Senior Recital:Michael Guerrero, Saxophone

Kemp Recital Hall Friday Evening April 14, 2000 9:30 p.m

Environmental Epigenetics and Effects on Male Fertility

Environmental exposures to factors such as toxicants or nutrition can have impacts on testis biology and male fertility. The ability of these factors to influence epigenetic mechanisms in early life exposures or from ancestral exposures will be reviewed. A growing number of examples suggest environmental epigenetics will be a critical factor to consider in male reproduction

Time-lapse photography of the edge-of-water line displacements of a sandbar as a proxy of riverine morphodynamics

A simple methodology to track the displacements of a sandbar from a fixed video camera, extracting its morphological features and deriving the associated fluvial morphology is presented, using a small reach of the Po River in Italy as a case study. A camera fixed on a bridge pier acquired images every twelve hours while hourly water levels are derived from a radar hydrometer located upstream of the study area. The quantification of the fluvial bathymetry is achieved by mapping multiple edge-of-water lines of a sandbar before and after high flow conditions in December 2017. Both from video information and 2-D numerical simulations, it is evident that flooding waves can easily remove sediments that accumulated on bars during low flow conditions in this area, redistributing them across the river channel. This video-based methodology-which confirms to be economically attractive if compared to more traditional monitoring systems-proves to be a valuable system to monitor long-term fluvial processes providing detailed indications on how to better plan river management activities

Transgenerational epigenetic actions of environmental compounds

Endocrine disrupting chemicals are known for their capacity to alter development and reproduction in mammals. One of the periods most sensitive to endocrine disruptor exposure is embryonic gonadal sex determination, when the germ line is undergoing epigenetic programming and DNA re-methylation. Epigenetic changes derived from exposure to endocrine disruptors have been described in several tissues and organisms. Endocrine disruptor induced epigenetic changes may have a wide range of phenotypic consequences, leading to disease conditions such as cancers, reproductive defects and obesity. Interestingly, the incidence of some diseases resulting from exposure to endocrine disruptors can be transgenerationally transmitted. In particular, exposure to the endocrine disruptor vinclozolin during early development is capable of inducing adult onset disease states that can be perpetuated across multiple generations. Environmental compounds such as endocrine disruptors can produce changes in the genome without altering DNA sequence. These changes are epigenetic in basis and can produce phenotypes that perpetuate transgenerationally. The suggestion that environmental factors can reprogram early development to induce epigenetic transgenerational phenotypes is a new paradigm in biology that will open new avenues for studies in disease etiology, reproduction and evolutionary biology

Partial shape matching using transformation parameter similarity

In this paper, we present a method for non-rigid, partial shape matching in vector graphics. Given a user-specified query region in a 2D shape, similar regions are found, even if they are non-linearly distorted. Furthermore, a non-linear mapping is established between the query regions and these matches, which allows the automatic transfer of editing operations such as texturing. This is achieved by a two-step approach. First, pointwise correspondences between the query region and the whole shape are established. The transformation parameters of these correspondences are registered in an appropriate transformation space. For transformations between similar regions, these parameters form surfaces in transformation space, which are extracted in the second step of our method. The extracted regions may be related to the query region by a non-rigid transform, enabling non-rigid shape matching. In this paper, we present a method for non-rigid, partial shape matching in vector graphics. Given a user-specified query region in a 2D shape, similar regions are found, even if they are non-linearly distorted. Furthermore, a non-linear mapping is established between the query regions and these matches, which allows the automatic transfer of editing operations such as texturing. This is achieved by a two-step approach. First, pointwise correspondences between the query region and the whole shape are established. The transformation parameters of these correspondences are registered in an appropriate transformation space. For transformations between similar regions, these parameters form surfaces in transformation space, which are extracted in the second step of our method. The extracted regions may be related to the query region by a non-rigid transform, enabling non-rigid shape matching

Edit propagation using geometric relationship functions

We propose a method for propagating edit operations in 2D vector graphics, based on geometric relationship functions. These functions quantify the geometric relationship of a point to a polygon, such as the distance to the boundary or the direction to the closest corner vertex. The level sets of the relationship functions describe points with the same relationship to a polygon. For a given query point, we first determine a set of relationships to local features, construct all level sets for these relationships, and accumulate them. The maxima of the resulting distribution are points with similar geometric relationships. We show extensions to handle mirror symmetries, and discuss the use of relationship functions as local coordinate systems. Our method can be applied, for example, to interactive floorplan editing, and it is especially useful for large layouts, where individual edits would be cumbersome. We demonstrate populating 2D layouts with tens to hundreds of objects by propagating relatively few edit operations

Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Chalcone Scaffolds as Potential Antiangiogenic Agents.

