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Fall 2011

Weaver, Sara

“Essentialism about kinds” is the belief that there are necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in a kind. This thesis addresses the parallels in the discussions of essentialism across feminism and the philosophy of biology. Specifically, I address the similarities and differences...

Fall 2015

Murphy, Jeffrey Nathaniel

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of Moore's law, which has described the exponential progress in semiconductor patterning technologies, enabling creation of smaller circuitry features at greater densities. These continued hardware developments, economically mass manufactured, have made possible...

Fall 2010

Chu, Jackson Wing Four

The glass sponge reefs of western Canada are modern analogues to ancient reefs and are unique habitats requiring conservation. However, the patterns and processes of the glass sponges have not been empirically studied. Here, I characterized the biology of the glass sponges in their reefs. I...

Fall 2009

Klassen, Jonathan L

Many diverse microbes have been detected in or isolated from glaciers, including novel taxa exhibiting previously unrecognized physiological properties with significant biotechnological potential. Of 29 unique phylotypes isolated from Victoria Upper Glacier, Antarctica (VUG), 12 were related to...

Spring 2013

Dewar, Matthew P

20Cr-32Ni-1Nb stainless steel alloys are commonly used in hydrogen reformer manifolds for transporting hot hydrogen by-products at 750-950 celcius. After long periods of exposure, embrittling secondary carbides and intermetallic phases can precipitate at the grain boundaries which can drastically...

Spring 2012

Reid, Michael S

For Molecular Electronics to become a viable replacement or complitment to current elec- tronic devices a fundamental understanding of device operation and functionality is needed. This work explores electron transport through diazonium derived molecular junctions via conductive atomic force...

Fall 2011

Glaves, John Paul J

In 2007, heart disease was the second leading cause of death in Canadians. In heart muscle cells, calcium (Ca2+) is released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) during contraction and must be replenished for relaxation to occur. Three proteins restore Ca2+ to the SR following contraction: the...

Fall 2016

Kahn, Amanda S

Suspension feeders are an important component of carbon exchange between the water column and the seafloor, a process called pelagic-benthic coupling. Sponges (Phylum Porifera) are filter feeders that consume especially small particles. They eat bacteria, which are inaccessible to most other...

Spring 2014

Windsor, Pamela J

Body polarity is a fundamental aspect of all multicellular organisms. Metazoans – animals – are monophyletic, but is body polarity homologous among all phyla? Sponges are considered to have branched off first from other animals and therefore studies of polarity formation in the simple sponge body...

Fall 2017

Mah, Jasmine L

The nervous system is present in all but two animal phyla – one of them being Porifera, sponges. Sponges have no neurons and yet have organized behavior and finely tuned sensation. Furthermore, sponges have genes involved in the nervous system of other animals (informally called ‘neural’ genes)....