Textures And Traction: How Tube-Dwelling Polychaetes Get A Leg Up

By controlling the traction between its body and the tube wall, a tube-dwelling polychaete can move efficiently from one end of its tube to the other, brace its body during normal functions (e.g., ventilation and feeding), and anchor within its tube avoiding removal by predators. To examine the potential physical interaction between worms and the tubes they live in, scanning electron microscopy was used to reveal and quantify the morphology of worm bodies and the tubes they produce for species representing 13 families of tube-dwelling polychaetes. In the tubes of most species there were macroscopic or nearly macroscopic (~10 μm–1 mm) bumps or ridges that protruded slightly into the lumen of the tube; these could provide purchase as a worm moves or anchors. At this scale (~10 μm-1 mm), the surfaces of the chaetal heads that interact with the tube wall were typically small enough to fit within spaces between these bumps (created by the inward projection of exogenous materials incorporated into the tube wall) or ridges (made by secretions on the interior surface of the tube). At a finer scale (0.01–10 μm), there was a second overlap in size, usually between the dentition on the surfaces of chaetae that interact with the tube walls and the texture provided by the secreted strands or microscopic inclusions of the inner linings. These linings had a surprising diversity of micro-textures. The most common micro-texture was a “fabric” of secreted threads, but there were also orderly micro-ridges, wrinkles, and rugose surfaces provided by microorganisms incorporated into the inner tube lining. Understanding the fine structures of tubes in conjunction with the morphologies of the worms that build them gives insight into how tubes are constructed and how worms live within them

Back Road Paranoia

The thesis experiments with poetic structure and ideas of temporality as they inform the speakers' perceptions of location; this tension emerges from examining history and the present through the lens of interpersonal exchange, the anxieties of public identity, and social parameters. It distills for the reader a particular projection of the American South in transition, both elegizing the agrarian life and absorbing the South's urbanity

USING AUDIENCE-CENTRIC DESIGN AND COMMUNITY FEEDBACK TO MANAGE COMPLEX PRIVACY SETTINGS

Today, technology is enabling people to share information on an unprecedented scale. Although much of this information is intended to be shared with a large group of people or even the public, some disclosure is intended for smaller audiences—a subset of a larger group. People may want to limit information visibility because the information is private or sensitive, or they may feel others would not be interested in the content. When people want to selectively share to different audiences, many technologies fail to provide usable mechanisms to manage these more complex sharing situations. In many cases, people lack understanding about which audiences are able to see what items of information. Additionally, the effort to manage audiences and control access to information adds some extra physical and cognitive burden. This research suggests two methods to help people better understand and control sharing. The first examines audience-centric design: using mechanisms that integrate with the primary task and allow sharing to multiple audiences to improve understanding of how information flows to multiple groups of people. The second method examines using community feedback to enhance privacy/sharing default settings thereby lessening the user’s configuration burden. This knowledge contributes to existing research by understanding the extent of how users share information to multiple audiences and react to community feedback mechanisms designed to ease configuration burden

Analysis of urban heat island climates along the I-85/I-40 corridor in central North Carolina

Land surface temperature is a significant parameter for identifying micro-climatic changes and their spatial distributions relative to the urban environment. This paper examined and identified the urban heat islands and their spatial and temporal variability along the I-85/I-40 corridor in central North Carolina between 1990 and 2002. More specifically, the study focused on: (1) understanding the behavior of the spectral and thermal signatures of various land cover and land use types and their relationships with UHI development, and (2) applying digital remote sensing techniques to observe and measure the temporal and spatial variability of these surface heat islands. An assemblage of remotely sensed imagery (Landsat data), land surface temperature data, land cover and land use classifications, vegetation indices, and archived weather data was used to create maps, charts and statistical models to indicate and display the magnitude and spatial extent of these thermal climates. The data revealed that urbanization in the I-85/I-40 corridor region increased significantly between 1990 and 2002. Quantitative results from the satellite imagery also indicated that differences in land cover/ land use types, anthropogenic heat sources, and land surface temperature variability likely contributed to a temperature rise in the corridor study area thus thermal climate development

Man-made menopause and architectural embodiment in Herman Melville’s “I and My Chimney” AND “A Disembodied Listener”: Hawthorne’s mesmeric narrator in The House of the Seven Gables

