Lubrication is the most means for sliding interface failure prevention because it helps separate two interacting surfaces, reduce asperity contacts and thus extend the working life of the parts. Improving the tribological performance of lubricated interfaces is a challenging work, as several influence factors are involved, such as coating, plasticity,...
Extensive study of nanomaterial chemical and optical properties has enabled their integration into a variety of applications. However, less thoroughly investigated are the heat generation and dissipation processes of nanomaterials following optical excitation. These phenomena are of immense importance as thermal energy can distort a material’s structure, which has profound...
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common non-cutaneous cancer among U.S. men. Lack of effective treatments for advanced disease make it a significant public health concern. However, PCa’s long natural history makes it an excellent target for prevention approaches that reduce overtreatment of indolent disease, treatment related morbidity, and mortality....
This dissertation considers a periodically-forced 1-D Langevin equation that possesses two stable periodic solutions in the absence of noise. We aim at answering the question: is there a most likely noise-induced transition path between these periodic solutions that allows one to identify a preferred phase of the forcing when the...
Global energy demand is increasingly rapidly in today’s modern world with increasing living standards all around the world. As global energy demand rises, energy efficiency has never been more crucial and that the improvement of tribological systems is critical to the progress of the global future. A large part of...
Modeling human language is at the very frontier of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Statistical language models are probabilistic models that assign probabilities to sequences of words. For example, topic models are frequently used text-mining tools to organize a vast set of unstructured documents by exploring their theme structure. More...
This thesis describes a novel demonstration of quantum teleportation, a protocol within the broader field of quantum information science, carried out by an electron transfer reaction within a molecular system. As described in Chapter 1, quantum information science has potential impacts in computation, communication, and cryptography. This field relies on...
Design problems are highly ill-structured, having “ambiguous specifications of goals, no determined solution path, and the need to integrate multiple knowledge domains” (Jonassen, 2000, p. 80). Design problems are generated by stakeholders to meet needs that exist outside of the classroom (Simon, 1973; Jonassen, 2000)—this is in contrast to most...
Semiconductor nanowires, such as group IV and III-V nanowires, shows distinct electrical, optical and mechanical properties from their bulk counterparts due to their nanoscale size and 1-D morphology. For example, the quantum confinement effect modulates the band gap of a semiconductor nanowire when its diameter approaches or below the exciton...
Theoretical investigation of photochemical processes in molecules is a nontrivial task. Ab initio calculations that completely describe such processes are often intractable to perform given today’s hardware. Thus, to gain insight into common areas of interest, such as in transition metal photochemistry and organic photovoltaics, less accurate but more feasible...