Matching Items (2,090)
Filtering by
- Creators: School of Life Sciences
- Creators: School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
The original version of Helix, the one I pitched when first deciding to make a video game
for my thesis, is an action-platformer, with the intent of metroidvania-style progression
and an interconnected world map.
The current version of Helix is a turn based role-playing game, with the intent of roguelike
gameplay and a dark fantasy theme. We will first be exploring the challenges that came
with programming my own game - not quite from scratch, but also without a prebuilt
engine - then transition into game design and how Helix has evolved from its original form
to what we see today.
for my thesis, is an action-platformer, with the intent of metroidvania-style progression
and an interconnected world map.
The current version of Helix is a turn based role-playing game, with the intent of roguelike
gameplay and a dark fantasy theme. We will first be exploring the challenges that came
with programming my own game - not quite from scratch, but also without a prebuilt
engine - then transition into game design and how Helix has evolved from its original form
to what we see today.
ContributorsDiscipulo, Isaiah K (Author) / Meuth, Ryan (Thesis director) / Kobayashi, Yoshihiro (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Aquatic macroinvertebrates are important for many ecological processes within river ecosystems and, as a result, their abundance and diversity are considered indicators of water quality and ecosystem health. Macroinvertebrates can be classified into functional feeding groups (FFG) based on morphological-behavioral adaptations. FFG ratios can shift due to changes in normal disturbance patterns, such as changes in precipitation, and from human impact. Due to their increased sensitivity to environmental changes, it has become more important to protect and monitor aquatic and riparian communities in arid regions as climate change continues to intensify. Therefore, the diversity and richness of macroinvertebrate FFGs before and after monsoon and winter storm seasons were analyzed to determine the effect of flow-related disturbances. Ecosystem size was also considered, as watershed area has been shown to affect macroinvertebrate diversity. There was no strong support for flow-related disturbance or ecosystem size on macroinvertebrate diversity and richness. This may indicate a need to explore other parameters of macroinvertebrate community assembly. Establishing how disturbance affects aquatic macroinvertebrate communities will provide a key understanding as to what the stream communities will look like in the future, as anthropogenic impacts continue to affect more vulnerable ecosystems.
ContributorsSainz, Ruby (Author) / Sabo, John (Thesis director) / Grimm, Nancy (Committee member) / Lupoli, Christina (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This study evaluates medical pluralism among 1.5 generation Indian American immigrants. 1.5 generation Indian Americans (N=16) were surveyed regarding their engagement in complementary and alternative medical systems (CAM), how immigration affected that, and reasons for and for not continuing the use of CAM. Results indicated most 1.5 Indian immigrants currently engage in CAM, given that their parents also engage in CAM. The top reasons respondents indicated continued engagement in CAM was that it has no side effects and is preventative. Reasons for not practicing CAM included feeling out of place, not living with parents or not believing in CAM. After immigration, most participants decreased or stopped their engagement in CAM. More women than men continued to practice CAM after immigration. From the results, it was concluded that CAM is still important to 1.5 generation Indian immigrants.
ContributorsMurugesh, Subhiksha (Author) / Stotts, Rhian (Thesis director) / Mubayi, Anuj (Committee member) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Many factors are at play within the genome of an organism, contributing to much of the diversity and variation across the tree of life. While the genome is generally encoded by four nucleotides, A, C, T, and G, this code can be expanded. One particular mechanism that we examine in this thesis is modification of bases—more specifically, methylation of Adenine (m6A) within the GATC motif of Escherichia coli. These methylated adenines are especially important in a process called methyl-directed mismatch repair (MMR), a pathway responsible for repairing errors in the DNA sequence produced by replication. In this pathway, methylated adenines identify the parent strand and direct the repair proteins to correct the erroneous base in the daughter strand. While the primary role of methylated adenines at GATC sites is to direct the MMR pathway, this methylation has also been found to affect other processes, such as gene expression, the activity of transposable elements, and the timing of DNA replication. However, in the absence of MMR, the ability of these other processes to maintain adenine methylation and its targets is unknown.
To determine if the disruption of the MMR pathway results in the reduced conservation of methylated adenines as well as an increased tolerance for mutations that result in the loss or gain of new GATC sites, we surveyed individual clones isolated from experimentally evolving wild-type and MMR-deficient (mutL- ;conferring an 150x increase in mutation rate) populations of E. coli with whole-genome sequencing. Initial analysis revealed a lack of mutations affecting methylation sites (GATC tetranucleotides) in wild-type clones. However, the inherent low mutation rates conferred by the wild-type background render this result inconclusive, due to a lack of statistical power, and reveal a need for a more direct measure of changes in methylation status. Thus as a first step to comparative methylomics, we benchmarked four different methylation-calling pipelines on three biological replicates of the wildtype progenitor strain for our evolved populations.
