The first essay examines how the shift between single-tasking and multitasking influences productivity and workers' bargaining power, and its implications on the distribution of earnings between management and workers. Under single-tasking, a firm can obtain high productivity because workers' hold-up power can provide them with larger incentives to work. In...
This dissertation investigates the nature of apocalyptic fiction in the first Soviet decade. In my introduction, I consider the secondary or underground status that apocalyptic thought assumed during this period vis a vis the prevailing cultural ethos of utopianism. I assert that Russian literary apocalyptic persisted as a genre by...
Youth with comorbid depression and conduct disorder (CD) in the juvenile justice system are a particularly vulnerable population. Comorbidity of depression and CD, as well as juvenile justice involvement, is associated independently with impairment and negative outcomes. Nevertheless, service provision to this high-need population is especially lacking. The purpose of...
Research suggests that there exists in some homosexual men a moral push towards the disclosure of their HIV serostatus; yet, does an antithetical, individualistic, and self-oriented movement that searches for restitution for HIV infection exist in others? The following study tested the influence of vengeance, hostility, anger, and other negative...
The dependence of the electro-optic (EO) properties on the field-dependent domain structure in epitaxial polydomain BaTiO<sub>3</sub> thin films was investigated. Models of both the field-dependent electronic polarization and the EO response and their dependence on domain structure were developed. The agreement of these models with measured polarization and EO data...
Novel self-healing alloy composites have been designed to address the need for self-repairable high-strength structural materials. A systems-based materials design approach using computational design tools was used to design a multifunctional biomimetic composite that can repair structural damage. The self-healing composite consists of a controlled-melting alloy matrix reinforced by thermodynamically...
Organizational research has analyzed employee-organization relationships for years (Eisenberger, Fasolo, & Davis-LaMastro, 1990; Levinson, 1965; Tsui, Pearce, Porter, & Tripoli, 1997). However, the research on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has mainly focused upon antecedents and consequences of OCB attentive to organizational outcomes. This study extends OCB research to investigate OCB...
Portfolio optimization problems with transaction costs have been widely studied by both financial economists and financial engineers through various approaches. In this paper, we propose the following approach. In analogy to American option pricing, we study the problem through the Finite Element Method (FEM) combined with an optimization method: We...
The first chapter investigates the offshoring decision from a network capacity investment perspective. We analyze a firm that manufactures two products to serve two geographically separated markets using a common component and two localized final assemblies. Two strategic network design questions arise naturally: (1) Should the common part be produced...
Polymers and polyelectrolytes are ideal tools for the development of novel self-assembled materials. The ability to control the length-scales of self-assembly, and thus the properties, for soft materials lies in the understanding and subsequent manipulation of competing intermolecular interactions, such as hydrophobicity, hydrogen bonding, van der Waals, electrostatics. In this...
My work in Comparative Literary Studies and French explores the link between the Mande oral tradition and its literature to reveal the presence and absence of the griots' words and their portrayal in the novel. Authors Amadou Hampaté Bâ (L'Étrange Destin de Wangrin); Massa Makan Diabaté (L'Assemblée de Djinns); D.T....
Although recent research has provided some evidence to suggest that positive mood is associated with increased interpersonal trust, our understanding of the underlying explanation for why this occurs is far from complete. The current project presents the results from 4 experiments which were designed to understand both when, and why,...
The combined trends of decreasing application size and increasing requirements for energy efficiency have driven a need for improved understanding and better predictive tools for thin film lubricated systems. Research on such systems is complicated by the involvement of both larger scale phenomena such as fluid flow, material deformation, and...
The emergence of lightwave communication and computing, and applications in nanophotonics require an understanding of complex electromagnetic wave phenomena in linear and nonlinear materials having frequency-dependent and intensity-dependent polarizations. Both the complexity of the underlying physics and the problems required for modern engineering applications necessitate understanding the vector-nature of the...
Magnetic nanostructures (MNS) have become the subject of intense
interest due to their superparamagnetic properties and consequently
their potential uses in medical diagnostics and therapeutics. In this
study, monodisperse magnetite MNSs were synthesized via thermal
decomposition of iron(III) acetylacetonate and transferred to aqueous
solution using 11-aminoundecanoic acid as the surfactant....
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most common forms of dementia,
with no current definitive premortem diagnosis. Amyloid beta-peptide
derived diffusible ligands, known as ADDLs, have become a key link in
the AD specificity for memory loss and are a potential biomarker for AD.
In order to develop an...
Neurons are difficult to manipulate experimentally. Most transfection
reagents used for gene silencing are neurotoxic, and the postmitotic
state of neurons prevents the effective use of viral vectors. This study
demonstrated the delivery of antisense DNA against target genes by
gold nanoparticle oligonucleotide complexes (GNOs) in primary cultures
of rat...
Thermoelectric materials, which convert heat energy to electrical
energy, may become increasingly important in the world’s energy
situation. Through the inclusion of nanoscale features embedded within
a thermoelectric bulk material, it has been shown that a corresponding
decrease in lattice thermal conductivity results in an enhanced
thermoelectric figure of merit,...
Under the correct conditions, aluminum can be anodized in an electrochemical
cell to produce hexagonally ordered arrays of nanoscale
pores. This study examines how adding the chemicals methanol and
acetic acid to a typical anodization solution alters pore-growth patterns
across the surface oxide layer. The existence of the unique pore-growth...
This paper investigates the use of self-assembled monolayers
(SAMs) to optimize the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR)
biosensor for disease detection. Various experiments were done
with 1-(9-mercaptononyl)-3,6,9-trioxaundecan-11-ol (TDT) and
heptaoxatricosanoic acid (HSA), a new SAM; these included a solvent
study to determine refractive index sensitivity and nonspecific binding
and specific...