Microlepidoptera of Illinois hill prairies

Among insects, which are the most diverse eukaryotic group on earth, Lepidoptera is one of four enormously diverse orders, with approximately 10,000 described species in North America. Within the order, Nearctic “microlepidoptera,” which represent an overwhelmingly large percentage of diversity within the order, remain poorly known despite their ecological importance in many plant communities. In this thesis, I undertook several studies of microlepidoptera diversity in a natural community type (hill prairie) and a managed community type (biofuel feedstock). In two Illinois hill prairies differing in size, latitude, and plant composition, alpha diversity of Pyraloidea and Tortricidae was similar, but the prairies were found to support different sets of species of these moth groups. It is concluded that the similarity in alpha diversity occurs because the larger prairie supports primarily a complement of moth species that feed as larvae on prairie plants (especially species of Asteraceae and Fabaceae), whereas the moths collected in the small prairie represent relatively few prairie-associated species, plus a large component of species that feed as larvae on deciduous trees that surround the prairie. This agrees with the finding of high beta diversity of moths between the sites, which reflects a high level of larval hostplant specificity in most species of Pyraloidea and Tortricidae. Based on published information plus observations made on microlepidoptera collected during the course of this study, 31 families of basal microlepidoptera were reviewed with an aim toward evaluating the likelihood of their including species that are dependent on tallgrass prairie. Of these families, 12 were evaluated as possible, and two as likely or certain, to include prairie-dependent species. In a comparison of moth diversity in light-trap samples from corn, miscanthus, switchgrass, and native prairie, alpha diversity was highest in prairie and was higher in switchgrass than in the other two biofuel crops. Moth species complements generally were similar among the biofuel crops, and prairie shared higher species complementarity with switchgrass than with corn or miscanthus. These findings suggest that large-scale conversion of land to biofuel crops may, to a substantial degree, detrimentally affect arthropod biodiversity, with a resulting loss of valuable arthropod-derived ecosystem services both within the cropping systems and in the surrounding landscape. During the course of this study, rearing efforts yielded two species of moths of the family Gelechiidae, both of which are monophagous leaf feeders on leadplant, Amorpha canescens (Fabaceae). Because these moths are restricted to tallgrass prairie, they are likely to be of interest to conservation biologists. In the interest of naming the moths to facilitate communication regarding them, and to augment our taxonomic knowledge of their respective genera, the moths are described, and diagnoses are provided to differentiate them from similar, related species.

Catalyst: Architecture for Change and Social Justice

In major cities today, there are neighborhoods that have been continually underserved and as a result are in decay. Private investors and developers turn to these particular neighborhoods, propose large developments that gentrify these areas, displacing communities and with them their social, political, and economic issues. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze South West, Baltimore, a community composed of 8 neighborhoods on the verge of being gentrified, by incoming development. Through investigating the key issues present in this community for many years, this thesis will attempt to develop a catalytic environment, which will facilitate change within the community by providing a place for its members to help tackle these issues, improving their circumstances, and the circumstances of the neighborhoods they form part of.

The New Jersey Meadowlands: Inhabiting an Urban Wilderness

The New Jersey Meadowlands is a thirty square mile industrial wetland between New York City and the commercial district of East Rutherford, NJ. The place is both strange and fascinating; many mysteries are hidden between the reed grasses and scattered garbage. Often exposed to subjectivity, the Meadowlands is commonly perceived as a weird, polluted, industrial, and even an other-worldly space; few know its beauty. These differing perceptions create a challenge when thinking of a cohesive identity and sense of place in the marsh. Over time, the once pure landscape has suffered from infrastructural slices, illegal dumping, and environmental abuse, resulting in fragmented land areas along the Hackensack River’s edge. This thesis explores how to inhabit an ecologically devalued and residual landscape through ideas of place-making and re-connecting communities. Investigating the paradox of this massive urban landscape and capitalizing on the ecological and educational potential of the site, lends also to a challenge of converging modern and forgotten life. Designing a place-based ecological research community within this currently placeless environment, will engage the public, re-connect lost communities, and bring a sense of renewal to the marsh.

