In this study, the ladder-type filters based on back-etched thin film bulk acoustic resonator (TFBAR) were fabricated with several patterns to investigate the influence on their frequency responses. The highly c-axis oriented ZnO films were deposited on silicon substrates by reactive RF magnetron sputtering. The optimal two-step deposition temperature for ZnO films is 100 ¢J, which is obtained by means of SEM AFM, and XRD analysis. According to the experimental results, it leads to good resonance responses as TFBAR filters are fabricated with the patterns of large resonance area, two stages and the ratio of shunt/series resonance area is equal to two. Herein, conventional thermal annealing (CTA) was adopted to improve the frequency responses of TFBAR filters. Because CTA treatment can release stress and improve surface roughness of ZnO and Pt films, it enhances the frequency responses of TFBAR filters. The optimal CTA treatment temperature for TFBAR filters is 400 ¢J. Finally, TFBAR filters show the good performances with insertion loss of -8.138 dB, band rejection of 10.9 dB and bandwidth of 37.125 MHz.

IL-1 is an essential pro-inflammatory factor in inflammation response. The effect of IL-1 is through binding to the IL-1 receptor that triggers the following signal transduction pathway. To study the role of IL-1 receptor-mediated signal pathway in inflammatory response, injecting P. aeruginosa into trachea of wild-type (WT) and type-1 IL-1 receptor knock-out (IL-1R1-/-) mice was used as the experimental model. Injecting bacterium into trachea of mice will induce pneumonia which increases accumulation of neutrophils, production of nitric oxide, expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 as well as many kinds of cytokines and causes the lung damage. The pneumonia-induced lung damage and inflammation at 24 hr after injecting P. aeruginosa into trachea were more severe in knock-out than in WT mice, as demonstrated by increases in extravasations of Evans blue dye (EBD), myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity, expression of iNOS, IL-1 beta and ICAM-1, and higher mortality of knock-out mice. The cause of the high mortality in knock-out mice was further investigated by culturing the lung and blood samples for bacterial counts. The bacterial counts of lung and blood of IL-1R1-/- mice were all higher than that of WT mice in 8 to 24 hr after injection of bacterium. Finally, chimeric mice (WT ¡÷ WT, IL1R1-/- ¡÷IL1R1-/-, WT ¡÷ IL1R1-/-, IL1R1-/- ¡÷ WT) were generated and used to determine the role of PMN cells of blood. Suggesting that increased amounts of bacteria in lung and blood is related to the higher mortality in knock-out mice and the type-1 IL-1 receptor is essential for mice to against pneumonia in this model.

Modern problems in astrophysics tend to require large, complex computational frameworks to solve many aspects of the system simultaneusly. Calculation of the energy production through nuclear reactions is typically one of those aspects. The use of standard nuclear burning algorithms will take up the majority of the computational time with all but the smallest of networks. The explicit asymptotic method has shown promise in computing large networks faster than existing methods in various environments while retaining accuracy. The purpose of this thesis is to show that this method can be successfully used to solve complex systems using a network of realistic size in a reasonable amount of time, and to investigate some problems in the flame propagation for a Type Ia, which have never been investigated with a realistic network.

The glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) is the major insulin-responsive glucose transporter in adipose and muscle tissues. Although the early steps in the insulin signaling pathway governing translocation of GLUT4 to the plasma membrane are well understood, the final steps in this pathway are not. TUG is a protein which has been shown to affect trafficking of GLUT4 both in the basal state and in response to insulin. One protein-protein interaction between TUG and the large cytosolic loop of GLUT4 has previously been identified. Based on reports of the requirement of the GLUT4 N-terminal domain for its proper targeting to the plasma membrane, we postulated that an interaction might also exist between TUG and the N-terminal domain of GLUT4, and we tested this hypothesis using two sets of pull-down experiments. In the first set, using the N-terminal domain of GLUT4 fused with glutathione S-transferase (GST), we were able to pull TUG down from the lysates of TUG-transfected HEK 293 cells. TUG was also pulled down by the GLUT4 cytosolic loop and, to a much lesser extent, its C-terminal domain. However, there was no specific interaction between these fusion proteins and the lysates of cells transfected with a truncated form of TUG lacking its own N-terminal domain. In the second set of experiments, using a biotinylated synthetic GLUT4 N-terminal peptide, we pulled down a protein detected by an anti-TUG antibody and running at ~64 kDa, a slightly higher molecular weight than wild-type TUG. We believe that this band represents modified full-length TUG. This interaction was not seen using synthetic GLUT4 N-terminal peptide mutated at 4 amino acids previously identified as necessary for proper GLUT4 retention and insulin-responsive trafficking. We conclude that TUG interacts not only with the large cytosolic loop of GLUT4, but also with the N-terminal domain of GLUT4, and that this latter interaction can be disrupted by mutations in GLUT4 that cause defective trafficking, suggesting that this interaction is critical for GLUT4 intracellular retention and insulin-responsive GLUT4 trafficking.

Thèse de doctorat : Médecine. Neuropsychopharmacologie : Université de Nantes : 2006. / Bibliogr.

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Immunologie : Lille 2 : 2008. / Résumé en français et en anglais. Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. p. 113-137.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-147). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 131 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 82-112).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri--Columbia, 2001. / "December 2001." Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-243). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-147). Also available on the Internet.