Mother Water

Water is life. That which nurtures, sustains and nourishes. My mother is truly my water. The one who gave me life and has supported and nurtured me though and through. While wading through the challenges and adversity of graduate school, she has been there every step of the way; and while I struggled to find what I was trying to say, I was quietly toiling over thoughts of my own fertility, maternal instincts and desire to nurture something and I began to acknowledge the mortality of my own mother. The materials and images I combine are deeply connected to my mother. I’m driven by process based mediums such as printmaking and metal casting. This exhibition honors traditional approaches in both areas but finds a playful marriage somewhere in between within my mixed media work. Cast iron, bronze, traditional and contemporary approaches to printed media, and an incredibly self indulgent combination of natural and synthetic fabrics come together into creative portals and plantlike forms. I create work to excite the senses with a seductive sort of mystery, a cheeky sense of humor and an extremely playful burst of colors and texture. My materials and technical skills in this body of work are the result of collaborating directly with my parents, in their shop where I also spent my formative years. My mother has owned her upholstery business for over 40 years and over time has imparted unique technical skills and tools of the trade onto me; without which this body of work never would have come to fruition. The art and design of the automotive industry has also had a direct influence on my mixed media work. I\u27m inspired by hot metallic colors and reflective forms of classic cars and hot rods. Although Industrial art and design may heavily influence my curation of materials and funky fabrics, nature and the cycles of life are what invigorate my concepts and pattern work. My work is inherently feminine as I embrace the earth, mother goddess, as a creator and giver of life, and inspiration. Characters, figures, and forms are meant to represent fertility and life cycles. Like a lotus flower emerging out of the mud to blossom at the surface, this exhibition was an intentional manifestation of joy and playfulness. It all grew out of shared trauma, challenges and adversity. My intentional manifestation begins in a joyous maker’s space, surrounded by plants and all of my favorite tools, colors and materials. Both my process and practice is based on repetition. I wanted my thesis exhibition to be my big creative orgasm, the ultimate self pleasuring moment. Through exploiting materials and colors in an extremely seductive, sexy and fun way. As the viewer sees light and even themselves literally reflected in this work, I mean to excite the notion of self-reflection and even a manifestation of another world, another version of what we believe is reality. I’ve manifested something fantastical, playful and created new interactive spaces and objects which change with each viewer, their own movements and how the changing light of day interacts with my mixed media works

What Do We Mean by Multicellularity? The Evolutionary Transitions Framework Provides Answers

At first glance, the meaning of the word “multicellularity” appears to be unambiguous—it is treated as an “intuitive” concept, something that can be grasped with common sense. On closer inspection, however, it is apparent that there is notable disparity in the recent literature regarding the usage of the term “multicellularity.” Whereas, traditionally it was mainly attributed to complex organisms (Grosberg and Strathmann, 2007), more recently it has also been used for simple microbial colonies or biofilms (Hengge, 2020). Accordingly, a unifying definition is lacking—whereas some definitions require cells to display an overall coordination of function (Wolpert and Szathmáry, 2002), have physical contact and strong interactions (Kaiser, 2001), others are simply based on the presence of a group-morphology (Schirrmeister et al., 2013)

Inducing resistance: a summary of papers presented at the First International Symposium on Induced Resistance to Plant Diseases, Corfu, May 2000

The First International Symposium on Induced Resistance to Plant Diseases, organized by Eris Tjamos, brought together over 150 participants to discuss the complexities, questions and future direction of research on the mechanisms by which plants can become better able to defend themselves against pathogen attack. Although the term immunization has been used to denote treatments that enhance the defensive capacity of plants, the correspondence to vaccination in vertebrates is far-fetched: the induced state is by no means specific, but rather constitutes a more general increase in plant resistance to various types of pathogens. Moreover, it seldom prevents disease from occurring but generally reduces its extent or severity. These characteristics make induced resistance a powerful mechanism to exploit for enhancing the overall resistance in crop plants. Indeed, the first commercial chemical triggering induced resistance in plants, acibenzolar-Smethyl (BTH) was recently introduced on the market by Novartis under the tradenames Actigard (USA) and BION (Europe)

New Insights in the Quality-Satisfaction Link : Identifying Asymmetric and Dynamic Effects

This study explores the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction. Building on existing literature, the link is proposed to be asymmetric in nature. Drawing on customer delight theory and opponent-process theory, we also study the dynamics of the relationship and develop an integrative perspective. Results are obtained by applying dummy variable regression and time-based cohort analysis in two different e-service settings. The findings show that functional-utilitarian quality attributes (efficiency, fulfillment, system availability, and privacy) display habituation effects over time, so that they tend to lose their capability to delight customers. In contrast, hedonistic attributes (website design, enjoyment, and image) seem to be increasingly enjoyed after initial experience with an e-service and develop customer delight capabilities in a later relationship stage. These insights are vital for e-service managers as they help to improve the efficiency of quality investments on the Internet