Prosthetic Architecture: Enabling Connection, Movement, and Empowerment

This thesis explores the relationship between body and architecture through a metaphorical and literal analysis of prosthetic devices. The thesis questions how the relationship between prosthetics and architecture can inform the design of a building that enables connection, movement and empowerment for its occupants. Driving questions of investigation include: How can a building enable growth, healing and wellbeing? , How can a building embody and reflect human growth and transformation? , and, How can a building enable equivalence between its users? The program of an inpatient prosthetic rehabilitation facility allows for the exploration of these questions and a study for how we can create spaces that influence rehabilitation and growth. Through body and prosthetics analysis the thesis explores what spaces are best for one to grow and develop in and study how concepts, such as connection, movement and empowerment can enable one and enhance one’s quality of life.

Using landscape metrics to predict hydrologic connectivity patterns between forested wetlands and streams in a coastal plain watershed

Geographically isolated wetlands, those entirely surrounded by uplands, provide numerous ecological functions, some of which are dependent on the degree to which they are hydrologically connected to nearby waters. There is a growing need for field-validated, landscape-scale approaches for classifying wetlands based on their expected degree of connectivity with stream networks. During the 2015 water year, flow duration was recorded in non-perennial streams (n = 23) connecting forested wetlands and nearby perennial streams on the Delmarva Peninsula (Maryland, USA). Field and GIS-derived landscape metrics (indicators of catchment, wetland, non-perennial stream, and soil characteristics) were assessed as predictors of wetland-stream connectivity (duration, seasonal onset and offset dates). Connection duration was most strongly correlated with non-perennial stream geomorphology and wetland characteristics. A final GIS-based stepwise regression model (adj-R2 = 0.74, p < 0.0001) described wetland-stream connection duration as a function of catchment area, wetland area and number, and soil available water storage.

The conformational landscape of RNA translational regulators and their potential as drug discovery targets

RNA is an underutilized target for drug discovery. Once thought to be a passive carrier of genetic information, RNA is now known to play a critical role in essentially all aspects of biology including signaling, gene regulation, catalysis, and retroviral infection. It is now well-established that RNA does not exist as a single static structure, but instead populates an ensemble of energetic minima along a free-energy landscape. Knowledge of this structural landscape has become an important goal for understanding its diverse biological functions. In this case, NMR spectroscopy has emerged as an important player in the characterization of RNA structural ensembles, with solution-state techniques accounting for almost half of deposited RNA structures in the PDB, yet the rate of RNA structure publication has been stagnant over the past decade. Several bottlenecks limit the pace of RNA structure determination by NMR: the high cost of isotopic labeling, tedious and ambiguous resonance assignment methods, and a limited database of RNA optimized pulse programs. We have addressed some of these challenges to NMR characterization of RNA structure with applications to various RNA-drug targets. These approaches will increasingly become integral to designing new therapeutics targeting RNA.

The Effect of Architecture and Shear Stress on Endothelialization of 3D Printed Vascular Networks

Despite significant progress in the field of tissue engineering within the last decade, a number of unsolved problems still remain. One of the most relevant issues is the lack of proper vascularization that limits the size of engineered tissues to smaller than clinically relevant dimensions. In particular, the growth of engineered tissue in vitro within bioreactors is plagued with this challenge. Specifically, the tubular perfusion system bioreactor has been used for large scale bone constructs; however these engineered constructs lack inherent vasculature and quickly develop a hypoxic core, where no nutrient exchange can occur, thus leading to cell death. Through the use of 3D printed vascular templates in conjunction with a tubular perfusion system bioreactor, we attempt to create an endothelial cell monolayer on 3D scaffolds that could potentially serve as the foundation of inherent vasculature within these engineered bone grafts.

The Indistinct Edge: Reconnecting Experience in Nature and Architecture

This thesis explores how architectures sense of place is rooted in the natural environment. The built environment has been constructed to protect and sustain human culture from the weathering of nature. Separating experience from the natural environment removes a sense of place and belonging in the natural and reinforces architectural dominance. This separation distinguishes the natural world as an article of spectacle and gives the human experience an unnatural voyeurship to natural changes. By examining the fusion of architectural and natural edges this thesis analyzes how the human experience can reconnect with a naturalistic sense of place through architecture, blending the finite edge where architecture maintains nature, and adapting buildings to the cycles of the environment. Removing dominance of man-made spaces and replacing them with the cohabitation of the edge between built and natural forms.

