Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Chemical Engineering / Peter H. Pfromm / Mary E. Rezac / Multiphase reactions are often constrained by mass transfer limitations which in many cases lead to low reaction rates and undesirable product distribution. Here we fabricate integral-asymmetric polymeric membranes decorated with metal catalysts, to supply hydrogen directly at or near the surface of the catalyst, thus minimizing mass-transfer limitations. The metal decorated polymeric membranes were used for partial hydrogenation of soybean oil with the goal to minimize trans fatty acid (TFA) formation. It was discovered that polymeric membranes with “defective” metal coatings are well suited to achieve low-TFA hydrogenation of soybean oil at quite moderate process conditions. The metal decorated polymeric membranes studied produced significantly lower trans fatty acid as compared to traditional reactors (3.5 wt% at an Iodine Value of 95 as compared to 8 wt% in slurry reactor), at pressures and temperatures which are compatible with the existing systems. The process concept is simpler than some of the alternatives being studied and no catalyst recovery from the oil is needed since the catalyst is immobilized on the membrane. Metal decorated polymeric membranes having a variety of hydrogen fluxes, skin defects, and catalyst loadings were evaluated. All the metal decorated polymeric membranes evaluated produced low TFA. Membranes with high hydrogen fluxes resulted in higher hydrogenation rates but had little influence on TFA formation. Membranes with higher catalyst loadings resulted in lower TFA but increased saturate formation. Metal decorated polymeric membranes behaved differently to changes in temperature and pressures when compared to traditional slurry reactors. They showed a minor increase in TFA with temperature (50-90 °C) as compared to traditional slurry reactors. The hydrogenation rate and cis-trans isomerization also showed a modest dependence on pressure. Due to the defective nature of the metal layer on the polymeric membrane skin and the low temperatures (50-90 °C) at which the reactor is operating, the hydrogen permeability of metals has a minor influence on hydrogenation reaction. A range of metal catalysts can be used for the given system. Repeat runs using the same membrane showed a decrease in hydrogenation activity, without any change in isomerization or hydrogenation selectivity. Initial results indicate the decreased activity may not be from leaching of catalyst from membrane surface nor from sulfur poisoning.

La maladie d'Alzheimer (MA) est une maladie neurodégénérative progressive et irréversible. Une étape précoce de la MA est la relâche neuronale excessive du peptide amyloïde-[bêta] (A[bêta]), qui s'accumule dans le cerveau, s'assemble et se dépose sous forme de plaques A[bêta] insolubles et neurotoxiques. L'A[bêta] est produit suite au clivage amyloïdogénique de la protéine APP, effectué par les sécrétases [bêta] et [gamma] au niveau des endosomes. Il est bien connu que le trafic intracellulaire de l'APP affecte son clivage. L'étude du trafic intracellulaire de cette protéine est donc cruciale pour comprendre ce qui régit la production d'A[bêta]. Certains membres de la famille des récepteurs de lipoprotéines de faibles densités (LDLR), dont SorLA/LR11, interagissent avec l'APP et modulent son clivage en régulant son trafic et/ou en s'associant avec les sécrétases. LRP10, un nouveau membre peu connu des LDLR, trafique entre le Golgi et les endosomes, tout comme SorLA/LR11. Conséquemment, nous avons émis l'hypothèse selon laquelle LRP10 serait un nouveau récepteur de la protéine APP, impliqué dans la régulation du trafic et du clivage de cette dernière ainsi que dans la relâche d'A[bêta]. Nos résultats démontrent que LRP10 et la protéine APP colocalisent au TGN (trans-Golgi network ) et interagissent de façon directe.La surexpression stable de LRP10 dans les cellules de neuroblastome humain SH-SY5Y, provoque une accumulation de la forme mature de l'APP, ainsi qu'une diminution de son clivage et de la production d'A[bêta].La déplétion de LRP10, par la technique d'ARN interférant, provoque l'augmentation de la production d'A[bêta]. De plus, l'expression d'un mutant de LRP10, redistribué aux endosomes précoces, induit la redistribution intracellulaire de l'APP au niveau de ces mêmes endosomes dans les cellules HeLa et SH-SY5Y, tel qu'observé en microscopie confocale.La surexpression stable du mutant de LRP10 dans les SH-SY5Y a aussi démontré une augmentation du clivage amyloïdogénique de l'APP normalement effectué aux endosomes et donc une augmentation de la production d'A[bêta]. Enfin, la comparaison des niveaux d'expression protéique de LRP10 retrouvés dans le cortex frontal et l'hippocampe de cerveaux de patients âgés sains ou atteints de la MA, révèle que l'expression de LRP10 est réduit dans le cerveau des patients atteints de la MA. En conclusion, LRP10 est un nouveau récepteur de l'APP participant à son triage entre le TGN et les endosomes, protégeant ainsi l'APP du clivage amyloïdogénique et de l'accumulation d'A[bêta]. Ainsi, la réduction de l'expression de LRP10 dans le cerveau pourrait augmenter la production de l'A[bêta] et représenter un facteur de risque dans la MA.

