With the advances in electronics and communication devices over the last several decades, radio-frequency antennas have miniaturized from externally mounted “rabbit ears” on our grandma’s televisions to devices small enough to be concealed within the body of the cellphone itself, corresponding to the carrier frequencies used from on the order...
This dissertation comprises three essays on industrial organization. In Chapter 1 I study the productivity effects of corporate diversification, where productivity is understood as a measure of sales per input at the productive unit level, and diversified firms are defined as firms that operate in different industries. I develop and...
Knot invariants can be defined using Legendrian isotopy invariants of the knot conormal. There are two types of invariants raised in this way: one is the knot contact differential graded algebra together with augmentations associated to this dga, and the other one is the category of simple sheaves microsupported along...
The U.S. Department of Education’s Ready To Learn (RTL) initiative funds (a) mass media and related community outreach intended to promote school readiness among all children—especially at-risk populations—, and (b) formative and summative research by third party evaluators (Michael Cohen Group, 2012). Today, the majority of American preschoolers have consumed...
Founded in Oakland, California, in 1966 to confront the crisis of anti-black police violence in the Bay Area, the Black Panthers advocated armed struggle against the violences and aggressions of racist American imperialism domestically and internationally. Against interpretations that would deem their image-making to be secondary to their professed political...
Languages provide expressions that allow its users to indicate their source of information for a given claim, which can have an effect of attenuating how committed they appear to be to the truth of their claims (e.g., ame-ga futteiru-sooda ‘It is raining, I hear’). This linguistic notion has been termed...
In March 1977 an exceptionally strong earthquake struck Romania ruled by the communist president and dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and his regime. The policies and actions implemented and undertaken in the days, weeks, and year that followed were forms of aftershocks. The Ceauşescu regime modeled the 1977 earthquake recovery on previous...
Significant deviations in the glass transition temperature (Tg) of nanoconfined polymer films from the bulk have been studied for over twenty years with the focus on high molecular weight (MW), linear polymers. This thesis explores low MW polymers, which represent an important class of materials widely used as coatings, detergents,...
In this dissertation, I discuss the role of neutrino masses and fermion flavor in modern particle physics and present several efforts aimed at exploiting these properties in searches for new physics. In particular, I discuss (1) the effects of neutrino decays on neutrino propagation; (2) the sensitivity of the Deep...
"Migration Forms” centers on the place where migration and Morocco meet to tell two stories. One argues for the centrality of migration to the projects of local, contemporary art making and postcolonial nation building, while the other examines the codification, circulation, and contestation through visual form of this North African...
The African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei is a single-celled eukaryotic protozoan parasite with a single cilium/flagellum. It cycles between its mammalian host (bloodstream cell), in which it scavenges cholesterol, and its tsetse fly host (procyclic cell), in which it both scavenges cholesterol and synthesizes ergosterol. For the first part of the...
People today increasingly first meet others in mediated spaces, undergoing impression formation processes where they view information, gain impressions, and make decisions about others. Previous research examines profile information (e.g. name, photo, about me) that people provide about themselves within this process, finding that people try to craft profiles for...
Metal and bimetallic nanoparticles are of interest and are widely used in various applications because of their unique optical, electronic, and catalytic properties, which differ from those of their bulk counterparts. Better understanding of the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of nanoparticles and their underlying growth mechanisms can serve as a...
Both chapters of this dissertation relate to the aggregate value of corporations in an economy. In particular, they relate to the ratio of the aggregate total market value of corporations over the replacement cost of their recorded capital. The first chapter introduces a model that can explain why this ratio...
An important question in religious and theological ethics concerns the human capacity for moral action, but contemporary Christian theological anthropologies largely theorize the human person in terms of the imago Dei, not moral subjectivity. The following study contributes to this challenge an investigation of human moral agency in the theological...
Mobile traffic is expected to grow tenfold by 2019, topping 24 exabytes of monthly traffic and accounting for nearly half of all Internet traffic. This growth is driven by the increasing number of smart phones and tablets, and the data demands of high bandwidth services enabled by next-generation cellular networks...
The concept of deportation has become increasingly important in recent years, as states more and more turn to removal as a technique of control over population and territory. But within the field of political theory the concept of deportation has not yet received the attention it deserves. This dissertation helps...
