Tomato [Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.] plants are chilling sensitive and do not
naturally accumulate glycinebetaine (GB), a metabolite that functions as a stress
protectant in plants. While GB can increase tolerance of tomato plants to salt and
drought stresses, its effect on chilling tolerance has not been examined. To evaluate
whether...
Quantifying the mass transport through marine sediments, and the geochemical response to such flow with numerical models has become a common and powerful approach for geochemical data interpretation. In this dissertation, I developed and applied transport-reaction models to unravel complex and interdependent reactions involving carbon, sulfur and silica transformations in...
Phospholipase C-β (PLC-β) isozymes are key effectors in G protein-coupled
signaling pathways. Prior research suggested that some isoforms of PLC-β may exist
and function as dimers, but little is known about dimerization of PLC-β. Data from coimmunoprecipitation
assays of differentially-tagged PLC-β constructs and sizeexclusion
chromatography of native PLC-β support homodimerization...
Marine sediments contain an abundance of methane that is biologically produced
and plays a significant role in the global carbon cycle. Microbes responsible for the
carbon cycle in marine sediments, and the processes that they carry out, need to be
characterized in order to fully understand the role of this...
This thesis will cover my work relating to the developing field of terahertz (THz) science and technology. It will present experimental and theoretical studies investigating the optical and electrical properties of various material systems using novel THz imaging and spectroscopy techniques. Due to its low photon energy, THz imaging and...
The overall focus of this thesis is on the distribution of specific lipids and membrane proteins of the external and internal membranes of plant cells, in the context of the roles that those lipids and proteins may play in microbe-plant interactions. The work includes the development of several new tools,...
Thermoelectric materials are playing a larger role in the global effort to
develop diverse, efficient, and sustainable energy technologies: primarily through
power-generating thermoelectric modules. The principal components of
thermoelectric modules are solid-state thermoelectric materials – typically heavily
doped semiconductors – that convert heat directly into electricity. However, this
conversion efficiency...
In this dissertation, a series of studies in the field of terahertz (THz) science are presented, specifically using nonlinear THz spectroscopy. We exploit huge field enhancement and subwavelength confinement in plasmonic structures. There are three distinct projects which will be discussed: nonlinear THz spectroscopy using plasmonic induced transparency (PIT), THz-triggered...