Our research focuses on taking advantage of the ability of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to operate at high-temperatures and high-pressures while still providing real-time atomic resolution images. We also utilize high-pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HPXPS) to monitor systems under identical conditions thus giving us chemical information to compare and contrast with the structural and dynamic data provided by STM.

Germanium Blocked Impurity Band (BIB) detectors require a high purity blocking layer (< 10{sup 13} cm{sup -3}) approximately 1 mm thick grown on a heavily doped active layer ({approx} 10{sup 16} cm{sup -3}) approximately 20 mm thick. Epilayers were grown using liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) of germanium out of lead solution. The effects of the crystallographic orientation of the germanium substrate on LPE growth modes were explored. Growth was studied on substrates oriented by Laue x-ray diffraction between 0.02{sup o} and 10{sup o} from the {l_brace}111{r_brace} toward the {l_brace}100{r_brace}. Terrace growth was observed, with increasing terrace height for larger misorientation angles. It was found that the purity of the blocking layer was limited by the presence of phosphorus in the lead solvent. Unintentionally doped Ge layers contained {approx}10{sup 15} cm{sup -3} phosphorus as determined by Hall effect measurements and Photothermal Ionization Spectroscopy (PTIS). Lead purification by vacuum distillation and dilution reduced the phosphorus concentration in the layers to {approx} 10{sup 14} cm{sup -3} but further reduction was not observed with successive distillation runs. The graphite distillation and growth components as an additional phosphorus source cannot be ruled out. Antimony ({approx}10{sup 16} cm{sup -3}) was used as a dopant for the …

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Undergraduate thesis on the emission of atmospheric pollutants. The pollutants focused on are NO and NO₂. The author discusses the influence of sulfur on NO emission using computational chemistry.

The phycobilisome (PBS) light-harvesting antenna is composed of chromophore-containing biliproteins and 'colorless' linker peptides and is structurally designed to support unidirectional transfer of excitation energy from the periphery of the PBS to its core. The linker peptides have a unique role in this transfer process by modulating the spectral properties of the associated biliprotein. There is only one three-dimensional structure of a biliprotein/linker complex available to date (APC/LC7.8) and the mechanism of interaction between these two proteins remains unknown. This study brings together a detailed spectroscopic characterization of C-Phycocyanin (PC)-linker complexes (isolated from Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002) with proteomic analysis of the linker amino acid sequences to produce a model for biliprotein/linker interaction. The amino acid sequences of the rod linkers [LR8.9, LR32.3 and LRC28.5] were examined to identify evolutionarily conserved regions important to either the structure or function of this protein family. Although there is not one common homologous site among all the linkers, there are strong trends across each separate subset (LC, LR and LRC) and the N-terminal segments of both LR32.3 and LRC28.5 display multiple regions of similarity with other linkers. Predictions of the secondary structure of LR32.3 and LRC28.5, and comparison to the crystal structure of …

Undergraduate thesis examining the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in the United States and its ethics. The authors' study provides that in states where, by legislation, physicians can aid a patient by prescribing a lethal dose which the patient can choose to ingest, the benefits well surpass any risk feared by opponents of physician-assisted suicide.