Visual Regression is a general task in the area of computer vision, with input visual data space and continuous output space. Most learning-based visual estimation tasks, where the output variables take values in continuous space, are related to visual regression. Examples of visual regression include many emerging but very difficult...
We tackle two important theoretical problems in macroeconomics and international economics. First, in macroeconomics, especially monetary economics, the models with a standard Taylor rule have multiple equilibria. This multiplicity is problematic since we do not have a theory to determine a price level. We propose a theory to pin down...
Machine learning and symbolic reasoning have been two main approaches to build intelligent systems. Symbolic reasoning has been used in many applications by making use of expressive symbolic representations to encode prior knowledge, conduct complex reasoning and provide explanations. Recently, machine learning has enabled various successful applications by learning from...
Stringent demands in the sheet forming industry related to rapid and customized part realization coupled with rigorous requirements on geometric accuracy and product properties have outpaced the capabilities of traditional forming processes. As an emerging novel technology, Double-Sided Incremental Forming (DSIF) offers much higher flexibility with the complete elimination of...
Many phenomena that occur in the nanoscale, such as the self-assembly of charged amphiphiles, the metal extraction for recovering rare earth elements and nuclear waste as well as water purification, are driven by the electrostatic forces. Although current simulation techniques can handle the long-range Coulomb potential efficiently, the inhomogeneity in...
The dissertation consists of three separate essays that lie at the interface of social network analytics and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Essay 1 and Essay 2 cover completed research, while the research covered in Essay 3 is at a more preliminary stage.', 'Essay 1: Starting Cold: The Power of Social...
Biology is entering the exciting world of big data. Modern high-throughput experimental techniques often produce large datasets that aim to capture complex relationships often found in biological systems. While these larger data sets contain vast amounts of useful information, the answers are often locked behind a wall of numbers. As...
In the last decade, global mobile data traffic increased by more than a hundred fold times while maintaining essentially the same monthly charge to the average mobile user. Cisco predicts that overall mobile data traffic will continue to grow rapidly at a compound annual growth rate of 60 percent between...
In college, high levels of student engagement, including the formation of relationships with faculty and staff, are positively associated with learning and development. Faculty and staff, known as institutional agents, can provide critical forms of institutional knowledge, resources, and services that can enhance the college experience and encourage student success....
My dissertation is an autoethnography, tracking my experience creating the Great Chicago Fire Festival for and with the City of Chicago. The production was a nearly unprecedented collaboration between an arts organization and a major municipality. It involved 7 different city agencies and 3 federal departments; more than 6000 city...
Intermolecular charge transfer between electron-rich donor and electron-poor acceptor molecules offer great promise in the development of novel, low-cost electronic materials. It is hypothesized that control over the intermolecular interactions and supramolecular self-assembly of these systems could tune electronic properties and discover new functions. To that end, a series of...
Demands in the aerospace, automotive and biomedical sectors for low-volume sheet metal parts made from materials with high specific strength are growing due to the needs imposed by rapid product development cycles, and personalized products to mention a few. However, high strength-to-weight ratio materials, such as Ti6Al4V, are usually difficult...
Composites of metal nanoparticles encapsulated by metal-organic frameworks (NP@MOFs) have recently emerged as intriguing heterogeneous catalysts for regioselective reactions. Sharing qualities of both zeolites and enzymes, these catalysts employ the pore system of a MOF to direct reactant access to the surface of nanoparticles. This dissertation seeks to better understand...
The recent development of quantum biology results in various breakthroughs in exploring the role of quantum physics in biological systems, as well as in observing and controlling light-matter interactions in biological materials on a fundamental quantum level. We seek to combine the concept of quantum biology with quantum optics to...
Recent years have witnessed success in using mathematical models to understand complex social phenomena. In this dissertation, we develop and apply two mathematical models in the area of urban productivity and political elections. ', 'First, we investigate the puzzling superlinear scaling behavior of many outputs in urban areas, such as...
Precise assessment of long-term aging and deterioration play a major role in life-time predictions of concrete structures. One of the primary challenges in studies of cementitious materials such as concrete comes from the fact that multiple chemical reactions are happening in parallel. Environmental conditions present another challenge as they can...
The phase-field crystal (PFC) model is an exciting new method for simulating crystalline materials with atomic resolution over diffusional time scales. Unfortunately, applications of the model have been severely limited by the requirement that novel free energies must be constructed for each new material of interest. This thesis describes three...
