Economic development is a complex and multi-faceted process. Among its many causes, two are particularly consequential: government and technology. By shaping the landscape of economic incentives, they impact how agents interact, invest, and innovate, which in turn affects the creation of wealth. In this dissertation I explore how this interaction...
Commercial agriculture and industrial manufacturing have contaminated freshwater sources with persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, and radioactive species. Effective mitigation of this pollution is paramount to safeguarding human health, animal and aquatic life, and the environment. Conventional adsorbents such as activated carbon, metal oxides, resins, and polymers attain moderate to...
Advancements in the understanding and synthesis of transition metal compounds have allowed materials engineers to design functional materials with a range of properties, such as ferroelectricity, non-linear optical activity, colossal magnetoresistance, and superconductivity. Conventional routes to tune and design functional materials includes chemical cation substitution and heterostructuring of oxide thin...
In this dissertation I explore the applications and test the limitations of surface haptics technology in producing tactile experiences akin to those encountered in the real world. The goal of this work is to build intuition around physical aspects of touch that contribute to perception of tactile textures in...
This dissertation is about the environment, inequality, and ways of being in the world. Water is necessary for biophysical existence, but also holds symbolic and ideological power. In ancient Maya ontologies, water was a powerful social force in the landscape, necessary for both bodily functions and cosmological connections. In some...
Astrocytes are the most abundant cell type in the brain, yet the mechanisms involved in astrocyte differentiation and the level of astrocyte heterogeneity in the CNS, particularly in the human cortex, is largely unknown due to the lack of subtype-specific astrocyte markers and inaccessibility of human brain tissue. Here we...
Location-aware technologies, such as personal navigation applications, location-based AR games, and artificial intelligence systems that learn from data about places, increasingly mediate our understanding of and interactions with the world. However, a number of risks associated with location-aware technologies have emerged, jeopardizing the welfare of its users. This dissertation seeks...
If life exists on Mars, it likely resides in a deep subsurface environment. The Martian rocky subsurface is a primary target for the search for extraterrestrial life because it offers a stable habitat for microbial life. On Earth, the continental subsurface is a key astrobiological analog for understanding what properties...
This dissertation investigates the nature of the interface between morphosyntax and cognition. My goal is to connect formal semantic theories of meaning with theories of cognition, drawing on the initial hypothesis that the interface between language and cognition is transparent. I look at different forms of adjectival comparatives -- positive...
This dissertation explores the fundamental science of flexoelectricity and its implications using a combined experimental and theoretical approach. I begin by introducing the flexoelectric effect and formalizing the basics of strain gradients, polarization, and flexoelectric coefficients. Next, I describe the development of a flexoelectric characterization system based upon three-point bending...