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Access to abstract permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Department of Physiology and Health Science

Vesicle associated membrane protein 2 (VAMP 2) is a synaptic vesicle protein involved with exocytosis in many different cell types, such as pancreatic cells, parotid salivary cells, adrenal cells, skeletal cells, and adipocytes. Also, white blood cells such as eosinophils, neutrophils, and mast cells have been characterized to process VAMP 2. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that VAMP 2 is associated with the vesicle population in rabbits B lymphocytes and may serve as the v-SNARE for vesicular antibody release. Two Rabbit B lymphoblast cell lines were used to detect the presence of VAMP 2, which are the 240 E IgG secreting plasmacytoma-like cell line and 55D1 IgM surface expressing cells. The cell lines were broken down into vesicle and plasma membrane fractions. Immune dot blots demonstrated VAMP 2 was positive in the vesicle fraction of both cell lines. However, VAMP 2 was expressed more by the 240 E IgG secreting cell line. Western blots displayed diverse results with bands that ran at or below 20 KDa, which is consistent with the known molecular weight bands for VAMP 2 of 12.6 kDa and 18 kDa. Our results suggested that VAMP 2 is associated with the vesicle population in rabbit B lymphocytes and could serve as the v- SNARE for vesicular antibody release. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community. / Department of Physiology and Health Science

VAMP-7 has been found to interact with SNAP-23, a t-SNARE that functions in relocating granule membranes in response to stimulation, and plays a large role in the regulation of granule release from mast cells in response to an allergic reaction. While evidence suggests that VAMP-7 is active in antibody release in the innate immune system, little investigation has been completed on VAMP-7 interaction in specific antibody release of B lymphocytes of the humoral immune system. Little research has previously focused on vesicular transport within B lymphocytes, leaving molecular mechanisms within B lymphocytes a mystery. Immunodot blots, western blots, and immunoflourescent microscopy were all utilized with the goal of identifying the presence of VAMP- 7. Immunobot blots for both 55D1 and 240E cells were all negative for the presence of VAMP-7. However, VAMP-7 was detected using immunoflourescent microscopy in both 55D1 and 240E cell lines. / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community. / Department of Physiology and Health Science

The purpose of this study is to analyze the philosophy and public career of Hoosier lawyer Lucius Burrie Swift (1844-1929). Born in western New York, Swift served in the Union forces and ultimately established himself as a lawyer in Indianapolis. His Puritan heritage and university -raining bred an intense awareness of civic responsibility and the necessity of establishing efficiency and economy in the operation of government.Six chapters comprise the total of this dissertation. Chapter One traces the early life of Swift and his career an educator--a time during which there emerged a desire fulfill his civic responsibility. Chapter Two analyzes Swift' s Mugwump political stance along with his role as a promoter of civil service in the federal government. As editor of the Civil Service Chronicle and through his association with national and local reform organizations, Swift emerges as one of the staunchest supporters of merit reform in the Midwest.Chapter Three examines Swift as a Progressive in the Roosevelt tradition. Friends since the young President’s days on the United States Civil Service Commission, Swift associated himself with the implementation of social and industrial justice. As a temporary supporter of the ever versatile Albert J. Beveridge, he worked not only to promote progressive ideas on the national level but also to purge the Indiana Republican Party of its social and economic conservatism exemplified by Charles Fairbanks.Chapter Four investigates Swift's contribution toward the establishment of municipal reform in Indianapolis. While never assuming an elected office, he worked for the advancement of Indianapolis as an autonomous entity free from the controls of the General Assembly and strove to inform citizens of backsliding politicians. Only after World War I did Swift assume a public office as president of the Board of Sanitary Commissioners. During his term the sanitation department became a hallmark of municipal efficiency and economy.Chapter Five examines Swift as a proponent of preparedness and internationalism. His activities as a member of the American Rights Committee portray him as a superpatriot with all of the accompanying vices. Yet following the War, Swift supported all calls for internationalism including Wilson's League of Nations and the Washington Conference.Chapter Six offers concluding remarks which suggest that Swift, while no prime mover of any reform throughout his career, does rank high above the general populace which exhibit apathy to national and international turmoil.Two minor themes pervade this dissertation. First, beginning in the late 1880's, local reformers and businessmen in Indianapolis were attempting to implement, with significant success, many of the progressive concepts of municipal government and operations which were responsive to the changing complexion of a growing urban society. Second, a reform-oriented tradition from the Mugwump era through the Progressive period definitely operated in Indiana although it achieved neither the public support nor concrete results of its Eastern counterparts.

