The Life of Death

"The Life of Death" is a creative nonfiction thesis in three parts. The purpose of this thesis is to explore and understand the importance of place in one's life, whether it's in relation to a job, after the loss of parents, or while looking back on childhood. It is a collection of nonfiction stories about my life told through flashbacks, and personal narration. It is a lyrical, moving journey that I take one memory at a time. The first essay, 'Sliding into Home' is set between late 2012 and 2013. Through personal narration, reflection and meditation the parallels between the importance of family, home and the sport of baseball, mainly the significance of home plate. During this journey home, I find out my mother has a rare, incurable cancer and she is given a limited amount of time before she will die. I find a way to come to terms with her diagnosis and move toward a grief I know will come. I use the game of baseball as a metaphor for my healing. The bat becomes an extension of the hand, the baseball another extension of self, family and home. All the pieces come together like a baseball player rounding the bases on the diamond-shaped field headed for a complete circuit. I use the game of baseball as a guide for my journey to the pre-grief stages of my mother's looming death. Like a baseball player not ready to give up the run, I am not ready to give up my mom. The second essay, 'The Landscape of Memory' is set in the fall of 2014, one year after my mother died, a few months after my father's sudden death, and two months after a miscarriage. It starts with a plan and ends with a trip across of the country to a writing and yoga retreat in search of healing and meditation. I use personal narration and reflection while navigating the initial stages of grief. Location plays a vital role in this essay, reminding me as the narrator, that grief cannot be boxed up and buried, but must be set free. My last essay, 'Losing Michelle,' is about the death of my friend. In this essay, I weave personal narration with flashbacks, while walking through a cemetery looking for her marker. It discusses my first experiences in death and grief. In preparation for my thesis, I continued to journal my memories, wrote and co-authored a nonfiction book, attended yearly writer's conferences, attended creative writing seminars, and began teaching college English. No matter what research avenue I selected, memories of my parents and death were already at the forefront of my writing. I researched the various stages of death by reading the widely popular nonfiction book, On Death and Dying, by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and explored the history of my hometown, Haw River, NC by reading the book, Down Along the Haw: The History of a North Carolina River by Anne Melyn Cassebaum. Before and after my mother's death, I educated myself on death in preparation of the inevitable. I dove into reading memoirs on death such as, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed and the famous The Last Lecture, by Professor Randy Pausch

Morphology-controlled growth of magnetic iron oxide components on gold nanoparticles as bi-functional agents

Summary form only given. Hybrid nanostructure can inherit the physiochemical properties of its individual components to realize its multi-functionality. The coupling of plasmonic effect of gold nanoparticles with magnetic properties of iron oxide nanoparticles has shown great promise as bi-functional agents allowing simultaneous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)/computed tomography (CT) imaging and magnetic/photonic thermal therapy. However, since gold and iron oxide are two dissimilar materials, the precise morphology and structure control for the hybrid nanostructure remains a great challenge, and there are few published studies on the correlation between composites morphologies and the optical/magnetic properties. In this work, we aim to fabricate gold/iron oxide hybrid nano-structures using less toxic precursors, control the morphology growth of iron oxide component on gold nanoparticles surface, and study the effects on optical and magnetic properties of final products. Here, nearly monodisperse gold/iron oxide hybrid nanoparticles were fabricated through thermal decomposition method. Spherical gold nanoparticles were pre-synthesized and used as seeds for the reduction of iron precursor to produce hybrid nanostructures. Various morphologies of iron oxide grown on the gold nanospheres surfaces were realized, including nano-shell, nano-octahedron, nano-flower, and dumbbell-shaped end. Pure gold nanospheres and iron oxide nanospheres were synthesized for comparison. The morphology and structure of obtained products were characterized by using TEM, EDX, electron diffraction pattern, and SEM. Their optical and magnetic properties were studied using UV-Vis spectroscopy and VSM. The plasmonic property of gold nanoparticles was shown to be affected by the optical index of its environment, and its absorbance peak was right-shifted after iron oxide shell coating. The gold/iron oxide dumbbell-shaped nanostructures displayed typical superparamagnetic behavior with no coerc- vity while the coercivity of gold/iron oxide nano-octahedron was about 45 Oe. The morphology-related blocking temperatures of the gold/iron oxide nano-structured samples were also studied through their ZFC/FC curves.postprin

