“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...
Computational material engineering (CME) has increased the pace of material development many folds in recent years by taking advantage of computational tools such as using simulations as replacement to experiments, and building complicated processing-structure-property relationships using advanced machine learning tools. The importance of CME is underscored by new computation-based design...
We consider constant scalar curvature K ̈ahler metrics on a smooth minimal model of general type in a neighborhood of the canonical class, which is the perturbation of the canonical class by a fixed K ̈ahler metric. We show that sequences of such metrics converge smoothly on compact subsets away...
In this thesis, I explore the formation and evolution of neutron stars and millisecondpulsar populations in globular clusters using N-body simulations. In particular, I examine how the number of millisecond pulsars and the pulsar properties, including binary
properties and different pulsar types, depend on the dynamical cluster environment. I
demonstrate...
Wireless power strategies are critical to system level implementation of bio-integrated devices. To achieve mechanically robust, manufacturable systems, batteries are often integrated as an on-board power source to support sensing, wireless communication and signal conditioning. Unfortunately, most sources of battery power use hazardous and environmentally harmful materials, which frustrate incorporation...
Cancer remains a leading cause of death worldwide, necessitating continued study to explore and unravel its complex etiology. For example, there has been a shift of focus in cancer treatment from surgery and radiotherapy to targeted chemo- and immunotherapies as we gain more knowledge on the hallmarks of cancer (e.g.,...