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The cellular inhibitor of apoptosis 1 and 2 (cIAP1 and cIAP2) proteins are essential regulators of the classical and alternative NF-κB pathways. The NF-κB pathway has been shown to be an important regulator of myogenesis and plays a role in skeletal muscle disease, but the involvement of cIAP1 and cIAP2 has not been examined in healthy skeletal muscle. I sought to characterize skeletal muscle of the cIAP1-null and cIAP2-null mice. We show mice lacking cIAP1 exhibit decreased satellite cell numbers in the TA following cardiotoxin-induced injury and in the uninjured soleus muscle, suggesting cIAP1 may be important for satellite cell expansion. cIAP2 may play a role in fiber maintenance and homeostasis as we show cross- sectional are of cIAP2-null uninjured tibialis anterior fibers at 7 and 10 weeks of age were significantly smaller than wild-type fibers. Furthermore, cIAP1- and cIAP2-null mice subjected to in situ force experiments demonstrated altered twitch kinetics compared to wild-type controls in the soleus and EDL, suggesting fast and slow-twitch fibers are affected differently by loss of cIAP1 and cIAP2. Further work elucidating the downstream mechanisms by which cIAP1 and cIAP2 regulate skeletal muscle development and regeneration will be beneficial to the development of treatments for muscular disorders. In this regard, Smac mimetic compounds (SMCs) are small molecule inhibitors that target cIAP1/2 for degradation, thus provide a potential therapeutic treatment for muscular disorders.

PLA nanofibers were successively produced by thermo-responsive transformation of PLA particles in water. The morphological structure of the nanofibers could be optimized by the heat treatment as well as the incorporation of GO to the fiber surface. PLA/GO fiber demonstrated a more stable morphology and GO provided good compatibility between PLA and starch. Both PLA and PLA/GO fibers incorporated in starch films resulted in increased thermal stability and mechanical properties. However, the most favorable properties were assigned starch films containing high concentration of PLA/GO fibers. These films with completely green components could possibly be utilized in biodegradable packaging applications.

Microstructure and photonic crystal fibers with periodic as well as random refractive-index distributions are investigated. Two cases corresponding to fibers with one-dimensional (1D) radial index distributions and two-dimensional (2D) transverse index distributions are considered. For 1D geometries with an arbitrary number of cladding layers, exact analytical solutions of guided modes are obtained using a matrix approach. In this part, for random index distributions, the average transmission properties are calculated and the influence of glass/air ratio on these properties is assessed. Important transmission properties of the fundamental mode, including normalized propagation constant, chromatic dispersion, field distributions, and effective area, are evaluated. For 2D geometries, the numerical techniques, FDTD (Finite-Difference Time-Domain) method and FDM (Finite Difference Method), are utilized. First, structures with periodic index distributions are examined. The investigation is then extended to microstructure optical fibers with random index distributions. Design of 2D microstructure fibers with random air-hole distributions is undertaken with the aim of achieving single-mode guiding property and small effective area. The former is a unique feature of the holey fiber with periodic air-hole arrangement and the latter is a suitable property for nonlinear fiber devices. Measurements of holey fibers with random air-hole distributions constitute an important experimental task of this research. Using a section of a holey fiber fabricated in the draw tower facility at Virginia Tech, measurements of transmission spectra and fiber attenuation are performed. Also, test results for far-field pattern measurements are presented. Another objective of this dissertation is to explore new applications for holey fibers with random or periodic hole distributions. In the course of measuring the holey fibers, it was noticed that robust temperature-insensitive pressure sensors can be made with these fibers. This offers an opportunity for new low-cost and reliable pressure fiber-optic sensors. Incorporating gratings into holey fibers in conjunction with the possibility of dynamic tuning offers desirable characteristics with potential applications in communications and sensing. Injecting gases or liquids in holey fibers with gratings changes their transmission characteristics. These changes may be exploited in designing tunable optical filters for communication applications or making gas/liquid sensor devices. / Ph. D.

There is continued interest in nonlinear devices for different types of optical signal processing, such as Raman or parametric amplifiers. The small nonlinearity of conventional single-mode fibers sets a major limitation for these devices. A large nonlinearity can be achieved by having a large nonlinear coefficient, a small effective area, or both. Having a small effective area, however, requires efficient coupling to very small core fibers. A novel technique for splicing conventional single-mode fibers to small core fibers is proposed and demonstrated. The coupling efficiency obtained by this technique is considerably improved over that obtained by the butt-joint splice. This technique uses a highly tapered splice in which the field leaves the core and propagates as a fundamental cladding mode before it couples back to the core mode of the small core fiber. At the beginning of the taper the fundamental core mode carries most of the power. Over the down-taper region, the core mode couples to the fundamental cladding mode for which the cladding-air interface plays a major role in guiding the light. Over the up-taper region, the cladding mode is coupled back to the core mode. Fabrication of such a device involves many constraints. Alignment of the cores, the slope of the taper, and the taper length are important issues to ensure that excessive radiation loss does not take place. The theory of tapered single-mode fiber is discussed including adiabaticity criteria, length considerations, mode coupling and wavelength dependence. We use a computational simulation to examine how the field changes from one part of the taper to the other. Variations of the fiber and the field properties along the taper are studied. In this simulation, the tapered region is approximated as a sufficiently large number of cascaded uniform fiber segments of decreasing or increasing diameters. Another analysis based on the conservation of power flow is also provided. Tapered splices were fabricated using two different experimental setups. The experimental setup to verify our theoretical results is shown. The tapering process is thoroughly discussed. The spectrum of a tunable laser passing through a splice shows how modes interact with each other during the tapering process. We successfully fabricated very low loss tapers with extremely small diameters. Tapered splices showed a lower loss than their butt-joint counterparts. Experimental measurements of these tapered splices are presented and discussed. / Ph. D.

The thermo-mechanical response of unidirectional P100 graphite fiber/6061 aluminum matrix composites (v_f = 0.47) was investigated at four temperatures: -150°F, +75°F, +250°F and +500°F, using test methods developed at Virginia Tech. Two types of tests, off-axis tension and Iosipescu shear, were used to obtain the desired properties. Good experimental-theoretical correlation was obtained for E_xx, v_xy and G₁₂. It is shown that E₁₁ is temperature independent, but E₂₂, v₁₂ and G₁₂ generally decrease with increasing temperature. Compared with rather high longitudinal strength, very low transverse strength was obtained for the graphite/aluminum. The poor transverse strength is believed to be due to the low interfacial bond strength in this material. The strength decreases significantly with increasing temperature. The tensile response at various temperatures is greatly affected by the residual stresses caused by the mismatch in the coefficients of thermal expansion of fibers and matrix. The degradation of the aluminum matrix properties at higher temperatures has a deleterious effect on composite properties. The composite has a very low coefficient of thermal expansion in the fiber direction. / M.S.