High-Performance Carbon Electrodes Modified with Polyaniline for Stable and Selective Anion Separation

Capacitive deionization (CDI) is a technology used for water desalination and ion recovery based on the use of capacitive electrodes. Typically, the porous carbon electrodes used for CDI display limited ion storage capacity and selectivity due to the mechanism of ion storage in the electric double layer, but impressive improvements have been achieved using alternative, redox-based electrode materials, including conducting polymers like polyaniline (PAni). PAni is capable of capturing anions based on redox chemistry, but it degrades at anodic potentials typically used in CDI. In this work, we employed a multi-channel membrane CDI cell to map the stability window of a porous carbon electrode modified with PAni by controlling the anodic potential. We demonstrated for the first time that applying a potential as low as + 0.35 V (vs. Ag/AgCl) yields a stable and high chloride removal capacity (65 mgCl/gAnode) with charge and coulombic efficiencies close to 100% for CDI. Furthermore, this is first work to explore the selectivity of the PAni-modified CDI electrodes towards chloride in binary solutions, evidencing that chloride is preferred regardless the valence of the competing anions. We believe that this work provides an important contribution for a larger figure, one in which CDI can be used for both high-performance water desalination, and efficient anion-selective removal and recovery.This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant 682444, E-motion, PI L.d.S)". L.A.M.R. thanks the Sao Paulo State Research Foundation (FAPESP, grant 2017/19838-5). The authors thank Kaíque S. G. C. Oliveira for the synthesis of the PAC material, Dr Sidharam Pujari for the AES measurements, and Ellen Dautzenberg for the nitrogen adsorption/desorption measurements. The authors also would like to thank the participants of the Advanced Materials for Chemical Selectivity group of the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry (WUR), particularly the CDI team, for the fruitful discussions

Proximity effect in planar superconducting tunnel junctions containing Nb/NiCu superconductor/ferromagnet bilayers

We present experimental results concerning both the fabrication and characterization of superconducting tunnel junctions containing superconductor/ferromagnet (S/F) bilayers made by niobium (S) and a weak ferromagnetic Ni0.50Cu0.50 alloy. Josephson junctions have been characterized down to T=1.4 K in terms of current-voltage I-V characteristics and Josephson critical current versus magnetic field. By means of a numerical deconvolution of the I-V data the electronic density of states on both sides of the S/F bilayer has been evaluated at low temperatures. Results have been compared with theoretical predictions from a proximity model for S/F bilayers in the dirty limit in the framework of Usadel equations for the S and F layers, respectively. The main physical parameters characterizing the proximity effect in the Nb/NiCu bilayer, such as the coherence length and the exchange field energy of the F metal, and the S/F interface parameters have been also estimated

Novel Hybrid Au/Fe3O4 Magnetic Octahedron-like Nanoparticles with Tunable Size

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Synthesis and Morphology Control of Gold/Iron oxide Magnetic Nanocomposites via a Simple Aqueous Method

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Changes in CD4+ cells’ miRNA expression following exposure to HIV-1

