This dissertation describes the relationship between the surface chemistry of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots, QDs) and their optoelectronic properties, such as photoluminescence and degree of quantum confinement. We primarily focus our efforts on one particular subset of ligands known to couple strongly to the inorganic core of the QD...
Climate change may be one of the most important puzzles the world has attempted to solve and one of the greatest challenges in this area is to improve our understanding of how atmospheric aerosol particles impact climate processes. We seek to overcome this challenge by focusing on the chemistry and...
The over-a-decade quantitative study of the flexion synergy has provided concrete evidence that the stereotypical movement coupling of shoulder abduction with elbow flexion and wrist/finger flexion (i.e. flexion synergy) significantly affects the ability to perform functional upper extremity movements that are essential for activities of daily living (e.g. reach-to-grasp an...
Using cross-sectional and 90-day discharge follow-up data from child welfare residential treatment, this study investigates gender differences in characteristics, needs, and strengths at entry to residential treatment. Specifically, this analysis examines trauma experiences, trauma-related symptoms, internalizing and externalizing behaviors, and strengths, in relation to length of stay and discharge status...
The patent system seeks to strike the ideal balance between competition and the rate of innovation – not to maximize innovation unconditionally. Clearly there must be limits on the manner and degree to which patents are used to diminish competition. A critical complication, however, is that this boundary is often...
DNA methylation in repetitive elements (RE) suppresses their mobility and maintains genomic stability, and decreases in it are frequently observed in tumor and/or surrogate tissues. Averaging methylation across RE in the genome is widely used to quantify global methylation. Methylation of RE in humans is considered a surrogate for global...
The National Institute of Mental Health and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality convened an expert panel to identify the top research priorities in the field of behavioral intervention technology (BIT) research. The panel determined that if BIT research is to evolve in an effective way to reach and...
Background: The tripartite model (Clark & Watson, 1991) has been used to represent the substrates of general distress in both depression and anxiety (Negative affectivity [NA]), while also characterizing specific features of decreased positive affectivity (PA) in depression and increased physiological hyperarousal (PH) in anxiety. Core affect characterizes affect by...
While equal political participation is a fundamental democratic ideal, it is an ideal unrealized in the United States. Those with more—more education, more money, more time, more skills—participate more. Those who have less—especially the poor and minorities—participate less and may be absent from the process altogether. A similar statement could...
Depression in children and adolescents is a prevalent, recurrent, and frequently chronic disorder, representing a considerable public health burden (Birmaher, Ryan, Williamson, Brent, & Kaufman, 2005; Costello et al., 2002). Consequently, an understanding of the disorder is critical for future intervention and prevention efforts. Previous research attempting to clarify family...
In eukaryotic organisms, genomic DNA is organized and condensed into repeating arrays of nucleosomes. The histone protein octamer of each nucleosome wraps 147 base pairs of DNA, effectively restricting access by transcription factors and other regulatory proteins to that region. An additional histone, histone H1, binds the DNA outside the...
This dissertation presents a program of research on cultural cognition of the natural world, involving long-term research with indigenous Ngöbe partner communities (Panama) and selected comparisons to Western samples (US). In two series of experiments focused on agency concepts, we show that cultural frameworks recruit distinct principles for inferring agency...
This dissertation studies the small dispersion asymptotics in highly stratified models. My goal is to show that accurate inferences are possible even if s, the number of strata, is large while m, the number of observations within each stratum, is small, provided that the model ”fit well” in the term...
In today's rapidly changing world, there is constant demand for the development of new, high performance materials. Fire resistant steels can provide greater safety in the event of a building fire, creep resistant stainless steels can allow for higher power plant efficiency, and cobalt based superalloys have potential for use...
Metabolite biosensors are powerful tools for basic biological research, medical diagnostics, and biotechnological applications. However, a generalizable strategy for developing new metabolite biosensors when an existing sensor cannot be found in nature, is a persistent challenge. Furthermore, while transcription factor biosensors have the broadest range of applications, the pool of...
The hormone prolactin (PRL) contributes to breast cancer pathogenesis through various signaling pathways, one of the most notable being the JAK2/signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (STAT5) pathway. PRL-induced activation of the transcription factor STAT5 results in the upregulation of numerous genes implicated in breast cancer pathogenesis. However, the...
Ultrafast spectroscopy offers an unprecedented view on the dynamic nature of chemical reactions. From charge transfer in semiconductors to folding and isomerization of proteins, these all important processes can now be monitored and in some instances even controlled on real, physical timescales. One of the biggest challenges of ultrafast science...
While literature indicates that fewer than half of older adults aged 65 years or older receive high quality end-of-life care, less is known about the quality of end-of-life care experienced by the segment of that population with multiple chronic conditions (MCC). Drawing upon the Teno Model of high quality end-of-life...
Traditionally, research on perception and sensory systems has considered the senses as independent and modular functions that only converge after sufficient processing in unisensory areas. Recently, however, that view has been called into question with a number of demonstrations of multisensory interactions that may occur as early as primary cortex....
The goal of this thesis is to design practical algorithms for nonlinear optimization in the case when the objective function is stochastic or nonsmooth. The thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1 describes an active-set method for the minimization of an objective function that is structurally nonsmooth, viz., it...