Meiosis is a specialized form of cell division where chromosomes are duplicated once and segregated twice, in order to reduce the chromosome number by half to generate haploid gametes. In contrast to mitosis, oocyte meiosis in many species occurs in the absence of centrosomes, the microtubule organizing centers that nucleate...
This dissertation studies three topics in labor and public economics. The first chapter examines the local economic consequences of prisons using two complementary approaches. The first uses the openings of 230 prisons during the 1990s across the entire United States, and the second uses a quasi-experimental strategy that compares winning...
Electrochemical energy storage devices have become increasingly relevant to the operation and sustainability of the modern world, as proliferation of mobile electronics, renewable electrical energy generators, electrical vehicles, and various high-tech bio-medical sensing device continues. The widespread need of easier to produce, better performing, and multifunctional energy storage materials in...
This study is an examination of conservative Christian pronatalist discourse in the contemporary United States and the myriad ways it endangers American women and children. Insofar as conservative Christian pronatalism is part of broader religious and pollical movement, this study also examines related conservative Christian discourses asserting anti-intellectualism, libertarian economics,...
This dissertation provides a study of local Black media development in Detroit in the decade following the 1967 Rebellion, as Detroit became a majority Black city. I argue that Black Detroiters not only produced documentaries that challenged local white discourse within what George Lipsitz terms “a Black spatial imaginary,†but...
Reactive Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) pollution is responsible for a vast array of environmental problems, including eutrophication of nutrient limited water bodies, vast dead zones in the ocean margins, and ammonia toxicity to aquatic life. N pollution is also linked to the emission of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous...
Systems of colloids coated with high-information polymers are powerful tools for designing crystal lattice with tailorable properties or studying the fundamentals of crystallization. By changing the colloid-colloid interaction strength or colloid shape, different types of lattices can be assembled. In this thesis, I present novel coarse-grained models to describe high-information...
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a movement disorder that arises following the degeneration of dopamine-producing neurons of the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc). Patients experience a host of limiting motor symptoms such as rigidity, tremor, and a paucity of controlled movement generation. These symptoms often correspond with a predominance of abnormally...
This dissertation interrogates the relationship between affect and blackness, as it is intimated in the materiality of water and its attendant sensations. My methodology draws from black feminist theory and metaphors extracted from the natural and neurosciences. In so doing, I grapple with the following questions, as they relate to...
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease characterized by the abnormal high blood glucose of patients. The defects in the hormonal regulation, including impaired insulin secretion, insulin action, or the combination of the two are usually the causes of such a disease. The elevated blood glucose also leads to a wide...
2018-1The human visual system has a remarkable ability for understanding material properties on the basis of texture appearance, such as', 'telling whether the food is fresh, the fabric is soft, the soil is wet, or the skin is dry. Such visual judgments of material properties mostly rely on the perception...
Ultrathin optical platform including two-dimensional materials and metasurfaces have emerged as potential candidates for novel nanophotonic applications. In this dissertation, I will present the possibility to achieve full active control of the electromagnetic waves with the platform in the flatland. We could achieve the amplitude control, which will be useful...
The use of polymeric membranes have become ubiquitous in our daily lives. From simple chip bags to million-dollar cockpits, these membranes find diverse applications in packaging, protective coating, electronic device, gas and liquid separation, and medicine. The 2-dimentional geometry of the membranes offered unique mechanical and interfacial properties that often...
This dissertation analyzes archival materials to examine the relationship between reproductive governance in India and the political and scientific dynamics of the Cold War. In 1952, India became the first country to institute anti-natalist population control as a national policy goal, concentrating its efforts on female sterilization and the building...
Gene regulatory networks contain multiple components including microRNAs (miRNAs) that coordinate regulation of genes to produce higher level cell functions. miRNAs are small non-coding RNA molecules that modulate gene expression post-transcriptionally by binding to short target motifs on mRNA transcripts to down-regulate target genes. Because miRNA regulation of genes is...
According to contemporary estimates, the 1933 Soviet famine killed six to eight million people, more than two million of them in Ukraine. This dissertation studies causes and consequences of this famine. ', 'Chapter one evaluates the causes of the 1933 famine offered by historians in Ukrainian context. Three main explanations...
Raytracing is a long-established means to simulate physically accurate light propagation. Increasing availability and power of highly-parallel computing, such as cloud-based clusters and dedicated graphics hardware, means that rendering algorithms can produce high resolution output very quickly. This means raytracing can now be used as a forward model in optimization...