Exploring Cross Channel Dissynergies in Multichannel Systems

In this paper, the authors propose that in a multichannel environment, evaluative conflicts (dissynergies) between service channels exist. Building on status quo bias theory, they develop a model which relates offline channel satisfaction to perceptions about a new self-service channel. Data were collected from 639 customers of a German bank currently using offline investment banking. Results of structural equation modeling show that offline channel satisfaction reduces the perceived usefulness and enhances the perceived risk of the online channel. These inhibiting effects represent a status quo bias. The two perceptions fully mediate between offline channel satisfaction and intention to use the new self-service channel. Trust in the bank shows both adoption-enhancing effects and an adoption-inhibiting effect. Finally, the negative relationship between offline channel satisfaction and perceived usefulness is significantly stronger for men, for older people, and for less experienced Internet users. This study has both theoretical and managerial relevance as it helps to understand consumer behavior in multichannel environments and provides implications for the design of multichannel service strategies

Female mice respond to male ultrasonic ‘songs’ with approach behaviour

The ultrasonic vocalizations of mice are attracting increasing attention, because they have been recognized as an informative readout in genetically modified strains. In addition, the observation that male mice produce elaborate sequences of ultrasonic vocalizations (‘song’) when exposed to female mice or their scents has sparked a debate as to whether these sounds are—in terms of their structure and function—analogous to bird song. We conducted playback experiments with cycling female mice to explore the function of male mouse songs. Using a place preference design, we show that these vocalizations elicited approach behaviour in females. In contrast, the playback of pup isolation calls or whistle-like artificial control sounds did not evoke approach responses. Surprisingly, the females also did not respond to pup isolation calls. In addition, female responses did not vary in relation to reproductive cycle, i.e. whether they were in oestrus or not. Furthermore, our data revealed a rapid habituation of subjects to the experimental situation, which stands in stark contrast to other species' responses to courtship vocalizations. Nevertheless, our results clearly demonstrate that male mouse songs elicit females' interest

In vitro transition of Schistocephalus solidus (Cestoda) from coracidium to procercoid and from procercoid to plerocercoid

With the present study, a culture system for successive life-cycle stages of the tapeworm Schistocephalus solidus was developed and this report documents for the first time, cultivation of the procercoid stage of S. solidus from eggs. Additionally we have transformed procercoids dissected from experimentally infected copepods and cultured procercoids into the early plerocercoid stage in vitro. Observations in the culture suggest that the coracidia can interact with their external environment and need no host specific stimuli, except for the components in the culture medium, for activation and hatching from the embryophore. Increasing the culture medium pH from 7.3 to 8.0 improved escape rates and frequencies of hook contractions, suggesting that the oncosphere may recognize and respond to environmental conditions along the host intestine. Procercoids in the culture did not stop growing indicating that conditions within the copepod may be important to limit growth and to induce transformation to plerocercoids. When procercoids are dissected from copepods and transferred to the culture, the outer tegument layers and cercomer starts to loosen. Comparison of the lectin staining of the loosened outer tegument layers and cercomer in procercoids dissected from copepods confirms that transitions of both, the oncosphere to procercoid and procercoid to plerocercoids, has taken place in the in vitro cultures

Phosphonodifluoropyruvate is a mechanism-based inhibitor of phosphonopyruvate decarboxylase from Bacteroides fragilis

Bacteroides fragilis, a human pathogen, helps in the formation of intra-abdominal abscesses and is involved in 90% of anaerobic peritoneal infections. Phosphonopyruvate decarboxylase (PnPDC), a thiamin diphosphate (ThDP)-dependent enzyme, plays a key role in the formation of 2-aminoethylphosphonate, a component of the cell wall of B. fragilis. As such PnPDC is a possible target for therapeutic intervention in this, and other phosphonate producing organisms. However, the enzyme is of more general interest as it appears to be an evolutionary forerunner to the decarboxylase family of ThDP-dependent enzymes. To date, PnPDC has proved difficult to crystallize and no X-ray structures are available. In the past we have shown that ThDP-dependent enzymes will often crystallize if the cofactor has been irreversibly inactivated. To explore this possibility, and the utility of inhibitors of phosphonate biosynthesis as potential antibiotics, we synthesized phosphonodifluoropyruvate (PnDFP) as a prospective mechanism-based inhibitor of PnPDC. Here we provide evidence that PnDFP indeed inactivates the enzyme, that the inactivation is irreversible, and is accompanied by release of fluoride ion, i.e., PnDFP bears all the hallmarks of a mechanism-based inhibitor. Unfortunately, the enzyme remains refractive to crystallization