Integrating Architecture for a Live-Work Lifestyle

Urban centers all around the world are striving to re-orient themselves to promoting ideals of human engagement, flexibility, openness and synergy, that thoughtful architecture can provide. From a time when solitude in one’s own backyard was desirable, today’s outlook seeks more, to cater to the needs of diverse individuals and that of collaborators. This thesis is an investigation of the role of architecture in realizing how these ideals might be achieved, using Mixed Use Developments as the platform of space to test these designs ideas on. The author also investigates, identifies, and re-imagines how the idea of live-work excites and attracts users and occupants towards investing themselves in Mixed Used Developments (MUD’s), in urban cities. On the premise that MUDs historically began with an intention of urban revitalization, lying in the core of this spatial model, is the opportunity to investigate what makes mixing of uses an asset, especially in the eyes to today’s generation. Within the framework of reference to the current generation, i.e. the millennial population and alike, who have a lifestyle core that is urban-centric, the excitement for this topic is in the vision of MUD’s that will spatially cater to a variety in lifestyles, demographics, and functions, enabling its users to experience a vibrant 24/7 destination. Where cities are always in flux, the thesis will look to investigate the idea of opportunistic space, in a new MUD, that can also be perceived as an adaptive reuse of itself. The sustainability factor lies in the foresight of the transformative and responsive character of the different uses in the MUD at large, which provides the possibility to cater to a changing demand of building use over time. Delving into the architectural response, the thesis in the process explores, conflicts, tensions, and excitements, and the nature of relationships between different spatial layers of permanence vs. transformative, public vs. private, commercial vs. residential, in such an MUD. At a larger scale, investigations elude into the formal meaning and implications of the proposed type of MUD’s and the larger landscapes in which they are situated, with attempts to blur the fine line between architecture and urbanism. A unique character of MUD’s is the power it has to draw in people at the ground level and lead them into exciting spatial experiences. While the thesis stemmed from a purely objective and theoretical standpoint, the author believes that it is only when context is played into the design thinking process, that true architecture may start to flourish. The unique The significance of this thesis lies on the premise that the author believes that this re-imagined MUD has immense opportunity to amplify human engagement with designed space, and in the belief that it will better enable fostering sustainable communities and in the process, enhance people’s lives.

Place in Time: The Role of Architecture in Establishing an Emotional Connection between Man and Time

This thesis explores the role of architecture as a means of reconnecting humans to the passage of time. A neglect of the temporal in our built environment obscures understanding of the human condition in all of its sensory aspects. The exploration and design of a series of ritual engagements, both culturally, and architecturally, begin to offer a venue through which designers can engage human senses. Rituals act as a means of demarcating the passage of time. It is through the engagement with these moments that people can begin to gain a richer understanding of the ephemeral nature of their own existence. The Pritzker Architecture Prize serves as the selected ritual of exploration because of its celebration of humanity and the art of architecture. However, the notion of ritual is explored down to the level of detail of engagement with handrails and door handles.

Designing Happiness: Architecture and urban design for joy and well-being

Scientific studies exploring the environmental and experiential elements that help boost human happiness have become a significant and expanding body of work. Some urban designers, architects and planners are looking to apply this knowledge through policy decisions and design, but there is a great deal of room for further study and exploration. This paper looks at definitions of happiness and happiness measurements used in research. The paper goes on to introduce six environmental factors identified in a literature review that have design implications relating to happiness: Nature, Light, Surprise, Access, Identity, and Sociality. Architectural precedents are examined and design strategies are proposed for each factor, which are then applied to a test case site and building in Baltimore, Maryland. It is anticipated that these factors and strategies will be useful to architects, urban designers and planners as they endeavor to design positive user experiences and set city shaping policy.

