Postmodern Postmortems: Art to Highlight Social Issues in Venice, Italy

The concept is to use art as a means to highlight key findings from IQP projects that were conducted in Venice since 1988. It is the desire of this initiative to develop installations to be scattered throughout Venice to peak the interest of passersby, hinting at some of the issues that have affected Venice in recent years. These displays will be subtle, engaging the senses, and be very meaningful. The installations will be coordinated throughout the city and also hope to engage young people in urban issues by the use of gaming and artistic expression. The goal of this IQP is to provide a blueprint for implementation of these installations. In addition to being used by this initiative, such a blueprint could be used by urban youth to produce their own artistic commentary on the issues

Prototype LED Lighting Control System

This project involved the analysis, design and implementation of an LED lighting control system capable of producing white light with consistent color and intensity. Four monochromatic strings of red, green, blue and amber LED\u27s were arranged in a staggered pattern for uniform color mixing and driven by a pulse width modulated (PWM) control system. Optical feedback was incorporated using a dual p-n junction photo sensor, providing balanced color mixing regardless of changes in LED junction temperature or manufacturing variations. Both LED duty cycle and peak current were successfully controlled to produce white light with the desired intensity and color temperature

Genome of Acanthamoeba castellanii highlights extensive lateral gene transfer and early evolution of tyrosine kinase signaling

Abstract Background The Amoebozoa constitute one of the primary divisions of eukaryotes, encompassing taxa of both biomedical and evolutionary importance, yet its genomic diversity remains largely unsampled. Here we present an analysis of a whole genome assembly of Acanthamoeba castellanii (Ac) the first representative from a solitary free-living amoebozoan. Results Ac encodes 15,455 compact intron-rich genes, a significant number of which are predicted to have arisen through inter-kingdom lateral gene transfer (LGT). A majority of the LGT candidates have undergone a substantial degree of intronization and Ac appears to have incorporated them into established transcriptional programs. Ac manifests a complex signaling and cell communication repertoire, including a complete tyrosine kinase signaling toolkit and a comparable diversity of predicted extracellular receptors to that found in the facultatively multicellular dictyostelids. An important environmental host of a diverse range of bacteria and viruses, Ac utilizes a diverse repertoire of predicted pattern recognition receptors, many with predicted orthologous functions in the innate immune systems of higher organisms. Conclusions Our analysis highlights the important role of LGT in the biology of Ac and in the diversification of microbial eukaryotes. The early evolution of a key signaling facility implicated in the evolution of metazoan multicellularity strongly argues for its emergence early in the Unikont lineage. Overall, the availability of an Ac genome should aid in deciphering the biology of the Amoebozoa and facilitate functional genomic studies in this important model organism and environmental host

Genome of Acanthamoeba castellanii highlights extensive lateral gene transfer and early evolution of tyrosine kinase signaling

Background The Amoebozoa constitute one of the primary divisions of eukaryotes, encompassing taxa of both biomedical and evolutionary importance, yet its genomic diversity remains largely unsampled. Here we present an analysis of a whole genome assembly of Acanthamoeba castellanii (Ac) the first representative from a solitary free-living amoebozoan. Results Ac encodes 15,455 compact intron-rich genes, a significant number of which are predicted to have arisen through inter-kingdom lateral gene transfer (LGT). A majority of the LGT candidates have undergone a substantial degree of intronization and Ac appears to have incorporated them into established transcriptional programs. Ac manifests a complex signaling and cell communication repertoire, including a complete tyrosine kinase signaling toolkit and a comparable diversity of predicted extracellular receptors to that found in the facultatively multicellular dictyostelids. An important environmental host of a diverse range of bacteria and viruses, Ac utilizes a diverse repertoire of predicted pattern recognition receptors, many with predicted orthologous functions in the innate immune systems of higher organisms. Conclusions Our analysis highlights the important role of LGT in the biology of Ac and in the diversification of microbial eukaryotes. The early evolution of a key signaling facility implicated in the evolution of metazoan multicellularity strongly argues for its emergence early in the Unikont lineage. Overall, the availability of an Ac genome should aid in deciphering the biology of the Amoebozoa and facilitate functional genomic studies in this important model organism and environmental host