Many protocols for adoptive T cell therapy (ACT) include preparative conditioning strategies to deplete host lymphocytes prior to T cell infusion. Total body irradiation and high-dose chemotherapy regimens not only relieve immunosuppression, but...
RNA binding proteins are fundamental components of crucial biological processes in all domains of life. The development of techniques to study RNA binding protein complexes is, therefore, broadly impactful. I employed multiple genome-wide...
Metal ions confer structural stability and reactivity to a large number of proteins that use the amino acids histidine (His) and cysteine (Cys) to form stable metal-ligand complexes. The stability of metal-His and metal-Cys interactions and their...
We present aligned hierarchies, a novel solution to the dimension reduction problem, representing high-dimensional and noisy sequential data as a low-dimensional object that encodes relevant information. In this thesis, we motivate our presentation...
Earlier work has suggested that various neurological or neuropsychiatric disorders may result in characteristic spatial patterns in brain activation, potentially allowing their detection from maps of brain activity under different conditions....
Medicine -- Study and teaching -- Audio-visual aids. ; Communication -- Audio-visual aids. ; Medical history taking. ; Physician and patient. ; Psychometrics.
The Patient Video Interview (PVI) is an instrument designed to assess communication skills in medical education that overcomes some of the drawbacks of other assessment methods. Three studies were conducted to: (a) determine a measurement system...
Some biomacromolecules require a metal co-factor to stabilize their physiologically active three-dimensional structure. The fundamental thermodynamic values of the binding of metal ions, particularly Zn2+, to a set of biomacromolecules have been...
The image of a child standing at the side of a creek and skipping stones across it exemplifies how we tend to mentally separate aquatic habitats from dry land. But there is a constant exchange of materials from land to streams, and vice-versa....
Cupredoxins, such as stellacyanin, plastocyanin, amicyanin, rusticyanin, and azurin perform electron transfer (ET) reactions with partner protein(s) in the cell. The role of the redox cofactor in these proteins is played by a copper ion, which...
Antibodies are known to be a primary correlate of protection in almost all current vaccines, and thus evaluating the antibody response is of critical importance in attempting to predict the efficacy of novel vaccine candidates. Historically...
All cells must organize their cytoplasm in order to carry out functions properly and survive in different environments, and the requirement for organization is increased in large, multinucleate cells. It has long been known that membrane-bound...
Dendritic cells. Biological response modifiers. Immune response -- Regulation. T cells. CD antigens. Dendritic Cells -- Immunology. Receptors
Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs) that regulate antigen-specific T cell activation or tolerance. The maturation state of DCs is critical since immature DCs are believed to induce T cell tolerance whereas mature...
Van Allen radiation belts -- Mathematical models. Electrons -- Diffusion -- Mathematical models. Magnetohydrodynamic waves -- Mathematical models.
It is becoming increasingly important to understand the dynamics of radiation belt energetic particles given their potentially hazardous effects on satellites and our ever-increasing dependence on those satellites. There is a need to determine...
In this thesis data from four sounding rocket experiments (PHAZE II, SIERRA, RACE and HIBAR) are used to explore the high and medium frequency waves seen in the auroral ionosphere. All rockets were launched into active aurora and carried both...
We present results from a modeling effort of simple shock phenomena in the Cygnus Loop and Cassiopeia A. Using multi-epoch MDM observations of a small, isolated cloud in the southwest region of the Cygnus Loop, we measure the velocity of the...
Shape modeling is an important area in computer vision and medical imaging. Shape models have proved valuable in the tasks of object representation, recognition, and classification. This thesis focuses on shape models of 3D surfaces extracted from...
Free electron lasers -- Experiments. Wave guides -- Design and construction. Diffraction gratings -- Experiments. Electron beams. Infrared sources.
The far infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, 15-3000 μm in wavelength, has a paucity of narrow band laser sources. To address the issue of whether a grating based free electron laser could operate well as such a source, a grating...
The processes by which nonlinear physical systems approach thermal equilibrium is of great importance in many areas of science. Central to this is the mechanism by which energy is transferred between the many degrees of freedom comprising these...
The control of gene expression is central to developmental biology, pattern formation, and phenotypic evolution. Enhancers are a class of regulatory DNAs that control when and where genes are turned ON or OFF. This highly regulated process is...
Single cycle electromagnetic pulses have been difficult to experimentally generate and to theoretically analyze. With the recent development of terahertz systems based on near infrared femtosecond lasers it has become possible to perform single...
Semen is the major vector for sexual transmission of HIV worldwide, yet little is known about its role in modulating mucosal transmission of HIV. Understanding the impact of semen on mucosal transmission of HIV could open up novel means of...
Classic studies demonstrated that when cells in different cell cycle phases are fused, nuclei cohabiting in a common cytoplasm synchronize their division cycles. Cytoplasmic factors, now known to be cyclin/cyclin dependent kinase (CDK) complexes,...