This dissertation approaches J. M. Coetzees work through the lens of critical animal studies. Puzzling out the frequent appearances of animals in his work, numerous scholars have attempted to answer the following question: What is Coetzee writing about when he writes about animals? But while many have engaged with the...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
Land and Water: Performing Ecologies of Statelessness in the Aftermath of the Vietnam/American War focuses on land and water as epistemological and ontological grammars to examine cultural productions of Vietnamese refugee narratives. Specifically, I analyze how Vietnamese/American oral history narrators, filmmakers, visual artists, and performance artists narrate refugee subjectivity in...
This dissertation focuses on Chinese contemporary artists conceptualization of spectatorship in the 2000s, the decade when the state started to regulate art production within the parameters of cultural industry. I argue that these artistsCai Guoqiang (b. 1957), Xu Bing (b. 1955), and Yang Shaobin (b. 1962)adopted the visual language and...
Type IIb supernovae (SNe) are important candidates to understand mechanisms that drive the stripping of stripped-envelope (SE) supernova (SN) progenitors. ', 'While binary interactions and their high incidence are generally cited to favor them as Type IIb SN progenitors, this idea has not been tested using models covering a broad...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Graphene oxide (GO), a product of oxidative exfoliation of graphite powders, has received significant attention due to its excellent solution dispersibility, rich functionality, and ease of conversion to chemically modified graphene (also known as œreduced graphene oxide or œr-GO). These properties make GO an attractive building block for constructing various...
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....
The overall goal of my thesis is to enhance our quantitative understanding of the biophysical properties of DNA a long polynucleotide chain, present in every living cell, that embodies the genetic information. The existence of DNA has been known to us for over a century, however, our understanding of its...
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...
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...