This dissertation analyzes how suburban school districts made sense of and planned to reduce inequality between 2019–2021. Previous literature has found that suburban schools, despite their reputation as the best in the country, are deeply unequal (Lewis and Diamond 2015; Lewis-McCoy 2014). Building on this previous scholarship, I ask: How...
The hippocampus has been identified as a critical structure for supporting spatial memory processes in both humans and animals alike. Many of these processes such as the ability to self-localize in a given environment as well as engage in goal-directed navigation are thought to depend on the location-specific firing of...
The field of materials discovery is undergoing an unprecedented transition from laboratory tocomputer. Behind this transition is the new ability to accurately compute material properties, especially
energetic stability, from first principles with density functional theory (DFT). However,
DFT remains computationally expensive, and DFT-based materials discovery is intractable, especially
in high...
One method of cancer treatment is to thermally ablate (destroy) tumor masses using heat caused by electric current, or Joule heating. This particular modality is called radiofrequency ablation (RFA), due to the use of electric currents in the 100 kHz to 800 kHz frequency range. Computationally, RFA is simulated as...
This dissertation examines how nineteenth century German literature constructed and experimented with an entangled concept of “the environment” based not in (Romantic) philosophical and literary conceptions of nature, but in the theory and science of color perception. As the visual point of interaction between an observer and their surrounding world,...
As sound changes advance across large geographic areas, they progress unevenly across populations. The speakers who lead these changes often share macro-social identities, like place or social class affiliations (e.g. Nesbitt 2018; Wagner et al. 2016). But the features undergoing these macro-level sound changes also hold social meanings related to...
When attached to another species (e.g. a nanoparticle), the sequence specificity of DNA can be repurposed to program interactions between such entities and to direct their formation into ordered structures. The research presented in this thesis aims to push the boundaries of structures that can be made via this approach....
We consider general utility models and information structures of the agents and illustrate when economic conclusions for designing simple mechanisms in classical settings extends for general environments. We show that whether economic conclusions can be generalized depends on the details of the generalizations. For example, in single-item auction, competition and...
Rapid changes in global climate are pushing nations to reduce CO2 emissions and adopt clean energy technologies for renewable energy generation and storage. As wind and solar are implemented worldwide, a commensurate response in energy storage will need to be installed to meet fluctuations in peak energy demands and generation...
This thesis focuses on the application of neural networks to three types of classification tasks, each work with its own chapter. The objective of the first work is to take advantage of deep neural networks in order to make next day crime count predictions in a fine-grain city partition. We...
In this dissertation, we aim to develop efficient algorithms with theoretical guarantees for several data-driven decision making problems. Specifically, we study the data-driven deci- sion making from three different perspectives: statistical learning, nonconvex optimization, and control of stochastic system. This dissertation contains three parts. In the first part, we study...
Understanding associative memory is fundamental for a variety of neurological and neurodegenerative diseases, however, a large proportion of this research has excluded female subjects due to unsubstantiated bias. By including intact females, ovariectomized females and males in the study of associative memory, clear sex differences in acquisition emerged. Female mice...
We study modular forms, Jacobi forms, and hermitian formal Fourier-Jacobi series over imaginary quadratic fields. In the first section, we prove that the ring of classical Jacobi forms of a fixed genus g, varying index m and weight k is generated by theta functions. From this result we show that...
Since Infrared radiation was discovered in 1800s, the research and applications on the infrared regime have been continually developed. The infrared detectors are the key technology in these applications and have been successfully used for medical imaging, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), free-space optical communication, target tracking and object identification...
Nanocarriers as structures with at least one dimension in the nanometer scale are capable of loading small molecule therapeutics that would otherwise have poor bioavailability, non- specific uptake, and off target effects. Polymeric nanocarriers can be modified to tune their chemical and biological behavior to better suit the intended application....
The negative early and late health consequences from exposure to artificial sources of radiation are particularly apparent in victims of radiological emergencies who were diagnosed with cancer, radiation pneumonitis, among other conditions. The renaissance of nuclear energy, increased use of ionizing radiation in the medical field, and nuclear threats from...
Harnessing the metabolic potential of methanotrophic bacteria is a compelling strategy for the bioremediation of environmentally harmful methane gas. Methanotrophs can activate a 105 kcal/mol C-H bond in methane at ambient conditions using metalloenzymes called methane monooxygenases (MMOs). Particulate methane monooxygenase (pMMO) is a copper-dependent, membrane-bound enzyme that is the...
In this thesis, we consider the spherical spin glass models at zero temperature. We first determine the structureof the Parisi measure at zero temperature for the spherical p+s spin glass model. We then
consider the spherical mixed p-spin model and show that for the spherical spin models with
n components,...
Economic growth in contexts of state weakness presents a puzzle. If the state’s provision of property rights is necessary for financial investment and related pro-growth behaviors, then why do we observe private investment and commercial transactions in settings where state institutions are far from reliable property guarantors? This study addresses...
Water vapor condenses into liquid water when it encounters a cold surface. If the surface temperature is sufficiently low, freezing follows the condensation step, and the process is holistically referred to as condensation frosting. Both phase change processes are fundamental to many industries ranging from water harvesting, thermal management, solar...