While it is understood that these methylated sites play a role in the MMR pathway, it is not fully understood the full extent of their effect on the genome. Thus the goal of this thesis was to better understand the forces which maintain the genome, specifically concerning m6A within the GATC motif.
To determine if the disruption of the MMR pathway results in the reduced conservation of methylated adenines as well as an increased tolerance for mutations that result in the loss or gain of new GATC sites, we surveyed individual clones isolated from experimentally evolving wild-type and MMR-deficient (mutL- ;conferring an 150x increase in mutation rate) populations of E. coli with whole-genome sequencing. Initial analysis revealed a lack of mutations affecting methylation sites (GATC tetranucleotides) in wild-type clones. However, the inherent low mutation rates conferred by the wild-type background render this result inconclusive, due to a lack of statistical power, and reveal a need for a more direct measure of changes in methylation status. Thus as a first step to comparative methylomics, we benchmarked four different methylation-calling pipelines on three biological replicates of the wildtype progenitor strain for our evolved populations.
While it is understood that these methylated sites play a role in the MMR pathway, it is not fully understood the full extent of their effect on the genome. Thus the goal of this thesis was to better understand the forces which maintain the genome, specifically concerning m6A within the GATC motif.
ContributorsBoyer, Gwyneth (Author) / Lynch, Michael (Thesis director) / Behringer, Megan (Committee member) / Geiler-Samerotte, Kerry (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This thesis evaluates the viability of an original design for a cost-effective wheel-mounted dynamometer for road vehicles. The goal is to show whether or not a device that generates torque and horsepower curves by processing accelerometer data collected at the edge of a wheel can yield results that are comparable to results obtained using a conventional chassis dynamometer. Torque curves were generated via the experimental method under a variety of circumstances and also obtained professionally by a precision engine testing company. Metrics were created to measure the precision of the experimental device's ability to consistently generate torque curves and also to compare the similarity of these curves to the professionally obtained torque curves. The results revealed that although the test device does not quite provide the same level of precision as the professional chassis dynamometer, it does create torque curves that closely resemble the chassis dynamometer torque curves and exhibit a consistency between trials comparable to the professional results, even on rough road surfaces. The results suggest that the test device provides enough accuracy and precision to satisfy the needs of most consumers interested in measuring their vehicle's engine performance but probably lacks the level of accuracy and precision needed to appeal to professionals.
ContributorsKing, Michael (Author) / Ren, Yi (Thesis director) / Spanias, Andreas (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The current study investigated whether intermittent restraint stress (IRS) would impair fear extinction learning and lead to increased anxiety and depressive- like behaviors and then be attenuated when IRS ends and a post- stress rest period ensues for 6 weeks. Young adult, male Sprague Dawley rats underwent restraint stress using wire mesh (6hr/daily) for five days with two days off before restraint resumed for three weeks for a total of 23 restraint days. The groups consisted of control (CON) with no restraint other than food and water restriction yoked to the restrained groups, stress immediate (STR-IMM), which were restrained then fear conditioned soon after the end of the IRS paradigm, and stress given a rest for 6 weeks before fear conditioning commenced (STR-R6). Rats were fear conditioned by pairing a 20 second tone with a footshock, then given extinction training for two days (15 tone only on each day). On the first day of extinction, all groups discriminated well on the first trial, but then as trials progressed, STR-R6 discriminated between tone and context less than did CON. On the second day of extinction, STR- IMM froze more to context in the earlier trials than compared to STR-R6 and CON. As trials progressed STR-IMM and STR-R6 froze more to context than compared to CON. Together, CON discriminated between tone and context better than did STR-IMM and STR-R6. Sucrose preference, novelty suppressed feeding, and elevated plus maze was performed after fear extinction was completed. No statistical differences were observed among groups for sucrose preference or novelty suppressed feeding. For the elevated plus maze, STR-IMM entered the open arms and the sum of both open and closed arms fewer than did STR- R6 and CON. We interpret the findings to suggest that the stress groups displayed increased hypervigilance and anxiety with STR-R6 exhibiting a unique phenotype than that of STR-IMM and CON.