The presence of German immigrants - especially the German orphans of 1948, was a known phenomenon to the South African community during the 20th century. After the Second World War, South Africa’s economy developed rapidly and the skills shortage drew immigrants from all over the world. For Germans, South Africa became a prime destination. They were mostly welcomed with open arms. Many of them also played an important role in South African society. Knowledge regarding these Germans, especially those who immigrated between 1945 and 1980, is fading in the 21st century, a century of dramatic changes and challenges. It appears that very little is known with regard to the contribution these German immigrants made towards the development of South Africa and how they integrated into the South African community. Each immigrant brings his own identity, worldview and concepts of how institutions should function. They bridge national borders and entered a new society with its own identity, or in the case of South Africa, multi ethnic identities. The immigrants have to integrate and adapt to the new culture and ways, while they still retain their old cultures. In the process, they develop a new identity, a trans nationality. They influence their environment and the people they came into contact with. In the 1970‟s, it was especially the German historians who developed a new historiography, known as transnational history writing. After the Second World War, the relationships of the Germans and the French became intertwined in Europe. This necessitated a new approach to the communal coexistence of communities in a fast - changing Europe. Previously history was largely written within the context of the national state and within geographic borders. Now history was developing over national borders and people of different nations were starting to live shared lives. By making comparisons and emphasizing differences, a new theory and principles of transnationalism and trans nationality surfaced. This study approaches transnationalism from the context of a family history, with a biographical case study of a single citizen who emigrated from Germany to South Africa. The focus is on how Wolfgang Wehrmeyer was transplanted to a new country and how he developed a transnational identity. This biographical case study is incorporated into a prosopography with the personal experiences of fellow German immigrants in order to gain a comprehensive insight on trans nationality. The findings are analysed and synthesised to come to a comprehensive conclusion as to how German immigrants experienced transnationalism. The purpose of the study is to make a contribution to our knowledge of transnational historiography in South Africa, as well as to our knowledge about the German immigrants and their experiences.

The presence of German immigrants - especially the German orphans of 1948, was a known phenomenon to the South African community during the 20th century. After the Second World War, South Africa’s economy developed rapidly and the skills shortage drew immigrants from all over the world. For Germans, South Africa became a prime destination. They were mostly welcomed with open arms. Many of them also played an important role in South African society. Knowledge regarding these Germans, especially those who immigrated between 1945 and 1980, is fading in the 21st century, a century of dramatic changes and challenges. It appears that very little is known with regard to the contribution these German immigrants made towards the development of South Africa and how they integrated into the South African community. Each immigrant brings his own identity, worldview and concepts of how institutions should function. They bridge national borders and entered a new society with its own identity, or in the case of South Africa, multi ethnic identities. The immigrants have to integrate and adapt to the new culture and ways, while they still retain their old cultures. In the process, they develop a new identity, a trans nationality. They influence their environment and the people they came into contact with. In the 1970‟s, it was especially the German historians who developed a new historiography, known as transnational history writing. After the Second World War, the relationships of the Germans and the French became intertwined in Europe. This necessitated a new approach to the communal coexistence of communities in a fast - changing Europe. Previously history was largely written within the context of the national state and within geographic borders. Now history was developing over national borders and people of different nations were starting to live shared lives. By making comparisons and emphasizing differences, a new theory and principles of transnationalism and trans nationality surfaced. This study approaches transnationalism from the context of a family history, with a biographical case study of a single citizen who emigrated from Germany to South Africa. The focus is on how Wolfgang Wehrmeyer was transplanted to a new country and how he developed a transnational identity. This biographical case study is incorporated into a prosopography with the personal experiences of fellow German immigrants in order to gain a comprehensive insight on trans nationality. The findings are analysed and synthesised to come to a comprehensive conclusion as to how German immigrants experienced transnationalism. The purpose of the study is to make a contribution to our knowledge of transnational historiography in South Africa, as well as to our knowledge about the German immigrants and their experiences.