Achievement gaps between students from different SES and racial/ethnic backgrounds stubbornly persist despite decades of policy interventions. My dissertation focuses on several unexpected sources of stress and disruption that may be related to the achievement gap: sunlight exposure, a sister’s teen childbearing, and nearby violent crime. I demonstrate that these...
After 9/11 there was a shift in the rhetoric surrounding counter-terrorism. Suddenly, the language of risk, security and prevention was being utilized to justify a new set of global financial regulations headed up by international organizations such as the United Nations, The Financial Action Task Force, and the IMF/World Bank....
Changing economic activities bring significant cultural, epidemiological, and nutritional transitions. These transitions have important and lifelong effects on the health of populations experiencing them. Infancy represents a critical period when rapid growth and metabolic programming occur, making infants particularly vulnerable to long-lasting biological changes due to such transitions. The objective...
This dissertation contains two studies. In Chapter 1, I implement a randomized intervention to measure the effect of reminders for timely payment of credit cards. While I find an 13% reduction in the cost of late payment fees paid, 31% of the users that avoid credit card late payments, incur...
Freeze casting is a technique for processing porous materials that has drawn significant attention for its effectiveness in producing a variety of tailorable pore structures for ceramics, metals, and polymers. With freeze casting, pores are generated based on a solidification process where ice crystals act as a sacrificial template which...
This work is concerned with the Laudau-Ginzburg $A$-model, or the Fukaya-Seidel category, associated with a Laurent polynomial $f: (\C^*)^n \ o \C$. We use constructible sheaves on a real $n$-dimensional torus to describe the Lagrangian thimbles associated to $f$. Then we discuss the application to Homological Mirror Symmetry for smooth...
We often criticize others for beliefs that are dogmatic, biased, or wishful. What, exactly, are we criticizing? Many epistemologists accept that such believing is problematic because it is not appropriately responsive to epistemic reasons. But why care about that? Or, to put it another way, why are epistemic norms authoritative...
This dissertation explores the relationship between institutions of political participation and environmental protection. What is the relationship and how is it constituted? How are participatory institutions put into motion, and how do they operate? What are the effects of these institutions? Are participatory institutions desirable from an environmental perspective and...
The scope of this thesis extends to the study of surface structures and electronic properties in a number of complex oxides. The c(6x2) surface reconstruction on SrTiO3 (001) was solved using a combination of plan view transmission electron microscopy imaging, atomic resolution secondary electron imaging, and density functional theory calculations....
We define multi-indexed Deligne extensions and multi-indexed log-variations of Hodge structures in the category of (filtered) logarithmic D-modules, via the idea of Bernstein– Sato polynomials and Kashiwara–Malgrange filtrations, generalizing the Deligne canonical extensions of flat vector bundles. We also obtain many comparison results with perverse sheaves via the logarithmic de...
FOXA1 is a FKHD family protein that plays pioneering roles in lineage-specific enhancer activation and gene transcription. Through genome-wide location analyses, here we show that FOXA1 expression and occupancy are, in turn, required for the maintenance of these epigenetic signatures, namely DNA hypomethylation and histone 3 lysine 4 methylation. Mechanistically,...
Analytic jurisprudence is the field organized around the “What is law?” question. When most scholars approach the “What is law?” question, they suppose that the goal of such inquiry is to discover, or to accurately represent, the true nature of law. Consequently, these scholars reject the notion that the goal...
This dissertation explores the renewed historical significance of the (geo)political demand to redraft national constitutions in the Americas. Building on previous work, my dissertation constructs a transnational lens to underline the intersectionality of the social struggles that catalyzed the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly process begun in 1999 and the Ecuadorian experience...
How can gatekeeping theory in the circulation of cultural objects, including knowledge production, inform the way cultural sociology investigates the role of the producer and the cultural object as “gated” entities? Using the case of producers working under the rubric of “Contemporary African art” to investigate opportunities and restrictions to...
Dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta are richly innervated by GABAergic neurons. The postsynaptic effects of GABA on SNc DA neurons are mediated by a mixture of GABAA and GABAB receptors. Although activation of GABAA receptors inhibits spike generation, the consequences of GABAB receptor activation are less well...
