The study of digital inequality has advanced our understanding of how existing socioeconomic disadvantage – such as by income, education, age, gender, and race – translates into disadvantage in the digital realm. Yet, our understanding of the relationships between the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and broader processes...
Tooth enamel, the outermost layer of human teeth, is a complex, hierarchically structured biocomposite. The details of this structure are important in multiple human health contexts, from understanding the progression of dental caries (tooth decay) to understanding the process of amelogenesis (enamel formation) and related developmental defects.While much is known...
Imagine someone who was raised to hold a number of irrational and objectionable beliefs. There seems to be an important sense in which they lack control over these beliefs, and so we might think they are not responsible for them. But many of our beliefs are like this: they are...
Heart failure due to genetic cardiomyopathy is associated with a range of phenotypic expression. The studies in this body of work interrogated the role of noncoding variation in modifying cardiomyopathy phenotypes. We used cap analysis of gene expression in heathy and failed left ventricles to define the regulatory environment of...
The U.S. population is rapidly changing with recent projections showing that soon whites will no longer be the majority. This information, when shown to white Americans, can generate a sense of threat. Across the three studies of this dissertation, I frame this group threat (i.e., a change in the demographic...
Pharmaceutical companies pay more than $2 billion to physicians every year. Most of these payments are for food and beverage, speaking, honoraria, consulting, and travel and lodging, which are termed “general payments.” These payments have come under increased scrutiny as critics of pharmaceutical promotion argue that they influence prescribing in...
Lower-SES (socioeconomic status) couples tend to face more challenges in their relationships. Relative to higher-SES couples, they are less likely to marry, more likely to divorce, and less satisfied with their relationships—but they do not value their romantic relationships any less. Drawing on risk regulation theory and theories of social...
This dissertation focuses on the development of quantitative approaches for characterizing endogenous signaling pathways and designing new pathways in mammalian cells. I demonstrate how mathematical descriptions that are formulated to explain gene expression patterns can also serve as a powerful springboard for deeper analyses into the properties and functions of...
This dissertation explores how American television portrayed canonical European classical music in the Cold War era. I analyze televisual negotiations of music-cultural hierarchies to complicate common narratives about the postwar decades as a peak moment of polarity between “high” and “low” culture, and between ideologies of consensus and rebellion. Drawing...
The world is awash in data and much of artificial intelligence focuses on learning models of the underlying structure in this data or the mechanisms governing its evolution. Both neural and symbolic models have weaknesses that make these models sub-optimal from a use perspective. Much of this data is in...