Melatoninas – hormonas, kurį produkuoja kankorėžinė liauka, buvo atrastas 1959 metais ir vadinamas “tamsos hormonu“, kadangi jis gaminamas tamsiu paros metu. Maksimalus melatonino kiekis būna vidurnaktį ir iki ryto mažėja, be to šviesa silpnina jo sintezę. Melatoninas reguliuoja biologinį laikrodį, pagerina miegą, stimuliuoja imuninę sistemą bei apsaugo nervų sistemą. Literatūriniai duomenys apie melatonino įtaką imuninei sistemai daugiausia yra apie jo poveikį T ląstelėms. Melatoninas padidina čiobrialaukės dydį bei citokinų produkciją, stimuliuoja T ląsteles pagalbininkes (TH1) bei aktyvuoja NK ląsteles ir makrofagus. Tačiau, šio hormono įtaka B ląstelių funkcijoms nėra ištirta. Mūsų darbo tikslas buvo ištirti melatonino įtaką B ląstelių funkcijoms, t.y. antikūnų susidarymui. Kadangi antikūnų produkcija būna nepriklausoma ir priklausoma nuo T ląstelių, buvo nuspręsta imunizuoti BALB/c peles nuo T ląstelių nepriklausomu ir priklausomu antigenais, bei stebimas specifinių antikūnų susidarymas. Imunizuojamos pelės eksperimento metu buvo laikomos trijose skirtingose sąlygose: esant normalioms šviesos tamsos ciklo sąlygoms; esant pastoviam apšvietimui ir esant pastoviam apšvietimui, ir papildomai kasdien leidžiant melatoniną. Buvo nustatyta kad, esant melatonino sintezės sutrikimams (gyvūnams esant pastovaus apšvietimo sąlygoms) padidėja nuo T ląstelių nepriklausomų antikūnų sintezė. Padidėja visų izotipų (IgM, IgG1, IgG2b ir IgG3) antikūnų kiekis. Melatonino sintezės sutrikimai... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland that is secreted during the night in response to the darkness. It reaches a maximum level in the middle of the night, then decrease until the morning. The light inhibits the melatonin synthesis: it is the hormone of the circadian rate/rhythm. When people are exposed to frequent artificial light and they do not get enough sleep, melatonin level is suppressed. The production of melatonin decreases with age. Melatonin regulates and controls biological clock: it improves sleep, stimulates the immune system, and protects the central nervous system. This hormone is an extremely powerful antioxidant. The literature data about melatonin effect on immune system are mostly about the T cells and macrophages. Melatonin increases the thymus weight. It stimulates the function of TH1 T cells, increases cytokine production by T cells. Melatonin also activates NK cells and macrophages. However, the role of melatonin on the function of B cells is not investigated very well. We have investigated the role of melatonin on the function of B cells, e.g. production of specific antibodies. For this purpose, BALB/c mice were immunized with T independent and T dependent antigen. We looked for production of specific antibodies in animals living at three different conditions. The first group of mice was kept on the normal light/night cycle conditions. The second group of mice was exposed all the time to artificial light, which causes decreased synthesis... [to full text]

Hepatitis B virus genotype G (HBV/G) is a unique genotype of HBV which contains a 36-nucleotide insertion in the Core gene as well as 2 mutations that lead to stop codons in the Pre-Core coding region. Chronic infection with HBV/G is not known to occur without a co-infecting HBV genotype, suggesting that it is defective on its own. This study aims to look at the replication capacity of HBV/G, HBV/A, and HBV/A/G recombinant strains circulating in Canada and to determine the relationship between co-infecting strains. Four full-length HBV genomes were isolated from 2 different patients and transiently transfected into the HepG2 human hepatoma cell line for phenotypic analysis of each strain. HBV/G, HBV/A and HBV/A/G recombinant strains were isolated from Patient 1, while a different HBV/A/G recombinant strain was isolated from Patient 2. HBV replication capacity was measured using a quantitative real time PCR assay. Markers of replication, such as secreted HBsAg and HBeAg, intracellular core particles and replicative DNA intermediates were measured by ELISA, Western blot and Southern blot, respectively. HBV/G demonstrated a higher replicative capability, relative to its co-infecting strains, while both HBV/A/G strains had levels of secreted HBV DNA greater than HBV/A alone, suggesting a modulating effect due to recombination. Replication marker levels revealed possible reasons for a co-infection requirement during HBV/G infection such as HBeAg for chronicity. These observations demonstrate the potential interactions of HBV/G with its co-infecting HBV genotype and provide the first reported phenotypic analysis of a HBV recombinant.