This dissertation presents a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) study of a novel anisotropic superconductor, HgBa$_{2}$CuO$_{4+\delta}$ (Hg1201) and unconventional strain dependence of the mean free path of silica aerogel. Hg1201 is one of the most structurally simple cuprates known. Therefore, it is an ideal compound in investigation of various phases in...
Increasing energy demand due to rapid growth in population and industrialization along with environmental crisis has led to the search for cheap, environmentally friendly, and nontoxic methods for generation of energy. However, most alternative energy sources such as photovoltaic, biofuels, hydraulic power, wind power, and geothermal energy, are characterized by...
Age-related cognitive deficits are observed in both humans and animals. Yet, the molecular mechanisms underlying these deficits are not yet fully elucidated. In aged animals, a decrease in intrinsic excitability of pyramidal neurons from the CA1 sub-region of hippocampus is believed to contribute to age-related cognitive impairments, but the molecular...
The impacts of many important technologies are limited by the availability of better-performing materials. One factor limiting the ability of engineers to develop better materials is the speed at which they can search through possible formulations and processing schemes. Recently, machine learning algorithms have emerged as a possible route to...
Loss of inhibitory control from descending serotonergic (5-HT) fibers deregulates the excitability of spinal motoneurons and interneurons following spinal cord injury (SCI). Exaggerated synaptic activity triggers long-lasting excitatory postsynaptic potentials (long EPSPs) in hyperexcitable motoneurons to ultimately drive muscle spasms at the chronic stage of SCI. Deep dorsal horn (DDH)...
The polypeptide hormone prolactin (PRL) is increasingly recognized as contributing to the development and progression of human breast cancer. This is supported by epidemiologic studies that found women with high levels of serum PRL are at an increased risk for developing breast cancer. Activation of the prolactin receptor (PRLR) by...
Natural products provide a renewable resource of novel chemical structures with relevance to the pharmaceutical, agricultural and materials industries. Genome sequencing has revealed that these industries currently rely on only a fraction of the number of natural products that exist in nature. Based on the impact that known natural products...
The genetic code, a set of rules by which mRNA codons are translated into the twenty standard amino acids used in protein synthesis, was once thought to be immutable. As we expanded our understanding of molecular biology more variations in this genetic code have been found across the animal kingdom....
As the title suggests, this dissertation is composed of three major topics. The first two are optimization problems focusing on developing effective solution methodologies, while for the last topic we present a large-scale information retrieval system in the domain of sports. With the algorithms and frameworks developed in this dissertation,...
The development of metal-based probes has provided major benefits to understanding basic biological process and clinical outcomes. Metals offer access to geometries that carbon alone cannot attain, along with valuable magnetic, optical, and binding properties. Metals have proven to be particularly useful in advancing molecular imaging, a field that seeks...
Scholars have noted that food marketing significantly impacts the lives of children, influencing what foods they request and consume. However, the impact of food marketing on low-income children has only been explored minimally. This project explores both media-based and in-store food marketing to low-income families, along with potential outcomes of...
Advancements in nanotechnology have led to the production of devices with components with sub-100 nm size scales. Studies have investigated how properties of polymers change when confined to nanoscale dimensions. However, stiffness-confinement studies have reported increases, decreases, and invariance with confinement for different polymer/substrate pairs, making it difficult to obtain...
We studied the nonlocal effects of intraspecific prey competition on the stability of the critical points of the Rosenzweig-MacArthur model and the Holling-Tanner model, respectively, using linear stability analysis. In particular we focused on the study of the stability of the coexistence state influenced by the nonlocality for both models....
Algebras and their bimodules form a 2-category in which 2-morphisms are certain zero-th Hochschild cohomology groups. When we derive this structure (i.e., use Hochschild cochains instead of HH^0 for 2-morphisms), we find that algebras form a category in dg cocategories. The Hochschild-Kostant-Rosenberg theorem and non-commutative calculus give a rich algebraic...
With the dual challenges of meeting global energy demand and mitigating anthropogenic climate change, significant effort is being applied to generating power from renewable sources. The dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) is a photovoltaic technology capable of generating electricity from sunlight, but suffers losses in efficiency due to deleterious electron transfer...
