Identifying habitat and spatial requirements of wildlife species across multiple spatial scales is a challenging, yet crucial component of wildlife management. Habitat use of bats is particularly difficult to study, and managing habitat to conserve bats is especially challenging because bats are highly vagile organisms that exploit several different types...
In the past few decades, magnetic recording has been used as a dominant solution for massive data storage due to its large capacity, excellent reliability and low cost. Nowadays, exponentially increasing user-generated information is creating a huge demand as well as great challenges for high density data storage solutions. For...
The development and some applications of holographic optical tweezers (HOT) are presented. Our HOT system uses a spatial light modulator (SLM) to control the location and properties of the optical trap. We have developed a method for optimizing the diffraction efficiency of a SLM that can be applied in situ...
The critically endangered Maui's dolphin (Cephalorhynchus hectori maui) and the endangered Hector's dolphin (C. h. hectori) are endemic to the coastal waters of New Zealand, where their primary threat is fisheries-related mortality. The Maui's dolphin is among the most critically endangered cetaceans in the world, with its remnant population primarily...
Circadian clocks are endogenous molecular mechanisms that coordinate daily rhythms in gene expression, cellular activities, and physiological functions with external day/night cycles. Breakdown of circadian rhythms such as sleep/wake cycles is associated with the onset of several neurological diseases; however, it is not clear whether disruption of rhythms is a...
Continued interest in the development of miniaturized and portable analytical platforms necessitates the exploration of sensitive methods for the detection of trace analytes. Nanomaterials, on account of their unique physical and chemical properties, are not only able to overcome many limitations of traditional detection reagents but also enable the exploration...
Within the past several years the technology of high-throughput sequencing has transformed the study of biology by offering unprecedented access to life's fundamental building block, DNA. With this transformation's potential a host of brand-new challenges have emerged, many of which lend themselves to being solved through computational methods. From de...
In grasslands, grazing by large ungulates can influence vegetation structure, composition, primary productivity, and ultimately, ecosystem functioning. While grazing represents a complex disturbance, grazing intensity largely determines the effects of
grazing on vegetation. Structural and compositional changes in the plant community caused by grazing could have bottom-up effects on species...
Magnetically programmable surface acoustic wave (MP SAW) devices were designed, fabricated and characterized in this thesis using integrated giant magnetoresistive (GMR) bits with interdigital reflectors. This provides a proof of concept of a novel storage element on radio frequency identification tags. Interdigital transducers (IDTs) on a piezoelectric substrate are used...
Proteins are the metabolic machines of the cell and as such, the study of proteins could illuminate the dominant biological activities that are occurring within cells and reveal how an organism interacts with its environment. Here, we used proteomic techniques to study the abundant marine bacterium SAR11 both as an...