Browsing by Subject "Biology, Society, and Environment"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Advances in Solar Power with CZTS
    (2012-04-18) Hanson, Parker
    Finding renewable forms of energy has become one of the largest issues facing the modern world. One example of an alternative energy that shows incredible promise is solar power. The major way this solar power is harnessed is through the construction and usage of solar panels. One concern with these panels is the high cost of production due to expensive raw materials. The idea of creating inorganic nanoparticles using cheaper raw materials for application in solar power has great potential. Here we show how the production of copper (I) zinc tin sulfide (CZTS) can provide a cheaper, more efficient alternative to the compounds currently used. CZTS can be created using inexpensive precursors, such as copper (I) acetate, making this compound financially responsible. Overall, strides made in the formulation of a procedure over the previous semester have made the mass production and implementation of CZTS in solar energy a definite possibility.
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    Neural Injury Model
    (2010-04-21) Schaefer, Kayla
    Urinary incontinence (UI) is usually a concern amongst women after child birth, however it has been discovered that it is also prevalent amongst young nulliparous women that are athletes. Through another UROP student, it was discovered that 50% of the women athletes at the University of Minnesota currently have urinary leakage problems. Research has suggested a correlation between the amount of physical activity and the severity of symptoms. However, it has not yet been proven what mechanism that causes this urinary incontinence in women athletes. It has been hypothesized that nerve compression is the contributing factor. Through past research it has been found that applied pressure on peripheral nerves causes damage and results in atypical functioning. The projects goal is to research the effects of compression on the functional status of peripheral nerves in terms of conduction velocity. I will be specifically experimenting with compression on sensory nerves and identifying if there is a variance between damaged sensory and motor nerve velocities.
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    Sucrose Transporters in Selaginella moellendorffi
    (2010-04-21) Baker, Rebecca
    Vascular tissue in plants functions in long distance transport of water, nutrients and metabolites. The evolution of vascular tissue is thought to be important for the development of large land plants. Phloem is one type of vascular tissue, it mainly transports sugars from photosynthetic leaves to the rest of the plant. Selaginella (a Lycophyte) is one of the earliest vascular plants and the Selaginella moellendorffi genome has been recently sequenced by the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI). Selaginella has phloem tissue and now we know that it also has five sucrose transporter (SUT) genes. SUTs transport sucrose into the phloem in higher plants and we are interested to know if SUTs have the same function in Selaginella. By phylogenetic analysis, 4 of the Selaginella SUTs are type III and 1 is type II. This is interesting because type I SUTs are present and essential for dicot plants but also are not present in monocots. To study the function of Selaginella SUTs we attempted to clone cDNAs for all five genes. This was done by reverse transcription PCR and TA cloning into Gateway vector pCR8. PCR products of the right length were obtained for 4 of the SUT genes. After TA cloning, plasmids from E. coli 74 transformants were checked by restriction digest, and 11 clones were sequenced. However, only one correct cDNA was obtained (SmSUT4.3). This represents the first cloning of a sucrose transporter from a Lycophyte. Interestingly, the predicted SmSUT4.3 cDNA sequence incorrectly predicted the presence of one intron. Now that we have cloned SmSUT4.3, it will be subcloned into oocyte and yeast expression vectors to test the function of the protein.