by KARAN SHARMA (Under the Direction of Walter D. Potter) ABSTRACT In spite of the impressive successes of many Artificial Intelligence techniques in narrow domains, one of the unrealized goals of AI remains the creation of a generally intelligent machine. It is hypothesized that the capacity for being creative in a wide variety of environments is a necessary and sufficient condition for genera...

The reductive coupling of enones or enals with alkynes, followed by olefin oxidative cleavage and Paal-Knorr cyclization, provides a versatile entry to a variety of pyrrole frameworks. A number of limitations of alternate entries to the requisite 1,4-dicarbonyl intermediate are avoided. Classes of pyrroles that are accessible by this approach include 2,3-, 2,4-, 1,2,3-, 1,2,4-, 2,3,5-, and 1,2,...

Inducible cAMP early repressor (ICER) has been described as a transcriptional repressor isoform of the cAMP response element modulator (CREM). Here we report that ICER is predominantly expressed in Th17 cells through the IL-6-STAT3 pathway and binds to the Il17a promoter, where it facilitates the accumulation of the canonical enhancer RORγt. In vitro differentiation from naive ICER/CREM-deficie...