The purpose of this thesis is to pursue a grammatical, common sense, reading of some of the contemporary accounts of the workings of law. In so doing it relies extensively on the critical work by Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Stanley Fish, writers assumed to present a somewhat unified perspective on such matters as understanding, language, meaning and reading. The shorter of the two parts, 'Judgement, Criteria, Justice,' sets the stage. Looking at Jean-Franςois Lyotard's discourse, in Just Gaming, of a semantic and moral apocalypse, and his subsequent search for a concept of the just, the first part introduces the principal themes of the essay. These themes at once form some of the major concerns of the contemporary legal theory; the text of the law, the authorial intention, the politics of interpretation, the interpreter, and the limits of interpretation. Chapter 1.1 probes the concept of authorship as formulated by Lyotard. According to him, the modern situation produces a concept of the author that is detached. The modem situation lacks the transparency that characterizes the classical situation, where the author and the reader could relate to one another, and where, therefore, interpretation was a possibility. The Lyotardian concept radically distinguishes between the realms of the author and of the audience, a distinction that suppresses the ineluctably fraternal, attached quality of authorship. Chapter 1.2 is a critique of the concept of judgement Lyotard advances. It explores the two distinct orders within which, according to Lyotard, judgement is practicable: those of faith ('the Jewish pole') and paganism. While both orders exclude the concept of an autonomous subject - a false order which defines the rhetoric of the mainstream Western thought - the homogenous formalism of one, faith, contrasts with the heterogenous localism of the other, the pagan attitude. Questioning the dichotomy, the discussion goes on to argue for a concept of the primordiality of the attached, situated, quality of both the issuing of the judgement and of its possible interpretations, irrespective of the distinct orders of rhetoric – autonomous, heterogenous, religious - in which they are presented. Chapter 1.3 explores the Lyotardian reworking of Kant's categorical imperative and seeks to point out the problematic nature of the enterprise. The discussion questions the idea that a thematic, non-moral, non-political, concept of the just may necessarily function better than one which is of common opinion, and indicates the illusory character of the Lyotardian venture radically to contrast what would be a thematic concept of the just with that which is mere common opinion. Chapter 1.4 continues on the subject of the politics of interpretation - can what would be the unruly, fantastic dictates of morals be avoided on the basis of a universalistic, politics-free, criterion? - to test the opposition Lyotard draws between the Sophistic and the Kantian positions. While from the Sophistic viewpoint a genuine opposition of competing moralities is not a possibility, the Kantian morality makes conceivable the concept of a rational, as opposed to mere opinion-based and rhetorical, choice. The longer part, The Law and Its Readings,' is a reading of some of the motifs of Franςois Gény's Method of Interpretation and Sources of Private Positive Law. Each of the four chapters that make the second part aims to dissolve one of the four binary oppositions that characterize the contemporary scene - polarities that are strictly mere variations on the theme of the dichotomy between the law and its readings, the law and that which is made of it: the text and the extratext, intention and extension, the tame and the freakish, the real and the formal. In the four chapters that form the second part, the logic behind the oppositions is explored, and a grammatical reassessment, which indicates the terms of each one of the polarities ultimately metamorphic and elusive, though, naturally, of possible grammatical use, is suggested. Chapter 2.1 examines some of the contemporary arguments relating to the text of the law. Extratextualist positions such as, famously, Gény's counter the mainstream textualist positions by arguing against the mechanistic conception of the law that is written, all inclusive, and once and for all. Curiously, however, the notion of the law therefore invoked presupposes a notion of the text which might best suit the formalism of the mainstream positions - namely that the text, as opposed to what might tentatively be called history, is the locus of meaning. What follows this markedly positivistic notion of the text, a notion invoked in particular in the extratextualist positions on the interpretation of the American Constitution, is a fear of judgement that would be made on the basis of what is often (as in the segregation cases) an obsolete concept embodied in the text. This fear, in fact, is not different