Policymakers and public entities work to make decisions that benefit society. Their choices, though, do not go into effect in a vacuum. Instead, the benefit they provide relies on the underlying consumer behavior that drives responses to those choices. This dissertation studies three different settings in which either policy is...
Ordered arrays of metallic nanoparticles (NPs) are a promising platform for technological applications and fundamental investigations due to their ability to excite surface lattice resonances (SLRs). SLRs can support extremely high local electric fields that have been used to realize exotic physical phenomena. The open cavity architecture lends itself to...
Guided by under-studied archival documents, including public-health and pharmaceutical advertisements, as well as contemporaneous visual art and performance pieces by queer artists of color, this dissertation analyses the critical and evolving role that aesthetics have played in combatting HIV/AIDS since the early days of the pandemic. Drawing on methods and...
The last decade has witnessed a rapid transformation in our understanding of the structure of chromatin, the nuclear complex of DNA and its structural proteins. While, barring mutations, the DNA sequence in each cell of the human body is the same, it is the structure of the chromatin complex that...
On 14 January 2017, President Donald J. Trump described the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as obsolete. During the first six months of his administration, President Trump discussed not honoring Article 5 commitments for NATO members who had not met the financial responsibilities outlined in the 2014 Wales Summit. His...
Regulatory RNAs are found throughout nature controlling critical cellular processes and enabling cells to sense and respond to their environment. In order to provide genetic regulation, these RNAs can selectively bind to target molecules, proteins, and invading pathogens, all while modulating gene expression on both the transcriptional and translational level....
This dissertation consists of three essays on spatially differentiated markets. Generally, I explore how firms and consumers behave in such markets using structural modeling, causal inference and machine learning techniques, as well as high-resolution spatial data. In the first chapter, I study the efficiency of firm location configurations in the...
Recent discoveries in vitamin D research indicate that vitamin D is a necessary component to several organs and tissues that extends beyond bone formation Furthermore, recent research indicates that vitamin D deficiency is rampant across the globe. Historically, anthropological research has focused on the adaptive significance of skin color to...
From cyber theft of personal financial information to Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks, nowadays endpoint devices suffer from various intrusions which cause inestimable property and privacy loss. To protect the security on endpoints, endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems have been developed to serve as the powerful solution against those...
The Unquenchable Fire examines how the United States outsourced the work and costs of imperialism through arms exports after the Vietnam War. As wartime contracts disappeared and government officials confronted new limits to interventionism, a devastating recession pushed defense contractors abroad in the late 1960s and 1970s. While arms makers...