Understanding the mechanisms that regulate local species diversity and community structure is a perennial goal of ecology. Local community structure can be viewed as the result of numerous local and regional processes; these processes act as filters that reduce the regional species pool down to the observed local community. In...
Local aquatic insect diversity and community structure is the result of multiple local and regional factors, and observed patterns depend upon the spatial and temporal scale under examination. Isolated stream systems in arid regions represent a new challenge in understanding the drivers of diversity and community structure, as most studies...
1. Ecological communities can be relatively stable for long periods of time, and then, often as a result of disturbance, transition rapidly to a novel state. When communities fail to recover to pre-disturbance configurations, they are said to have experienced a regime shift or to be in an alternative stable state....
T cells are one of the key cells in the immune system. Although they are not the first line of defense against a pathogen, their functions can greatly enhance the phagocytosis and destruction of pathogens as well as the development of antibody responses. Furthermore, even when responding T cells have...
The immune system has been identified as a very sensitive target for the toxic effects of 2,3,7,S-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD). Exposure to TCDD has been shown to disrupt the generation of both cell-mediated and humoral T cell-dependent immunity in laboratory animals; however, the mechanism remains unknown. In this dissertation, the hypothesis is...
Temporary rivers are increasingly common freshwater ecosystems, but there have been no global syntheses of their community patterns. In this study, we examined the responses of aquatic invertebrate communities to flow intermittence in 14 rivers from multiple biogeographic regions covering a wide range of flow intermittence and spatial arrangements of...
In the problem of testing the median using a random sample from a
certain distribution, and if no other parametric family is suggested,
the t-test is known to be the optimal procedure when this distribution
is normal. If the sample appears to be non-normal, one has the choice
either to...
Although IL-4 is a well-characterized multi-functional cytokine, its role as a survival factor in T cells is not completely understood. In an attempt to uncover IL-4-mediated survival, we studied caspase activation in primary mouse T lymphocytes undergoing death by neglect, activation-induced or steroid-induced cell death. Here, we identify the executioner...
Anaerobic digestion of lipid-extracted algal biomass has been proposed as a method to
recover and recycle nutrients in algal biofuel systems. The purpose of this study was to quantify recoverable nitrogen and phosphorus from anaerobically digested C. vulgaris. Recoverable nutrients were deemed those present in the liquid phase of anaerobic...
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algae to make 226 billion gallons of biodiesel, USDA 2011 AG inputs 11.6 MT N, 0.5 MT P
5
Phosphorus