The thesis begins with an introduction to signal transduction
and an analysis of current understanding of plant signal
transduction. There are similarities between plants and animals,
but also key differences, including lack of protein kinase C and of a
cAMP signaling pathway in plants, and presence in plants of
calcium...
Plants develop a vast array of cell shapes and sizes by selectively modifying their surrounding cell walls to expand in some regions and not in others. This process of morphogenesis requires the delivery of secretory vesicles to specific locations at the cell periphery, where exocytosis adds new membrane and proteins...
Primary cultures of stromal-vascular (S-V) cells from adipose tissue were
used to investigate the regulation of preadipocyte development. Differentiation of
S-V cells was found to be under hormonal control. Insulin and glucocorticoids are
essential for S-V cell differentiation in culture.
S-V cells from both newborn and mature pig adipose tissue...
Direct red Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) Turbine hybrid plants have the potential to dramatically increase power plant efficiency, decrease emissions, and provide fast response to transient loads. The US Department of Energy's (DOE) Hybrid Performance Project is an experimental hybrid SOFC plant, built at the National
Energy Technology Laboratory...
Current cadmium telluride and copper indium gallium diselenide thin-film solar cells
(TFSCs) utilize thick absorbers (2 - 4 μm). For efficient carrier extraction in these TFSCs,
the absorber layer requires high carrier mobilities and a long minority carrier lifetime, which
necessitates the use of a high purity, defect-free thin film....
Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMS) have claimed many advantages over traditional job shop processes. Some of the advantages reported by several users of CMS are reduction in throughput time, reduction in WIP inventory, improvement in product quality, faster response time to customer orders, shorter move distances, increase in manufacturing flexibility, and...
Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) of the strains representing the 14 races of
U. hordei, the causal agent of covered smut on barley, revealed extensive polymorphism
in chromosome length and number. The purpose of this study was to determine by two
approaches the exact chromosome number for each U. hordei race,...