Developing Practices Within the Lord’s Supper That Develop Central Identity at Queen City Church of Christ

This project was designed to meet a need at the Queen City Church of Christ (QCC) for developing intentional practices around the Lord’s Supper for forming a central identity in a diverse community. The scope of this project focuses on the project group’s ability to develop practices based on the theology of the Lord’s Supper, biblical teaching, engaging in practices of spiritual formation as a group, and their observations of Lord’s Supper practices in other Christian traditions. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth provides the textual context for the discussion of the role the Lord’s Supper plays within a faith community. The theology of the Lord’s Supper throughout scripture and church history also informs the theological foundation for the project. Gleaning from the work of James K. A. Smith, the project consults the study of the formation of liturgies as an approach to creating intentional identity formative practices. A purposeful sample of members at QCC were used for conducting this intervention. The diverse project group were chosen by the church leadership and me from applicants from the congregation. One primary objective of the project was to introduce the group to spiritual disciplines to help them form the habits of spiritual formation. Another primary objective was to connect new practices each week with the teaching from the session and implement them into the group’s time together with the Lord’s Supper. The intervention was intended to draw upon the experience of a diverse group of Christians who engaged in spiritual disciplines, theological teaching, and observations of the Lord’s Supper within the Christian tradition to see if they could formulate practices for our congregation in our context for the sake of cultivating a central identity in our diverse community. The intervention resulted in a proposal of practices presented to the church elders for their consideration

Mammalian DCN-1-like Proteins Enhance Neddylation of CUL3, and Vary in Localization and Tissue-Specific Expression

The Squamous Cell Carcinoma-Related Oncogene (SCCRO/DCUN1D1), located at 3q26.3, is a candidate oncogene that is gene-amplified and overexpressed in squamous-cell carcinomas of the upper aerodigestive tract and lung. The SCCRO protein is a member of a phylogenically conserved protein family, the defective in cullin neddylation - 1 - like domain containing ( Dcun1d ) proteins, which have been shown to promote the covalent modification of cullin proteins by the ubiquitin-like protein Nedd8. In this study, we sought to characterize the expression and molecular interactions of vertebrate Dcun1d proteins, in order to better understand the normal function of genes in this family. We demonstrate that the majority of SCCRO protein in cultured human epithelial cell lines is not found in stable complexes with known interactors, including cullins, UBC12, and CAND1, a regulator of cullinRING-finger ubiquitin ligases (CRLs). We show that SCCRO expression is not cell-cycle regulated in HeLa-S cells. We describe five highly conserved vertebrate Dcun1d genes, and show that the products of all five genes interact with cullins and with CAND1. We show that four of the five proteins enhance the neddylation of CUL3 in a dose-dependant fashion in-vitro. We demonstrate that the UBA domain-containing SCCRO and Dcun1d2 proteins are pan-cellular in localization, while other family members contain alternate N-terminal domains which mediate their exclusive localization to the nucleus (Dcun1d4 and Dcun1d5) or to cellular membranes (Dcun1d3). We demonstrate that expression of alternate Dcun1d1 transcipts is specifically regulated in mouse germ cells during spermatogenesis, and we present evidence for specific expression of Dcun1d2 in brain and muscle tissue. We conclude that spermatogenesis and myogenesis could serve as valuable model systems for future studies of the interaction between expression levels of vertebrate Dcun1d proteins and the activity of CRL complexes. Such work could be valuable in understanding how SCCRO overexpression contributes to cancer

Katz-Calls: Application of Fourth Amendment Protection to Police Use of Smartphone Emergency Functionality

In determining whether an officer’s use of the Emergency function of a phone is a search, it is important first to lay a foundation for why the Constitution provides protection against searches in the first place. Part I of this Note will provide a brief overview of why the Fourth Amendment was adopted, and what rights it is intended to protect. Next, it is impossible to know whether use of Emergency would qualify as a search unless we know how a search is defined. Part II of this Note will examine the tests that have developed over the years, namely the Katz test and the Jones test, which give the prevailing framework for determining whether a search has taken place. Part III will show how these tests have been adapted and made applicable to modern technology in our digital age. Technology has presented courts with a variety of legal issues to sort through and, though the question of Emergency use has not been settled at a circuit court level, related issues have already found their way into appellate jurisdiction. In Part IV, this Note will give a summation of what have come to be called the “MagStripe” cases, and will show how the legal questions at issue in those cases could come to bear heavily on the fate of Emergency use in future prosecutions. To conclude, Part V will address how the culmination of the case law indicates that police use of Emergency is not a search under the Fourth Amendment

