide-free dynamin

Dynamin is a mechanochemical GTPase that oligomerizes around the neck of clathrin-coated pits and catalyses vesicle scission in a GTP-hydrolysis-dependent manner. The molecular details of oligomerization and the mechanism of the mechanochemical coupling are currently unknown. Here we present the crystal structure of human dynamin 1 in the nucleotide-free state with a four-domain architecture comprising the GTPase domain, the bundle signalling element, the stalk and the pleckstrin homology domain. Dynamin 1 oligomerized in the crystals via the stalks, which assemble in a criss-cross fashion. The stalks further interact via conserved surfaces with the pleckstrin homology domain and the bundle signalling element of the neighbouring dynamin molecule. This intricate domain interaction rationalizes a number of disease-related mutations in dynamin 2 and suggests a structural model for the mechanochemical coupling that reconciles previous models of dynamin function