Maxwell equations are behind an incredible number of physical phenomena, explaining the behavior of light, electricity and magnetism, from Gamma rays to ultra-low frequency radio-waves. Since their inception in 1861, many approximations have been derived, many devices have been modelled and fabricated to manipulate the electromagnetic fields, and more recently...
Research shows that psychometrically-assessed spatial abilities (e.g., spatial visualization and spatial orientation) can be improved through training, and that some training yields improvements that are transferable to novel contexts and tasks (Uttal et al., 2013). While the training of these spatial abilities may be valuable for some forms of STEM...
Oxidation processes play an integral role in many industries, but questions still remain regarding the mechanisms of carbon-hydrogen bond activation and oxidation in free-radical and catalyzed processes. Microkinetic modeling is a powerful tool capable of examining oxidation processes at the mechanistic level to gain understanding and guide catalyst applications. This...
In this dissertation thesis, I introduce three-dimensional (3D) image reconstruction algorithms for multi-focus microscopy (MFM). MFM provides a fast way to obtain 3D information of the sample by simultaneously capturing multiple focal planes on a single camera shot. However, stacking the sub-images from different focal planes does not provide a...
Small molecules such as indanes, chromanes, tetralins and their derivatives play a significant role in drug discovery due to their potent biological activity. This research herein presents a facile Brønsted acid-catalyzed allylsilane annulation methodology to generate fused ring systems such as indanes. The reaction goes through a homoallylic intermediate which...
This dissertation consists of three essays in Microeconomic Theory that study the interplay between mechanism and information design, provide insights into the design of efficient dispute resolution mechanisms for partnerships, and analyze the stability of fractional matchings in two-sided markets.', "In the first chapter, we study the optimal disclosure policy...
This thesis studies three approaches for solving linear programs with complementarity constraints (LPCC). The focus of Chapter 2 lies on difference-of-convex (DC) penalty formulations and the associated difference-of-convex algorithm (DCA) for computing stationary solutions of LPCCs. We concentrate on three such formulations and establish connections between their stationary solutions and...
In this dissertation, efforts are detailed to utilize semiquinoid bridging ligands to impart strong magnetic coupling between metal centers. Chapter 1 introduces the synthetic challenge of realizing molecule-based magnets with high operating temperatures due to weak magnetic coupling between spin centers through large, diamagnetic ligands. An alternative strategy is described...
The cerebellum contributes to movement initiation, execution, and adaptation. Primary cerebellar neurons receive synaptic inputs related to sensory stimuli and motor commands, leading to modulation of their firing. Furthermore, synaptic input differs substantially between cerebellum-dependent behaviors. I have made voltage- and current-clamp recordings from Purkinje and eurydendroid neurons in the...
Chromatin organization involves a hierarchy of length scales ranging from a few tens of nanometers in nucleosomes to hundreds of nanometers for chromosomal territories. This physical nanostructure is regulated by the genetic code, differential methylation and histone modifications that comprise the histone code, as well as non-molecular factors, such as...
Understanding bridge performance and detecting structurally deficient components are of increasing concern to modern infrastructure owners and managers. Concerns over possible effects of increased truck weights led to the opportunity to monitor a highway bridge, regularly subjected to heavy traffic due to logging activities typical of its locale. A weigh-in-motion...
This mixed-method dissertation explores how companies manage competing tensions in their corporate social responsibility platforms, with an emphasis on the activity of corporate philanthropy. While existing literature has overwhelmingly focused on the post-grant financial effects of corporate philanthropy, I shift our attention to various internal contestations between social impact and...
In this thesis, I investigate how the disagreements among market participants can affect markets in various settings. In the first chapter, I study how market participants with heterogeneous beliefs and non-commitment can create and manage counterparty risk in a sequentially and bilaterally traded market. I find that the equilibrium price...
In this work, we explore the utility of the three main types of neural networks: feed forward, convolutional, and recurrent. While using these networks, we develop a new way to model multiagent trajectory data, explore the use of multiple activation functions for neurons at each layer of a neural network,...
Technology mediated experiences are becoming more common and creating new ways for us to work and learn together when separated by distance. However, these remote environments lack many of the rich non-verbal cues that we take for granted in co-located interactions, such as information about where your partner is looking....
This dissertation focuses on the topic of pseudowords and how speakers pseudoword processing relates to that of real words. Three main lines of inquiry are pursued with respect to pseudowords and real words: mechanisms of gradient well-formedness, theories of morphological decomposition, and indexical associations for morphemes in complex words. It...
Platyrrhines are an enigmatic and intriguing radiation of New World monkeys that currently inhabit the western hemisphere from Argentina to Mexico. Platyrrhini, a taxonomic parvorder within Primates, is their formal taxonomic designation, as they represent the sister group of the Catarrhini or all of the Old World monkeys and apes....
Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) is a promising technology for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). However, while there has been much interest in PSA process development, the choice of adsorbent for the separation is just as important as the process configuration. Therefore, it is important to develop PSA processes in conjunction...
This dissertation seeks to investigate how social policy is made and implemented where established scripts and institutionalized schemas do not align with complex subjects and cases: how do policymakers classify subjects and cases when they cannot default to established categories, what are the implications of engagement in forms of evaluation...
Like the majority of media studies, research on Latinx media is characterized by a focus on a single medium. As an alternative, this dissertation provides a media ecology of the city's Latinx mediascape between the years 1953 and 2012. This dissertation investigates four case studies: (1) Univision's former television affiliate,...
The dissertation illuminates the centrality of communication to the way environmental policies and practices arise and unfold, and it shows how the living materiality of ecological phenomena are entangled with the social dynamics of communication. The work innovatively bridges insights from the field of political ecology with theory and method...
This work presents a cognitive model of argument structure construction acquisition and application based on analogy. The claims of this model are that (1) constructions, pairings of form and meaning, are a productive unit of linguistic analysis that account for a broader range of phenomena than traditional approaches; (2) human...
Carbon-based materials, such as graphene and carbon fibers, have good prospects for applications in reinforcements of polymers as advanced structural composites. Hence, the study of the mechanical properties of the constituents and the composites is becoming increasingly popular in both academia and industry.', 'Graphene has been shown to have a...
This dissertation develops computational models to study the optical coupling between plasmonic nanoparticles and quantum emitters. A large number of nanophotonic applications function by using either plasmon enhanced fields to enhance optical processes within quantum emitters or the sensitivity of plasmon resonances to their environment. Developing computational methods to fully...
Currently, the only treatment for end stage liver disease is transplantation, of which there is a critical shortage of available donor tissue. Recent developments in 3D printing have greatly accelerated progress in the field of liver tissue engineering. A variety of 3D printing and additive manufacturing techniques show great promise...
Perovskite oxide materials for the wide array of properties that make them candidate materials for application ranging from catalysis, to electronics, to beyond-Moore computation. As many of these oxides share similar structures they can be combined in a seemingly-endless number of ways to produce the desired properties for a given...
When constructing buildings with basements in urban areas, the deformation levels during the excavation process must be carefully evaluated to prevent or minimize damage to adjacent structures. Because of uncertainties in predicting ground deformations during the design phase for a project, a robust monitoring program should be included in significant...
The use of biomass as a feedstock for fuels and chemicals has been a long-standing challenge and opportunity for the chemical and basic materials industries. In order to unlock the value of biomass, it is necessary to first deconstruct its structural polymers, cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, into low molecular weight...
Nonlinear optical (NLO) effects are used universally in modern day telecommunication and form the foundation of emergent photonic technologies. Twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT) chromophores, composed of a donor and acceptor fragment connected by a twisted bi-aryl bridge, combine large molecular NLO response with properties such as transparency in the...
Bimetallic polymerization catalysis represents a small, though active, area of research due largely to the interesting properties observed in the resulting product polymers, including higher molecular weight, increased comonomer incorporation, and enhanced tacticity. Current work is focused on furthering an understanding of the active catalytic species that give rise to...
Segregation of granular materials with different particle properties (e.g.,~size and density) is a ubiquitous phenomenon in nature and industry. In this thesis, different segregation mechanisms are studied in steady granular heap flows. Flow kinematics and segregation in transient granular flows are also explored. ', '\t', 'First, this thesis studies segregation...
The assembly of nanoscale building blocks into larger ensembles with well-defined architecture has the potential to create entirely new classes of designer photonic and plasmonic metamaterials with unique properties not found in nature. Electromagnetic metasurfaces, or 2D metamaterials, operating at optical wavelengths are of particular interest due to ease of...
This dissertation is a collection of three essays that study (dynamic) incentive provision in multi-agent settings with asymmetric information: delegation of projects in organizations, dynamic matching on a platform, and arbitration between partners in a dispute.', "The first chapter studies dynamic delegation of heterogeneous projects to agents with diverse capabilities....
