Opto-Poration And Direct Uptake Of His-Tat-Nls-Cre As Single Cell Transfection Techniques For Cancer Initiation

Two potential methods to excise genes in a single cell by inserting Cre Recombinase into its nucleus are described here. Optical transfection using a femtosecond laser was found to be effective at getting dyes into cells, but because of issues with spontaneous transfection and cell death, was inadequate as a method to introduce plasmids into cells. Direct delivery of His-NLS-TAT Cre with a micropipette was able to excise the DNA in a small number of cells without causing significant damage to them. It however was unable to reproducibly localize the location of the cells produced to less than a 600 micron diameter circle on the plate

Toward the Combinatorial Limit Theory of Free Words

Free words are elements of a free monoid, generated over an alphabet via the binary operation of concatenation. Casually speaking, a free word is a finite string of letters. Henceforth, we simply refer to them as words. Motivated by recent advances in the combinatorial limit theory of graphs-notably those involving flag algebras, graph homomorphisms, and graphons-we investigate the extremal and asymptotic theory of pattern containment and avoidance in words. Word V is a factor of word W provided V occurs as consecutive letters within W. W is an instance of V provided there exists a nonerasing monoid homomorphsism {\phi} with {\phi}(V) = W. For example, using the homomorphism {\phi} defined by {\phi}(P) = Ror, {\phi}(h) = a, and {\phi}(D) = baugh, we see that Rorabaugh is an instance of PhD. W avoids V if no factor of W is an instance of V. V is unavoidable provided, over any finite alphabet, there are only finitely many words that avoid V. Unavoidable words were classified by Bean, Ehrenfeucht, and McNulty (1979) and Zimin (1982). We briefly address the following Ramsey-theoretic question: For unavoidable word V and a fixed alphabet, what is the longest a word can be that avoids V? The density of V in W is the proportion of nonempty substrings of W that are instances of V. Since there are 45 substrings in Rorabaugh and 28 of them are instances of PhD, the density of PhD in Rorabaugh is 28/45. We establish a number of asymptotic results for word densities, including the expected density of a word in arbitrarily long, random words and the minimum density of an unavoidable word over arbitrarily long words. This is joint work with Joshua Cooper.Comment: 110 pages, dissertatio

AVATAR! (Presented in 3D!)

Learn how to make a “Virtual YOU! During this session, you will create one or more “avatars” (a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet) that you can use to represent your persona in a Learning Management System or a social networking site. No funny glasses needed, but bring your imagination. (Note: the presenter is three-dimensional, hence the title!

An Accessible Approach to Exploring Space through Augmented Reality

Physically engaging with space is often difficult for people who struggle with mobility. Elderly people and people with disabilities in particular may find it challenging to walk for long periods of time on various terrain in order to explore their environment. This project is designed to provide an alternative way to physically engage with spaces without requiring the user to walk, and I am focusing on the accessibility of Bard’s campus specifically. My project involves a map of the college that users can tour in an augmented reality environment. Through the use of a projector-camera system, this program projects a map and tracks objects placed on that map. It tells the user information about the space based on the object’s location. Users are meant to collaboratively trace the map and label buildings as they explore them. Finally, users highlight their favorite locations with colored markers, and take a screenshot of the completed map. The colors used are associated with different subjective experiences of the campus and are projected back on the table in the final step of this project. This experience is meant to operate as an alternative to traditional physical tours while also maintaining the communal experience that Bard tours provide

The Sermonic Urge: Postsecular Sermons in Contemporary American Fiction

Contemporary American novels over the last forty years have developed a unique orientation toward religious and spiritual rhetoric that can best be understood within the multidisciplinary concept of the postsecular. In the morally-tinged discourse of their characters, several esteemed American novelists (John Updike, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, and Cormac McCarthy) since 1970 have used sermons or sermon-like artifacts to convey postsecular attitudes and motivations. These postsecular sermons express systems of belief that are hybrid, exploratory, and confessional in nature. Through rhetorical analysis of sermons in four contemporary American novels, this dissertation explores the performance of postsecularity in literature and defines the contribution of those tendancies to the field of literary and rhetorical studies

Metabolic Syndrome, Vitamin D Status, and the Incidence of Prostate Cancer

ABSTRACT Background: Epidemiologic data on the role of metabolic syndrome on prostate cancer risk is inconsistent, and only one case-control trial has examined the combined relationship of metabolic syndrome and vitamin D deficiency. Objective: To determine the association of metabolic syndrome and vitamin D insufficiency on prostate cancer. Design: De-identified data for blood pressure, BMI, triglyceride, HDL, serum glucose, 25-hydroxyvitamin D, and prostate cancer diagnosis were collected retrospectively from the HERON database on 104 men who received care at the University of Kansas Medical Center from 2003 to 2012. Logistic regression was used to determine the association between metabolic syndrome, vitamin D concentration and prostate cancer. Results: Vitamin D insufficiency was not significantly associated with prostate cancer and did not have a significant interaction with metabolic syndrome. High HDL (>60 mg/dL) was protective against prostate cancer (p=0.04, OR .173) compared to normal HDL (40-60 mg/dL). High systolic blood pressure (>135 mmHg) increased the risk of prostate cancer among general age-matched controls (p=0.03 OR=2.58) compared to normal blood pressure (60 mg/dL) was protective against prostate cancer (p=0.04, OR .173) compared to normal HDL (40-60 mg/dL). High systolic blood pressure (>135 mmHg) increased the risk of prostate cancer among general age-matched controls (p=0.03 OR=2.58) compared to normal blood pressure (135 mmHg) increased the risk of prostate cancer among general age-matched controls (p=0.03 OR=2.58) compared to normal blood pressure (Conclusion: Metabolic syndrome with vitamin D insufficiency did not prove to be significantly associated with prostate cancer diagnosis. Only elevated systolic blood pressure (135 mmHg) was significantly associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer, whereas high HDL was associated with a protective effect

Antimagic Labelings of Weighted and Oriented Graphs

A graph $G$ is $k$-$weighted-list-antimagic$ if for any vertex weighting $\omega\colon V(G)\to\mathbb{R}$ and any list assignment $L\colon E(G)\to2^{\mathbb{R}}$ with $|L(e)|\geq |E(G)|+k$ there exists an edge labeling $f$ such that $f(e)\in L(e)$ for all $e\in E(G)$, labels of edges are pairwise distinct, and the sum of the labels on edges incident to a vertex plus the weight of that vertex is distinct from the sum at every other vertex. In this paper we prove that every graph on $n$ vertices having no $K_1$ or $K_2$ component is $\lfloor{\frac{4n}{3}}\rfloor$-weighted-list-antimagic. An oriented graph $G$ is $k$-$oriented-antimagic$ if there exists an injective edge labeling from $E(G)$ into $\{1,\dotsc,|E(G)|+k\}$ such that the sum of the labels on edges incident to and oriented toward a vertex minus the sum of the labels on edges incident to and oriented away from that vertex is distinct from the difference of sums at every other vertex. We prove that every graph on $n$ vertices with no $K_1$ component admits an orientation that is $\lfloor{\frac{2n}{3}}\rfloor$-oriented-antimagic.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur