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The distal compartments of the motor neuron represent early and significant targets across situations of both neurodegenerative disease and traumatic injury. In this thesis, we address two distinct scenarios of axonal and synaptic degeneration. First, we explore neuromuscular junction pathology in a mouse model of the heritable motor neuron disease spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and address the capacity for neuronal regeneration following restoration of the pathologically depleted Survival Motor Neuron (SMN) protein. We demonstrate that motor neurons exhibit a robust and phenotypically translatable recovery from considerable levels of cellular and molecular dysfunction. In the second chapter, we explore the phenomenon of delayed Wallerian degeneration in neonatal mice. We employ a quantitative mass spectrometry approach to profile proteins exhibiting a temporal expression pattern in line with previously observed postnatal changes in axonal and synaptic vulnerability to injury. We then utilise a variety of proteomics tools to identify pathways which may mechanistically contribute to age-dependent resistance to degeneration. Together, these results provide a preliminary insight into the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying motor neuron vulnerability in two independent models of degenerative disease and injury.

Alternative management plan summarized the future use and treatment of the Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center (BOMARC) Complex, one of four discontiguous sections of the National Register eligible McGuire BOMARC-SAGE Historic District (MBSHD), located within the Plumstead Township, Ocean County. The MBSHD comprises four discontiguous boundaries spread across a total of 117 acres that house 117 buildings and structures. The report provides an existing condition assessment and recommendations for management options and site interpretation.

This report is a survey and assessment of the curation of the Westover Air Reserve Base (Westover ARB) archival collection and provides recommendations and alternatives for the repository of the collection. Currently, the Westover ARB archival collection is housed at The Public Archaeology Laboratory, Inc. (PAL) in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Westover ARB is interested in evaluating the curation standards of the current repository and their consistency with federally owned and administered curation standards for archaeological collections. Additionally, Westover ARB is interested in assessing the possible relocation of the collection to a repository in closer proximity to the base.

Based on nationally representative samples from 13 Sub-Saharan African countries, this paper reinforces and expands previous findings that condom use in general is low in this region, men report using condoms more frequently than women, and unmarried individuals report they use condoms more frequently than married individuals with their spouse. Based on descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate analyses, the authors also demonstrate to a degree not previously shown in the current literature that married men from most countries report using condoms with extramarital partners about as frequently as unmarried men. However, married women from most countries included use condoms with extramarital partners less frequently than unmarried women. This result is especially troubling because marriage usually ensures regular sexual intercourse, providing more opportunities to pass HIV from extramarital partner to spouse than an unmarried person who may also have multiple partners but not as regular sexual intercourse.

The literature shows that divorced, separated, and widowed individuals in Africa are at significantly increased risk for HIV. Using nationally representative data from 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper confirms that formerly married individuals are at significantly higher risk for HIV. The study goes further by examining individuals who have remarried. The results show that remarried individuals form a large portion of the population - usually larger than the divorced, separated, or widowed - and that they also have higher than average HIV prevalence. This large number of high-risk remarried individuals is an important source of vulnerability and further infection that needs to be acknowledged and taken into account in prevention strategies.