Experimental performance of a conical pressure probe at Mach numbers of 3.0, 4.5, and 6.0

Wind tunnel investigation of performance of conical pressure probe at hypersonic speed

Mothers Behind Cameras: Mother-Artist, Mother-Child Dyads In Sally Mann’s Immediate Family And Elinor Carucci’s Mother

Women, particularly mothers, are often made invisible within narratives of their own family and domestic spaces, despite their role as creators and maintainers of those spaces. This perpetuation of invisibility is threaded throughout the history of artistic practices, (photography especially). Contemporary mother-artists Sally Mann and Elinor Carucci confront and unapologetically reflect their singular experience(s) with motherhood through their photography, which addresses the symbiotic dyads of mother-child and mother-artist. This thesis focuses on an analysis of four images: Mann’s The Wet Bed and Lee’s Dirty Hands, and Carucci’s Trying to Protect Emanuelle and I Will Protect You. In both Mann and Carucci’s photography, the image of the child is explicit, but the image of the mother is harder to decipher. The uncanny Victorian era practice of Hidden Mother photography initially inspired this thesis, but it is further informed by iconographic Madonna and child imagery, artistic and maternal labor, Roland Barthes’s concept of the “umbilical cord,” feminist art history, and, theory on the ontology of photography. Photography as a medium has been likened to the maternal, as a vehicle of production and reproduction. This thesis argues that motherhood-as-image is indexical of motherhood-in-practice, developed through a surrogate gaze of the mother specifically created through the use of the camera (lens). Through a contextualization and deep visual analysis of these four photographs, this thesis explores how Mann and Carucci’s artwork uses the child and the camera as a medium to produce images that inflect the mother-artists’ individual maternal experiences

MULTIPLEX REAL TIME PCR and MELT CURVE ASSAY DEVELOPMENT FOR THE SIMULTANEOUS DETECTION AND IDENTIFICATION OF STREPTOCOCCUS PNEUMONIAE and STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS

Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae are bacteria that commonly colonize healthy individuals without causing disease. Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), a more virulent type of S. aureus, is carried by a small percentage of people. These two bacteria have an adversarial relationship both in vitro and in vivo, with S. pneumoniae being able to limit the growth of S. aureus. It has been hypothesized that the relationship between these bacteria may be altered in individuals immunized with the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, raising concerns that vaccinated individuals may be more likely to carry MRSA. Assessing the carriage rate of these bacteria in both vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals may provide important information to support or refute this hypothesis. To facilitate this study, we developed a multiplex Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) assay to simultaneously detect S. aureus and S. pneumoniae in the same sample

An Integrative Investigation of the Synechococcus A/B Clade During Adaptive Radiation at the Upper Thermal Limit of Phototrophy

Thermophilic microorganisms have been scientifically observed since the early nineteenth century and have spurred many questions about the limits of life and the capacity of organisms to survive extreme conditions. Decades of research on thermophile proteins and genomes have yielded several proposed correlates of temperature that may contribute to adaptation of bacteria and archaea to high temperature. However, many of the generalizations reported are drawn from analyses of deeply divergent taxa or from individual case studies in isolation from mesophilic relatives. Members of the Synechococcus A/B (SynAB) group are the only cyanobacteria with members able to grow above 65 °C and represent the most thermotolerant phototrophs on the planet. This group exhibits extensive variation in thermal performance and appears to represent a single adaptive radiation to colonize higher temperature environments—providing an ideal opportunity to test the relative importance of proposed mechanisms of the evolution of thermophily. I have established an unparalleled collection of SynAB strains and genomes from populations in Yellowstone NP and Oregon. Phylogenomics confirmed that lineages of Synechococcus that have diverged in thermotolerance have a unique, ancient origin, and physiological characterization corroborates a pattern of sequential adaptation to increasingly higher temperatures. During adaptation to higher temperatures, SynAB genomes have shrunk dramatically, and I argue that this is likely due to decreases in community complexity rather than selection for smaller cell size or faster growth. Proteome adaptation at the SynAB thermal limit has included the evolution of amino acid composition (most notably, the onset of aspartate phobia) and the acquisition of new proteins from distantly related bacteria. My work also establishes a framework to tackle longstanding questions about the relative contributions of thermodynamic constraints versus biochemical adaptation during the evolution of thermal physiology. To help spur the field of thermal biology in a new direction, I present a novel integration of genomic, physiological, and metabolic modelling approaches that enables exploration of how a cellular system, not just its constituent components, responds to the factors that contribute to the thermal limit of phototrophy

Checking Executive Disregard

(Excerpt) Part I of this Note more precisely defines executive disregard, its confluence with signing statements, and distinguishes executive disregard from executive discretion. Part II, through an analysis of the Constitution\u27s text, case law, precedent, and policy, argues that executive disregard is a constitutionally impermissible act when the President disregarding the statute also signed it into law. Part III discusses the merits of a limited theory of executive disregard in the instances where the disregarding President did not sign the bill into law. Part IV discusses Senator Specter\u27s bill and proposes further checks on executive disregard, specifically that Congress grant itself standing to challenge a President\u27s nonenforcement of a statute