VALIDATION OF RETENTION TIME LOCKING SOFTWARE WITH POLYCHLORINATED BIPHENYLS. Kirk E. Lokits and Gale Clark. Department of Chemistry.

CHARACTERIZATION OF ADENOSINE NUCLEOSIDASE FROM YELLOW LUPIN (lupinus luteus l.) SEEDS. Xin Liu, Paul Kline. Department of Chemistry.

SEASONAL VARIATION IN GAS CHROMATOGRAPHIC PROFILES OF MISTLETOE EXTRACTS. Nathan Hurt and Linda Wilson. Department of Chemistry.

DEVELOPMENT OF AN IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM FOR Legionella USING AN IMMUNOGOLD LABELED ANTIBODY ASSAY. Chad T. Welsh and Anthony Newsome. Department of Biology.

REVIEW OF THE MAYFLIES (INSECTA: EPHEMEROPTERA) OF TENNESSEE: NOTES ON RECENT ADDITIONS, DISTRIBUTIONS AND ECOLOGY. Lewis S. Long and Charles McGhee. Department of Biology.

SEROTYPE-DEPENDENT INDUCTION OF TUMOR NECROSIS FACTOR-a IN HUMAN MACROPHAGES BY RETROVIRUS. Chad S. Brooks and Anthony L. Farone. Department of Biology.

BercQuery DATABASE ACCESS THROUGH THE WORLD WIDE WEB. Mercedes A. Soria V. Department of Computer Science.

AN OBJECT ORIENTED PARALLEL GENETIC ALGORITHM (POOGA). Andy Green and Jungsoon Yoo. Department of Computer Science.

VALIDATION OF RETENTION TIME LOCKING SOFTWARE WITH POLYCHLORINATED BIPHENYLS. Kirk E. Lokits and Gale Clark. Department of Chemistry, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) have become the most abundant polychlorinated aromatic pollutants rivaling DDE. Due to the complex and varied chemical and physical properties of PCBs, the qualitative and quantitative analysis remains a major problem f or analysts. This method deals with the standardization of PCB retention times to a particular column under a specific set of conditions that are transferable and reproducible from laboratory to laboratory, instrument to instrument, utilizing GC/ECD and G C/MSD. Two different generations of Hewlett Packard gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers were compared based upon retention time reproducibility for various analytical columns.

CHARACTERIZATION OF ADENOSINE NUCLEOSIDASE FROM YELLOW LUPIN (lupinus luteus l.) SEEDS. Xin Liu, Paul Kline. Department of Chemistry, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee 37132

Adenosine nucleosidase is an enzyme of the purine salvage pathway in plants. It catalyzes the irreversible hydrolysis of purines such as adenosine to ribose and the corresponding base. Previous work has resulted in a homogeneous preparation of adenosin e nucleosidase from yellow lupin seeds It is the purpose of this study to investigate the subunit structure, stereochemistry of the reaction and essential amino acids.

SEASONAL VARIATION IN GAS CHROMATOGRAPHIC PROFILES OF MISTLETOE EXTRACTS. Nathan Hurt and Linda Wilson. Department of Chemistry, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

The greatest proportion of mistletoe in the United States belong to two species: Phoradendron serotinum found in the Eastern U.S. and Phoradendron tomentosum found in the Central and Western U.S. It has previously been shown that Texas and Tennessee mi stletoe samples can be distinguished from each other using multivariate statistical analysis of gas chromatographic profiles. However, there are some discrepancies that may be due to either the overlapping range of the species or to seasonal variation. I will explore the seasonal variations of mistletoe samples using gas chromatographic profiling of hexane extracts.

DEVELOPMENT OF AN IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM FOR Legionella USING AN IMMUNOGOLD LABELED ANTIBODY ASSAY. Chad T. Welsh and Anthony Newsome. Department of Biology, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Current methods-- such as IFA, PCR, or any culturing methods- that are used for the detection of Legionella in the environment are shown to have some serious deficiencies. They are deficient in that they are not designed to show the association of Legionella spp. with its proposed amoebae host cell. A new method has been designed for the identification of 32 out of the 36 currently recognized species of Legionella. Through the use of antibodies bound to colloidal gold particles, th e Immunogold antibody technique offers a sensitive method for the detection of Legionella species in environmental water samples. Preliminary results have shown that this method can be used not only in the detection of the bacteria but also in the study of any association with protozoa.

