When first-year students begin college they are thrown into a new environment where they are expected to simultaneously perform academically, form new relationships, and become independent. Many students struggle with this transition; experiences of stress, anxiety, and depression are common. For the majority of residential college students this is their...
Circulating tumor cell (CTC) clusters mediate metastasis at a higher efficiency compared to single cells and are associated with lower overall survival in breast cancer. However, the cellular heterogeneity and molecular mechanisms underlying CTC cluster formation and metastasis have yet to be fully elucidated. Combining single-cell RNA sequencing and flow...
This dissertation consists of three chapters on topics in economic theory. In Chapter 1, "Subjective Complexity Under Uncertainty", I propose and axiomatize a model of choice under uncertainty in which the size of the partition with respect to which an act is measurable arises endogenously as a measure of subjective...
“Los Grans Mals: Disasters and Civic Life in the Late Medieval Midi” examines the many catastrophes that struck the cities of Marseille and Montpellier during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. During this era, southern Europe witnessed increasingly frequent episodes of natural disasters due in part to the Little Ice...
Visualization is a powerful tool to help people better communicate and understand data. But the perception and interpretation of data is riddled with bias. Data visualizations are ambiguous objects such that different people viewing the same visualization can come to different conclusions. The ambiguity is likely associated with people's perceptual...
Prions are self-perpetuating, alternative protein conformations associated with neurological diseases and normal cellular functions. Saccharomyces cerevisiae contains many endogenous prions – providing a powerful system to study prionization. Previously, the Li Lab demonstrated that Swi1, a component of the SWI/SNF chromatin-remodeling complex, can form the prion [SWI+]. A small region,...
This dissertation explores cognitive and action errors that occur in communication networks. I leverage theories on organizational errors and social networks to develop a novel, conceptual, and empirically testable framework to understand how individuals make errors when using their networks to share information. Here, I argue that information sharing is...
Unrestrained urban growth combined with the increase in the intensity and frequency of precipitation events, due to climate change, has become a major challenge for urban green spaces. Urban sprawl increases ecosystem degradation and the vulnerability of cities to floods as a result of excess stormwater runoff and non-point source...
Using the Connected Learning framework as a lens to frame my research inquiry, this dissertation explores the potential of Hip-Hop songwriting and recording practices as a new form of music education in elementary schools. Using data from three years of ethnographic study I have collected while working as a youth...
This dissertation is motivated by the decision process of the supply chain team of a major furniture retailer that delivers its products at the customer's home. In retail supply chains for companies offering home delivery services, demand surges are observed at the store level, which translate to a high volume...