Angiogenesis is an integral part of tumour growth and development. Endothelial cell proliferation, migration and differentiation are the main hallmarks of this physiological process. From this, the use of antiangiogenic therapy have brought about a range of licensed FDA approved agents (that are also used by the NHS), that aim to regress tumour induced angiogenesis. However, issues such as: drug resistance, evasion and poor efficacy have limited the use of antiangiogenic therapy as a main stake in anti-cancer therapy. The need for multi-targeted or combinatorial therapies are ever more needed to enhance the current use of these drugs. Therefore, in an attempt to identify novel compounds that exhibit antiangiogenic activity, a group of 1-3-diphenylpropenones (chalcones) were designed, synthesised and biologically evaluated using AH1 (2-chloro-2’5’-dihydroxychalcone) as the parent compound. Methods: Chalcones were synthesised using variations of the Clasien-Schmidt condensation reaction, to develop a compound library based on AH1 (the parent compound). Thereafter, using HUVECs as an angiogenesis model, the effects of the compounds on HUVEC proliferation and migration were evaluated. This was carried out using the MTT cell proliferation assay and the wound healing “scratch” assay. Therein mechanistic evaluation was carried via gel electrophoresis and chemiluminescence western blot. Main findings: Structure activity relationships (SARs) studies identified, that novel compounds AH9 (2-bromo-2’5’-dihydroxychalcone) and AH12 (2-nitro-2’5’-dihydroxychalcone) were shown to exhibit strong anti-proliferative activity along with AH1. Other synthesised derivatives containing different functional groups such as, alkoxy, halogen and methyl did not exhibit similar activities to AH1. The culmination of structure activity relationship suggested that 2’5’-dihydroxy moiety was important to the observed activity only in conjunction with 2-chloro or now 2-bromo substitution on the other phenyl ring. Due to AH9’s better drug likeness over AH12, AH9 and AH1 were taken forward as the lead candidates. Anti-migratory analysis of lead candidates and licensed drug Sorafenib were conducted against HUVECs. AH9 (p < 0.0007) was shown to exhibit significantly more potent inhibitory effects on endothelial migration than AH1 (p = 0.19) and Sorafenib (p = 0.41) over the 8 hour time course study when compared to the untreated control. Mechanistic evaluation identified that AH9 could be exerting its anti-proliferative and potent anti-migratory activity via inhibiting ERK kinase phosphorylation, this was seen at 10μM (p < 0.0001). Discussion and conclusion: To summarise, anti-proliferative and potent anti-migratory activity, towards HUVECs, of a novel molecule AH9 have been identified showing significant effects against two hallmarks of the angiogenesis cascade. AH9 presents a strong case as an agent capable of being developed as an angiogenesis inhibitor for anti-angiogenic therapy

Lobbying Firms & Their Role in American Politics

Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP)http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116114/1/Lobbying_Firms_Their_Role_in_American_Politics.pd

Learning shape placements by example

We present a method to learn and propagate shape placements in 2D polygonal scenes from a few examples provided by a user. The placement of a shape is modeled as an oriented bounding box. Simple geometric relationships between this bounding box and nearby scene polygons define a feature set for the placement. The feature sets of all example placements are then used to learn a probabilistic model over all possible placements and scenes. With this model, we can generate a new set of placements with similar geometric relationships in any given scene. We introduce extensions that enable propagation and generation of shapes in 3D scenes, as well as the application of a learned modeling session to large scenes without additional user interaction. These concepts allow us to generate complex scenes with thousands of objects with relatively little user interaction