The Honors College

There is growing interest in using perennial grasses as renewable fuels for generating electricity and for producing cellulosic bioethanol. Miscanthus x giganteus, a C4 perennial grass native to Japan, has demonstrated great promise as one such bioenergy crop. In the United States, field research exploring M. x giganteus yield potentials have been limited to Illinois and Kansas. In this thesis, we explored the potential for cultivating M. x giganteus in the southeastern US.

Up until recently, environmentally destructive occupations were the dominant economic provider in Costa Rica. By identifying the history of land use practices, it is clear why the rate of deforestation that resulted was so drastic. Fortunately, since the rise of ecotourism in the early 1990s, deforestation has slowed. Ecotourism, when done effectively, not only provides locals with economic incentives, but also provides cultural preservation to a community. By gathering information through a literature review, background information was obtained.

Skateboarding is currently an issue at Appalachian State University and in the Town of Boone. Appalachian State University and the Town of Boone’s policies were investigated, as were their histories. These were assessed in comparison to other North Carolina universities and towns. Three North Carolina universities, including Appalachian State University, do not allow skateboarding out of the eleven universities studied. The feasibility of commuting to campus via skateboard was analyzed and potential benefits of allowing skateboarding were outlined.

On March 21, 1961, over 6,000 native South African protestors converged on a small police station on the outskirts of the black township of Sharpsville, just twenty-eight miles south of Johannesburg. Angered by the recent passage of legislation further restricting their movement, the protesters surrounded the station screaming for the twenty white police to come arrest them for not carrying their passes. With only a four foot high wire fence impeding the ever-growing African mob, the bewildered policemen called for back-up.

Eugenics was a branch of science that sought to improve the quality of human beings in the world. In the beginning of the twentieth century this scientific movement was growing in the United States and soon moved to Western Europe. Once the Nazi Party took over control of the German government, it used the eugenics movement as a scientific cover for their extermination programs and policies. Although many people wish to distance themselves from the Nazis, there is a definite link between the eugenics movement in the United States and Nazi Germany. 

With 17% of our children considered obese, one might wonder about the programs and policies being put into place to reverse this epidemic.  Many school systems have begun to implement school gardens, offering students the opportunity to plant, grow, harvest, prepare, and eat their own food, all while learning about the health and nutritional benefits of such consumption. Implementation of such school garden programs is growing in popularity, but the number of schools and research conducted on successful gardens is still lacking  An assessment of current literature

Obesity is a severe epidemic affecting one in every ten adults worldwide (WHO 2011). Obese persons are at a greater risk for numerous chronic diseases such as hypertension, increased levels of cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis, and psychological problems, yet their health problems are preventable. Most people who are considered overweight attempt short-term weight loss plans that have proven to be unsuccessful and fail to promote long-term weight reduction.

In North Carolina, the cultivation of Fraser firs is a large industry which harvests over 3,000,000 trees per year1. Commonly used pesticides include dimethoate, disulfoton (di-syston 15 G), lindane, and simazine2.  The development of a method to quantify these pesticides in local surface waters using polar organic chemical integrative sampling (POCIS) devices is described.  An OASIS HLB (hydrophilic-lipophilic balance) available from Waters was used as the sorbent material in the POCIS device. An appropriate solvent is used to elute the pesticide from the sor

Organic cation transporters (OCTs) are studied for their excretion of metabolic and xenobiotic cations. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is a model system employed to study the mammalian OCT. In this work, a phylogenie tree was constructed to compare the human and C. elegans OCTs (CeOCTs). Despite low sequence homology(~ 28%) between the CeOCT and human OCTs (hOCTs), previous work has illustrated common substrates. To further characterize the CeOCT, a fluorescent assay using the nematodes was developed to determine additional substrates and inhibitors.

In this thesis, the neurological disease, Multiple Sclerosis through pathophysiological changes as well as personal experiences with the devastation the disease can present. The neural deterioration is analyzed through the etiology, presenting symptoms, diagnostic and assessment criteria, treatments, and current research. Using decades of gathered research I have compiled this synopsis of known information about Multiple Sclerosis. My own personal memoir was compiled to address the reality of living with a father who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis every day.