2013 MU theses - Access restricted to UM
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Item Written rules and practical matters on state public records laws(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2013) Yang, Mengni; Davidson, Sandra, 1946-[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] Public access laws are at the heart of transparent democracy, in place to ensure that government meetings and records are open to the public. Without adequate enforcement provisions, the courts are powerless to prevent public officials from conducting illegally closed meetings and withholding public information from scrutiny. Previous literature has focused on response time, appeal, expedited process, attorneys' fees, sanctions, and texts of the public access laws. However, scarce research had compared the written rules to the actual compliance of state access laws. The purpose of this study is to identify what trends or conclusions can be made about the actual compliance of public records laws at the state level. The article compares the written statutes and the actual enforcement of open records laws across the United States. The research analyzed texts of the statutes and court rulings on public records disputes in order to answers the following questions: 1. How strong are the public records laws across the United States? 2. How many open government disputes are there? How many of them have been processed? What are the court decisions in these disputes? 3. How much effort have the public officials put into open government laws compliance? Does it work?Item An efficient closed-form solution for wideband source direction-of-arrival estimation(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2013) Shi, Wenjia; Ho, Dominic K. C.[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] We propose and develop in this research an efficient closed-form solution to estimate the direction-of-arrivals (DOAs) for a wideband source signal, based on the data collected by a number of sensors. It has great potential for use in many applications including sonar, navigation and emergency rescue, which might require fast response and accuracy. A closed-form solution avoids the time-consuming grid search to obtain the DOA estimate, thus improving the efficiency and accuracy of the localization results. The proposed algorithm uses the two-stage least-squares minimization techniques and estimates the DOA using the time-difference-of-arrivals (TDOAs) of the source signal at different sensors. The algorithm is applicable for two-dimensional and three-dimensional DOA estimation, and it can be generalized to include the situation where the receiver positions have errors. In addition, this can work with a sensor array of arbitrary configurations. This is in contrast to most of the DOA techniques found in literature that require a linear sensor array configuration. We show theoretically that the performance of the proposed algorithm attains the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) accuracy. Simulations in MATLAB program are generated to compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with that of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) implemented by the iterative Taylor series linearization method.Item Solids retention time-dependent phototrophic growth and microbial population dynamics in wastewater treatment(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2013) Shen, Qi; Hu, Zhiqiang, 1966-[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.]Item The use of a lysostaphin fusion protein as a dry-cow treatment for chronic Staphylococcus aureua mastitis in dairy cattle(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2013) Hoernig, Kenton J. (Kenton John); Middleton, John R.[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This study evaluated the efficacy of a lysostaphin-fusion protein (Lyso-PTD) as a dry-cow therapy for the treatment of experimentally-induced chronic, subclinical Staphylococcus aureus mastitis. Twenty-two Holstein dairy cows were experimentally infected with Staph aureus in a single pair of diagonal mammary quarters approximately 45 d before dry-off. Staphylococcus aureus infected mammary quarters of cows were randomly assigned to one of two groups at dry-off 1) 279 mg of Lyso-PTD in 50 mL of vehicle (n = 11 cows; 22 quarters) or 2) 50 mL of vehicle solution (n =11 cows; 22 quarters) by intramammary infusions. All cows were followed for 30 d post-partum to determine cure rates using bacteriologic culture, somatic cell counts, and clinical mastitis scores. No cures were recorded in either the treatment or control groups. Milk somatic cell count, bacterial colony counts, and mastitis scores did not significantly differ between groups (P = 0.832, P = 0.117, and P= 0.108, respectively). Follow-up studies in lactating cows revealed neither increasing the Lyso-PTD dose to 1340mg nor treatment with cephapirin sodium showed improved efficacy. In conclusion, Lyso-PTD was not an effective dry-cow therapeutic for chronic, subclinical Staph. aureus mastitis at the experimental dose and formulation used.Item Abundance of TRIM28, SETDB1, and TP53 mRNA is dynamically regulated during porcine early embryogenesis and is abnormal in preimplantation embryos produced by in vitro fertilization in comparison to in vivo derived and nuclear transfer derived embryos(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2013) Hamm, Jennifer Maurine; Prather, Randall S.[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] In vitro embryo production is important for research in animal reproduction, embryo transfer, transgenics, and cloning. However, in vitro-derived embryos generally have delayed development and are inferior to in vivo-derived embryos likely resulting from aberrant gene expression. To characterize three genes implicated to be important in normal preimplantation embryo development, the abundance of TRIM28, SETDB1, and TP53 was determined in in vitro fertilized (IVF), somatic cell nuclear transfer (NT), parthenogenetic, and in vivo-derived (IVV) porcine oocytes and embryos. Abundance of mRNA was quantified by real-time PCR after mRNA isolation and cDNA amplification. There was no difference in TRIM28 or SETDB1 abundance between oocytes matured in vitro versus in vivo. There was an increase of TP53 in in vitro matured oocytes. TRIM28 increased from MII to the 4-cell and blastocyst stage in IVF embryos, whereas IVV embryos have decreased TRIM28 abundance from maturation throughout development. Relative abundance of TP53 increases around the blastocyst stage in all treatment groups, but is higher in IVF embryos compared to IVV and NT embryos. SETDB1 decreases from the 2-cell to blastocyst stage in all treatments. For each gene analyzed, NT embryos of both hard to clone- and easy to clone- cell lines were more comparable to IVV embryos than IVF embryos. TRIM28, SETDB1, and TP53 are dynamically expressed in porcine oocytes and embryos. TRIM28 and TP53 are aberrantly expressed in IVF embryos in comparison to IVV and NT derived embryos. Knockdown of TRIM28 has no effect on blastocyst development or expression of SETDB1 or TP53.