Given directives such as the UN Global Goals targeting sustainable development, the research presented herein makes but a small contribution to the advancement of alternative energy technologies. Nevertheless, the present work was largely motivated to address specific points of intrigue within the thermoelectrics community. The general principles demonstrated, however, may...
Total synthesis of natural products provides an avenue for investigation of complex chemical scaffolds, not only delivering access to biologically impactful molecules but also lending a deeper understanding of their inherent chemical reactivity. Expansion of reaction methodology, optimization of biological activity, and absolute structural confirmation can all be accomplished via...
In this thesis, we study applications of the theory of perverse sheaves and their enhancements to problems in birational geometry. In the first application, we give positive results towards a conjecture of Batyrev about the nonnegativity of stringy Hodge numbers. In particular, we prove the nonnegativity of $(p,1)$-stringy Hodge numbers...
Cells are often precisely organized into patterns within developing tissues. This precision must emerge from biochemical processes within, and between cells, that are inherently stochastic. I investigated the impact of stochastic gene expression on self-organized pattern formation, focusing on Senseless (Sens), a key target of Wnt and Notch signaling during...
The variation of entropy in a family of dynamical systems is a natural indication of the bifurcations that the family undergoes. In the context of one-dimensional dynamics, Milnor's monotonicity of entropy conjecture (now a theorem of Bruin and van Strien) asserts that for polynomial interval maps with real critical points...
Phenotypic diversity underlies life as we know it–a variety of species, each with different roles, are essential for a fully functioning ecosystem just as a range of different crops is necessary to provide different nutritional value. Even within a single species, individual variation promotes diversity, allowing for adaptation to new...
Approximately 80-90% of individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) develop motor speech impairments, predominantly in the form of voice dysfunction. It is known that the motor symptoms of PD arise from degeneration of the dopamine producing neurons in the substantia nigra and dysregulation of basal ganglia motor pathways. It is also...
Soft matter is the field of science concerning soft and deformable materials: such as liquids, gels, and foams. Active matter is a sub-field of soft matter that considers systems that contain active agents or particles that consume energy for self-propulsion or to exert mechanical stress on the surrounding system. In...
In conventional data federations, a set of data providers each possess an autonomous database and collectively make the union of these databases available for querying by a client from a unified SQL interface. This setting however, provides no guarantees on data privacy or security. With my work, I consider a...
After the Second World War, two states claimed to represent the same nation: “China.” This work examines how the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CPC) competed to represent China and the international consequences of that competition. The CPC’s victory in the Chinese Civil War (1946-1949) led to...