Mixed oxides including SiO2', 'and supported oxides on SiO2', 'comprise the majority of', 'heterogeneous catalysts employed in the chemical industry. SiO2', '-Al2O3', 'and microporous,', 'crystalline variants called zeolites have been used widely since the 1960s in petroleum', 'processing, commodity chemical production, and fine chemical synthesis [1]. SiO2', 'supported', 'TiOx catalysts...
A vast portion of the Universe is predicted to consist of an as-of-yet undetected, non-luminous form of matter, known as dark matter. Evidence of its existence has been corroborated by various astrophysical observations at many cosmological scales, and its relative abundance has been determined. However, knowledge of its nature and...
Of the half million new cases of invasive cervical cancer (ICC) reported globally each year, over 80% occur in Low-and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)1. Nigeria is one of these countries with a huge burden of ICC incidence and mortality.2 As reported in the Global Burden of Cancer 2013, cervical cancer is...
The thermodynamics and kinetics of electron transfer reactions in catalysis, energy conversion and storage, and plasmon-driven chemistry depend strongly on nanoscale electrode surface structure. To elucidate the structure-function relationships that determine nanoscale electrochemical reactivity, it is necessary to observe electron transfer reactions one molecule at a time. Over the past...
Mounting evidence indicates that known schizophrenia susceptibility genes regulate dendritic spines supports the model that perturbations in the molecular network underlying spine plasticity are crucially involved in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. The Rac1- and RhoA-guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) kalirin is critical for spine morphogenesis on cortical pyramidal neurons, and...
Biopolymers are polymers synthesized by living organisms. Depending on the monomeric units, biopolymers can be classified as polynucleotides (e.g., DNA and RNA), polypeptides (e.g., protein), polysaccharides (e.g., cellulose) and so on. Biopolymers not only play an essential role in nature, but also have wide applications in various fields of industry...
RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq) is a powerful high-throughput tool to profile transcriptional activities in cells. The observed read counts can be biased by various factors such that they do not accurately represent the true relative abundance of mRNA transcript abundance. Normalization is a critical step to ensure unbiased comparison of gene expression...
This dissertation presents research on solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) cathodes. It specifically covers two main topics: the electrochemical performance of porous two-phase composite cathodes, and the degradation mechanisms of porous single-phase mixed conducting cathodes. Current-voltage measurement and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were used extensively to evaluate the cell performance. The...
Self-assembly is an important process in biological system to build various bioactive structures from small amphiphilic molecules. The structural versatility of amphiphile self- assembly also provides a unique platform for the design of functional soft materials with controllable structural features. However, little is known about the correlation between external stimuli,...
Ultrafast, multi-dimensional coherent spectroscopy (MD-CS) has enabled scientists to probe fundamental aspects of chemical and photo-physical reactions on the nanosecond to femtosecond timescales. Using MD-CS, scientific contributions ranging from increased understanding of energy transfer in photosynthetic biological proteins to correlating the motion of electrons in semiconductors have been achieved. Concurrent...
One of the main drivers of complexity in a service system is the dependence between different random variables describing the system. For example, the queue lengths at different time points and the waiting times of different items (jobs, customers) in queue are strongly dependent. To reduce dependence-related complexities, it is...
Patterning hierarchical structures in three-dimension (3D) has created nature-inspired functional surfaces. Gecko feet structures have been mimicked for reversible adhesive properties, shark skin for reduced drag, and lotus leaves for self-cleaning surfaces. Rational design of out-of-plane patterns across multiple length scales is crucial because each micro- and nano-feature has different...
My dissertation consists of two chapters that empirically study policy-related questions in applied microeconomics by using structural econometric modeling developed in industrial organization. In the first chapter, I study the welfare effects of a cap-and-trade program. I develop an equilibrium framework that incorporates forward-looking behavior and transaction costs. In the...
The ability to efficiently sense and respond to molecular signals is crucial for any organism's survival. Sensitive, specific and timely, microbial sensing systems provide an excellent starting point for the engineering of single-celled organisms to detect new molecules of human interest. Towards this goal, our lab pursues the engineering of...
The objective of this work has been the design of new lubricant additives to target friction in the boundary lubrication regime and the hydrodynamic lubrication regime. Modern automotive engines operate at higher temperatures and speeds than ever before, and therefore require new and more effective lubricant additives to meet higher...
Chapter 1: Product Market Strategy and Capital Structure: Evidence from Resale Price Maintenance', "This paper studies how a firm's pricing strategy affects its financial leverage. Retailers vary in pricing strategy, ranging from low markup (i.e., ``discount''), no frills retailers to high markup retailers that offer extensive service. The choice of...
Spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) are a class of structures composed of spherical nanoparticle cores that are densely functionalized with radially oriented, linear DNA. SNAs exhibit properties that are distinct from those of their linear counterparts. These constructs can readily enter cells, evade nuclease degradation, and bind complementary DNA targets with...
Self-assembled monolayers as tunable chemical platforms broadly enable the study of the interaction between biological species and synthetic surfaces. Unlike small molecule chemistry where the freely diffusible product can interact with biological targets as an inhibitor or probe, interfacial chemistry allows for the controlled and multi-valent presentation of ligands to...
Research on rat whiskers offers knowledge in neuroscience analogous to humans\' sense of touch and inspiration for efficient sensing robotics. The present work investigates the rat whisker system from a mechanical engineering perspective. First, key quasi-static and dynamic properties were quantified in Chapter 2 for individual whiskers in an array,...
A spokesman for the American Revolution, John Adams, famously claimed that a third of colonists supported independence, a third supported Britain, and a third remained neutral. Since then historians have struggled to understand the mixed loyalties of the Revolutionary generation.
"The Popular Politics of Loyalism During the American Revolution, 1774-1790,"...
This dissertation explores topics in information economics. A particular focus in this dissertation is how competition affects incentives for information acquisition and information sharing between competitors. The first chapter studies a principal-agent setting where two principals compete for the services of one agent. The second chapter studies how competition in...
Drawing on over 400 legal decisions and other documentary materials, 40 semi-structured interviews with legal and scientific actors, and hundreds of hours of multi-sited ethnographic observation, I offer a fine-grained analysis of how expert evaluative practices become institutionalized in legal settings and result in divergent understandings of sexuality within the...
Hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels are expressed in the heart and central nervous system where they regulate membrane excitability. Recently, inhibiting HCN channels in the hippocampus has been identified as a possible therapeutic intervention for the treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). However, based on the high expression level of...
Distance learning has increased its presence in academia, and there is a growing trend among higher education music schools to utilize distance learning in tandem with a traditional curriculum. Many instrumental pedagogues do not understand the benefits even though distance learning has been used for close to twenty years in...
From 2008 to 2019, a range of new interactive and immersive digital formats that present new possibilities for musical and artistic expression have become available. In order to begin the work of uncovering what new compositional and experiential possibilities are now possible, this document will examine each format’s core concepts...
The saxophone has long been an instrument at the forefront of new music. Since its invention, supporters of the saxophone have tirelessly pushed to create a repertoire, which has resulted today in an impressive body of work for the yet relatively new instrument. The saxophone has found itself on...
This document will examine the influence of sacred, Latin, polyphonic, Tudor, choral composition on the compositional style of contemporary British composer, Gabriel Jackson. This examination will lead to an acknowledgement and discussion of the larger trend in 21st-century choral music to incorporate older compositional models into new works.
The impetus...
Significant deviations in the glass transition temperature (Tg) of nanoconfined polymer films from the bulk have been studied for over twenty years with the focus on high molecular weight (MW), linear polymers. This thesis explores low MW polymers, which represent an important class of materials widely used as coatings, detergents,...
Personality traits and personal values represent individual differences that influence many forms of behavior including psychopathology (Hanel & Wolfradt, 2016; Jarden, 2010; Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006; Schwartz, 2006). Extensive research has highlighted the importance of personality traits in the development of psychopathology in children. However, the association between values and...
This dissertation focuses on policy issues in the area of Economics of Innovation. As developed countries are becoming increasingly reliant on innovation for economic growth, it is important to enhance our understanding of how public policies affect innovation.
The first chapter examines the effect of government research grants on firms'...
Charge-containing polymers have received considerable attention for many decades, as these polymers combine the flexibility of polymer chains with electrochemical properties of the ions to provide a highly tunable, chemically and mechanically versatile class of materials. These materials have found use in energy conversion devices, high-density energy storage devices such...
Modern cosmological simulations are some of the world's largest and most demanding numerical computations that are run on state-of-the-art supercomputers. The codes use N-body and mesh-based methods in gravity-only solvers, and both Lagrangian and Eulerian schemes to model gas dynamics. Even complex astrophysical effects such as of star formation and...
Shared emotions are associated with thriving in relationships (Anderson, Keltner & John, 2004; Gonzaga, Campos, & Bradbury, 2007), and greater liking for new individuals (Larson & Gardner, 2015). However, the psychological mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are not well-understood. Emotions are fleeting experiential states and, seen through this lens, finding someone...