Oomycete and fungal pathogens threaten food, fiber, and forests around the world. With climate change, these pathogens are expected to emerge more frequently. Evolution can facilitate their emergence through mechanisms such as mutations that change or expand host range. Characterizing evolutionary mechanisms in plant pathogens will contribute to our ability...
The research presented herein represents an effort to combine the ultra-smooth surface of an amorphous metal thin film (AMTF) with a solution-processed dielectric synthesized via prompt inorganic condensation (PIC). Analysis of dielectric film quality is carried out via electrical measurements of metal-insulator-metal (MIM) diodes. Anneals at 500 and 700 °C...
Dinosaurs represent one of the most successful evolutionary radiations of terrestrial vertebrates, with a myriad of forms that dominated the terrestrial environment for over 180 million years. Despite the fact that dinosaurs are the focus of extensive popular and scholarly investigation, relatively little is actually known of their biology. The...
This thesis focuses on the investigation of extraterrestrial tracers Ir, Pt and 3He in polar ice cores. These tracers may be used to identify characteristics of interplanetary dust particles, and to quantify the flux of extraterrestrial material during impact events, certain volcanic eruptions, and stable background periods. In the first...
An asymmetric approach to the synthesis of byssochlamic acid (1) is
described. Regioisomeric enzymatic differentiation is described in the selective
hydrolysis of dimethyl ester 30 by porcine liver esterase. Chiral dimethyl ester 42
was prepared by desymmetrization of cyclopentene 34 using porcine liver
esterase. A key intramolecular [2+2]cycloaddition-cycloreversion
photometathesis of...
RNA silencing plays a critical role in plant defense against viral infection. Plants use virusderived
small interfering RNA to target and silence invading viruses. The antiviral silencing
pathway can be broken down into three conceptual stages: initiation, amplification, and systemic
movement. The molecular mechanisms of silencing initiation are not well...
This paper presents an exposition of the stochastic models
for the Brownian motion. The results of Einstein and Wiener are
presented, together with the Uhlenbeck-Ornstein process which
gives a more realistic model of the Brownian motion of a particle.
Finally, applying a one-one transformation on the forward
Kolmogorov equation we...
Facial recognition has become increasingly important in recent years, due to the wide range of applications it has in fields such as security, surveillance, and human-computer interaction. Three popular methods for facial recognition are the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Karhunen-Loeve Expansions, which is fundamentally a continuous form of PCA but...