Coevolution and cospeciation in a bark-beetle fungal symbiosis

Bark beetles in the genus Dendroctonus are some of the most important insects in forest ecosystems worldwide and are known to be involved in symbiotic relationships with fungi. However, we have a poor understanding of beetle-fungal coevolution and if the specificity we see in beetle-fungal relationships may translate to cospeciation over longer time frames. In this dissertation, I attempt to answer these questions by investigating the western pine beetle (Dendroctonus brevicomis)-fungal symbiosis, a beetle that consists of two putative cryptic species in the early stages of divergence on two susbspecies of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). In the first chapter, I describe research aimed at determining if the western pine beetle harbors the same species of mycangial fungi across its entire range. I found widespread fungal fidelity and that the beetle carries two species, Entomocorticium sp. B, and Ceratocystiopsis brevicomi. In the second chapter, I describe research aimed at determining if the western pine beetle is indeed in an obligate mutualism and is adapted to fungal isolates with a shared evolutionary history. I found that E. sp. B was crucial for the successful development of western pine beetles and found no significant difference in the effects of the natal (shared history) and non-natal (no shared history) isolate on beetle fitness parameters. However, brood adult beetles failed to incorporate the non-natal fungus into their mycangium indicating adaption by the beetle to particular genotypes of symbiotic fungi. In the third chapter I describe research exploring if the beetle, its two fungal symbionts, and the host tree are genetically structured in a similar fashion indicative of shared evolutionary history and cospeciation. I sequenced the genomes of the beetle and two fungal symbionts and conducted population genetic and genomic analyses for the host tree, beetle, and for the two fungal symbionts. I found congruent patterns of population genetic structure and phylogenetic relationships between multiple species. Taken together, my dissertation research suggests that the western pine beetle is in a tightly linked and evolving obligate mutualism with fungi and that the entire tree-beetle-fungi system is diverging and cospeciating in concert

Examination of metabolism in diabetic offspring

The purpose of this study was to categorize aberrant metabolic function in diabetic offspring (FH+). This study examined metabolic flexibility (MF), and changes in fasting blood-glucose concentrations and markers of lipotoxicity with resistance training in college age FH+ and FH-. Results are significant at p = 0.05. MF testing indicate no baseline differences in RMR, VO2, REE, fat or CHO use were noted between T2D, FH+, or FH-. Passive stretching caused increased metabolism overall, however the T2D group temporarily displayed increased CHO use during passive stretching, which quickly returned to pre-stretched levels during recovery as compared with FH-. Both T2D and FH+ display impaired MF as compared with FH- via indirect calorimetry as noted by the change in RER. With training, changes in glucose: lactate ratios were no different between groups, but increased immediately after exercise with training, and decreased at five and ten minutes post-exercise with training. Lastly, there were no differences between FH- and FH+ in pre-training strength, BMI, or in markers measured in plasma before or after exercise. Strength increased from pre to post training similarly. However, changes in NEFA and insulin were noted in weight loss subjects vs non-weight loss. Negative correlations exist between weight loss and: TG, NEFA, insulin and HOMA, and strength, and positive correlations with blood glucose AUC. Though there are differences metabolic flexibility and recovery kinetics between groups with and without a family history of diabetes, this study does not reveal any such differences in glucoregulatory function, or markers of lipotoxicity. Resistance training did not affect FH+ differently than FH-, however there were differences in these markers when groups were re-categorized by weight loss. We were unable to isolate specific factors likely to contribute to the development of IR or T2D within the confines of the current study. However, further research, such as lipid tracers and MRI studies are needed to determine factors leading to more aberrant metabolic function in order to better understand what factors lead to the development of IR and T2D

Dynamics and Control of Smart Structures for Space Applications

Smart materials are one of the key emerging technologies for a variety of space systems ranging in their applications from instrumentation to structural design. The underlying principle of smart materials is that they are materials that can change their properties based on an input, typically a voltage or current. When these materials are incorporated into structures, they create smart structures. This work is concerned with the dynamics and control of three smart structures: a membrane structure with shape memory alloys for control of the membrane surface flatness, a flexible manipulator with a collocated piezoelectric sensor/actuator pair for active vibration control, and a piezoelectric nanopositioner for control of instrumentation. Shape memory alloys are used to control the surface flatness of a prototype membrane structure. As these actuators exhibit a hysteretic nonlinearity, they need their own controller to operate as required. The membrane structures surface flatness is then controlled by the shape memory alloys, and two techniques are developed: genetic algorithm and proportional-integral controllers. This would represent the removal of one of the main obstacles preventing the use of membrane structures in space for high precision applications, such as a C-band synthetic aperture radar antenna. Next, an adaptive positive position feedback law is developed for control of a structure with a collocated piezoelectric sensor/actuator pair, with unknown natural frequencies. This control law is then combined with the input shaping technique for slew maneuvers of a single-link flexible manipulator. As an alternative to the adaptive positive position feedback law, genetic algorithms are investigated as both system identification techniques and as a tool for optimal controller design in vibration suppression. These controllers are all verified through both simulation and experiments. The third area of investigation is on the nonlinear dynamics and control of piezoelectric actuators for nanopositioning applications. A state feedback integral plus double integral synchronization controller is designed to allow the piezoelectrics to form the basis of an ultra-precise 2-D Fabry-Perot interferometer as the gap spacing of the device could be controlled at the nanometer level. Next, an output feedback linear integral control law is examined explicitly for the piezoelectric actuators with its nonlinear behaviour modeled as an input nonlinearity to a linear system. Conditions for asymptotic stability are established and then the analysis is extended to the derivation of an output feedback integral synchronization controller that guarantees global asymptotic stability under input nonlinearities. Experiments are then performed to validate the analysis. In this work, the dynamics and control of these smart structures are addressed in the context of their three applications. The main objective of this work is to develop effective and reliable control strategies for smart structures that broaden their applicability to space systems