Mixing of granular materials is an important engineering process, and a very complex problem. In this thesis, I use granular mixing in a half-full biaxial spherical tumbler (BST), a spherical container that rotates sequentially about two orthogonal axes, to motivate the study of mixing with piecewise isometries (PWIs), a rich...
We argue that a country’s level of wealth inequality can be viewed as a reflection of the quality of its housing rental market. Using the ECB’s Household Finance and Consump- tion Survey (HFCS), we document that the aggregate homeownership rate and various measures of wealth inequality are negatively correlated across...
Lattice models of fermions, bosons, and spins have long served to elucidate the essential physics of quantum phase transitions in a variety of systems. Generalizing such models to incorporate driving and dissipation has opened new vistas to investigate nonequilibrium phenomena and dissipative phase transitions in interacting many-body systems. Circuit- QED...
The properties of crystalline materials are controlled by their composition and by their structure, however, the structure of a crystal is only partly controlled by its composition. Development of specifically directed inorganic syntheses will require an understanding of the dynamics of crystal phase forming processes, especially those processes involved in...
This dissertation presents some development of the single molecular ion precision spectroscopy experiment including construction of the project, spectroscopy state readout, and production of ultracold molecules. Such molecular ion spectroscopy aims at testing fundamental physics such as probing the time variation of electron-proton mass ratio.
The theories and characterization of...
I present research in systems of biomedical relevance consisting of agents near or com- prising surfaces using computational approaches. The research topics include formation of bacterial biofilms, behavior of charged species near stacked, like-charged lamellae, and the the conformational behavior of lamellae with strong self-attraction.
In chapter 2, I present...
When we speak, we communicate not only with the words we choose, but also with the patterns of sound we create. As auditory experts, musicians are especially adept at making sense of sound, and accumulating research reveals that this extends to their processing of speech and other communication signals. Much...
How do households confront insecurity? This dissertation is a study of how households navigate insecurity as observed through struggles with homeownership and foreclosure. I discuss insecurity as a multi-dimensional experience that puts important resources at risk of loss and reaches into many areas of family life, including health, wealth, food,...
In the past few decades, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research has shown that nouns and verbs are processed differently in cognitively healthy individuals, and can be selectively impaired in aphasic individuals. However, this noun-verb dichotomy is poorly understood. This dissertation investigated cognitive and neural distinctions between nouns and verbs by studying...
The microwave, optical, and electro-optic properties of epitaxial barium titanate thin films grown on (100) MgO substrates and photonic crystal electro-optic modulators fabricated on these films were investigated to demonstrate the applicability of these devices for telecommunication and data networks. The electrical and electro-optical properties were characterized up to modulation...