Herman Melville’s 1856 short story “I and My Chimney” illustrates a dispute between an old man and his wife about the domestic inconveniences caused by the chimney centrally located in their home. The old man desires to preserve his chimney at all costs. Meanwhile, the wife seeks to reduce the size of the chimney for mobility within the home and the comfort of her family. R. Bruce Bickley, Jr. and Clark Davis, among others, view the old man’s wife as emasculating. However, the narrator is responsible for many of the physical and mental conditions that limit his wife’s agency. Furthermore, these conditions cause her to resemble the stereotypical nineteenth-century menopausal woman. I argue that, through this narrative, Melville suggests that menopausal symptoms are male-constructed rather than biological. In order to further support my argument that Melville does not characterize the wife as a tyrant, I compare Melville’s story with Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s “Revolt of ‘Mother’”—a critically-accepted feminist text. Freeman’s female protagonist experiences a similar plight to the wife in “I and My Chimney,” though scholars have interpreted both women in significantly different ways. This intertextual approach shows similarities between the short stories and encourages a new reading of Melville’s story that shows the depth of Melville’s understanding of gender, sexuality, and aging. AND Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables thrives on its engagement with mesmerism, a pseudoscience Hawthorne feared but often explored throughout his fiction. Much like a mesmerist, the novel’s narrator controls the Pyncheons and his readers using spellbinding language. Alongside this commanding language, the narrator suggests he is both embodied and disembodied, singular and ubiquitous. While scholars have examined Hawthorne’s recurrent use of mesmerism, this essay is the first to examine how Hawthorne’s narrator influences Seven Gables’ plot as a mesmeric character. In this essay, I discuss Hawthorne’s narrative style, how his narrators are embodied, and how mesmerism influences how we interpret these narrators. Then, I examine how the narrator of Seven Gables controls his readers, actively threatens the Pyncheon family, and characterizes himself as a threat to the safety of both characters and readers. Through this analysis, I hope to further the ongoing critical conversation regarding Hawthorne’s use of narrative mesmerism and its interconnectedness with the structure, style, and theme of the novel. Moreover, this essay urges scholars to further question Hawthorne’s narrators in his mesmeric stories and the evolving role of the narrator in nineteenth-century American fiction

ARID1a is an Inhibitor of Wnt Signalling in Xenopus and Human

Wnt signalling regulates a wide range of events throughout embryonic development, adult homeostasis and the onset of disease. Within the frog Xenopus laevis activation of the Wnt pathway results in one of the first major events during embryogenesis: the establishment of the dorsal-ventral axis. At the molecular level the Wnt pathway in Xenopus embryos is similar to that in many other organisms – including humans – therefore what is learned about protein functions from studies in Xenopus can be extrapolated to other species. My PhD has focussed on the role of ARID1a in the regulation of the Wnt pathway. ARID1a is the largest subunit of the chromatin remodelling BAF complex, which is the vertebrate homologue of the yeast SWI/SNF complex. The BAF complex functions by repositioning nucleosomes within chromatin, and plays a role in a variety of cellular functions such as the regulation of transcription, RNA splicing and DNA damage repair. ARID1a was originally identified in the fruit fly Drosophila, where it was implicated as a repressor of Wg. My studies verify and expand upon this work, investigating the role of ARID1a as a repressor of the Wnt pathway in Xenopus and in Human Embryonic Kidney 293 (HEK293) cells. I carried out a mass spectrometry screen in HEK293 cells and identified two interacting proteins for further study: BCL7a and DDX5. I demonstrate that these two proteins are also able to inhibit Wnt signalling in Xenopus, and suggest mechanisms by which this repression may occur

Searching for truth in the post-truth era: an examination of detective fiction from Poe to present

