Caves are accessible windows into the shallow subsurface, serving as transitional ecosystems between the photosynthesis-dependent surface and the deeper subsurface. Without a source of solar energy to ultimately power carbon (C) fixation (photolithoautotrophy), cave ecosystems are either reliant on surface-derived nutrients, recovering reducing power from the microbial oxidation of redox-sensitive...
Cancer is a complex and heterogeneous disease characterized by aberrant gene regulation. Gene regulation is fundamentally orchestrated by the 3D genome organization which involves chromatin looping, compartmentalization, and the formation of topologically associating domains (TADs). Structural variations (SVs), such as genomic rearrangements, deletions, inversions, and duplications, are commonly observed in...
In shared workspaces users have real-time access to others’ actions, allowing greater access to potentially informative cues. However, there has been little exploration about what impact the ability to view each other’s work in real time has on group members’ perception of both each other and their understanding of the...
Directional freeze-casting is a porous materials fabrication technique that is used to create materials with complex, three-dimensional pore structures. Particle suspensions are solidified under a thermal gradient, promoting anisotropic growth of dendrites and incorporation of particles within interdendritic space. A fully-solidified directional freeze-cast structure is composed of dendrites that are...
This dissertation uses the case of Colombia to examine the causes and reproductive mechanisms of civil wars that last more than fifty years, which I call perpetual civil wars. It draws on network analysis of violent events and political claims, content analysis of official archival documents and historical records of...
Swallowing impairment or dysphagia has many possible causes with severe sequelae. One major mediator of the relationship between causes and sequelae is the physiologic impairment of the swallowing mechanism. Assessing the physiology of swallowing impairment is of great importance so that treatment can target physiology to mitigate sequelae. The assessment...
Recent experiments in participatory democracy, such as Iceland’s 2013 Constitutional Reform process to Chicago’s annual participatory budgeting process, have empowered members of the public to directly make policy decisions. These new participatory democratic institutions depend on citizens having capacity to organize new institutions and the capacity to participate in them....
In recent years, the understanding and identification of quantum materials supporting non-trivial band topology has progressed rapidly. This progress has been motivated in part by the potential application of topological quantum materials in quantum computers, sensors, and other next-generation devices. Despite this progress, the computation of bulk topological invariants in...
This dissertation focuses on quantifying protein folding stability determinants and presenting initial experiments that can guide the development of a novel assay that identifies cell-penetrating miniproteins. First, despite over a century of scholarship on protein folding stability, applying this knowledge to design proteins computationally remains limited. Usually, protein designers generate...
This dissertation investigates how scope relations are constructed and evaluated during real-time human sentence processing. Theoretical approaches to processing scope relations exist in a multi-dimensional space where trade-offs are made around how quickly scope relations can be computed, how many mistakes are made in computing scope relations, and how many...