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Since the discovery of Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia (VHS) in the Great Lakes in 2005, the assessment of its ability to spread amongst connected watersheds has been at the forefront of VHS management. This project was designed to determine a rate of passage of VHS-susceptible fish species between coastal Lake Michigan and its harbors and the artificial waterways in the Chicago metropolitan area. This information can be used to assess the potential for VHS to spread into the waterways, which drain into the Illinois River watershed. Although fishes (e.g. Round Goby and occasionally salmonids) are known to have moved from Lake Michigan into the Illinois River via the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS), the rate of fish passage from the lake into the waterway system is unclear. To directly assess fish movement, a total of 1216 fish were collected, tagged, and returned to Lake Michigan harbors (532, 43.8% of total) and Lake Calumet (684, 56.2%), an adjacent lake connected to Lake Michigan via the CAWS. Fishermen reports, Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) sampling, and subsequent electrofishing sampling trips yielded 51 recaptured fish (4.2% of tagged fish). Of these, 2 fish were recaptured below the O¡¯Brien Lock and Dam in the Calumet River (south of Lake Michigan and Lake Calumet) and 49 fish were recaptured in the location at which they were originally tagged. To further assess movement of VHS susceptible species between Lake Michigan and the CAWS, otoliths were collected from 375 small-bodied fish (<150 mm total length) captured in the CAWS and analyzed for ¥ä©ö©øC to determine the origin (Lake Michigan or CAWS) of these fish. Fifty-six percent of small-bodied fishes collected from the Calumet River were immigrants from Lake Michigan, whereas 35% of fish collected from the Chicago River and 28% of fish collected from the North Shore Channel were immigrants. Results indicate that fishes (particularly small-bodied species such as Round Goby) move between VHS-positive Lake Michigan into the VHS-negative Chicago area waterways and represent a potential vector for VHS to spread into the inland waters of Illinois. However, the lack of movement of fishes from Lake Michigan into the Des Plaines River and further downstream waters also indicates a watershed-based approach to managing VHS in Illinois waters rather than simply designating the entire state as VHS-affected due to positive samples in Lake Michigan, may be valid. VHS surveillance should be continued in the CAWS to ensure the status of these water bodies as ¡°VHS positive¡± or ¡°VHS negative¡± is accurate, as this is useful for informing the public and creating policies and regulations to attempt to slow the spread of this disease.

Cells infected with herpes simplex virus show a rapid cessation of protein synthesis and a dramatic decline in the levels of mRNA; a process known as host shutoff. This effect is attributed to a viral tegument protein called the virion host shutoff protein, or vhs. The mechanism by which vhs induces mRNA degradation is not yet understood. It is not known whether vhs possesses RNase activities or if it acts in combination with other cellular factors. To gain a better understanding of the function of vhs, I examined RNA degradation in detail by analyzing the RNA decay products generated in the presence of vhs. 𝘐𝘯 𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘰 experiments, performed by infecting murine erythroid leukemia cells with HSV, revealed that beta-globin mRNA is rapidly degraded, in the presence of vhs, without being converted to detectable decay intermediates. The half-life of this mRNA was 15 and 60 minutes for HSV-2 and HSV-1, respectively. Using vhs translated in a rabbit reticulocyte lysate system, I found that vhs induced rapid decay at the 5' end of a capped RNA molecule. The decay event was endonucleolytic and occurred at preferred sites downstream of the cap, generating capped oligonucleotides. Unlike influenza RNA polymerase, the cleavage event did not occur at a fixed distance from the cap since capped oligos of differing size were generated from different RNA substrates. My data indicate that vhs induced cleavage exhibits a strong, but not absolute preference for RNAs possessing an m⁷G cap, which may account for vhs' specificity for m RNAs 𝘪𝘯 𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘰. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

