Prostate cancer is the most common cause of cancer among men in the United States, and the second most common cause of cancer-related death, accounting for significant morbidity and mortality. This dissertation describes the genomic landscape of prostate cancer from multiple angles to identify mechanisms of disease heterogeneity amongst patients....
Current technologies capable of establishing bioresorbable orthopedic fixation devices and stents have broad utility for biomedical applications to improve constructive tissue remodeling. Recent studies and investigations on bioresorbable conductors, semiconductors, dielectrics, and polymer substrates offer a promising opportunity to propel the existing non-degradable bioelectronic devices to the promising bioresorbable electronics,...
Cell-based therapies are an exciting frontier in medicine. This field is built on a simple premise—cells can be engineered to recognize and treat various human diseases. The paradigm of cell-based therapy uses biosensors to interrogate a cell’s environment and distinguish disease from health, intracellular signaling pathways and genetic circuitry to...
Electrochemical cell devices are increasingly being sought for energy conversion and storage applications due to their high efficiencies and their potential for operating free of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Solid Acid Electrochemical Cells (SAECs), which most commonly employ CsH2PO4 (CDP) as the electrolyte component, are uniquely suited to meet the...
Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) is an essential mediator of senescence and a potential therapeutic target for preventing aging-related pathologies. Cellular Senescence is associated with organismal aging and related pathologies. In our study, we investigate the efficacies of PAI-1 inhibitors in both in vitro and in vivo models of homocysteine...
This dissertation examines how China’s involvement in transnational LGBTQ activism, adaptation and innovation of queer media technologies, and the global pink economy have influenced queer men’s understandings of selfhood, sexual desires, and the relationships among queer subjects. It is based on extensive fieldwork in Beijing and digital ethnography on China’s...
Assistive robotics focuses on human-robot systems that provide physical support and assistance to the elderly and people with motor-impairments. While assistive machines, such as the powered wheelchair, can significantly enhance the functional independence of individuals, many users are challenged by their direct operation, the manner in which such systems are...
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,...
This dissertation aims to redefine the concept of pain as it appears in literary studies and demonstrate how the new definition garners insight into the interwovenness of literature and physiology in the mid-eighteenth century. It challenges the claim that pain is opposed to language by adopting a new materialist concept...
Since their introduction nearly a century ago, protein vaccines and therapeutics have revolutionized our ability to prevent and treat human disease. However, existing production processes for biopharmaceuticals are technically complex and rely on living cells, which necessitates highly centralized manufacturing in large-scale production facilities, specialized equipment, and cold-chain distribution. With...
Human skin oils are significant scavengers of atmospheric oxidants in occupied indoor environments. Many techniques used to study gas-phase transformations of surface films indoors have been limited to off-line bulk analysis, although more surface-selective methodologies are emerging. Here, we present a multi-prong analytical approach to characterizing skin oil ozonolysis. Skin...
This dissertation explores black litigation strategies, black legal culture, and the effect of black litigation on civil law. Not only did African Americans sue white southerners and white-owned companies for white-on-black violence under Jim Crow, they shared their collective legal knowledge through a network of black newspapers and contributed to...
Stories and fantasy represent an important aspect of consumer life and comprise a huge marketing enterprise within consumer entertainment. Each year, upwards of $82 billion is spent on books, games, and other fantasy industries in the United States alone. Likewise, fantasy has important implications for consumers’ sense of identity. In...
With growing system complexity and closer cyber-physical interaction, there are stronger needs for cyber-physical systems to adapt to the dynamic environment and improve their runtime performance. However, especially for safety-critical systems, the ability of such adaptation and improvement is often restricted by multiple factors, such as limited resources, stringent timing...
Every object emits radiation depending of their temperature. Objects between 300K to 100K emit radiation in the infrared range (1-12µm). These radiations cannot be seen by the human eyes. Infrared detectors find applications in many aspects of life, from night vision and target tracking for homeland security and defense, to...
Does the Russian Federation in the Putin-Medvedev era follow a grand strategy, and if so, what does it look like, and how can we discern the making of Russian grand strategy? However, Russian grand strategy is neither formally codified nor readily accessible, and it remains opaque at best. In this...
In the late Middle Ages, the Italian word fama had a wide semantic range that encompassed such vitally important topics as reputation, honor, community memory, and trustworthiness. In this dissertation, I examine how fama manifested within sodomy prosecutions in late medieval Italy and what insights such prosecutions can give into...
The predominant, categorical system used to classify and diagnose psychiatric disorders suffers from several critical scientific limitations, including extensive comorbidity, unreliability, and disorder heterogeneity. As such, clinical psychological scientists are increasingly moving away from this traditional, categorical system, and toward empirically-based, dimensional, and transdiagnostic alternatives such as the Hierarchical Taxonomy...
Episodic memory provides a means by which we are able to reflect on the past, make decisions about the future, and form a learned identity. Even subtle changes to our memory can have a detrimental impact on our daily lives. Memory declines as we age, and clinically salient impairment is...
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, hundreds of Venetian women began musical training in childhood to become professional musicians, known as figlie di coro (daughters of the choir), in the four charitable Ospedali Maggiori. These women overcame childhood poverty and abandonment to awe prestigious guests with their skills and even...