from the formalistic, mainstream-textualistic, fear of what would become of the law in the absence of formally circumscribed, textual, constraints. In exploring the theme, the discussion focuses on certain individual cases, such as the segregation cases of the U.S. Supreme Court, arguments over which have been an integral part of the theory. Chapter 2.2 is devoted to the considerations of the legislative will. Counterintentionalist positions regarding the interpretation of the law, it argues, may in fact suggest an inherent intentionalism, as epistemologically understood, which may in turn point in the direction of a reversal not dissimilar to that of the binary opposition of textualism and extratextualism. The traditional arguments against the mainstream intentionalism seem to gather on two points: first, that intention is a state of mind and therefore impossible to uncover for those who do not have a natural access inside others' heads; and secondly, that even if it were possible to uncover it, what one has with the legislative will is but a fiction, for it refers to, not one, but many minds who could not possibly intent one and the same thing. The discussion seeks to disclose the way counter-intentionalist arguments subscribe to traditional intentionalism by assuming intention as an occult presence, to use two concepts, one Wittgesteinean and one Derridean, together. And it argues how intention as a concept is a possibility precisely because it is in each case a collegiate, fraternal extension. Chapter 2.3 explores the problems of judicial discretion, politics, and the politics of interpretation. It discusses some of the traditional criticisms of judicial review, in particular the countermajoritarian objection, and points out the metamorphic character of some of the positions in the debate. In that countermajoritarianism refuted from a majoritarian viewpoint stands right behind the very idea of constitutionalism, a distinct refuge at once of the majoritarian positions. And the positions that resist the idea of a timid, majoritarian, judiciary appear to be equally paradoxical, for these positions are simply for being ill at ease with the constitutional principle that is countermajoritarianism par excellence. The discussion then focuses on the Dworkin-Fish debate on the politics of interpretation and at once attempts to pin down some of the veins in Dworkin's thinking on the subject of judicial licence. An overall evaluation of the conceptual scheme, potentialities, and assumptions of legal realism is attempted in chapter 2.4. Realism appears to emphasize the part of the interpreter, as opposed to the text, in the event of adjudication, and question the traditional assumptions of formalism whose mechanistic concept of jurisprudence equates the law with its text. While some of the most crucial of the realist objections to the formalistic concept of adjudication have been genuine and insightful.

Derrida and Economics analyses two essays of Jacques Derrida on the Public and Democracy, alongside other essays reflecting these political works. However, Derrida's political thought will be taken seriously by emphasising Economics before Politics. Economics will be viewed as a detour, a detour inflecting every attempt to present a meaningful political position or stable political realm. For Derrida, economics has the force of an oblique ruse. Derrida ADd BconoDdcs aligns Derrida's view of economics with the Eighteenth Century realisation that a stable SOciety, analogous to the Antique ideal of the Polis, is neither a common goal nor a proper object for Political philosophy. Here, Classical economics emerges as an oblique attempt to construct the conditions for the possibility of a political body through economic relations. This epistemological 'en passant' is familiar, in Britain, as Adam Smith's' Invisible Hand'. For Derrida, the equi valent Continental ruse is distinguished by a faith in 'dialectical idealisation'; a process bent upon securing an idealised po 11 tical space, but unable to limit its more speculati ve drifts. If Classical economics represents an attempt to construct the possibility of the Body Politic, Derrida's political essays deconstruct this possibility. His emphasiS upon the 'possible' highlights the effects of risk and competition in an economy that could never comfortably be identified wi th a stable Polt tical realm. For Derrida, economics is not simply an attempt to secure or rewrite more direct Political discourses. As he argues, its every detour is haunted by the possibility of speculative failure. Derrida argues an enthusiasm for economics can also imply a preoccupation with the finitude of the Body Politic. This observation allows him to comment upon the valorisation of death or redundancy in certain poli tical discourses; i. e. those analyses that, in the throes of Depression, remain devoted to the idea of redundancy as though to the object of a renewed political will.

In this thesis I investigate the notion of experience in German Idealist Philosophy. I focus on the exploration of an alternative to the transcendental model notion of experience through Schelling's insight into the notion of logogrif. The structural division of this project into two sections reflects the two theoretical standpoints of this project, namely the logic and the logogrif of experience. The first section - the logic of experience - explores the notion of experience provided in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Judgement and Fichte's Science of Knowledge. I argue that Kant's fundamental question about the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements succeeds in thematising the aporia of cognitive experience but results in a subject-oriented, representational model which radically confines the notion of experience to the constitutive laws of the understanding or to the normative precepts of Reason. Experience is founded upon a sharp division between faith and knowledge, will and logic, desire and reflection, absolute and finitude. Fichte's endeavour to articulate a non-representational account of experience, does not succeed in extricating itself from the representational model, so long as experience is reduced to the ever-producing deeds of the self-positing ego. Despite the serious differences between Kant's and Fichte's notions of experience, both accounts, so long as they unfold from a transcendental standpoint, attempt to resolve experience into conceptual laws or determinations of the ego's absolute will. Experience is transformed into an object of the subject's cognitive or volitional faculties. The paradoxes of man's interaction with the world are intended to be accommodated either by the law-giving spontaneity of the understanding and the Architectonic of Pure Reason or by the overpowerful primordial act of the self-positing ego. This implies the conceptualisation of the self in terms of constant identity-through-time, or sheer self-determination. However, this conceptualisation remains at the normative or prescriptive level, which in turn is projected upon the world. The latter, though appears as the subject's property, essentially remains alien and opaque, confirming the radical limitations of the ego rather than its order-giving authority. Moreover, this notion of experience is ultimately founded upon a radical expulsion of the divine from the world, the de-spiritualisation of the sensual and the de-sensualisation of the spiritual, the sharp juxtaposition between absolute and finitude. This results in a self-defeating subjectivity, whose firm identity and rule-giving authority does not rescue it from its perennial unattainability to 'organise the conditioned' or 'conquer the unconditioned'. In Kant's and Fichte's thought, however, I detect elements that potentially transgress their transcendental account of experience. These are found in Kant's concept of spontaneity and free play between understanding and imagination, and Fichte's concept of productivity. I argue that these elements lose their potential dynamism, so long as they are absorbed by the transcendental demands for the solution of the aporias of logic. However, these elements point to the need for a radical re-conceptualisation of the notion of experience. This is provided by means of Schelling's logogriflic approach, which constitutes the theme of the second section. The second section - the logogrif of experience - attempts to articulate a different approach towards the notion of experience, through an exploration of Schelling's versatile and provocative thought. This section focuses on Schelling's original insight into the notion and act of logogrif, which opens the dialogue between logos and mythos, cosmic becoming and human soul, cosmic imagination and human reflection, faith and knowledge. This section attempts to illuminate Schelling's fascinating philosophical investigations and discoveries that have been rather overlooked, possibly, due to Hegel's overwhelming critique. This section, after a brief critical examination of the Identity Philosophy, attempts to elucidate Schelling's notion of experience through his middle works, Of Human Freedom, Ages of the World, The Deities of Samothrace, which are treated as a self-developing trilogy. Schelling re-addresses the aporias of logic not as part of Reason's self-interrogation but as part of the cosmic paradoxes and living experiences. In this way, Schelling resets the scene of the debate on the conditions of possibility for cognitive experience by putting on the stage the enigmas of the cosmos and life rather than the Tribunal of Reason. Logic itself is conceived as a potency in the cosmic becoming, and consequently can no longer attempt to establish the transcendental conditions for the possibility of cognitive experience. Cosmic becoming, in which man is an active part, is conceived as the process of the movement, the interaction, the transformations and transmutations of multiple potencies. These, far beyond any mechanical conceptualisation, appear as self-moving and yet interdependent, unknown yet familiar, inscrutable and yet manifest powers, describing the mystery of life itself. The latter is depicted as an ever-recurrent act of longing for self-expression as active unity. Experience is conceived as the lived process of a network of living potencies, which may not only resist rational powers but may also puzzle and seize them. In this context, reflection acquires a plastic dimension, as opposed to its rigidity in the representational model of experience. Reflection depicts cosmic longing's self-formation, whose man is part. This self-bending formation partially illuminates the nature of longing, and from this standpoint is the logic of the longing. However, this formation is movable, transmutable and mostly ineffable, and from this standpoint is the logic of a riddle: a logogrif. Logogrif is the transitive term that attempts to describe the transition of experience from its enacted phase to its allusive conceptual utterance, and in this sense the term itself participates in both phases, as both form of thought and form of life. The logogrific approach to experience in turn transposes us as from the realm of pure concepts to the realm of the mystery of life, from pure thought to acts of longing, from the Architectonic of Pure Reason to Cosmic Theurgy. The latter term attempts to grasp the paradox and dynamism of cosmic and non-cosmic becoming by means of multiple, vanishing and ever-recurring, transmutable potencies, or in Schelling's terms 'the magic of insoluble life'. Schelling's logogrific account consists in a powerful voice for the re-enchantment of the world, the introduction into the notion of experience of the imminence of the divine. This is not suggested in terms of the adoption of old religious doctrines but by means of the discovery and re-discovery of the theurgy of life, through the intensification of our artistic mood, the creative expansion of our deeds. This notion of experience allows for the reconsideration of the notion of the self, in terms of a dynamic, conflictual process between conscious and unconscious powers and the critical revaluation of the accounts of subjectivity which reduce it to the sphere of self-consciousness. The thesis concludes with the need for an investigation into the relation between logos and mythos, which only tangentially has been introduced by the present project. In this context it will be possible to re-appraise the potential that the logogrific approach opens for an alternative to both logical and traditional mythological patterns of thinking.