Energy Efficiency of Software Transactional Memory in a Heterogeneous Architecture

Hardware vendors make an important effort creating low-power CPUs that keep battery duration and durability above acceptable levels. In order to achieve this goal and provide good performance-energy for a wide variety of applications, ARM designed the big.LITTLE architecture. This heterogeneous multi-core architecture features two different types of cores: big cores oriented to performance and little cores, slower and aimed to save energy consumption. As all the cores have access to the same memory, multi-threaded applications must resort to some mutual exclusion mechanism to coordinate the access to shared data by the concurrent threads. Transactional Memory (TM) represents an optimistic approach for shared-memory synchronization. To take full advantage of the features offered by software TM, but also benefit from the characteristics of the heterogeneous big.LITTLE architectures, our focus is to propose TM solutions that take into account the power/performance requirements of the application and what it is offered by the architecture. In order to understand the current state-of-the-art and obtain useful information for future power-aware software TM solutions, we have performed an analysis of a popular TM library running on top of an ARM big.LITTLE processor. Experiments show, in general, better scalability for the LITTLE cores for most of the applications except for one, which requires the computing performance that the big cores offer.

Sociocultural Complexities of Ecosystem Restoration: Remaking Identity, Landscape and Belonging in the Florida Everglades

The Florida Everglades is a highly diverse socionatural landscape that historically spanned much of the south Florida peninsula. Today, the Florida Everglades is an iconic but highly contested conservation landscape. It is the site of one of the world’s largest publicly funded ecological restoration programs, estimated to cost over $8 billion (U.S. GAO 2007), and it is home to over two million acres of federally protected lands, including the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. However, local people’s values, practices and histories overlap and often conflict with the global and eco-centric values linked to Everglades environmental conservation efforts, sparking environmental conflict. My dissertation research examined the cultural politics of nature associated with two Everglades conservation and ecological restoration projects: 1) the creation and stewardship of the Big Cypress National Preserve, and 2) the Tamiami Trail project at the northern boundary of Everglades National Park. Using multiple research methods including ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, participant observation, surveys and semi-structured interviews, I documented how these two projects have shaped environmental claims-making strategies to Everglades nature on the part of environmental NGOs, the National Park Service and local white outdoorsmen. In particular, I examined the emergence of an oppositional white identity called the Gladesmen Culture. My findings include the following: 1) just as different forms of nature are historically produced, contingent and power-laden, so too are different claims to Everglades nature; 2) identity politics are an integral dimension of Everglades environmental conflicts; and 3) the Big Cypress region’s history and contemporary conflicts are shaped by the broader political economy of development in south Florida. My dissertation concluded that identity politics, class and property relations have played a key, although not always obvious, role in shaping Everglades history and environmental claims-making, and that they continue to influence contemporary Everglades environmental conflicts.

New Pradolongo Park

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Cork oak transplant: A new reality? A Physiological Approach to maximize sucess rate.

Cork oak tree (Quercus suber L.), in Portugal, is considered the national tree and have special demands and legal protection when dealing with silviculture management (pruning, debarking, thinning). Being a species of slow growth, cork oak transplanting procedures can be a valuable asset either from the economic or ecological rationales to relocate trees, re-populate areas affected by high tree mortality, increase tree density to control erosion on montado ecosystems or landscape design. This study focuses the impacts and physiological responses of ten juvenile rain fed cork oak trees (with diameter at breast height between 6 and 16cm), when subjected to transplant operations. The work was conducted in a cork oak woodland experimental plot at the campus of the University of Évora (SW Portugal), during the year of 2015. Tree’s transplants were performed with a truck-mounted hydraulic spade transplanter coupled with a proposed methodology to maximize tree survival rates, addressing techniques to limit canopy transpiration and to improve root systems prior to transplant. Tree ecophysiological indicators (sap flow, leaf water potentials and stomatal conductance) were monitored comprising the periods before and after transplant operations, and water stress avoidance practices were established to promote post-transplant tree status recovery, including irrigation to match average daily accumulated sap flow. Transplant operations were considered successful when the tree's water uptake inferred from sap flow exhibited a high correlation with solar radiation and returned to its undisturbed or pre-transplant water potential gradients in the following 2 to 3 weeks. The post-transplant tree nourishment follow up included permanent sap flow measurements and identified the time elapsed after transplantation from which the tree recovers its normal transpiration thresholds and response. Our results suggest that by following the proposed methodology the sampled cork oak trees exhibited a transplant success rate of 90%.