The Singspiele of Johann Adam Hiller

Thesis (M.M.)--Boston Universit

Studies on the Binding of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin to Polystyrene & a Possible Application

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), labeled with 125I, was used to study the binding properties of hCG to polystyrene beads. The binding capacity of the 0.25-in diameter beads was determined to be approximately 300 mIU/bead. The affinity constant, K, was determined to be essentially O, suggesting that binding is strictly passive. The binding of hCG to polystyrene was proportional to the hCG concentration and temperature. There were highly significant (p\u3c0.001) differences among amounts of hCG bound at 3 C, 25 C and 37 C. There was a highly significant (p\u3c0.001) relationship between the amount of hCG bound and the initial hCG concentration. There did not appear to be any correlation between the percentage of hCG bound and the initial hCG concentration. Attempts to use Staphylococcal Protein A-peroxidase conjugate to detect murine monoclonal antibodies to beta-hCG were not successful

A Synthesis of the Literature on Interventions to Improve the Diets of African American Youth in order to Prevent Overweight and Obesity

This literature review examines the problem of overweight and obesity in African American youth focusing on what is currently known regarding interventions designed to improve the diets of this population. The paper discusses the causes and contributing factors to the rise of overweight and obesity, followed by an overview of the major types of interventions that have been designed to address factors across the social-ecological continuum--that is, from the intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational, community, and policy levels, paying particular attention to school-based interventions. The cultural appropriateness of nutrition interventions for African American youth and barriers to program effectiveness are also explored. Evidence from the literature suggests the need to employ multi-component interventions which emphasize upstream, policy change. In addition, collaborative partnerships have also been identified as being necessary in order to sustain interventions and maximize their long-term impacts. The issue of overweight and obesity among African American youth is a significant public health problem that is associated with the poor quality of diet. Improving the diets of African American children and adolescents requires multi-component, coordinated efforts in order to ameliorate the negative health consequences. This issue suggests the need for continued research to develop effective interventions

An Analysis of Antichimeral Ramanujan Type Congruences for Quotients of the Rogers-Ramanujan Functions

This paper proves the existence of antichimeral Ramanujan type congruences for certain modular forms These modular forms can be represented in terms of Klein forms and the Dedekind eta function. The main focus of this thesis is to introduce the necessary theory to characterize these specific Ramanujan type congruences and prove their antichimerality

A shared silence

I took a journey home to Western New York and turned the camera’s lens on both my family and myself. 

 This thesis is a story about my family and me. I photographed my family to confront the tragic car accident that took my brother’s life and my mom’s sanity. I also acknowledged the present state of my family with these photographs by exploring the root of many of my fears and anxieties that stem from the tense and stressful atmosphere within my home as a result of this car accident

Effects of rotations and nitrogen fertilization on corn yields at the Northwest Iowa (Galva-Primghar) Research Center

A crop rotation and nitrogen (N) fertilization experiment was begun in 1957 at the Northwest Iowa (Galva-Primghar) Research Center near Sutherland, Iowa. The experiment was designed to compare crop rotations and to determine the response of corn to nitrogen fertilization in the various crop rotations. Sixteen years of corn yield data from the experiment are summarized and analyzed in this study;The experiment was a split-plot with rotations as whole-plot treatments and N fertilization as subplot treatments. The crop rotations were: corn-oats-meadow-meadow (COMM), corn-corn-oats-meadow (CCOM), sorghum-corn-oats-meadow (SgCOM), corn-soybeans (CSb), continuous corn harvested for grain only (C), and continuous corn with the stover and grain removed (C(,s)). In rotations including meadow, corn was fertilized with 0, 20, 40, and 80 lb N/acre. In other rotations, the rates were 0, 40, 80, and 120 lb N/acre. Treatments of 0, 50, 100, and 150 lb potassium (K)/acre were applied to C(,s) plots during the last 5 years of the experiment;Because of the split-plot design and because the experiment was conducted over time, yields for different treatment combinations were correlated. The corn yield data were transformed to produce nearly uncorrelated errors with homogeneous variance before estimating functions for the response of corn yields to N and K fertilizer;The C(,s) grain yields for 1974-1978 were fitted to a grafted polynomial function of K. The response to K was much greater at higher levels of N fertilization;Functions for the response of corn yield to N fertilizer in the various rotations were proposed and estimated. The preferred function for the response of corn to N fertilizer was an exponential (Mitscherlich) equation which included terms for a time trend in the yield of continuous corn. The analysis showed that the maximum yield obtained under continuous corn was less than the maximum yield obtained in rotations containing legumes

