2009 MU dissertations - Access restricted to MU
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Item Beginning's ends : new senses of ending and the eighteenth-century novel(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009) Friedman, Emily Clare; Justice, George; Looser, Devoney, 1967-[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This dissertation argues that an examination of innovative endings in both canonized and forgotten eighteenth-century prose fiction contributes to our understanding of the early novel. When endings have been discussed in previous scholarship, it has usually been to show how they fit into (or deviate from) a set of expectations about what a novel ending looks like. The assumptions about where these expectations come from are rarely - if ever - articulated. In consequence, there is a discrepancy between how we talk about narrative expectations and what readers actually encountered in the eighteenth-century novel. I argue that novel endings do not suddenly become dynamic at the beginning of the nineteenth century but rather that such dynamism is built into the novel form. Each chapter focuses on a particular thread of innovation during this period. I examine several sorts of endings that highlight the discrepancy between what we say about the early novel and what was actually happening: a canonical author's least-read text (Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison), a neglected author's texts (the experimental work of Sarah Fielding), one of the most well-known endings of the eighteenth-century (William Godwin's Caleb Williams), and the work of a canonical woman writer working in multiple genres across a long period of time (diarist, playwright, and novelist Frances Burney). This dissertation serves as part of what I hope is a growing chorus of works calling for more comprehensive mapping of the early novel's narrative features.Item The eight leaves(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009) Connolly, Wm. Anthony (William Anthony).; Stanton, Maureen P., 1960-[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The creative dissertation The Eight Leaves is a deconstructed memoir, composed in a series of inter-connected lyric essays structured in a ring composition. The manuscript is an attempt to authenticate a fractured self, reconcile contradictory narratives and deal with the fallibility of memory. Lyric essays flexibility help create the loose associative nature of assembling self, while fragmentary vignettes and lacunae serve to remind the reader of the form's artifice in relation to reality. The ring composition, a form found in sapiential writing, is designed to provide a structure akin to a lifecycle, in one respect, but also to mimic the "monomyths" prevalent in many cultural tales of heroes. In The Eight Leaves the author takes us through parts of his life, and with several themes through it: his brother's death; his family; his recurring bad back; leaving notes for others to find; seeing people from his past. The manuscript moves seamlessly through all of these, as each theme weaves in and out, intermingled with each other. The main theme is the death of the author's brother, Kevin, He wants to know why his brother died so young - was it something from the past? Did his ghosts catch up with him? Could he have done something to prevent it? When younger, he always wanted to go where his brother was - calling after whenever he left the house. When older, he showed off for him by stealing for him. There are moments when he remembers his brother fondly and wondered if he could have helped him in some way.Item A hierarchical Bayesian mixture approach for modeling reflectivity fields with application to Nowcasting(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009) DeWees, Todd A., 1979-; Micheas, Athanasios Christos[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] We study a hierarchical Bayesian framework for finite mixtures of distributions. We first consider a Dirichlet mixture of normal components and utilize it to model spatial fields that arise as pixelated images of intensities. We demonstrate our models using results from simulated data as well as using "real-world" weather radar reflectivity fields. We propose model adequacy and verification tests to further illustrate the effectiveness of the model. We then consider and define spatio-temporal processes using a hierarchical Bayesian mixture model to help us predict the evolution of these processes based on several radar reflectivity fields observed over a short-term time period. We illustrate the methodology with simulated data and apply verification methods to demonstrate the ability of the methods to model such data. We implement these models in nowcasting the evolution of storm systems observed around the area of Kansas City, Missouri, on June 7, 2007.Item An essential role in germline development for a P-granule associated novel protein in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans and RNAi in the ubiquitous parasitic nematode Ascaris suum(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009) Gao, Ge; Bennett, Karen L.The germline RNA helicases (GLHs) are constitutive components of P granules and important for fertility in C. elegans. Discovered as a GLH-1 partner, the P-granule associated novel protein (PAN-1) is important both in larval development and for germline development. We focused our studies on characterizing the germline function of PAN-1 and found it co-localized with the P-granule components PGL-1 and GLH-1 in the adult germline, but not during embryogenesis. In addition, when PAN-1 was knocked down only in germline by a somatic RNAi defect strain rrf-1, it resulted in reducing or eliminating GLH-1 protein levels, depending on the dsRNA concentration used for the RNAi effect. Because PAN-1 contains 13 leucine rich repeats that are often found in the F-box protein in C. elegans and the homologue to C. elegans F-box protein Fog-2, as well as the F-box conserved motif at the N-terminal domain, it is possibile that PAN-1 works as an F-box protein involved in regulating GLH-1 protein level, directly or non-directly. Since the CSN-5 was also found as a GLH-1 binding partner that protects GLH-1 from degradation, whether they work in the same pathway is yet to be studied. Ascaris infections are the most prevalent human parasite nematode infections. There are concerns as to the current treatment of using anthelmintic drugs due to the drug resistance and the efficiency in killing the exuberant Ascaris eggs. As RNAi was discovered as an exciting technology, it has the great therapeutic potential due to its specificity, potency and diversity. To investigate if RNAi could be used to cause sterility in Ascaris worms, we divided our task to two steps: first of all, in searching the potential dsRNAs that could be used in the RNAi study in Ascaris, we used C. elegans as a model to test different Ascaris dsRNAs that can cause either embryonic lethal or sterile phenotype in C. elegans. Then, these dsRNAs that have been successfully tested in the cross-species RNAi led us to test RNAi using Ascaris worms. However, although we tried various different means of dsRNAs delivery to Ascaris adults or the embryos, we have yet to succeed to observe any developmental defect.Item Hierarchical physical-statistical forecasting in the atmospheric sciences(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009) Song, Yong, 1974-.; Wikle, Christopher K., 1963-[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] A class of hierarchical Bayesian models is introduced for Physical-Statistical forecasting purposes in the Atmospheric Sciences. The first project describes a methodological approach to implement a stochastic trigger function for convective initiation in the Kain-Fritsch (KF) convective parameterization scheme within the Penn State/NCAR Mesoscale Model version 5 (MM5). The second project introduces a spatio-temporal dynamic model that has a physical basis and incorporates Bayesian parameterizations and sequential importance sampling estimation to track and forecast the movement of multiple storm cells. The third project describes a finite difference model, in the framework of Bayesian hierarchical modeling (BHM), for investigating the possibility of forecasting the change of relative vorticity on a constant pressure surface in the middle troposphere over the globe.