A prevalent belief during the Victorian age was that the world was divided between inferior beings governed by passion and superior reasoning beings. On the political level, this idea separated inferior passion-driven natives from superior reasoning Europeans. This division contributed to the maintenance and expansion of imperialist rule in distant...
This dissertation investigates the problem of uncertainty in complex ecological models. The term "complex" is used to convey both the common and scientific meanings. Increasingly, ecological models have become complex because they are more complicated; ecological models are generally multi-variate and multi-leveled in structure. Many ecological models are complex because...
Environmental concerns about urban air quality, global climate change, energy
security and economic considerations motivate a growing interest in alternative fuels for
the transportation sector. Ethanol, a fermentation-derived fuel, can be produced by
bioconversion of renewable materials, such as wood, grass, and waste. Combustion of
ethanol fuel, in both neat...
Most metal ions have negative impacts on pulp mill operations. The concentrations of metal ions on pulp fibers and in washwaters rise significantly with increased wastewater recycling. The development of technology to remove these metal ions requires an understanding of how metal ions are bound to pulp components. It is...
This thesis describes investigations of marine algal secondary metabolites, with particular interest in their biomedical and agrichemical potential. Invaluable in such pursuits have been the access and application of advanced spectroscopic techniques, such as NMR, and the ability to assess the biological activity of the algal samples in a variety...
A novel type of model substrates, i.e. immobilized p-aminophenyl-β-D-cellooligosaccharides,
was developed and used in the study of exocellulases. The
two major cellobiohydrolases from Trichoderma reesei, CBH I and CBH II were
used as representative enzymes. p-Aminophenyl derivatives of cellobiose (PAPG₂),
cellotriose (PAPG₃), and cellotetraose (PAPG₄) were synthesized from the reaction...