Background: MiRNAs inhibit HIV-1 expression by either modulating host innate immunity or by directly interfering with viral mRNAs. Here, we investigated the miRNA profile that discriminates different classes of HIV-1 infected patients from multiple exposed uninfected individuals. Methods: The expression levels of 377 miRNAs were selectively analyzed in CD4+ cells isolated from whole blood of HIV-1 \ue9lite LTNP (\ue9LTNP), naive, and multiply exposed uninfected individuals (MEU). MiRNA extraction was performed by the mirVana miRNA Isolation Kit (Ambion) and their expression was subsequently examined by real-time PCR-based arrays. The expression of miRNAs was also determined in primary culture of CD4+T cells and monocyte-macrophages infected in vitro by R5 strains. Expression of Dicer and Drosha was evaluated by real-time PCR. Results: We only considered miRNAs that were expressed in the 70% of patients of at least one class and varied by at least 1 log10 from healthy controls. Out of 377 miRNAs, 26 were up-regulated, while 88 were down-regulated. Statistical analysis showed that 21 miRNAs significantly differentiated \ue9LTNP from MEU and 23 miRNAs distinguished naive from MEU, while only 1 (miR-155) discriminated \ue9LTNP from naive. By hierarchical clustering of the miRNAs according to patient class, \ue9LTNP clustered with naive whereas all MEU subjects grouped together. The Dicer and Drosha expression in the patient classes correlated with miRNA profile changes. Among miRNAs differentially expressed in patient classes, 32 were detected in in vitro infection model: the most of the up-regulated miRNAs were expressed in monocyte-macrophages, whereas the most of the down-regulated miRNAs were expressed in T lymphocytes. Conclusions: These findings support that miRNA profile could be the result not only of a productive infection, but also of the exposure to HIV products that leave a signature in immune cells. These data provide some intriguing issues relative to the development of HIV vaccines targeting viral proteins

Large microwave generation from d.c. driven magnetic vortex oscillators in magnetic tunnel junctions

Spin polarized current can excite the magnetization of a ferromagnet through the transfer of spin angular momentum to the local spin system. This pure spin-related transport phenomena leads to alluring possibilities for the achievement of a nanometer scale, CMOS compatible and tunable microwave generator operating at low bias for future wireless communications. Microwave emission generated by the persitent motion of magnetic vortices induced by spin transfer effect seems to be a unique manner to reach appropriate spectral linewidth. However, in metallic systems, where such vortex oscillations have been observed, the resulting microwave power is much too small. Here we present experimental evidences of spin-transfer induced core vortex precessions in MgO-based magnetic tunnel junctions with similar good spectral quality but an emitted power at least one order of magnitude stronger. More importantly, unlike to others spin transfer excitations, the thorough comparison between experimental results and models provide a clear textbook illustration of the mechanisms of vortex precessions induced by spin transfer

Association Between Plasma Monocyte Chemoattractant Protein-1 Concentration and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality in Middle-Aged Diabetic and Nondiabetic Individuals

OBJECTIVE Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1/CCL2) is a chemokine involved into the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and has prognostic value in the acute and chronic phases in patients with acute coronary syndromes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS MCP-1/CCL2 concentration was measured in plasma fractions of 363 middle-aged overweight/obese individuals (aged 61 \ub1 12 years, BMI 30.1 \ub1 6.6 kg/m2, 15% with type 2 diabetes, and 12% with impaired glucose tolerance) of a population survey carried out in 1990\u20131991 in Lombardy, Italy (Cremona Study), and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality was assessed in 2006 through Regional Health Registry files. RESULTS At baseline MCP-1/CCL2 was increased in individuals with type 2 diabetes (P < 0.05) and showed significant correlations with biochemical risk markers of atherosclerosis. After 15 years, among the 363 subjects, there were 82 deaths due to CVD. In univariate analysis age, sex, fasting glucose and insulin, fibrinogen, glucose tolerance status, smoking habit, and MCP-1/CCL2 were associated with CVD mortality. Age, sex, fasting serum glucose, MCP-1/CCL2, and smoking habit maintained an independent association with CVD mortality in multiple regression analysis. In a subgroup of 113 subjects in whom data for C-reactive protein (CRP) were available, its level was not predictive of CVD mortality. CONCLUSIONS In middle-aged overweight/obese individuals MCP-1/CCL2 was independently associated with CVD mortality. Further studies will be necessary to establish its role as a surrogate biomarker and as a potential therapeutic target