Graphene offers promising opportunities for applications in printed and flexible electronic devices due to its high electrical and thermal conductivity, mechanical flexibility and strength, and chemical and environmental stability. However, scalable production and processing of graphene presents a critical technological challenge preventing the application of graphene for flexible electronic interconnects,...
This dissertation studies fictionalized diasporic subalternity, how it is represented by the authors (of the same social status or a cosmopolitan writer), and how different types of agency layered onto the characters influence each other. The choice of texts includes Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke (2011), Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of...
AIMS: This study investigated the longitudinal effects of internal and external housing quality problems on child mental health outcomes, as measured by child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. The study also aimed to elucidate the mechanisms through which housing quality problems affect child mental health by testing the mediating effects...
Organizations comprise of groups who share and compete for resources. During organizational change, resources are often redistributed. Although change messages highlight overarching benefits for the organization, recipients of the message are interested in knowing how they will be affected at the group level, and this affects the way the message...
I use the current accounting rules for earnouts and the previous changes in the accounting rules for earnouts to examine three research questions. My first research question is whether accounting regulation has real effects on the use of earnouts. My second research question is whether the earnout liability represents the...
Metabolic abnormalities of cancers provide opportunities for novel tumor-specific therapies. Isocitrate dehydrogenases (IDHs) catalyze the oxidative decarboxylation of isocitrate to α-ketoglutarate (αKG) and the reduction of NAD(P)+ to NAD(P)H. Oncogenic mutations in two IDH-encoding genes (IDH1 and IDH2) have been identified in acute myelogenous leukemia, low-grade glioma, and secondary glioblastoma...
This dissertation examines various means by which the profit motives of media firms can directly result in biased information transmission. In the first two chapters, I analyze to what extent conflicts of interest in expert review industries may result in artificially inflated reviews, with a particular application to the video...
Individuals with severe motor impairments often have a difficult time performing daily activities, and thus rely heavily on assistive devices to restore some functional independence. The two main limitations of the current controllers for assistive devices are: 1) controllers that do not require coordinated hand movement provide a limited vocabulary...
Understanding the nature of quantum effects in dense biological systems is of great interestto many scientists today. It seems that the question is not does quantum mechanics dictatebiological processes, but rather by how much and to what extent. A big challenge though in thisfield is how to properly test and...
Neisseria gonorrhoeae is the causative agent of the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhea and is adapted to survive in humans, its only host. The N. gonorrhoeae cell wall is critical for maintaining envelope integrity, resisting immune cell killing, and production of cytotoxic peptidoglycan (PG) fragments. Deletion of the N. gonorrhoeae genes...
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...
In Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), spinal motoneurons degenerate in the order of large motoneurons that innervate fast and fatigable muscle fibers to small motoneurons that innervate slow muscle fibers (Pun et al. 2006). This order of degeneration is peculiar in that it is in direct opposition to the normal order...
Algorithms which are efficient and robust are essential to meet the increasing computational demands in the world today. In this thesis, we consider the analysis and design of both distributed algorithms for dynamic average consensus and centralized algorithms for convex optimization.
Dynamic average consensus consists of a group of agents,...
3D integration of integrated circuits is becoming a prominent solution in the design of high performance chips. Multiple dies can be stacked in a single 3D structure and utilizes Through Silicon Vias (TSV) for die to die communications. While this feature significantly decrease the latency of data transfer, multi-tier stacking...
Phase separation in segmented polymers provides distinct challenges in regard to their chemical reaction kinetics and characterization. Well studied, it has been shown that structure, phase separation and non-covalent interactions are key factors in the design of elastomeric polyurethanes. Specifically, this dissertation is focused on two areas: the synthesis of...
Ross (2015) proposed a recovery theorem which uses prices of contingent claims to recover market’s expectations about underlying asset returns. His work relies on two assumptions. He assumes all uncertainty of the economy follows a finite state irreducible Markov chain and that the pricing kernel is transition independent. We first...
A failure to effectively regulate emotions elicited by a stressful life event contributes to symptoms of psychopathology. This regulatory failure may result from a deficit in executive control. For some individuals, executive control is impaired following stress exposure. Thus, for some individuals, when executive control is needed to regulate emotions...