Evaluation of a fluorocarbon plastic used in cryogenic valve seals

Effects of strain rate, temperature, crystallinity, and surface finish /smoothness/ on the tensile strength of a commercial chlorotrifluorethylene plastic /CTFE/ used for lipseals in very fast-acting liquid oxygen valves

Distributional and Efficiency Impacts of Clean and Renewable Energy Standards for Electricity

http://globalchange.mit.edu/research/publications/reports/allWe examine the efficiency and distributional impacts of greenhouse gas policies directed toward the electricity sector in a model that links a “top-down” general equilibrium representation of the U.S. economy with a “bottom-up” electricity-sector dispatch and capacity expansion model. Our modeling framework features a high spatial and temporal resolution of electricity supply and demand, including renewable energy resources and generating technologies, while representing CO2 abatement options in non-electric sectors as well as economy-wide interactions. We find that clean and renewable energy standards entail substantial efficiency costs compared to an economy-wide carbon pricing policy such as a cap-and-trade program or a carbon tax, and that these policies are regressive across the income distribution. The geographical distribution of cost is characterized by high burdens for regions that depend on non-qualifying generation fuels, primarily coal. Regions with abundant hydro power and wind resources, and a relatively clean generation mix in the absence of policy, are among the least impacted. An important shortcoming of energy standards vis-`a-vis a first-best carbon pricing policy is that no revenue is generated that can be used to alter unintended distributional consequences.The authors acknowledge the support of the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis, which is operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the University of Colorado-Boulder, the Colorado School of Mines, the Colorado State University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University under grant NREL 6A502020 “Integration of a Computable General Equilibrium Model with an Electricity Sector Optimization Model to Assess the Economic Impacts of U.S. Climate Policy”. We further acknowledge support of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change through a combination of government, industry, and foundation funding, the MIT Energy Initiative, and additional support for this work from a coalition of industrial sponsors (for a complete list see: http://globalchange.mit.edu/sponsors/all)

Detection and characterization of Sp1 binding activity in human chondrocytes and its alterations during chondrocyte dedifferentiation.

We have detected DNA binding activity for a synthetic oligonucleotide containing an Sp1 consensus sequence in nuclear extracts from human chondrocytes. Changes in the levels of Sp1 oligonucleotide binding activity were examined in nuclear extracts from freshly isolated human chondrocytes, from chondrocytes that had been cultured under conditions that allowed the maintenance of a chondrocyte-specific phenotype on plastic dishes coated with the hydrogel poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate), and from chondrocytes induced to dedifferentiate into fibroblast-like cells by passage in monolayer culture on plastic substrata. It was observed that Sp1 binding was 2-3-fold greater in nuclear extracts from dedifferentiated chondrocytes than in nuclear extracts from either freshly isolated chondrocytes or from cells cultured in suspension. The Sp1 binding activity was specific, since it was competed by unlabeled Sp1 but not by AP1 or AP2. The addition of a polyclonal antibody against Sp1 to nuclear extracts from freshly isolated chondrocytes or to extracts isolated from chondrocytes cultured in monolayer decreased the binding of Sp1 by approximately 85%. However, when the same experiment was carried out with nuclear extracts prepared from cells cultured on poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)-coated plates, only a very slight inhibition of Sp1 binding was observed. When fragments of the COL2A1 promoter containing putative Sp1 binding sites amplified by polymerase chain reaction were examined, it was found that the amounts of DNA-protein complex formed with nuclear extracts from dedifferentiated chondrocytes were 2-3-fold greater than the amounts formed with nuclear extracts from freshly isolated chondrocytes or from cells cultured in suspension. Quantitation of DNA binding activity by titration experiments demonstrated that nuclear extracts from fibroblast-like cells contained approximately 2-fold greater Sp-1 specific binding activity than nuclear extracts from chondrocytes. The direct role of Sp1 in type II collagen gene transcription was demonstrated by co-transfection experiments of COL2A1 promoter-CAT constructs in Drosophila Schneider line L2 cells that lack Sp1 homologs. This is the first demonstration of Sp1 binding activity in human chondrocytes and of differences in Sp1 DNA binding activity between differentiated and dedifferentiated chondrocytes