Global energy demand is increasingly rapidly in today’s modern world with increasing living standards all around the world. As global energy demand rises, energy efficiency has never been more crucial and that the improvement of tribological systems is critical to the progress of the global future. A large part of...
Modeling human language is at the very frontier of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Statistical language models are probabilistic models that assign probabilities to sequences of words. For example, topic models are frequently used text-mining tools to organize a vast set of unstructured documents by exploring their theme structure. More...
This thesis describes a novel demonstration of quantum teleportation, a protocol within the broader field of quantum information science, carried out by an electron transfer reaction within a molecular system. As described in Chapter 1, quantum information science has potential impacts in computation, communication, and cryptography. This field relies on...
Design problems are highly ill-structured, having “ambiguous specifications of goals, no determined solution path, and the need to integrate multiple knowledge domains” (Jonassen, 2000, p. 80). Design problems are generated by stakeholders to meet needs that exist outside of the classroom (Simon, 1973; Jonassen, 2000)—this is in contrast to most...
Semiconductor nanowires, such as group IV and III-V nanowires, shows distinct electrical, optical and mechanical properties from their bulk counterparts due to their nanoscale size and 1-D morphology. For example, the quantum confinement effect modulates the band gap of a semiconductor nanowire when its diameter approaches or below the exciton...
Theoretical investigation of photochemical processes in molecules is a nontrivial task. Ab initio calculations that completely describe such processes are often intractable to perform given today’s hardware. Thus, to gain insight into common areas of interest, such as in transition metal photochemistry and organic photovoltaics, less accurate but more feasible...
Etching flourished as a printmaking medium in Paris during the Second Empire and early Third Republic, the precise timeframe of the city’s drastic transformation due to the state-authorized phase of urban renewal implemented under the reign of Napoléon III by his prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. This study...
We address the problem of efficient maintenance of the answer to a new type of query: Continuous Maximizing Range-Sum (Co-MaxRS) for moving objects trajectories. The traditional static/spatial MaxRS problem finds a location for placing the centroid of a given (axes-parallel) rectangle $R$ so that the sum of the weights of...
In three empirical chapters, this dissertation examines the field of sustainability over time, specifically uncovering the processes by which contentious interactions between movements and organizations can shift to the development of shared meaning and the creation of new organizational positions. The dissertation utilizes the analyses strategies of text analysis, field...
This dissertation uses the lens of sociomateriality to examine two cases of innovative, technology-mediated civic learning programs, a U.S. Government class in a suburban high school that engages students in a simulation of the legislative process, and an English Language Arts unit in an urban public school in which students...
Celebrity, reputation, and identity were complex issues for nineteenth-century British actresses. This dissertation examines how actresses responded to, integrated, and defied gender norms and social structures as they performed “authentic” identities for consuming publics. I investigate how actresses participated in charity events and bazaars, autobiographical writing, and advertising campaigns in...
Regulations often impose quality restrictions on firms, which in turn can influence prices and welfare in a theoretically ambiguous manner. To study such quality restrictions, my coauthor and I examine the Wright Amendment by analyzing its full repeal in 2014 as a natural experiment, and the analysis is documented in...
Cognitive impairment is a significant public health concern as the United States (US) population continues to age at unprecedented rates. It is well established that older adults are more likely to have higher rates of morbidity and mortality, in addition to greater healthcare utilization and costs. A parallel concern is...
Polymer nanocomposites have attracted great interest in recent years because of their potential as tailored materials with enhanced properties. Recent experiments have shown that polymer nanocomposites are able to achieve significant improvement in dielectrical, thermal, mechanical and other physical properties compared with their parent polymer systems. More importantly, these outstanding...
Hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) channels are non-selective cation channels expressed in the brain and heart where they exert control over many diverse physiological properties. In the hippocampus, HCN channels are enriched in a dendritic gradient within CA1 pyramidal cells where they reduce dendritic integration and dampen neuronal excitability. HCN channels...
The vaudeville remains an oft-overlooked genre of French song that was popularized by Paris’s fairground theaters and street singers on the Pont Neuf. Many histories of French music point to the middle of the eighteenth century as the period when the vaudeville began its rapid disappearance from the city’s musical...
Prior studies about restatements generally examine outcomes under assumed auditor responsibility. Surprisingly, however, about 20% of the restatements obtained from Audit Analytics correspond to cases where the current auditor was not engaged during the misstatement period. I refer to these cases as uninvolved. The first chapter examines current literature findings...
Decision making is an essential and indispensable element in everyday life. It is posited that parallel, distinct systems subserving deliberative, goal-directed control and automatic, habitual control underlie decision making. Computational accounts suggest that model-based and model-free learning strategies give rise to these two systems respectively. The model-based system is a...
For years, neuroscientists have strived to understand memory consolidation, where salient memories are sorted and organized into distributed cortical networks for long-term storage. A large body of sleep research suggests that slow-wave sleep is an optimal opportunity for memory consolidation, and that consolidation is driven, at least in part, by...
This thesis deals with modeling long-term deformation and failure of concrete and shale structures. First concrete structures are studied. For concrete structures, design lifetime of over a hundred years is required. Shrinkage, swelling, creep and Alkali-silica reaction are significant parts of the long-term deformation of concrete and are studied here....