Cells are primarily comprised of metal ions, small molecules, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids. The ability to probe these molecules in single living cells can shed new light on chemical processes inside of cells or allow disease diagnosis based on molecular profiling. However, there exists a lack of tools that...
Macrophages are one of the most versatile immune cells in the immune system. They are found in nearly every tissue and organ throughout the body. Macrophages play important roles of orchestrating initiation and resolution of inflammation, such as sentineling against pathogens or engulfing apoptotic cells. Macrophages are able to respond...
The cerebellar cortical system is an extensively studied circuit which is critical for motor learning. While multiple monoamines, such as norepinephrine and serotonin, modulate cerebellar cortical output, the mechanistic details of dopaminergic signaling in the cerebellum remain poorly understood. Additionally, neuronal cell types residing within the cerebellum remain relatively under-characterized....
In December 1889, a few weeks after the monarchy in Brazil was replaced by a republican government, seventy-year-old USAmerican poet Walt Whitman wrote a poem called “A Christmas Greeting” to welcome the “Brazilian brother” into democracy. Though filled with hope and excitement for yet another republic born in the Americas,...
Proteins are a class of nanoscale building block with remarkable chemical complexity and sophistication: their diverse functions, shapes and symmetry, and atomically monodisperse structures far surpass the range of nanoparticles that can be accessed synthetically. The chemical topology of proteins that drive their assembly into higher order materials are central...
Innovations are adopted by individuals and spread to other individuals. They are adopted at different rates, some are never adopted at all, some are abandoned, and some become the new norms. A very extensive evidence-based research and practice paradigm that studies how innovations spread is called diffusion of innovations. This...
This thesis focuses on exploring the explanatory and discovery potential of the four-neutrino and enhanced neutrino magnetic and electric dipole moments hypotheses when
applied to the NOvA/T2K discrepancy and the XENON1T anomaly, respectively. Firstly,
we study the effect of a very light (sub eV) sterile neutrino on the NOvA/T2K anom-...
The purpose of this thesis is to derive three results in probability theory. The first is a proof that small powers of the normalized absolute characteristic polynomial of a random matrix sampled from either the Gaussian Orthogonal or Symplectic Ensemble converges in law to a Gaussian multiplicative chaos measure. The...
During the 1870s and 1880s, state governments in the former slaveholding South established eleven public institutions for black higher learning. Given the volatile, impoverished, often repressive climate of the region, how did black political and educational leaders mobilize to expand state support for black higher education? Furthermore, how did they...
Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) is a promising non-invasive imaging technique capable of assessing cardiovascular function and anatomy for both adult and pediatric patients without the need for ionization energy. Even with the stated benefits, CMR utilization in the clinic is low (~1-2%) due in large part to long acquisition time...
Recent studies have shown that many high profile studies in biology could not be reproduced, calling into questions the legitimacy of their findings. These reports have the potential to greatly jeopardize the credibility of scientists in the field as well as erode public confidence in the scientific enterprise. Computational research...
Understanding the outcomes of interactions from assessing shoot traits has practical applications and has elucidated major ecological patterns. Roots and shoots differ in their functions and can differ in responses to abiotic and biotic stimuli. And while roots are more difficult to characterize because they tangle and are embedded in...
Necessity is the mother of innovation. In the wake of the pandemic, with no flow of samples and limited fabrication techniques available, necessity demanded a new material platform and adaptable methods to make complex oxide samples worth measuring. The material platform was KTaO3 , the younger successor to the mainstay...
This manuscript describes and contextualizes the research I performed as a PhD student in Northwestern University. The first three chapters, on Markov chains, stochastic thermodynamics, and large deviation theory, describe three interrelated topics that serve as the background for subsequent research detailed in the next three chapters, on understanding the...
Thermoelectric (TE) materials has been drawn broad attention given that it can enable direct conversion between thermal and electrical energies, hence is treated as a vital candidate for clean power generation as well as waste heat recycling. However, the energy conversion efficiency of TE devices used nowadays is still very...
This dissertation aims to develop innovative analytical methods that integrate engineering, marketing, and social science disciplines to incorporate heterogeneous consumer preferences into product design using network-based customer preference modeling. Both companies and designers frequently face difficulties in understanding and addressing customer preferences, which can result in product failure and loss...
We rely on the properties of our skeletal muscles to traverse our world, interact with objects, and complete everyday tasks. The macroscopic properties of muscles that endow us with these abilities arise from the material properties of muscle fibers and the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM), as well as how they...