Cyclophilins are ubiquitous enzymes that are involved in protein folding, signal transduction, viral proliferation, oncogenesis, and regulation of the immune system. Cyclophilin A is the prototype of the cyclophilin family. We use molecular dynamics to describe the catalytic mechanism of cyclophilin A in full atomistic detail by sampling critical points along the reaction coordinate, and use accelerated molecular dynamics to sample cis-trans interconversions. At these critical points, we analyze the conformational space sampled by the active site, flexibility of the enzyme backbone, and modulation of binding interactions.We use Kramer’s rate theory to determine how diffusion and free energy contribute to lowering the activation energy of prolyl isomerization. We also find preferential binding modes of several cyclophiln A inhibitors, and compare the conformational space sampled by inhibited cyclophilin A to the conformational space sampled during wild-type interactions. We also analyze the mechanism of the next family member cyclophilin B in order to probe differences in enzyme dynamics and intermolecular interactions that could possibly be exploited in isoform-specific drug design. Our results indicate that cyclophilin proceeds by a conformational selection binding mechanism that manipulates substrate sterics, electrostatic interactions, and multiple reaction timescales in order to speed up reaction rate. Conformational space sampled by cyclophilin when inhibited and when undergoing wild-type interactions share significant similarity. Cyclophilins A and B do have notable differences in enzyme dynamics, due to variation in intramolecular interactions that arise from variation in primary structures. This work demonstrates how computational methods can be used to clarify catalytic mechanisms.

Compensating an employee for work performed or services rendered constitutes an important aspect of personnel management. The question of determining and establishing appropriate wages and salaries for comparable, different and varied jobs in an organization is one that raises complex, thorny and even nebulous issues such as "equity." The eight-week intensive training of the intern was a considerable concentration on the basic and specific methods of determining the relative ranks of jobs on the basis of their contents as judged by certain defined job characteristics or factors. In the early part of the internship program, the intern was acquainted with the basic philosophy and fundamental methods of job evaluation. The intern was subsequently introduced to the actual job evaluation methods as applied in TWA. Actual case problems and situations were studied; job descriptions were reviewed, audit of jobs were conducted; the intern had the opportunity of observing and participating in actual information collecting, verifying and recording process. The intern was acquainted with the techniques of compiling salary surveys and applying such information as a method of comparing internal salary structures with external market conditions. The latter part of the program was largely a concentration on and analysis of job descriptions and organizational structures of Ethiopian Airlines. The study basically involved the understanding of the salary structures of management personnel of Ethiopian Airlines, the investigation of the possibilities of translating TWA job evaluation methods, and the subsequent application of the methods employed by TWA to that of Ethiopian Airlines.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att utifrån ett transperspektiv förstå hur transpersoners kön och sexualitet förhålls till varandra utifrån kropp, tid och partners. Studiens material består av intervjuer med tre olika transpersoner om deras könsidentitet, sexuella läggning och transerfarenheter. Som teoretiskt ramverk står Judith Butlers Gender Trouble som exempel på queerteori, samt Jay Prossers Second Skins som exempel på transteori. Resultatet av studien är att subjekts identitet och begär står i relation till varandra samt att transpersoners antagna eller aktiva gränsöverskridanden gör att de som subjekt kan erfara denna relation med större tydlighet och över flera kategorier, med kropp, tid och partners som tydligast exempel.