Patients born with severe heart defects need regular monitoring of the complex hemodynamics in their heart and vasculature. 4D flow MRI has emerged as the state-of-the-art technique for comprehensively evaluating cardiovascular hemodynamics. This imaging technique allows for the dynamic visualization of 3D blood through the cardiac cycle and the quantification...
Radiation is a ubiquitous health risk. Contemporary populations are exposed to several hundred milliSieverts per person over their lifetimes from both natural and human made sources such as radon, cosmic rays, CT-scans, etc. Risk estimates based on studies of atomic bomb survivors suggest that these exposures induce excess cancer mortality...
Kainate receptors (KARs) are expressed throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems. One of three subfamilies of ionotropic glutamate receptors, KARs are localized both pre- and post-synaptically and exert important modulatory control over neural circuits. This modulatory role in circuit function makes them a potential actor in wide variety of...
Nano-structured mixed ionic and electronic conducting (MIEC) materials have garnered intense interest in electrode development for solid oxide fuel cells due to their high surface areas which allow for effective catalytic activity and low polarization resistances. In particular, composite solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) cathodes consisting of ionic conducting scaffolds...
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), the result of fetal alcohol exposure (FAE), affects 2-11% of children worldwide with no treatments in sight. In my thesis work, I aimed to identify underlying biological mechanisms of the FAE-induced hippocampus-based cognitive deficits that would lead to identify potential treatment targets to reverse the...
Musicians have a responsibility to assess and perform new or extant music in order to present a larger body of repertoire to audiences. The purpose of this study is to introduce the euphonium music of the contemporary Belgian composer Frangois Glorieux to the tubaeuphonium community. With numerous works written for...
Classic mechanism design studies the implementation of optimal systems or processes in the presence of multiple selfish and fully rational agents. The theory of mechanism design has been one of the most celebrated advances in the economics discipline, especially with regards to auctions Myerson (1981),Vickrey (1961), Clarke (1971), Groves (1973)....
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most prevalent primary central nervous system malignancy. Due to the aggressive nature of these tumors and our inability to adequately treat them, only 3-5% of patients survive longer than 3 years post-diagnosis. The standard of care for newly diagnosed GBM is surgical resection followed by...
In December 1928, Ernst Jünger wrote to his brother Friedrich Georg: “Wir müssen uns […] bemühen, die literarische Tätigkeit als Kriegsmittel zu betrachten.” This project analyzes the result of said activity: viz. text understood as a means of war. That is to say, it does not aim at answering questions...
X-ray reflectivity (XRR) versatile technique that characterize the surface structures. However, due to the lack of phase information of X-ray data, the reconstruction of electron density profile (EDP) from XRR data is an ill-posed inverse problem that requires extra attention. In Chapter 1, several key concepts in XRR data analysis...
This dissertation provides the first in-depth comparative study in any language of the female figurations made, viewed, and interpreted in the realm of refashioning modern Chinese painting during the war period of Republican China (1930s-1940s) in the Nationalist government-controlled southwestern inner frontier, with projects by Pang Xunqin (1906–85) and Fu...
Polyurethane (PU) is an important commodity polymer with a broad range of applications. Increasing regulations on isocyanates have prompted investigations into alternative routes to PU. Cyclic carbonate aminolysis leading to polyhydroxyurethane (PHU) is a promising alternative. This dissertation describes the first fundamental investigation of the synthesis and properties of segmented,...
Regeneration is a complex biological phenomenon. Organisms that regenerate must possess robust mechanisms that direct new tissue production of the appropriate size and pattern to allow for correct and functional integration with preexisting tissue structures. Planarians are flatworms capable of regenerating from nearly any injury, making them a powerful system...
Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are an attractive solar energy technology for low-current applications. Herein is described the supramolecular design and methodology to manipulate intermolecular interactions in order to create an active layer in OPVs devices composed of crystalline and amorphous donor-acceptor domains, which has been proposed as the ideal morphology for...