ContributorsShah, Vrishti Bimal (Author) / Conrad, Cheryl (Thesis director) / Newbern, Jason (Committee member) / Judd, Jessica (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The main goal of this project is to study approximations of functions on circular and spherical domains using the cubed sphere discretization. On each subdomain, the function is approximated by windowed Fourier expansions. Of particular interest is the dependence of accuracy on the different choices of windows and the size of the overlapping regions. We use Matlab to manipulate each of the variables involved in these computations as well as the overall error, thus enabling us to decide which specific values produce the most accurate results. This work is motivated by problems arising in atmospheric research.
ContributorsSopa, Megan Grace (Author) / Platte, Rodrigo (Thesis director) / Kostelich, Eric (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Due to artificial selection, dogs have high levels of phenotypic diversity, yet, there appears to be low genetic diversity within individual breeds. Through their domestication from wolves, dogs have gone through a series of population bottlenecks, which has resulted in a reduction in genetic diversity, with a large amount of linkage disequilibrium and the persistence of deleterious mutations. This has led to an increased susceptibility to a multitude of diseases, including cancer. To study the effects of artificial selection and life history characteristics on the risk of cancer mortality, we collected cancer mortality data from four studies as well as the percent of heterozygosity, body size, lifespan and breed group for 201 dog breeds. We also collected specific types of cancer breeds were susceptible to and compared the dog cancer mortality patterns to the patterns observed in other mammals. We found a relationship between cancer mortality rate and heterozygosity, body size, lifespan as well as breed group. Higher levels of heterozygosity were also associated with longer lifespan. These results indicate larger breeds, such as Irish Water Spaniels, Flat-coated Retrievers and Bernese Mountain Dogs, are more susceptible to cancer, with lower heterozygosity and lifespan. These breeds are also more susceptible to sarcomas, as opposed to carcinomas in smaller breeds, such as Miniature Pinschers, Chihuahuas, and Pekingese. Other mammals show that larger and long-lived animals have decreased cancer mortality, however, within dog breeds, the opposite relationship is observed. These relationships could be due to the trade-off between cellular maintenance and growing fast and large, with higher expression of growth factors, such as IGF-1. This study further demonstrates the relationships between cancer mortality, heterozygosity, and life history traits and exhibits dogs as an important model organism for understanding the relationship between genetics and health.
ContributorsBalsley, Cassandra Sierra (Author) / Maley, Carlo (Thesis director) / Wynne, Clive (Committee member) / Tollis, Marc (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Vitellogenin (vg) is a precursor protein of egg yolk in honeybees, but it is also known to have immunological functions. The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of vg on the viral load of deformed wing virus (DWV) in worker honey bees (Apis mellifera). I hypothesized that a reduction in vg expression would lead to an increase in the viral load. I collected 180 worker bees and split them into four groups: half the bees were subjected to a vg gene knockdown by injections of double stranded vg RNA, and the rest were injected with green fluorescent protein (gfp) double stranded RNA. Half of each group was thereafter injected with DWV, and half given a sham injection. The rate of mortality in all four groups was higher than expected, leaving only 17 bees total. I dissected these bees' fat bodies and extracted their RNA to test for vg and DWV. PCR results showed that, out of the small group of remaining bees, the levels of vg were not statistically different. Furthermore, both groups of virus-injected bees showed similar viral loads. Because of the high mortality rate bees and the lack of differing levels of vg transcript between experimental and control groups, I could not draw conclusions from these results. The high mortality could be caused by several factors: temperature-induced stress, repeated stress from the two injections, and stress from viral infection. In addition, it is possible that the vg dsRNA batch I used was faulty. This thesis exemplifies that information cannot safely be extracted when loss of sampling units result in a small datasets that do not represent the original sampling population.
ContributorsCrable, Emma Lewis (Author) / Amdam, Gro (Thesis director) / Wang, Ying (Committee member) / Dahan, Romain (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Researchers suggests that college students' involvement and use of resources on campus are important for success, in the form of satisfaction and GPA, in the first year. College officials invest substantial resources in activities to encourage freshmen students to become involved in campus activities and utilize resources that promote successful outcomes, yet we do not know which activities best relate to success. Using a self-report survey, we sought to corroborate previous research that has shown that overall levels of involvement and use of resources relate to satisfaction/GPA. Furthermore, we disentangled which individual types of involvement and use of resources are most highly correlated with satisfaction and GPA. And finally, we identified the barriers and benefits to involvement and resource use, according to the students themselves. We found evidence that higher levels of involvement were related to satisfaction and attending faculty office hours appears to be particularly important, given a significant relation to both satisfaction and GPA. Implications for program promotion and resource allocation are discussed.
ContributorsPaley, Madeleine (Author) / Foster, Stacie (Thesis director) / Spinrad, Tracy (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12