Drug resistance in D. discoideum: isolation of 4-nitroquinoline 1-oxide resistant mutants

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (July 14, 2006)Includes bibliographical references.Thesis (M.A.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2005.Dissertations, Academic -- University of Missouri--Columbia -- Biological sciences.The drug 4-nitroquinoline 1-oxide (4NQO) displays both carcinogenic and antitumor effects, a well known characteristic of many chemotherapeutic drugs. In addition 4NQO shares a similar operating mechanism with the commonly used chemotherapeutic drug cisplatin. Previously, using the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum, we have shown that we can alter sensitivity to cisplatin by deleting or overexpressing enzymes in the sphingolipid metabolic pathway. Similarly, this work analyzed the cellular response to 4NQO in Dictyostelium discoideum. To study the molecular basis of 4NQO resistance in Dictyostelium, I used restriction enzyme mediated integration (REMI), a direct insertional mutagenesis approach, to isolate 4NQO resistant mutants. This study lead to the isolation of two Dictyostelium mutants showing about 1.5 to 4.5 fold more resistance than the wild-type. Using inverse PCR and DA sequencing one mutant disruption was found to be in a retrotransposon and in the second mutant the disruption was fond to be in an intergenic region between a S-adenosylmethionine-dependent methyltransferase gene and a retrotransposon. This study confirmed that Dictyostelium discoideum can be used as a model system to study the molecular basis of resistance to anticancer drugs

Electrical detection of spin echoes for phosphorus donors in silicon

The electrical detection of spin echoes via echo tomography is used to observe decoherence processes associated with the electrical readout of the spin state of phosphorus donor electrons in silicon near a SiO$_2$ interface. Using the Carr-Purcell pulse sequence, an echo decay with a time constant of $1.7\pm0.2 \rm{\mu s}$ is observed, in good agreement with theoretical modeling of the interaction between donors and paramagnetic interface states. Electrical spin echo tomography thus can be used to study the spin dynamics in realistic spin qubit devices for quantum information processing.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Doping of Si nanoparticles: the effect of oxidation

The preferred location of boron and phosphorus in oxidized free-standing Si nanoparticles was investigated using a first-principles density functional approach. The calculated formation energies indicate that P should segregate to the silicon core, whereas B is equally stable in the Si and SiO_2 regions. Our models thus suggest that, in contrast with nanocrystals with H-terminated surfaces, the efficiency of phosphorus incorporation in oxidized Si nanoparticles can be improved by thermal annealing

A study on the 3D inertial instability mechanism in the sub-mesoscale ocean

see pdf fil

Ripple and kink dynamics

We propose a relevant modification of the Nishimori-Ouchi model [{\em Phys. Rev. Lett.} {\bf 71}, 197 (1993)] for granular landscape erosion. We explicitly introduce a new parameter: the angle of repose $\theta_r$, and a new process: avalanches. We show that the $\theta_r$ parameter leads to an asymmetry of the ripples, as observed in natural patterns. The temporal evolution of the maximum ripple height $h_{max}$ is limited and not linear, according to recent observations. The ripple symmetry and the kink dynamics are studied and discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 10 figure, RevTe

Tarifabschluss im öffentlichen Dienst - die große Tarifrechtsreform?

Stellt der Tarifabschluss für Arbeiter und Angestellte von Bund und Kommunen einen Beitrag zum Einstieg in eine umfassende Neustrukturierung des öffentlichen Dienstes dar, oder wurde vor allem an den bisherigen alten Strukturen des öffentlichen Dienstes festgehalten? Für Dr. Thomas Böhle, Vereinigung der Kommunalen Arbeitgeberverbände, wird "das bisherige Tarifrecht … durch ein modernes, leistungsorientiertes und transparentes Tarifrecht ersetzt, das den Anforderungen einer modernen Verwaltung für die Bürgerinnen und Bürger gerecht wird". Auch Dr. Ralf Stegner, Finanzminister des Landes Schleswig-Holstein, sieht positive Elemente: "Der Potsdamer Tarifabschluss vom 9. Februar 2005 ist der erste Baustein zur großen Tarifrechtsreform durch Einführung einer neuen Entgeltordnung, in dem auch die Gewerkschaften durchaus ihre Reformfähigkeit unter Beweis gestellt haben.… Im Detail gibt es aus Ländersicht aber auch kritisch zu hinterfragende Entscheidungen." Weitaus skeptischer ist Prof. Dr. Walter A. Oechsler, Universität Mannheim: "Die Analyse macht deutlich, dass die Tarifreform nicht die große durchgreifende Modernisierung des Tarifrechts im öffentlichen Dienst darstellt." Nach Ansicht von Prof. Dr. Monika Böhm, Universität Marburg, stellt der Tarifvertrag einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Einstieg in eine umfassend erforderliche Neustrukturierung des öffentlichen Dienstes dar, obwohl weitgehend an den bisherigen Strukturen festgehalten wurde.Öffentlicher Dienst, Angestellte, Arbeiter, Tariflohn, Leistungsorientierte Vergütung, Tarifvertrag, Deutschland

Electron Paramagnetic Resonance of Boron Acceptors in Isotopically Purified Silicon

The electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) linewidths of B acceptors in Si are found to reduce dramatically in isotopically purified 28Si single crystals. Moreover, extremely narrow substructures in the EPR spectra are visible corresponding to either an enhancement or a reduction of the absorbed microwave on resonance. The origin of the substructures is attributed to a combination of simultaneous double excitation and spin relaxation in the four level spin system of the acceptors. A spin population model is developed which qualitatively describes the experimental results.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Stability of parallel wake flows in quasigeostrophic and frontal regimes

International audienceRecent laboratory experiments [G. Perret, A. Stegner, M. Farge, and T. Pichon, Phys. Fluids 18, 036603 (2006)] have shown that the vortex-street formed in the wake of a towed cylinder in a rotating shallow-water layer could present a strong cyclone-anticyclone asymmetry. In extreme cases, only large-scale anticyclones were observed in the far wake. This asymmetry occurs in the so-called frontal regime when the Rossby number is small and the surface deviation is large. This asymmetry may have various origins and in particular may be attributed to the asymmetry of the flow around the cylinder, to the linear stability property of the wake, or to its nonlinear evolution. To discriminate between these mechanisms, we study the stability of two idealized parallel flows in the quasigeostrophic and in the frontal regimes. These parallel flows correspond to two velocity profiles measured just behind the cylinder in a region where the perturbations are negligible. According to our linear stability analysis, the most unstable mode, in the frontal regime, is localized in the anticyclonic shear region whether the base flow profile is symmetric or not. On a linear basis, it is thus more the instability that imposes the asymmetry than the base flow. Direct numerical simulations of the synthetic parallel wake flows show that nonlinearity exacerbates the dominance of the anticyclonic mode linearly selected. By numerically studying the spatio-temporal evolution of a small perturbation localized in space, we show that, unlike incompressible two-dimensional wake flows and the symmetric wake in the quasigeostrophic regime, the parallel asymmetric wake is strongly convectively unstable in the frontal regime, and not absolutely unstable. When the surface deformation becomes large, the wake instability changes from the absolute instability in the quasi-geostrophic regime to the strongly convective instability of the frontal regime. This explains well the changes. © 2006 American Institute of Physics