Supported metal oxides are an important class of catalysts for chemical synthesis and manufacturing, particularly for selective oxidation reactions. This dissertation seeks to understand broad relationships among families of silica-supported Group 4 and 5 metal oxide catalysts for the synthesis of epoxides with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and to further extend...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is characterized by progressive motoneuron loss. Autopsy from thoracic spinal tissues of sALS patients revealed a significant loss of large motoneurons while medium and small motoneurons were relatively unaffected. Using two-photon microscopy, we observed a soma hypertrophy of neonatal motoneurons in mice overexpressing mutant human G93A-superoxide...
This dissertation explores the extent to which Portuguese theologian, papal penitentiary, bishop, and abbot Andreas de Escobar, O.S.B. (1348-1448) benefited from contemporary trends in manuscript culture and thereby functioned as a late-medieval public intellectual. Recent research suggests that early-fifteenth-century university-trained theology masters used their expertise and authority to intervene into...
In yeast, inducible genes such as INO1, PRM1 and HIS4 reposition from the nucleoplasm to nuclear periphery upon activation. This leads to a physical interaction with nuclear pore complex (NPC), interchromosomal clustering, and stronger transcription. Repositioning to the nuclear periphery is controlled by cis-acting transcription factor (TF) binding sites located...
This dissertation considers how best to define the imagined “life” of the puppet, and how that “life” offers new meaning to narrative puppet productions. In my first chapter, begin with the observation that puppeteers, scholars, and audiences often describe the puppet as an object that appears to “have life,” and...
Semiconducting nanoelectronic materials, including single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) possess interesting optoelectronic properties that could enable next-generation electronics, sensing technologies, and biomedicine. In this thesis, biomolecule-assisted dispersion and assembly of these nanomaterials are explored for human toxicity, environmental hazard potential, and applications in supramolecular hydrogels.
Liquid-based...
In this thesis I present the theoretical work on Fermionic surface states, and bulk Bosonic collective excitations in topological superfluids and superconductors. Broken symmetries in topological condensed matter systems have implications for the spectrum of Fermionic excitations confined on surfaces or topological defects.
For the B-phase of superfluid 3He, which...
This dissertation aims to address a gap in the literature regarding the effect of the achievement-focused student identity on prosocial values and behaviors, specifically among students who predominantly value prosociality. Largely, research on identity and motivation addresses academic outcomes and psychological well-being outcomes (Settles, Sellers, & Damas, 2002; Jaret &...
While equal political participation is a fundamental democratic ideal, it is an ideal unrealized in the United States. Those with more—more education, more money, more time, more skills—participate more. Those who have less—especially the poor and minorities—participate less and may be absent from the process altogether. A similar statement could...
This thesis discusses the application of advanced digital signal and image processing techniques, particularly the technique known as super-resolution (SR), to enhance the imagery produced by cameras mounted on an airborne platform such as an unmanned aircraft system (UAS). SR is an image processing technology applicable to any digital, pixilated...
Raman spectroscopy is an established and versatile molecular sensing technique, but it is limited by its modest chemical sensitivity. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) can amplify otherwise weak normal Raman signals up to nine to ten orders of magnitude, giving rise to its application in many molecular sensing problems, including those...
This dissertations consists of three chapters. The first chapter is on the topic of environmental economics and studies the question of the effects of air pollution on students’ school absences, finding significant and positive effects for air pollution, and PM10 in particular, on school absences. The second chapter is on...
We introduce and advocate a new paradigm in simulation experiment design and analysis, called ``green simulation,'' for the setting in which experiments are performed repeatedly with the same simulation model but different input parameters. In this dissertation three classes of green simulation estimators are proposed: the likelihood-ratio-based estimators, the metamodeling-based...
This work argues that Latina/o immigrant Charismatic Catholicism does not encourage passive hope for heavenly rewards but rather emphasizes active strategies for transforming the self and the world. This study responds to two major concerns in the field of religious studies: the concern that Pentecostal forms of Christianity emphasize an...
The purpose of this research is to apply a sociocultural lens to examine students’ perceptions of usefulness in mathematics. It is important to explore perceptions of usefulness, as teachers are increasingly being encouraged to help their students view mathematics as useful. However, we know little about how students – and...