During the 2016 election, terms such as “fake news” and “post-truth” became commonplace as well as talks of “two Americas,” suggesting that truth and reality were relative to one’s perspective. Trust in foundational institutions like church, school, and government has become shaky at best, leading many scholars to believe we have entered a post-truth age. In my dissertation, I attempt to tackle the question of truth by examining people whose job it is to uncover the truth: detectives. I trace a philosophical history of detective novels through three different time periods described as modern, postmodern, and contemporary in order to argue that truth is located in intersubjectivity, explaining that successful detectives, through their ability to identify another’s perspectives, can discover motive and belief in order to bring cases to closure, where others cannot. In the modern period, I examine ways in which Edgar Allan Poe’s detective August C. Dupin and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes solve mysteries by assuming a rational world where everything is neatly ordered. This allows truth to be a function of rationality and solvable by applying logic. Following this analysis, I turn to the hard-boiled novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett to examine the way order and meaning became increasingly elusive after two world wars and the atomic bomb, leading to an existential crisis and the postmodern era. The postmodern era is characterized by the endless deferral of meaning, making it impossible for the detectives in this section to reach closure. I begin with Jorge Louis Borges and Samuel Beckett, transitional authors associated with late modernism, who laid the groundwork for an upheaval of traditional Cartesian rationality by pushing its boundaries to the limits. Following these late modernist examples, I turn to the postmodern novels Libra by Don DeLillo and The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon to exemplify the problem of knowledge construction in a world that has become increasingly paranoid. The rise of paranoia has been caused by both philosophical and historical reasons. From modernist critiques of transcendental meaning to the rising distrust in the state after the Vietnam war, there became a lack of faith in a common background from which to build knowledge. In both cases, the lack of agreement on the nature of reality renders the detectives unable to discover truth and achieve closure. In the contemporary era, I explore the ways in which globalization and the rise of digital technology have increased the speed and density of information networks, further complicating the idea of discovering the truth regarding any complex event. In this chapter, I examine Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves as a representative case of the problem of closure in a hypermodern world that is connected by a blending of physical and digital networks. I do find a hopeful example in HBO’s drama The Wire where detectives are able to stabilize a network by limiting their environment and narrowing their scope, albeit temporarily. In so doing, the detectives show that it is possible to discover the truth, if one can “triangulate” in Donald Davidson’s sense. Finally, I conclude by showing the dangers of believing that these critiques of truth and closure have resulted in a “post-truth” era, where people live in diverse worlds based on preexisting categories such as culture, or language. Through the works of philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, and Donald Davidson, I argue for a way out of the problems of relativism through a phenomenological perspective grounded in being-in-the-world. This approach results in the conclusion that objectivity is intersubjective

Homemakers' reactions to planning, developing and using coordinated food mixing centers in their kitchens

The purposes of this study were to determine reactions of homemakers to coordinated food mixing centers in their kitchens during the planning, developing, and after use stages, and to suggest ways in which educators might work more effectively with homemakers in developing efficient kitchen storage. Contacts were made in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, to locate ten women willing to develop a mix center. Reactions were noted following eight visits. Family information, and reactions after the use period were gained through questionnaires. Photographs taken before and after development of mix center showed space utilization. Mix centers were developed according to the principles of good storage. The homemakers were unaware of inefficient kitchen arrangements or storage. Storage patterns were developed with little thought when families moved into a dwelling. The homemakers could not visualize a mix center until they saw one evolve. They offered varying degrees of resistance to change. Some women, as their understanding and interest grew, were able to apply principles of storage in other areas of the home

An exhibition of paintings

This document is a record of a thesis exhibition held in the Weatherspoon Gallery April 25 through May 15, 1965. The thesis is an exhibition of two pieces of sculpture and seventeen oil paintings chosen from among the works I have completed as a graduate student. All of the pictures are produced on canvas except one, "'Winthrop with the Rout of San Romano,” which is painted on a small wooden panel. Portions of this painting are taken from three famous battle paintings of San Romano by the Italian Renaissance artist, Ucello. Thirteen of the canvases are stretched across wooden stretchers, but three of them, which I have termed "mural panels," hang in the exhibition somewhat in the manner of tapestries or scrolls from the ceiling. They are attached both above and below to wooden cross pieces, but not at the sides. These three panels are sections, which I have selected for the exhibition, of a continuous wall decoration, for an entire room, which is at this time partially completed. Eventually these panels will be affixed permanently, with others, to the walls of that room. One of the sculpture heads was fashioned directly in clay from a model. 'The other head was cast in plaster in a mold of fourteen pieces made from the original clay one. Each of them is painted in oil colors, one predominantly in yellows, the other in blues