A fundamental materials science question is “why and how will this material form?” The experimental,computation, and time resources necessary to answer this question consume significant resources due to the
predominantly trial-and-error based approaches common in materials research. This dissertation reintroduces
a number of fundamental thermodynamics-based tools for the study of...
Understanding organization of soft materials on mesoscopic and nanoscopic scales is importantfor materials design. In this regard, non-van der Waals interactions such as hydrogen
bonding and electrostatic interactions offer great opportunities due to the richness and diversity
in morphological structures they produce. The primary reason for this is that these...
Fausto Romitelli (1963-2004), one of the most inventive composers of his generation, created a musical language that draws inspiration from a multifaceted array of sources, including the technological landscape of daily life, the visual arts, poetry, literature, and philosophy. Furthermore, from early in his career, Romitelli incorporated elements in his...
Desmosomal cadherins are a recent evolutionary innovation that make up the adhesive core of highly specialized intercellular junctions called desmosomes. Desmosomal cadherins, desmogleins and desmocollins, are related to the classical cadherins but their cytoplasmic domains are tailored for anchoring intermediate filaments instead of actin to sites of cell-cell adhesion. The...
Many computing technologies are primarily useful because of the existence of some set of data created by people, intentionally in some cases and unintentionally in others. For instance, technologies like search engines, recommender systems, classifiers, and language models are all dependent on digital records of things people have said, done,...
“Pornographic Bodies: Constructing Corporeality in Adult Film” explores how the body is theorized within pornography through issues of materiality, spacing, form, libidinal organization, and subject/object relations. This dissertation challenges the way existing porn studies scholarship has taken body to be a self-evident vessel containing the psychosexual dynamics of the performers...
To better prepare for earthquakes, we need to know how large they will be, how strong the shaking will be, and how often they will occur. To answer these questions, seismologists look to past earthquakes to better understand future hazards. Earthquakes, however, are complex physical phenomena that occur on timescales...
Since the mid-20th century, urbanization has altered the physical landscape and brought social, economic and lifestyle changes to populations worldwide. In the Global South, this has dramatically affected environmental conditions of settlements, communities, and households, with both positive and negative consequences for population health. The objective of this dissertation is...
DNA is extremely versatile and powerful, both as a construct in biological applications and as a ligand in materials design due to the fact that its recognition properties can be programmed through sequence and length. Spherical nucleic acids (SNAs), nanoparticles surrounded by a dense shell of DNA or RNA, are...
Since its introduction as an artist’s pigment in the earth 20th century, titanium white has become one of the most common white pigments. The early formulations of titanium white contained anatase, which has been studied to facilitate degradation of oil paint under UV illumination. Around the 1940s production shifted to...