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...