Graphic Design, Symposium Program Contest, Luke Reynolds

https://digitalcommons.jsu.edu/ce_jsustudentsymp_2021/1029/thumbnail.jp

Who Owned Waterloo? Wellington’s Veterans and the Battle for Relevance

This dissertation examines the afterlife of the battle of Waterloo in the collective memory of Great Britain as well as the post-war lives of officers who fought there. Using a variety of techniques associated with cultural, social, and military history, it explores the concept of cultural ownership of a military event and contextualizes the relationship between Britain and her army in the nineteenth century, both at home and abroad. It argues that, almost immediately after the dust settled on the field of Waterloo, a variety of groups laid claim to different aspects of the ownership of the memory of the battle within Great Britain, resulting in a nationalization of the victory that was often complex and marked by overlapping claims. Over the thirty-seven years between the battle in 1815 and the Duke of Wellington’s funeral in 1852, those groups employed histories, memoirs, patronage, tourism, relic collecting, annual commemorations, performances, social interactions, and a variety of art and literature to celebrate Britain’s victory, further craft and delineate their own identities, and incorporate the battle into the wider creation myth of Great Britain. To best explore Britain’s relationship with its army and with the victory at Waterloo, this dissertation is divided into two sections, the first comprising four chapters and the second three. The first section charts the cultural history of the British officer corps and the collective memory of the Battle of Waterloo, allowing for a detailed exploration of the question of ownership of a military victory, both within Britain and internationally. The first chapter contrasts military memoirs with civilian histories. The second examines Waterloo itself as a pilgrimage destination, while widening the question of ownership to include physical items and monuments. The third discusses military and civilian commemorations and celebrations of the Battle of Waterloo, from 1815 until the 1850s. The concluding chapter explores depictions of officers in the popular culture and media of the day. The second section begins with a chapter on the army at home (including Ireland), which discusses the change from wartime to peacetime service. The second chapter examines the involvement of officers in politics, focusing on veterans who followed Wellington’s lead and entered parliament. The third chapter covers veterans appointed by London to positions in the imperial service. The dissertation concludes with an epilogue on Wellington’s state funeral in 1852, arguing that this event served as the culmination of many of the cultural and social trends discussed throughout the work

Creating an Integrated Coaching Culture In Higher Education

In higher education, it is a common ask to do more with less while delivering high-quality, holistic service to students. Coaching has been shown to produce significant gains in strengthening self-efficacy, improving GPA, and increasing retention through graduation (Alzen et al., 2021; Capstick et al., 2019; Catchings, 2014; Grover & Furnham, 2016; Losch et al., 2016), therefore making it a logical program to target for growth. To expand the impact of the University of Kentucky’s academic coaching program, in 2020, leadership modified the Appreciative Academic Coaching framework (Bradley & Reynolds, 2021) into Integrated Success Coaching with the intent to build a coaching culture across campus. This modification created a two-pronged approach to serving students, faculty, and staff across our campus: (a) training for professionally certified International Coaching Federation (ICF) coaches across six domains, including academic life, career, finances, wellness, leadership, and identity (e.g., First Gen) to directly serve students, and (b) training in foundational coaching skills for faculty, staff, and student leaders to incorporate into their daily practice. The evolution of this coaching model has allowed for holistic support of students and immersive coaching values and practices for faculty, staff, and student leaders that have led to improved retention and better GPA outcomes for students on probation and a culture of coaching care among faculty, staff, and students

