Osteosarcoma (OSA) is a primary malignant bone tumor sarcoma that occurs in dogs as well as people and has aggressive biologic behavior with devastating consequences. Because of the similarities in morphology and prognosis, OSA in dogs represents an effective model for the equivalent disease in humans. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)...
Five solvents were used to resolubilize the fungal pigments of Chlorociboria aeruginosa and Scytalidium cuboideum, two common fungi used in the spalting of wood pieces. These solvents were tested as a replacement for dichloromethane in the pigment application process, via analysis of their ability to increase internal color coverage inside...
Optical trapping is a tool used throughout a wide variety of disciplines rang- ing from precisely probing and manipulating sub-micron organisms in biol- ogy to analyzing fundamental charge transfer in colloidal physics. This thesis presents research involving optical tweezer force measurements of polystyrene and silica microspheres. In addition, preliminary work...
A simple Janus-type membrane-based wicking microfluidic device fabricated on a polycaprolactone-filled glass microfiber membrane enables separation and collection of blood plasma or serum from whole blood. This device bridges the wicking and cut-capillary-based solution transport mechanisms in a single membrane. The initial portion of the device is fabricated using selective...
Exploring and quantifying the parameters regarding contact guidance may provide valuable insight to the precise mechanisms controlling cell movement, especially in a three-dimensional environment. The objective of this project was to quantify the relationship between MDA-MB-231 cell morphogenesis and the geometry of the cell’s local microenvironment, which was modeled by...
Pantoea vagans C9-1 (C9-1) is a biological control agent sprayed onto apple and pear trees during bloom for suppression of fire blight, a devastating bacterial disease caused by Erwinia amylovora. Prior bioinformatics studies of C9-1 focused on predicted phenotypes associated with the three native megaplasmids, pPag1, pPag2, and pPag3, and...
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2015 10.4 million people worldwide became infected with tuberculosis (TB) with 1.8 million TB related deaths. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a slow growing yet highly infectious bacterium. Among the first line of treatments...
Multicellular coordination in response to environmental stimuli is essential in biology, and this coordination is often achieved by a division of labor to establish leaders and followers in a cell population. This is called emergent leadership, but how a cell adopts its role and effectively exchanges information with peers is...
Stream light availability is an important factor influencing aquatic food webs. In forested headwaters, stream algal production is often highly light-limited, so an increase in light enhances benthic algal growth, which in turn increases food availability for primary consumers in the stream. In forested headwater streams, light availability is almost...
Sonification is an emerging field that highlights and translates the patterns of data into sound. In this way, the auditory sense functions as an interface for transmitting information in a meaningful way. There have been many previous applications of sonification in research and professional settings. However, this field remains an...