Feast and Yeast-A Study of Two Categories of Eucharistic Motifs of the Early Church Later Recovered by Luther and Chemnitz

The first purpose of this thesis will be to explore the Lord\u27s Supper as it was understood and celebrated by the early Fathers. The subject of our focus will be the two categories of motifs employed by the early Fathers. The first category will study how the early Fathers thought of the Lord\u27s Supper as food. These motifs are collected under chapter one and will consider how the early Fathers saw connections between the Lord\u27s Supper and food (such as the Passover meal, food for the journey, etc.) The second category will study how the early Fathers thought of the Lord\u27s Supper as yeast. These motifs are collected under chapter two and will consider how the early Fathers believed the Lord\u27s Supper to be active and transforming within the communicant. This chapter will show, for instance, how the body and blood of the Lord actively mingle with the human body, changing its nature, not unlike yeast mingling within a batch of dough

Surface recordings of evoked field potentials from the cerebellum with a flexmea microelectrode array

The cerebellum is an integral part of multijoint control. There are two input pathways to the cerebellar cortex, the mossy fiber and the climbing fiber pathways. The mossy fiber pathway forms a disynaptic input to Purkinje cells through the granular cells. This disynaptic input produces a multicomponent field potential composed of the P1, N 1, N2, N3, N4, and P3 waves. The climbing fiber input forms a monosynaptic input to the Purkinje cells and thus creates a much simpler field potential. The mossy and climbing fiber field potentials were recorded with a FlexMEA microelectrode array from the pial surface of the paramedian lobule. The peripheral stimulation showed that the mossy and climbing fiber field potentials evoked through intramuscular stimulation were consistent with those of the literature. These results verified the experimental setup to be used in the central stimulation. The central stimulation produced only the mossy fiber field potential. The amplitude of the field potentials were mapped out to the location on the electrode array producing unique maps for each stimulation site. ANOVA analysis showed that distinct regions can be associated with a certain region of stimulation. These results show that the FlexMEA is able to record the field potentials from the pial surface of the cerebellar cortex. The 300 um pitch of the electrodes in the array produces distinct patterns with clear regions of activity for different sites of stimulation. In conclusion the FlexMEA can be used to record from cerebellum in behaving animals

High frequency field potentials of the cerebellar cortex

The cerebellum plays a crucial role in motor coordination along with basal ganglia and the motor areas of the cerebral cortex. Both somatosensory and the cerebro-cerebral pathways bring in massive amounts of neural information to the cerebellum. The output of the cerebellar cortex projects to various motor cortices as well as down to the spinal cord to make its contributions to the motor function. The origin and function of the field potential oscillations in the cerebellum, especially in the high frequencies, have not been explored sufficiently. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the spatio-temporal characteristics of high frequency field potentials (150-350Hz) in the cerebellar cortex in a behavioral context. To this end, the paramedian lobule in rats was recorded using micro electro-corticogram (µ-ECoG) electrode arrays while the animal performed a lever press task using the forelimb. The phase synchrony analysis shows that the high frequency oscillations recorded at multiple points across the paramedian cortex episodically synchronize immediately before and desynchronize during the lever press. The electrode contacts were grouped according to their temporal course of phase synchrony around the time of lever press. Contact groups presented patches with slightly stronger synchrony values in the medio-lateral direction, and did not appear to form parasagittal zones. Spatiotemporal synchrony of high frequency field potentials has not been reported at such large-scales previously in the cerebellar cortex

Tunable thermopower in a graphene-based topological insulator

Following the recent proposal by Weeks et al., which suggested that indium (or thallium) adatoms deposited on the surface of graphene should turn the latter into a quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator characterized by a sizeable gap, we perform a systematic study of the transport properties of this system as a function of the density of randomly distributed adatoms. While the samples are, by construction, very disordered, we find that they exhibit an extremely stable QSH phase with no signature of the spatial inhomogeneities of the adatom configuration. We find that a simple rescaling of the spin-orbit coupling parameter allows us to account for the behaviour of the inhomogeneous system using a homogeneous model. This robustness opens the route to a much easier experimental realization of this topological insulator. We additionally find this material to be a very promising candidate for thermopower generation with a target temperature tunable from 1 to 80K and an efficiency ZT close to 1.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Graphene-based heterojunction between two topological insulators

Quantum Hall (QH) and quantum spin Hall (QSH) phases have very different edge states and, when going from one phase to the other, the direction of one edge state must be reversed. We study this phenomena in graphene in presence of a strong perpendicular magnetic field on top of a spin-orbit (SO) induced QSH phase. We show that, below the SO gap, the QSH phase is virtually unaffected by the presence of the magnetic field. Above the SO gap, the QH phase is restored. An electrostatic gate placed on top of the system allows to create a QSH-QH junction which is characterized by the existence of a spin-polarized chiral state, propagating along the topological interface. We find that such a setup naturally provides an extremely sensitive spin-polarized current switch.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

A rapid DNA extraction method suitable for human papillomavirus detection

Infection with oncogenic human papillomavirus (HPV) genotypes is necessary for the development of cervical cancer. Testing for HPV DNA from liquid based cervical samples can be used as an adjunct to traditional cytological screening. In addition there are ongoing viral load, genotyping, and prevalence studies. Therefore, a sensitive DNA extraction method is needed to maximize the efficiency of HPV DNA detection. The XytXtract Tissue kit is a DNA extraction kit that is rapid and so could be useful for HPV testing, particularly in screening protocols. This study was undertaken to determine the suitability of this method for HPV detection. DNA extraction from HeLa and Caski cell lines containing HPV 18 and 16 respectively together with DNA from five liquid based cervical samples were used in a HPV PCR assay. DNA was also extracted using the QIAamp DNA mini kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany) as a comparison. DNA extracts were serially diluted and assayed. HPV DNA was successfully detected in cell lines and cervical samples using the XytXtract Tissue kit. In addition, the XytXtract method was found to be more sensitive than the QIAmp method as determined by a dilution series of the extracted DNA. While the XytXtract method is a closed, the QIAamp method uses a spin column with possible loss of DNA through DNA binding competition of the matrix, which could impact on the final extraction efficiency. The XytXtract is a cheap, rapid and efficient method for extracting HPV DNA from both cell lines and liquid based cervical samples

Identification of sex specific DNA regions in the snake genome using a subtractive hybridisation technique

Karyotypic studies have shown that a ZZ/ZW sex chromosome system is used by snakes, which chromosomally resembles the ZZ/ZW system used by birds. However genetic studies have shown that SOX 3; the sex determining gene in mammals and DMRT1; which is the hypothesised sex determining gene in birds, are both located on autosomal chromosomes in the snake. Therefore it has been suggested that the snake sex chromosome system is unique and has evolved independently of the bird?s system. This paper describes a subtractive hybridization method, using physical separation of biotinylated 'driver' DNA. The novel application of this technique was its use in identifying sex specific DNA regions within the genome of the Australian python; Morelia spilota imbricate. Female DNA enrichment was achieved using this technique and resulted in the identification of two non-sex specific repeating elements. The conclusion from this work is the identification of female specific DNA in snakes requires further subtractive hybridization enrichment and a more efficient screening procedure