The investigator made a study of the history, philosophy, method, and operation of centralized purchasing as it now exists for the state-supported institutions in the State of Texas and other selected states (New Hampshire, Montana, Michigan, Nebraska, and Minnesota).

Typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

No description available.

There are four contributions of this research: 1) confirmation of inconsistent use of terminology in the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research field; 2) the development of a hierarchical terminology technique that extends the idea of cognitive mapping into a hierarchy of concepts and dictionary of related definitions; 3) a taxonomy of terminology showing the boundary of the CSCW research field; and 4) a dictionary of definitions relating to the terminology in the taxonomy. The investigation of prior research in this field found that there was a proliferation of terms all relating to support of groups, and there was a proliferation of software and systems that support groups. However, the terminology and definitions used by researchers were found to be inconsistent, with some terms being defined differently, but then used interchangeably. Inconsistency makes it difficult to determine what technology is being used in the research and where a research study fits into the research field. Knowledge of any research field is mainly gained through reading published research documents. This research analysed published documents in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) to determine the scope, structure and meaning of the terminology used in this research field. The research resulted in a hierarchy of terminology and a dictionary of definitions. Future research will determine the value of these structures for new researchers, experienced researchers, and practitioners. During the investigation of prior research no technique was identified to undertake such a study. A hierarchical terminology technique (HTT), which is a form of content analysis process, was developed to structure a hierarchy of concepts to expose the relationships between terms. This technique includes terminology identification, analysis and presentation to show the scope of a research field and to present terminology and definitions to improve consistency. This technique can be used in other fields of study.

The research presented within this dissertation explores the photocatalytic deposition of metal carried out within sealed microfluidic channels. Micro scale patterning of metals inside sealed microchannels is investigated as well as nanoscale control over the surface morphology of the nanoparticles making up the patterns. This is achieved by controlling solution conditions during deposition. Finally, the nanoparticle patterns are used in fabricating a sensor device, which demonstrates the ability to address multiple patches within a sealed channel with different surface chemistries. Also presented here is the construction of the first epifluorescence/total internal reflection macroscope. Its ability to carry out high numerical aperture imaging of large arrays of solid supported phospholipid bilayers is explored. For this, three experiments are carried out. First, imaging of a 63 element array where every other box contains a different bilayer is preformed, demonstrating the ability to address large scale arrays by hand. Next, a protein binding experiment is preformed using two different arrays of increasing ligand density on the same chip. Finally, a two-dimensional array of mixed fluorescent dyes contained within solid supported lipid bilayers is imaged illustrating the ability of the instrument to acquire fluorescent resonance energy transfer data. Additionally, the design and fabrication of an improved array chip and addressing method is presented. Using this new array chip and addressing method in conjunction with the epifluorescence/total internal reflection macroscope should provide an efficient platform for high throughput screening of important biological processes which occur at the surfaces of cell membranes.

Ligand-receptor interactions are ubiquitous on cell membranes. Indeed, many important physiological functions primarily involve such interactions. These include cell signaling, pathogen binding, trafficking of lymphocytes, and the immune response.1-4 Therefore, studying ligand-receptor interactions at appropriate model membrane is of importance for both proper understanding of biological functions and applications to biosensors and bioseparations. Supported lipid bilayers are composed of the same lipid molecules found in the plasma cell membranes of living cells and possess the same two-dimensional fluidity as cell membranes, making them capable of mimicking the cell surface. Moreover, supported lipid bilayer-based in vitro assays are appealing because they require only very small sample volumes and they are suitable for multiplexing and high-throughput screening. Recently, our laboratory has combined supported lipid bilayer-coated microfluidic platforms with total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy to obtain equilibrium dissociation constant data for protein-ligand interactions. Using this method, it was found that equilibrium dissociation constants of antibody-ligand interactions at lipid membrane interfaces can be strongly affected by ligand lipophilicity and linker length/structure. These results are described in Chapter III. Monitoring protein-ligand interactions is routinely performed by fluorescently labeling the proteins of interest. Protein labeling can, however, interfere with detection measurements and be highly inconvenient to employ. To solve these problems, a simple and highly sensitive technique for detection of protein-ligand binding at biointerfaces has been developed. The method is based upon modulation of the interfacial pH when the protein binds. This change is detected by pH-sensitive fluorescent dye molecules embedded into the biointerface. The dye fluoresces strongly in the protonated state but becomes inactive upon deprotonation. These results are demonstrated in Chapter IV. Finally, the study of supported lipid bilayer-based electrophoresis is described in Chapter V. Bilayer electrophoresis is an attractive alternative to gel electrophoresis for the separation of membrane components such as lipids and membrane proteins because it is run in native-like environments and avoids exposing the analytes of interest to harsh chemicals. In this study, lipid rafts of varying size were used as separation matrices to separate two similar lipids with different alkyl chains. Lipid rafts of varying size were formed by a process controlled by varying treatment of the solid substrate. Depending on which method was employed, the results showed that lipid raft size could be modulated over five orders of magnitude. Moreover, it was found that the electrophoretic separation of the two lipid components depended on the size of rafts in the bilayer matrix.

Thesis (doctoral)--Hochschule St. Gallen für Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften, 1994.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Köln, 2000.

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-73). Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

Tübingen, University, Diss., 2009 (Nur beschränkt für den Austausch).