Transient Optical Studies of Exciton Dynamics in Organic Solar Cells

There is increasing evidence that the initially generated excited state species in bulk heterojunction solar cell photoactive layers are critical to device performance. At present however, an understanding of the nature and dynamics of such excited states still remains limited. This thesis presents a study of the ultrafast exciton dynamics in bulk heterojunction organic and hybrid organic-inorganic solar cells. Fluorescence upconversion is used to elucidate the dynamics of such transient species allowing internal properties of the blend systems to be probed including changes in film morphology and ultrafast energy loss mechanisms. An understanding of such processes is an important step forward in the evolution of molecular semiconductor based solar cells. The first chapter focuses on the main experimental technique, fluorescence upconversion, and how this can be employed to study excited states. In particular, this section addresses one of the main unanswered questions in the field and attempts to correlate the exciton dynamics with the structure of the common photoactive polymer poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT). Three structural variations of P3HT are studied and their exciton dynamics associated with differing internal processes occurring within the polymers. These include self localisation, and different types of long-range energy transfer mechanisms. The following two chapters build upon the knowledge of exciton dynamics obtained from the first chapter. First, a study is made of amorphous polymers with different acceptors, all based on phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM). The distinct interactions of the PCBM-type molecules with the polymer results in different electron transfer dynamics, from which the exciton diffusion length of the polymer in real bulk heterojunction blends is extracted using a simple model. Second, the ultrafast excited state dynamics of a crystalline polymer with the same PCBM-type acceptors is studied. Correlation of these dynamics with thermal analysis of the blend films allows the morphology of the films to be extracted and allows two different mechanisms of microstructure development to be identified. In the final chapter, the effect of acceptor aggregation on exciton dynamics and charge generation yields in hybrid organic-inorganic blend films has been studied. Such aggregation has been shown to be essential for efficient charge generation in all-organic solar cells but has often been assumed to be less important in such inorganic hybrids. More aggregated acceptor nanoparticles are shown to not only result in greater than expected exciton quenching but are also shown to result in a greater yield of long-lived charges. This study is extended to show that in-situ grown inorganic nanoparticles exhibit superior performance to standard pre-synthesised inorganics

Growth Sequence of Post-fire Chaparral Resprouts in California’s Santa Monica Mountains

The post-fire resprout succession of California Chaparral was surveyed in Corral Canyon of the Santa Monica Mountains. The primary objective of this investigation was to determine the sequence of Chaparral post-fire resprouts and possible correlations to the life histories of those species. Over a three month period, four designated study sites were visited every two weeks, surveying the number of adults, the number of resprouts and the height of the resprouts. It was found that both the facultative and the obligate typed species were successful in post-fire resprout. Facultative species were the first to resprout and obligate species displayed the most rapid growth rate upon resprouting. It is concluded that the life histories of these Chaparral species is directly related to their time of regrowth as well as their rate of regrowth. Also, that facultative sprouters, specifically Adenostoma fasiculatum and Ceanothus spinosus, are the first to resprout followed by the remaining facultative species, the obligate species, and lastly the non-sprouting species

EmbR2, a structural homologue of EmbR, inhibits the Mycobacterium tuberculosis kinase/substrate pair PknH/EmbR

International audienceEmbR is a transcriptional regulator that is phosphorylated by the cognate mycobacterial STPK (serine/threonine protein kinase) PknH. Recent studies demonstrated that PknH-dependent phosphorylation of EmbR enhances its DNA-binding activity and activates the transcription of the embCAB genes encoding arabinosyltransferases, which participate in arabinan biosynthesis. In the present study, we identified a genomic region of 4425 bp, which is present in Mycobacterium tuberculosis CDC1551, but absent from M. tuberculosis H37Rv, comprising the MT3428 gene, which is homologous with embR. Homology modelling of the MT3428 gene product illustrated its close relationship (56% identity) to EmbR, and it was hence termed EmbR2. In marked contrast with EmbR, EmbR2 was not phosphorylated by PknH, although it is a substrate of other M. tuberculosis kinases, including PknE and PknF. Tryptophan fluorescence emission of EmbR2 was monitored in the presence of three different PknH-derived phosphopeptides and demonstrated that EmbR2 binds to at least two of the threonine sites known to undergo autophosphorylation in PknH. We observed that the capacity of EmbR2 to interact physically with PknH without being phosphorylated was a result of EmbR2-mediated inhibition of kinase activity: incubation of PknH with increasing concentrations of EmbR2 led to a dose-response inhibition of the autokinase activity, similarly to O6-cyclohexylmethylguanine, a known inhibitor of eukaryotic cyclin-dependent kinases. Moreover, EmbR2 inhibited PknH-dependent phosphorylation of EmbR in a dose-dependent manner. Together, these results suggest that EmbR2 is a regulator of PknH activation, thus directly participating in the control of the PknH/EmbR pair and potentially in mycobacterial physiology/virulence of M. tuberculosis CDC1551

Late Pleistocene human genome suggests a local origin for the first farmers of central Anatolia

Anatolia was home to some of the earliest farming communities. It has been long debated whether a migration of farming groups introduced agriculture to central Anatolia. Here, we report the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer and from seven Anatolian and Levantine early farmers. We find high genetic continuity (~80–90%) between the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of Anatolia and detect two distinct incoming ancestries: an early Iranian/Caucasus related one and a later one linked to the ancient Levant. Finally, we observe a genetic link between southern Europe and the Near East predating 15,000 years ago. Our results suggest a limited role of human migration in the emergence of agriculture in central Anatolia