Browsing Duke Dissertations by Issue Date

Now showing items 1-20 of 1769

Effects of Past and Future CO2 on Grassland Soil Carbon and Microbial Ecology

Procter, Andrew (2013)

Rising atmospheric CO2 concentration, currently about 390 ppm, causes climate change and is expected to reach 500 ppm or higher this century due to human activities. Soils are the largest terrestrial pool of carbon, ...
"For Better or Worse: Divorce and Annulment Lawsuits in Colonial Mexico (1544-1799)

Bird, Jonathan Bartholomew (2013)

"For Better or Worse: Divorce and Annulment Lawsuits in Colonial Mexico (1544-1799)" uses petitions for divorce and annulment to explore how husbands and wives defined and contested their marital roles and manipulated ...
Convincing the World: Pentecostal Liminality as Participation in the Mission of the Paraclete

Raburn, Michael (2013)

Did the early Pentecostals regard themselves as servants to the wider church, bearers of the gifts of the Spirit, sent to bring a renewed focus on love, unity, holiness, and justice to all parts of the church? Or did ...
Characterization of a Mouse Model of Soft Tissue Sarcoma: Intraoperative Molecular Imaging and miRNA Regulation of Metastasis

Mito, Jeffrey (2013)

Soft Tissue Sarcomas are a rare group of mesenchymal tumors with over 50 recognized subtypes. These tumors are a diverse group of malignancies that primarily arise from the connective tissue, fat and muscle. In the ...
The Role of Autophagy and Translation Initiation Factors in Overcoming Resistance to mTOR Inhibitors in Prostate Cancer.

Herbert, James Taylor (2013)

Castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) causes significant morbidity and mortality around the world and improving treatment options for patients with CRPC is a major concern for biomedical research. Because of the ...
New Communities in Old Spaces: Evidence from HOPE VI

Burns, Ashley Brown (2013)

The goal of this study is to understand how residents may benefit from living in a mixed income, HOPE VI development in the South. This analysis focuses on a former housing project and its immediate neighborhood in the ...
Novel Nonlinear Microscopy Techniques Based on Femtosecond Laser Pulse Shaping and Their Applications

Li, Baolei (2013)

Nonlinear optical microscopy serves as a great tool for biomedical imaging due to its high resolution, deep penetration, inherent three dimensional optical sectioning capabilities and superior performance in scattering ...
Aspects of the Feeding Ecology of the Antillean Manatee (<italic>Trichechus manatus manatus</italic>) in the Wetlands of Tabasco, Mexico

Gonzalez-Socoloske, Daniel (2013)

Manatees (Mammalia: Sirenia), along with the closely related dugongs, are the only herbivorous marine mammals. Manatees consume a wide variety of vascular plants and algae in both marine and freshwater habitats. However, ...
The Night Watchman: Hans Speier and the Making of the American National Security State

Bessner, Daniel (2013)

What accounts for the rise of defense intellectuals in the early Cold War? Why did these academics reject university life to accept positions in the foreign policy establishment? Why were so many of German origin? "The ...
Constructal Vascularized Structures for Cooling and Mechanical Strength

Cetkin, Erdal (2013)

This dissertation shows how to use Constructal theory in order to design vascular structures with high cooling performance and mechanical strength. The vascular structures consist of grid, tree and hybrid (grid + tree) ...
The Mating System Evolution of Ipomoea lacunosa

Duncan, Tanya Marie (2013)

The evolution of selfing from outcrossing is one of the most frequent mating system transitions in angiosperms. Plants that are highly selfing typically exhibit a suite of morphological traits termed a "selfing syndrome," ...
Regulation of Cerebellar Development and Tumorigenesis by CXCR4 and by Aurora and Polo-Like Kinases

Markant, Shirley Loretta (2013)

During development, the precise regulation of the processes of proliferation, migration, and differentiation is required to establish proper organ structure and function and to prevent the deregulation that can lead to ...
Family Reintegration Experiences of Soldiers with Combat-Related Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Hyatt, Kyong Suk (2013)

<bold>Abstract</bold>More than 300,000 soldiers have returned from Southwest Asia (i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan) with combat-related mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) associated with exposure to improvised ...
Structure-Guided Development of Novel LpxC Inhibitors

LEE, CHUL-JIN (2013)

The incessant increase of antibiotic resistance among Gram-negative pathogens is a serious threat to public health worldwide. A lack of new antimicrobial agents, particularly those against multidrug-resistant Gram-negative ...
The Development and Testing of a System for Monitoring Site-Specific Lesions In Vivo

Asllani, Melissa (2013)

Every day, cells face agents that generate lesions in genomic DNA, which can interfere with the processes of DNA replication and gene expression. These lesions can range from small abasic sites to alkylated bases to ...
Polymer Remodeling Enabled by Covalent Mechanochemistry

Ramirez, Ashley Lauren Black (2013)

Material failure is a ubiquitous problem, and it is known that materials fail at much lower stresses than the theoretical maximum calculated from the number and strength of the individual bonds along the material ...
Enhanced Vasculature Imaging of the Retina Using Optical Coherence Tomography

Hendargo, Hansford (2013)

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive imaging modality that uses low coherence interferometry to generate three-dimensional datasets of a sample's structure. OCT has found tremendous clinical applications ...
Outer Membrane Vesicles: A New Paradigm of Bacterial Innate Immunity

Manning, Andrew (2013)

Outer membrane vesicles are an important constitutive product of all Gram-negative bacteria. Bacteria have evolved many responses to alleviate all different types of stress. The primary objective of this dissertation ...
Destructivity: A Political Economy of Military Effectiveness in Conventional Combat

Miller, Charlie Arthur (2013)

Abstract Neither technological nor numerical superiority accounts for the outcome of most battles. Instead, some intangible factor has historically mattered more. The political science literature has termed this ...
Role of LAT in the Cytotoxicity and Memory Response of CD8 T Cells Following Microbial Infection

Ouyang, Chihwen (2013)

Linker for activation of T cells (LAT) is a transmembrane adaptor protein that is crucial in linking TCR engagement to downstream signaling events, such as calcium flux and Ras-MAPK pathway. Following TCR engagement, ...