Recommender systems (RSs) have become essential tools that provide personalized recommendations to their users. These systems may consider user, item provider, and system requirements simultaneously. With the inclusion of possibly clashing considerations, there is a growing focus on solving multiple-objective recommender system (MORS) problems as efficiently as possible. The constrained...
Historically, there have been large disparities in the degree to which different communities have access to resources and representation within society. With the increased availability of the internet and the growth of user-generated content platforms like Twitter and Wikipedia, there are opportunities to alleviate some these long-standing barriers to access...
Peptides consists of a series of amino acids connected via an amide type of covalent chemical bond. A diverse field of applications such as biosensors,2 catalysis,4 and biomedicine6 include the oligomeric forms of peptides due to their genuine features comparing to other biomacromolecules. Particularly, peptides in the field of biomedical...
Promyelocytic leukemia (PML) nuclear bodies act as quality control centers in the nucleus, participating in a plethora of nuclear functions. As such, PML bodies are a signature model for functional nuclear organization. PML bodies have a dynamic protein composition that responds to changing conditions of the cell. Many of the...
We establish the criterion for chaos in three-planet systems, for systems similar to those discovered by the Kepler spacecraft. Our main results are as follows: (i) The simplest criterion, which is based on overlapping mean motion resonances (MMRs), only agrees with numerical simulations at a very crude level. (ii) Much...
Machine learning and deep learning have been proven successful across various scientific fields, such as computer vision, natural language processing, and recommendation systems. As models become more complex, with more parameters and intricate architectures, they can achieve higher prediction accuracy when trained on larger datasets. However, despite the great prediction...
The action of the automorphisms of a formal group on its deformation space is crucial to understanding periodic families in the homotopy groups of spheres and the unsolved Hecke orbit conjecture for unitary Shimura varieties. This action is called the Lubin-Tate action. We first show sufficient conditions for geometrically modelling...
A great deal of work has been done in recent years to construct algebraic invariants ofLegendrian knots, and their higher-dimensional analogues. Here we employ the diagram-
matic calculus developed in [3], in order to develop an iterative method for computing the
so-called vexillary functions of a class of Legendrian surfaces....
Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ng), a strict human pathogen, is the sole causative agent of gonorrhea. Gc possess a complex gene conversion system, the pilin antigenic variation system, (pilin Av), which alters the DNA sequence of the major pilin, PilE. Pilin Av results in the constant alteration of the surface exposed appendage,...
This dissertation consists of three chapters that each study the interaction between government policy and real estate markets. All three chapters are connected by a broad interest in renters, landlords, and rental markets. Chapter 1 investigates the relationship between place-based policies and real estate and rental markets empirically by studying...
Arising from the study of multiple ergodic averages, nilsequences and multiple correlation sequences lie at the crossroads of ergodic theory, combinatorics and number theory. We study these types of sequences along various subsequences of integers, and provide applications to ergodic theory and harmonic analysis. Our first result involves multiple correlation...
Chapter 1 presents analysis comparing the effectiveness of two mechanisms of regulation enforcement: (1) the frequency of inspections and (2) penalties for violations. Recent policy changes regarding enforcement of mining safety regulations are exploited to quantify the effectiveness of each mechanism. It is concluded that increasing the frequency of inspections...
Photochemistry is an inherently interdiscplinary field where very large energies are leveraged for the making and breaking of bonds. My work has broadly dealt with various strategies to control how energy delivered by light can be channeled into useful functions. I developed a strategy to control the chemo- and stereo-selectivity...
Research on how sleep contributes to memory has blossomed in recent years. These studies have generally focused on whether or not sleep impacts various types of memory independently. An open question is whether sleep interactively influences different memory types. My research focuses on two types of memory—specificity and generalization. Whereas...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) are two of the most highly prevalent neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), each affecting roughly 2% of the population. Despite the need for therapies, few exist due to a myriad of challenges, such as the complex underlying genetic etiology and historic inaccessibility of neural...
Fibrosis is a chronic pathology which commonly develops after chronic inflammation. Different specific kinds of inflammation have been linked to fibrosis across various tissues. When specifically occurring in the prostate, fibrosis can lead to urinary dysfunction. Prostate conditions that involve inflammation have also been linked to both prostate fibrosis and...
In this thesis we study the geometric limits under degree growth of Julia sets and filled Julia sets for complex polynomials with a unique critical point at $z = 0$. Specifically, for $c \in \mathbb{S}^1$, we are interested in the limit of the associated sequence of Julia sets $J(f_{n,c})$ in...