Group I introns are catalytic RNAs with the ability to splice out of RNA transcripts, often without the aid of proteins. These self-splicing introns have been reengineered to create ribozymes with the ability to catalyze reactions. One such ribozyme, derived from a Pneumocystis carinii group I intron, has been engineered to sequence specifically remove a targeted segment from within an RNA substrate, which is called the trans excision-splicing reaction.The two catalytic steps of the trans excision-splicing reaction occur at positions on the substrate known as the 5' and 3' splice sites. Strict sequence requirements at these sites could potentially limit the target choices for the trans excision-splicing ribozyme, so the sixteen possible base pair combinations at the 5' splice site and the four possible nucleotides at the 3' splice site were tested for reactivity. All base pair combinations at the 5' splice site allow the first reaction step (5' hydrolysis) to occur and several combinations allow the second step to occur, resulting in trans excision-splicing product formation. Moreover, we found that non-Watson-Crick base pairs are important for 5' splice site recognition and prevent product degradation via hydrolysis at other sequence positions. The sequence requirement at the 3' splice site is absolute, as guanosine alone produced complete product.To date, the experiments with the trans excision-splicing ribozyme have been conducted in vitro. The further development of this ribozyme as a biochemical tool and as a potential therapeutic agent requires in vivo reactivity. Thus, a prokaryotic system was designed and tested to assess the catalytic potential of the trans excision-splicing ribozyme. We show that the ribozyme successfully excised a single, targeted nucleotide from a mutated green fluorescent protein transcript in Escherichia coli. On average, 12% correction was observed as measured by fluorescence and approximately 1.2% correction was confirmed through sequence analysis of isolated transcripts.We have used these studies to further characterize trans excision-splicing ribozymes in vitro and to pave the way for future development of this ribozymereaction in vivo. These results increase our understanding of this ribozyme and advance this reaction as a biochemical tool with potential therapeutic applications.

This narrative chronicles the dissemination of sacred music from the eastern seaboard to the West and South spanning a time frame from the colonial era to the latter part of the Early Nationalist Period (1700-1820). Musical culture in its migration away from the eastern seaboard also parallels the greater western and southern expansion of the United States from its initial configuration of localized regional subgroups to the beginnings of a larger national identity. From this conceptual base, sacred music becomes a vehicle for understanding not only religious and musical changes over time, but also the broader maturity of a nation. Focusing on this period allows for inquiries both into the development of hymnody in the Middle Atlantic, and the subsequent developments of the West and South. These chronological delimitations allow for a discussion of musical practice beginning with formative sacred music developments and continuing to the incorporation of techniques shaped by reform-minded musicians from the eastern seaboard. The following topics guided the construction of this thesis: explicating how the Middle Atlantic region shaped compositional trends, aesthetic, and performance practice of the American West and South; identifying the various southern cultures as understood by eighteenth and nineteenth-century southerners and their application to sacred music practice; understanding how nineteenth-century Americans distinguished between the West and the South; understanding how southern and western music relates to individual denominations and cultures within these areas; and understanding performance practice common to the evangelical and non-evangelical branches of individual sects. Identifying patterns of development in American sacred music of the South and West involves documentation of performance practice, denominational aesthetics, and tunebook bibliography. The study of eighteenth-and-nineteenth-century material by twentieth-and-twenty-first-century writers has falsely defined cultural borders of this region according to a post-bellum conceptualization of the boundaries of the North and South. Prior to 1850, writers defined their borders according to a different set of geographic boundaries than today. Consequently, this thesis differs in terms of geographic and cultural definitions of the North and South from current scholarship because of this writer’s application of colonial and Early Nationalist understandings of American culture.

Outfacing the Storm is a song cycle that tells the story of the spectacular failure-turned-triumph of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Expedition was an attempt to trek overland across the whole of the Antarctic continent. Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, launched from England in August of 1914 with twenty-eight men. Within weeks of entering the polar latitudes, ice ensnared the ship. The Endurance remained stuck fast until the spring breakup crushed its hull, and it sank in November of 1915. The crew struck out for civilization, and, after six months and over one thousand miles of travel by foot, by ice-drift, and by lifeboat, they returned home alive. The Expedition’s safe return was heavily credited by its crew to Shackleton himself. A man of intense character, burning passion, and unfailing determination, Shackleton put the needs of his crew ahead of all else. His individual dedication to each member of the voyage was an inspiration to each. Ernest Shackleton, however, was a private man. He hid his own concerns from all except those closest to him. During the Expedition, he feared for the well-being of the crew. In the largest sense, he feared failure. Shackleton was only ever content while at sea. “Sometimes,” he wrote to his wife, “I think I am no good at anything but being away in the wilds… I grow restless and feel any part of youth is slipping away from me and that nothing matters… I feel I am no use to anyone unless I am outfacing the storm in wild lands.” This song cycle tells the tale of the Expedition through Shackleton’s eyes. The cycle is in eleven movements—nine recounting the story, plus a prologue and epilogue. All of the text is Shackleton’s own. The nine middle movements are taken from Shackleton’s memoir about the voyage, South. The prologue and epilogue are taken, respectively, from an interview and the above letter. / Music, Butler School of / text