2008 MU theses - Freely available online
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Item Lord Byron's critique of despotism and militarism in the Russian Cantos of Don Juan(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008) Avkhimovich, Irina S.; Heringman, NoahIn his mock-epic masterpiece Don Juan (1819-1824), Lord Byron dwells on the example of Russia in his discussion of the politics of European imperial powers and their military ambitions. In Cantos VII-VIII, the poem's hero, Juan, participates in storming of Turkish fortress Ismail by the Russian army. The poet draws on historical accounts of the Siege of Ismail (1792) for his background and satirizes them for their misrepresentations of war. In Byron's opinion, imperial war discredits all Russia's claims about its progress and cultural improvement. This critique of Russian imperialism amplifies Byron's critique of British imperialism and develops into a universal anti-war critique. The Russian empress Catherine II is the central character in Cantos IX-X. Byron condemns the concept of enlightened despotism that Catherine was widely considered to represent, which leads him to a critique of the Enlightenment. Using imagery from political cartoons, Byron explores Catherine's gender identity in its interaction with her political power. In the context of contemporary travel narratives, Byron is among those who express a more negative attitude towards Russia. On the whole, those who write about Russia's foreign affairs and imperialism offer more critique than those who are concerned with witnessing the life inside the country. This paper argues that Byron's critique, though more superficial than the travel narratives, takes advantage of commonplace perceptions of Russia and Catherine to comment on the politics of post-Napoleonic Europe.Item A silent savior: the inapproachability of Christ in the Dream of the rood(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008) Richardson, Rebecca M.; Kramer, Johanna IngridThe Dream of the Rood is celebrated as one of the most beautiful poems in the Old English corpus, mostly due to its blending of Christian and Germanic heroic traditions. In this dream vision, the cross as Christ's retainer reveals to the dreamer Christ's brave battle during the Crucifixion. The result of this portrayal is one of duality on several levels: Christ as Germanic hero and Christian Savior, the cross as retainer and lord. These dualities function together to deliver a message of salvation to the Anglo-Saxon community. However, the way in which this spiritual message is brought to the Anglo-Saxon audience holds importance for the temporal, historical, and human-governed institution of the church. Though many scholars acknowledge Christ's portrayal in The Dream as that of a Germanic warrior, few have addressed the relevance of his silence. As both a warrior and the Christian Savior, Christ should be the one to deliver his message of conquest over sin and death, offering saving Grace. However, it is the cross which appears and addresses the dreamer, becoming the mode of salvation. It is the purpose of this thesis to evaluate the importance of Christ's silence and offer an alternative reading to The Dream of the Rood, which does not focus on the balance of the Germanic and Christian traditions but explores the possibility of the Christian church utilizing traditional framework to assert their importance as an intercessor on man's behalf, especially in its role as vocal educator and interpreter of God's message.Item The role of sodium-calcium exchanger in the electrical activity of embryonic chicken heart(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008) Modgi, Amol; Polo-Parada, LuisHeart is one of the most important organs of the body and also it is one of the first organs during to the development. The electrical activity of heart is essential for its function. It has been shown that the sodium-calcium exchanger (NCX) is an important exchanger for calcium homeostasis. We hypothesize that the NCX may be present during development. To test this hypothesis we recorded the spontaneous electrical activity of heart from the embryonic chicken heart before and after blocking NCX during different stages of development with different concentration of KB-R7943. We found that the blocking of this exchanger does have significant effect on the amplitude and the rise time of AP. We found out that changes in duration of AP were less in atrium in early stages of development and increased during later stages of development. Interestingly these results were opposite in ventricles where increase in duration of AP was more during early stages of development and decreased during later stages of development. Similarly there was an increase in decay time of atrium and ventricular action potential at different stages of development. There were relatively few very significant changes in rise time of AP. Hence it is quite apparent that the blocking of NCX affects the plateau phase of AP or the calcium extrusion phase. It is also certain that NCX is one of the exchangers present in early embryonic hearts to actively play role in shaping the electrical activity.Item Uneven turns oscillating heat pipes(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009) Hathaway, Aaron A., 1983-; Ma, Hongbin, 1962-An experimental investigation on oscillating heat pipes with uneven turns was conducted in order to determine the effect of short turns on the heat transport capability. The shorter turns do not go through both the evaporating and condensing sections; the short turns were placed only in the evaporating section. The design of the OHP consists of 14 long turns which run from the evaporator to the condenser and 6 short turns were placed only on the evaporating section. An extensive experimental investigation on the effects of the input power, tilted angle, condensing temperature, and charging ratio was conducted. Experimental results show that for all test conditions, the OHP functions very well and it can transport an input power up to 1200 W and can reach a thermal resistance of 0.028. From the experimental results of tilted angle effect, it can be found that the heat pipe is almost independent of the tilted angle. Most importantly, it is shown that with a number of short turns placed on the evaporating section, the OHP can operate efficiently without the assistance of the gravitational force. In other words, the heat pipe developed herein can operate at a condition of the heating section on the top and the cooling section on the bottom with a distance of 18.5 cm from the center of the evaporator section the center of the condensing section. In addition, the results show that the heat transfer performance depends on the operating temperature and charging ratio. When the operating temperature increases, the heat transfer performance of the OHP investigated herein significantly increase. WC/o.Item Molecular characterization of genetic resistance to soybean cyst nematode in soybean line SS97-6946(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008) Islam, Md Sariful; Sleper, D. A.Soybean Cyst Nematode (SCN) (Heterodera glycine) is the most damaging pest of soybean and estimated annual yield losses are 1.5 billion dollars in USA. Breeding resistant cultivars is the most efficient means to control SCN but the nematode has adapted and overcomes resistance of developed soybean cultivars due to a narrow genetic base. A study was initiated in summer 2007 to investigate the genetics of resistance to SCN and identify Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) conferring broad-spectrum SCN resistance in SS97-6946. Leaves of 160 F2 individuals from the cross PI 567476 X SS97-6946 were collected to isolate DNA in summer 2007. Three hundred forty seven polymorphic Single Sequence Repeat primer pairs out of 547 were used to genotype the F2 plants. Seeds from 160 F2:3 families were evaluated against races 1, 2, 3 and 5 for SCN bioassay following standard protocol. The ratio observed between resistant to susceptible F2:3 families revealed that SCN resistance involved three recessive genes for both race 1 and 2; two dominant and one recessive for race 3; one dominant and two recessive for race 5. Three markers mapped on linkage groups (LG) A2, E, and G and accounted for 33.8% of the total phenotypic variance for resistance to SCN race 1. One resistant QTL was detected on LG A1 accounted for 18.8% of the total phenotypic variance of race 2. Three markers mapped on LGs A2, G, and M to be associated with resistance to SCN race 3 and shared 24.9% of total phenotypic variance. Three markers on LG G alone and four markers on LGs A1, B2, M, and O were mapped and shown to be linked with SCN resistance to race 5 and accounted for 70.8% of the total phenotypic variance.