Digitization has led to dramatic cost reductions and reshaped both what and how products are sold. This dissertation examines the impact of digitization on the behavior of market intermediaries that bring together producers and consumers. Our empirical context is the transition from 35mm film to digital cinema technologies in the...
Inflammasomes are intracellular multiprotein signaling complexes that link Pathogen Associated and Danger Associated Molecular Patterns (PAMPs and DAMPs) by Pattern Recognition Receptors (PRRs) to the activation of Caspase-1, leading to the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-18, and the induction of pyroptosis. Nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain (NOD)-like containing a...
The histone methyltransferase DOT1L methylates lysine 79 (K79) on histone H3 and is implicated in active transcription. Here we show that DOT1L is overexpressed in Prostate cancer (PCa) and is associated with poor clinical outcome. Genetic and chemical inhibition of DOT1L selectively impaired viability of androgen receptor (AR)-signaling competent PCa...
The integration of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) into large scale computing systems is gaining attention. In these systems, real-time data handling for networking, tasks for scientific computing, and machine learning can be executed with customized datapaths on reconfigurable fabric within heterogeneous compute nodes. At the same time, high-level synthesis (HLS)...
Wearable visual systems, such as ego-centric wearable cameras, have failed to integrate into everyday life. We have witnessed the abandonment of wearable visual systems as consumer devices (e.g., Google Glass) and as research tools (e.g., SenseCam). While it is natural for some technologies to die out, visual wearable systems are...
Multistage optimization is a prominent modeling tool to solve a broad range of dynamic decision-making problems in the presence of uncertainty. However, computing optimal policies is intractable, since they are obtained by considering all possible realizations of uncertainties and subsequent future decisions over time. To overcome these challenges, we present...
Thinkers attempting to challenge existing conceptions of political life often find that they encounter limitations in dominant modes of spectatorship and communication. If popular audiences are unsuitably oriented toward the presentation of certain content, this introduces a fundamental obstacle for political theoretic efforts to shape ideas and interactions. This dissertation...
Listeners can experience strong and often positive identification with music. Contemporary research has emphasized the importance of a listener’s own identity, including their sense of self and their desires, when forming such identifications. However, acknowledgments of the listener’s role in the listening experience have failed to productively engage discussions of...
Chemical modifications of oligonucleotides (ONs) have advanced these molecules towards clinical approvals. On their own, native ONs have poor pharmacokinetic properties, such as rapid degradation by nucleases and poor cell uptake, which limit their potential therapeutic applications. Chemical modifications of ONs can increase their stability, alter their interactions with cells,...
Mortgage brokers originate a large share of residential real estate lending. Exploiting state-level regulatory changes to local entry costs I am able to study the effect on credit quality and access. Using data from a major mortgage lender in the run up to the financial crisis I study how the...
Excess loading of reactive nitrogen and phosphorus into the environment from human activities has resulted in widespread eutrophication and the degradation of surface water quality and wildlife habitat. Wastewater is the dominant point source of nutrient loading into waterways, and thus represents a critical opportunity for treatment and prevention of...
Early life adversity predicts greater health risk in later life across multiple outcomes, including cardiovascular disease (CVD) and all-cause mortality. While biological pathways are incompletely understood, evidence is increasingly highlighting immune function, specifically chronic inflammation, which is implicated in cardiometabolic diseases, certain cancers, and all-cause mortality. Links between early adversity...
Despite the increasing interest in biogenic secondary organic aerosols (SOAs), their role in the climate system remains the greatest source of uncertainty in global models. Cloud formation, critical for the net cooling effect provided by cloud cover, is dependent on the abundance of SOA particles and their ability to activate...
The purpose of this multiple-case study was to examine the lived experiences of current collegiate music education majors, both students from under-represented minorities and their well-represented peers, with attention to racial/ethnic identity and social class. Dyads of current music education students at 8 separate colleges/universities—a student from an under-represented racial...
Macrophages are innate immune cells that are traditionally thought to be specialists in phagocytosis. More recent evidence suggest that macrophages reside in nearly every organ and readily adapt to local microenvironmental signals, leading to highly plastic phenotypes across and within tissues. Therefore, rather than treating it as a homogenous cell...
Unrestrained urban growth combined with the increase in the intensity and frequency of precipitation events, due to climate change, has become a major challenge for urban green spaces. Urban sprawl increases ecosystem degradation and the vulnerability of cities to floods as a result of excess stormwater runoff and non-point source...