SIRT3 is a mitochondrial-localized, NAD+-dependent deacetylase, tumor suppressor protein that functions to direct mitochondrial energy sensing and antioxidant proteins, increasing the efficiency of energy utilization, providing a redox balanced environment, and preventing aging-related diseases. One SIRT3 deacetylation target is NADP+-dependent isocitrate dehydrogenase 2 (IDH2), a key Krebs Cycle enzyme that...
Simulation analytics treats stochastic simulation as data analytics for systems that do not yet exist, and extends traditional performance estimation and system optimization to uncovering underlying patterns and the key drivers and dynamics of system behavior by retaining the sample paths generated throughout simulation runs. My dissertation addresses two research...
This dissertation examines the situated and interactional nature of cultural experiences. Drawing on the literature on materiality, place, and space, the study analyzes how the physical and spatial characteristics of art galleries and art museums in Accra, Ghana, and Johannesburg, South Africa, lead people to engage with culture, and derive...
This dissertation focuses on exploring novel light steering and spectral engineering functionalities by flat optics, which includes photonic architectures of flat plasmonic metasurfaces, nanoparticle arrays, and thin film coatings. We have designed, fabricated and characterized different plasmonic metasurfaces (trapezoid-shaped antennas, nanorings/nanowires, etc.), nanoparticle arrays (single-layered or multilayered nanocubes and nanodisks),...
This dissertation develops a theory of rebel-state engagement during armed conflict that links these varied interactions to processes of institutional change in the state in which they unfold. Conventional wisdom portrays conflict zones as lacking institutions or pitting armed groups and states as competitors. Yet, this dissertation finds that rebels...
Optical quantum communication (QC) has the potential to address the demands of high-speed and maximally-secure communication. In optical QC, information is encoded onto the state of photons. By using entangled photonic states, QC protocols can support fundamentally secure communication for applications which cannot use classical information. To increase the information...
Web users suffer from security and privacy threats. According to Symantec, 430 million new unique pieces of malware have been discovered in 2015, and over half a billion personal records were stolen or lost in the same year. Defense mechanisms can be classified as reactive approach and proactive approach. Reactive...
Over the past two decades, optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been successfully applied to various fields of biomedical researching and clinical studies, including cardiology, urology, dermatology, dentistry, oncology, and most successfully, ophthalmology. This dissertation seeks to extend the current OCT practice, which is still largely morphology-based, into a new dimension,...
In today's marketplace, consumers purchase a basket of goods of different categories from many different types of retail stores. While most marketing literature focuses on studying a single retail chain or a single category, my dissertation considers consumers' collective basket purchases across different retail formats. By doing so, my dissertation...
This dissertation asks how deepening global inequalities reshape the ways families negotiate “economic moralities,” normative expectations of material obligation and entitlement. It focuses on the families of middle class migrants: French-educated Senegalese urbanites whose diplomas no longer protect them from discrimination in Paris but who, among Africans, are still construed...
How do independent artists use social media and e-commerce websites to support their creative businesses? This dissertation examines independent artists’ participation in the peer economy for selling handmade goods, a hybrid economy that combines sharing content on social media and selling goods on e-commerce platforms. While a multidisciplinary array of...
Bacterial gene expression requires numerous steps that are energetically costly and tightly regulated. Following transcription of messenger-RNA, the translation of mRNA into protein is further regulated by a variety of sequence features both within and upstream of coding sequences. Collectively, these features contribute to the control of translation initiation, elongation,...
Seismic waves from large-magnitude earthquakes sometime trigger small secondary earthquakes or tectonic tremor. These secondary signals are important to observe and study because their occurrence reflects on the state of stress of the subsurface, which is important for hazard assessment. Here we first report on how individual inspection by a...
Ecological restoration is vital to the conservation of biodiversity and provision of ecosystem services in a changing world. Biodiversity is often a goal of restoration, and species to be planted for restoration are often selected based on diversity objectives. But species are not independent; they are related to one another...