The average and local glass transition temperatures (Tgs) and physical aging behavior of various confined polymers were studied in order to gain an understanding of these surface/interface effects and their propagation into the polymer. Using a novel multilayer/fluorescence method, the Tgs of layers at the free surface, substrate-polymer interface, and...
The early transition metal oxide fluoride molecular anions with the general formula [MOxF6-x]n- with x = 1 for M = V5+, Nb5+, Ta5+ (n = 2) and x = 2 for M = Mo6+, W6+ (n = 2) feature distorted octahedral coordinations, that arise from electronic dπ pπ metal oxide...
Biological fouling of surfaces is problematic for many medical applications because proteins, cells and bacteria can impair the function of devices and lead to catastrophic complications. Numerous strategies exist for reducing fouling in physiological environments; the strategy described in this thesis focuses on the modification of substrates with poly-N-substituted glycine...
Plants, animals, and yeast have the capacity to produce and accumulate neutral lipids, sterol esters and triacylglycerol (TAG). However, their accumulation and the genes underlying their synthesis in intracellular microorganisms are poorly understood.
Plasmodium falciparum is a parasitic protozoan that causes the most virulent form of human malaria. During erythrocytic...
Novel materials and nanostructures with superior electro-mechanical properties are emerging in the development of novel devices. Engineering application of these materials requires accurate electro-mechanical characterization, which in turn requires development of novel experimental techniques. This dissertation outlines the investigation of the mechanical and electrical properties of one-dimensional nanomaterials.
One-dimensional nanomaterials...
As Wilfrid Sellars put it, one of the principal aims of philosophy "is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term." In this I think Sellars is right: the discipline is charged with taking a "synoptic...
This dissertation examines the participation of tens of thousands of African-American servicemen in the occupation of Japan and the Korean war. It poses three questions: how were black servicemen incorporated into a postwar military empire; how did they help shape their nation's expanding Asian protectorate; and how did they understand...
In Muslim West Africa, food-producing villages also produced literate scholars. This study examines how such unlikely intellectuals acquired and gave meaning to Islamic knowledge through one village's experience from 1900 to the 1960s. Unlike the colonial sources underlying conventional approaches to West African Islam, libraries and oral sources from Ruumde...
The purpose of this mixed methods study was to learn about the ways that instrumental music teachers in Chicago navigate the urban landscape. The design of the study most closely resembles Creswell and Plano Clark's (2007) two-part Triangulation Convergence Mixed Methods Design, with the addition of an initial exploratory focus...
We consider two problems in low Reynolds-number, interfacial fluid mechanics: the rupture of thin liquid films on chemically patterned solid substrates, and the engulfment of foreign particles by a solidification front progressing through a binary alloy.
First we investigate the stability and rupture of thin liquid films on patterned sub-...