The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002: Impact on Auditor Switching and Quality of Audit Effort

by

Shannon Detling and Dr. F. Greg Burton, School of Accountancy In the early 21st century, public confidence in corporate America faltered considerably following the demise of Enron, Inc., Arthur Andersen, LLP and other businesses. The United States government responded to the outbreak of corporate scandals with several legislative actions. The main thrust of legislative effort […]

Determining Treatment of Children Suffering from Protein-Energy Malnutrition

by

Mary Ann Zarkou and Dr. Bruce Woolley, Physiology and Developmental Biology Severe malnutrition is one of the most devastating health problems in the world, particularly in developing countries. Protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) is one of the most prevalent types of malnutrition, and is divided into three major types: Kwashiorkor, Marasmus, and Marasmic-kwashiorkor. These diseases in children […]

Inferring Demographic Events from Population Level Phylogenies

by

Steven Woolley and Dr. Keith Crandall, Integrative Biology While I initially proposed to perform a rather thorough comparison of methods designed to infer population level demographic events, during the course of my research, I took a different direction. In order to reliably infer such events, it is first essential to have an accurate phylogeny. Since […]

Botox Cleavage of SNARE Proteins that are Bound Together in Vitro

by

Joseph D. Walch and Dr. Dixon Woodbury, Physiology and Developmental Biology I finished my project last July (2005) just before Dr. Woodbury left for Germany to present his recent work at a few of the academic institutions of Europe. The project commenced in February of 2004. Due to the nature of the project, which included […]

Development of Software Program for Organizing DNA Sequence Data from GenBank

by

Heather Vernon and Dr. David McClellan, Integrative Biology Nucleotide sequence data on GenBank (a government sponsored repository located on http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/) is organized in a flat file format that can be accessed by searches. Obtaining a large volume of sequences from GenBank is a tedious process because the sequence data must be extracted from the flat […]

Pioneer Lizards: Speciation in South America

by

Cameron R Turner and Dr. Jack W. Sites Integrative Biology Understanding the processes by which new species are formed is a primary objective of evolutionary biology. My project aimed to contribute to this understanding by measuring the genetic and geographic structure of a population of South American lizards, Liolaemus koslowskyi. Previous research (1) had provided […]

The Effects during Embryogenesis and Tumorigenesis of Dominant-Active Beta Catenin in Wnt Signaling

by

Melissa Schmidt and Dr. Jeffery Richard Barrow, Physiology and Developmental Biology Cell communication is crucial in multiceullar organisms. Cells have therefore devised signaling pathways for intracellular communication. One of these is the Wnt signaling pathway. Wnt signaling plays an important role in cell fate decisions during embryogenesis. In the adult, Wnt signaling has been hypothesized […]

Long-term Preservation of Breadfruit, Cassava, and Taro by Solar-drying in the Pacific Islands Area

by

Jonathan Pratt Rowe Cassava, taro, and breadfruit are critical food sources indigenous to the Pacific islands. Because they serve as the main source of energy for 500 million people, their availability is vital to the survival of these people. In addition to the energy provided, these plants also provide essential vitamins and minerals. Generally, cassava, […]

Cytotoxicity of Thirty-Six Moroccan Plants Against Four Cancer Cell Lines and 3T3 Cells

by

J. Aukai Riordan and Dr. Rex G. Cates, Integrative Biology It is not hard to believe that eighty percent of the populations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America rely principally on traditional medicine for their primary source of health care. However, many people do not realize that many of the best-selling pharmaceuticals in the Western […]

Vesicle Fusion: A Size Dependant factor? The Role of Ultrasound in Manipulating Vesicle Size

by

Eric Richardson and Dr. Dixon Woodbury, Physiology and Developmental Biology Vesicles are microscopic spherical capsules that have many important applications in both medicine and biology. They are the cell’s primary vehicles for transporting proteins and other chemicals to and from organelles. In the last half century, artificial vesicles (AVs) have been manufactured to explore many […]