Nature has been evolving innovative solutions to complex design challenges for billions of years, the success of which is evidenced by the myriad of life-sustaining systems that operate with unparalleled simplicity, efficiency, and durability. Biomimetic researchers derive inspiration from principles underlying natural phenomena to solve design challenges. This work is...
Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. While many therapies have been used to treat vascular disease symptomatically, gene therapy offers a means of treating the molecular dysfunctions driving disease pathogenesis. Unfortunately, gene therapy has achieved only modest therapeutic success in clinical trials due to a...
This dissertation traces the meaning and scope of early modern complaint poetry. I argue that what I understand as a secular "poetics of dissatisfaction" arose to fill the void left when religious auricular confession was no longer an institutionalized practice, and that this mode of literary expression was itself shaped...
Over the past decade and a half, there has been considerable interest in the effect confinement and interfaces have on the properties of glass forming materials. With the emergence of nanotechnology, some glass formers, in particular polymeric glass formers, will be used at increasingly smaller length scales. An understanding of...
When considering his pioneering and innovative role in broadening the tonal palette of the piano, as well as his tireless efforts to promote his own and other composers’ music, it is not surprising that a large percentage of Franz Liszt’s compositional output for that instrument is made up of transcriptions....
Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are fabricated and characterized on anodes modified by a variety of surface treatments. OLED performance response is correlated to the treatment conditions with current-voltage (I-V) measurements and impedance spectroscopy. Small-scale OLED arrays are fabricated using a novel shadow mask approach and are characterized with electrical...
Separation of DNA molecules by electrophoresis through entangled polymer solutions continues to be an important tool for genetic analysis, especially Sanger-based DNA sequencing. Separations of DNA on microfluidic devices are much more efficient than in capillary electrophoresis (CE) systems, such that the implementation of DNA sequencing onto microchips promises to...
This dissertation explores the factors that influence the creation and interpretation of novel denominal verbs in English. Of particular focus is the potential influence of one factor, termed here the Semantic Category Distribution Effect. The Semantic Category Distribution Effect involves the type frequency distribution of existing forms of a given...
The last two decades in nineteenth-century West Africa witnessed a two-fold movement, namely the territorial expansion of French colonial empire and the first attempts to extend biomedicine through mass vaccination to control smallpox epidemics. This study provides both a deep history and conceptual framework to analyze the relationship between the...
Chapter 1 describes the homopolymerization of styrene and the copolymerization of ethylene and styrenic comonomers mediated by the single-site bimetallic "constrained geometry catalysts" (CGCs), (µ-CH2CH2-3,3'){(η5-indenyl)[1-Me2Si(tBuN)](TiMe2)}2 [EBICGC(TiMe2)2; Ti2], (µ-CH2CH2-3,3'){(η5-indenyl)[1-Me2Si(tBuN)](ZrMe2)}2 [EBICGC(ZrMe2)2; Zr2], (µ-CH2-3,3'){(η5-indenyl)[1-Me2Si(tBuN)](TiMe2)}2 [MBICGC(TiMe2)2; C1-Ti2], and (µ-CH2-3,3'){(η5-indenyl)[1-Me2Si(tBuN)](ZrMe2)}2 [MBICGC(ZrMe2)2; C1-Zr2], in combination with the borate activator/cocatalyst Ph3C+B(C6F5)4- (B1). Under identical styrene homopolymerization conditions,...