REVIEW OF THE MAYFLIES (INSECTA: EPHEMEROPTERA) OF TENNESSEE: NOTES ON RECENT ADDITIONS, DISTRIBUTIONS AND ECOLOGY. Lewis S. Long and Charles McGhee. Department of Biology, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

The mayfly fauna for the state of Tennessee is presented. Previous studies listed 143 species in 43 genera and 15 families. Unpublished records now brings the total to 148 species, 44 genera and 16 families. A correction to the list is also presented. Although the list contains 148 species, even more genera and species are expected to be reported for the state eventually. More surveys for the state are necessary due to the fact that only 17 counties (18%) have records of more than 10 species, 48 counti es (51%) have less than 10 records and 30 counties (31%) have no records for mayflies at all. Overall, Tennessee contains the highest mayfly diversity when compared to the other southeastern states with 148 species. The species composition of Tennessee is more similar to that of Virginia and North Carolina that to that of the other southeastern states. Preliminary data on a new species of Procloeon from Williamson County and the endemic Paraleptophlebia kirchneri are also presented.

SEROTYPE-DEPENDENT INDUCTION OF TUMOR NECROSIS FACTOR-a IN HUMAN MACROPHAGES BY REOVIRUS. Chad S. Brooks and Anthony L. Farone. Department of Biology, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Reovirus serotype 1 Lang (T1L) and serotype 3 Dearing (T3D) have been shown in previous studies to induce pulmonary inflammation in a rat model of viral pneumonia, however, T3D causes a more prominent inflammatory response then T1L. The studies from our laboratory have shown that rat alveolar macrophages are the predominant sources of inflammatory cytokines. The purpose of this study was to determine whether reovirus stimulation of inflammatory cytokines in the human monocyte cell-line, THP-1, was serotype-dependent. Tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF-a ) is one of many inflammatory cytokines that human monocytes produce when stimulated. THP-1 cell-lines were incubated with reovirus T1L, T3D, or media alone for 24 hours. An ELISA was utilized to characterize the levels of TNF-a produced by the stimulated monocytes. We found that THP-1 cells treated with T3D statistically significantly increased the levels of TNF-a expression compared to T1L and media alone. These results lend evidence to support our hypothesis that macrophages respond differently to T1L and T3D.

BercQuery DATABASE ACCESS THROUGH THE WORLD WIDE WEB. Mercedes A. Soria V. Department of Computer Science, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Providing the Middle Tennessee State University community with data is one of the most important goals outlined in the mission statement of MTSU's Business and Economic Research Center (BERC). However, the BERC's present manual retrieval/storage sy stem does not provide easy data access. Inconsistent data formats, incompatible storage strategies, and other problems make data access difficult and time-consuming. The BercQuery system aims to alleviate this dilemma by blending three different te chnologies: the World Wide Web, the Perl programming language and an Oracle database. Basically, a user will access the BERC's web page to fill out a form indicating which kind of data is needed. This request will then be sent to the server to be processe d by a CGI program written in Perl. The CGI program will construct queries and send them to an Oracle database server where the desired data is stored. Once the CGI program receives the results from the database, it will be formatted for display on the cl ient computer as an HTML document. This new service will be of much use for the MTSU community because the WWW can be accessed at any time of the day without the assistance of BERC employees.

AN OBJECT ORIENTED PARALLEL GENETIC ALGORITHM (POOGA). Andy Green and Jungsoon Yoo. Department of Computer Science, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Genetic Algorithms (GAs) provide a powerful optimization strategy. They mimic nature in an attempt to maximize or minimize a given problem. The addition of parallelism allows the GA to not only complete faster, but examine the search-space far more ext ensively. Object oriented techniques allow for the use of abstract data types and the notion of inheritance. This allows for the creation of a well-defined class interface. The research presented in this paper explores the marriage of object oriented tech niques with a parallel genetic algorithm. A software library called POOGA is created. POOGA provides classes for building problem specific parallel GAs using the island model and the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) library. Typically the developer need onl y specify an evaluation and size function to create a problem specific parallel GA.