VP16 is an integral element in the HSV-1 strategy to overturn normal cellular functions and use the host machinery for the production of new virus. VP16 enhances the expression of viral immediate-early genes in the nucleus of the infected cell. By binding to the virion host shutoff protein (vhs), VP16 is able to downregulate its activity and prevent destruction of the viral transcripts. Finally, VP16 has an essential but specifically undetermined role in virus assembly. While a null mutation in VP16 correlates to a lethal defect in virus assembly, recent work has revealed that the C-terminal acidic activation domain of VP16 is not essential to virus survival. Viral mutants containing 422 and 379 amino acid tail-deleted derivatives of VP16 are viable. We have constructed a viable viral mutant which encodes a 369 amino acid VP16, revealing that the N-terminal 369 amino acids of VP16 retain a function which is essential to virus survival. The viral mutants encoding truncated VP16 derivatives displayed a characteristic preference for growth on a cell line which supplied full length VP16 in 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴. Furthermore, the preference for growth on the complementing cell line became more apparent as VP16 was progressively truncated from the C-terminus. To determine if full length VP16 was aiding these virtues in attenuating vhs activity or in performing a structural role in the presence of vhs, we constructed double mutant viruses encoding the truncated VP16s and containing an inactivating mutation in the vhs locus (ΔSma). The elimination of vhs activity and/or vhs-VP16 binding alleviated the preference for growth on the complementing cell line in these viruses. Thus, while the acidic activation domain of VP16 is not essential for viral replication in tissue culture, it clearly confers a growth advantage to the virus. The viral mutants constructed here will prove useful in understanding the significance of the interaction between VP16 and vhs. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1995 / Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada / Half inch Super VHS (S-VHS) tape is an exceptional media for recording telemetry instrumentation data. Due to high volume mass production for the commercial and industrial video markets, high quality S-VHS media is available at a low cost. Advances in head technology as well as data path electronics contribute to increased data densities recorded on this media. Present system capabilities of 50,000 bits per inch will soon be replaced with newer technology systems that will record at linear densities up to 100,000 bits per inch.

With the quick abandonment of VCR technology and the adoption of digital and online replacements, people give up freedom and personal power in the name of perceived convenience. VCRs and VHS tapes served two needs: the need to time-shift programming and the need to archive The internet and DVR technology fulfill the first need, that of time-shifting, but completely ignore the need of people to archive, which is a need many people don't even realize they have until they are no longer able to archive programs in both an audio/visual and physical manner. The disappearance of physical recording also makes it impossible for others to use ones VHS tapes for anthropological investigation. DVR records do not end up in thrift stores, or flea markets, and are not easily bequeathed after a person passes. By investigating one man's VHS collection, encouraging others to use tapes, and using tapes as a raw material with which to create new work, I hope to inspire others to realize what they have lost, or perhaps, given up.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1992 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / In recent years, many designers have turned to digital techniques as a means of improving the fidelity of instrumentation data recorders. However, single and multi-channel recorders based on professional VHS transports are now available which use innovative methods for achieving near-perfect timebase accuracy, inter-channel timing and group delay specifications for long-duration wideband analog recording applications. This paper discusses some of the interesting technical problems involved and demonstrates that VHS cassette recorders are now a convenient and low cost proposition for high precision multi-channel wideband data recording.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1998 / Town & Country Resort Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / As the performance of inexpensive commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) data storage devices continues to increase, the temptation to use them as the basis for data capture products for military and industrial applications becomes ever more compelling. For example, the Digital Linear Tape (DLT) format now offers a 270 Gigabits per cassette capacity at a sustained transfer rate of 40 Mbits/s – performance which would have cost tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per system just a few years ago. But to transplant such a device from its benign office habitat into a data capture product which will function reliably and consistently in a wide range of field and platform environments is an engineering task fully as difficult and complex as designing an environmentally robust recorder from scratch. This paper discusses the problems which typically have to be overcome; environmental protection, reliability, data integrity, power supplies, software issues, control and data interfacing, etc., citing practical examples of analog and digital DLT-based data recorders which are now entering service for telemetry, intelligence gathering, anti-submarine warfare and related applications

This paper is an exploration of the concepts and motivations behind the video installation and performance that made up my MFA Thesis Exhibition. My primary interest as a filmmaker is in the “invisible art” of editing. In my practice I employ iconic imagery such as old home movies and classic Hollywood films, as my source material. This “found footage” is deconstructed, drastically altered, and reassembled into a new movie that tells my story while still maintaining the memory of the original images. My process and philosophy concerning the salvage and repurposing of video is analyzed and discussed. I also examine my experience in translating video editing into a live improvisational performance.

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