This dissertation reports on novel theoretical concepts as well as experimental efforts toward laser cooling of semiconductors. The use of quantum well system brings the opportunity to engineer bandstructure, effective masses and the spatial distribution of electrons and holes. This permits the incorporation of novel quantum mechanical phenomena to manipulate...
Interprotein electron transfer (ET) occupies a central role in both chemistry and biology, as it is important in a variety of functions including cellular respiration, metabolism, and energy transduction during photosynthesis. Consequently, understanding the protein-protein recognition and docking that controls interprotein ET is an important field of scientific research.
One...
An atom interferometric gyroscope (AIG) made with an uncorrelated ensemble of N two-level atoms, rotating at a rate ΩG about an axis normal to the area Θ accrues a phase ϕ = 2ωCΘΩG/c2 due to the Sagnac effect. Here ωC is the Compton frequency of the atoms used, and c...
Herpes stromal keratitis (HSK) is a potentially blinding inflammatory condition initiated by corneal infection with herpes simplex virus (HSV). As its name suggests, the host receptor herpes virus entry mediator (HVEM) facilitates HSV entry through interactions with a viral envelope glycoprotein. HVEM also bridges several signaling networks, binding ligands from...
A stroke can occur at any point throughout the lifespan, including in utero. The timing of the injury relative to neural development can have implications on the type of lesion, plasticity, and motor deficits. However, associated reactions, which refer to involuntary movement in one limb in response to voluntary activity...
Client-server architectures have been used for years, and many modern applications rely on this approach to be able to present rich and complex information to users without needlessly encumbering their local device with computation, and also to be able to keep all data in a (more-or-less) centrally available location, as...
This dissertation studies a variety of consumer behaviors and their strategic implications for firm profit maximization. The first chapter discusses how bundle pricing (via shipping policies) allows firms to achieve higher profits than component pricing when consumers's tastes for products are correlated. The second chapter illustrates how durable good producers...
Recent advances in optical switching have yielded an all-fiber, all-optical, device capable of routing single-photon quantum signals at high rates (≈25 GHz), with almost immeasurably small degradation of the quantum state[1, 2, 3]. These switches can facilitate complex quantum networking and quantum information processing schemes. However, the complexity of these...
An accurate knowledge of the engineering properties of rocks is crucial for a variety of geomechanical problems, ranging from wellbore stability to failure in rock slopes, underground excavations, and crustal faults. While strength and deformation properties are usually obtained from a limited number of in situ and/or laboratory tests, their...
Growing energy and climate concerns in the United States and across the world demand improvements in energy efficiency, conservation, and renewability. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are highly efficient devices that electrochemically convert the chemical energy of a fuel to electricity. These devices can operate on natural gas as a...
The progressive women’s movement in the United States during the mid-twentieth century enjoyed increased support and success until national politics were dominated by conservatives during the 1980s. This dissertation analyzes the discourse around women’s issues created by two of the largest conservative women’s organizations, Eagle Forum and Concerned Women for...
Fungi have an immense untapped store of natural products, small molecules that can often be repurposed as pharmaceuticals. The genes that encode secondary metabolic machinery are often genomically co-localized into biosynthetic gene clusters. Because of the immense energetic costs that goes into producing the biosynthetic pathway and its products, strict...
This dissertation draws on a field-level, qualitative study of business analytics to explore the legitimation and design of knowledge practices. In the last few decades, both the power and the acceptance of business analytics have advanced dramatically; nonetheless, end-users and clients can still be deeply sceptical of particular analytics practices...
The circadian clock is a biological oscillator present in all terrestrial life forms that aligns organismal functions with the daily rising and setting of the sun. In mammals clocks are expressed both in pacemaker cells in the brain that are directly entrained by light as well as in all peripheral...
The ability to track labeled cancer cells in vivo would allow researchers to study their distribution, growth and metastatic potential within the intact organism. Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging is invaluable for tracking cancer cells in vivo as it benefits from high spatial resolution and absence of ionizing radiation. However, many...
Short-wave infrared (SWIR) photon detection has become an essential technology in the modern world. Sensitive SWIR detectors with low noise levels, and high signal-to-noise-ratios are highly desirable for a variety of applications including light detection and ranging, optical tomography, and astronomical imaging. As such many efforts in infrared detector research...
The airway epithelium forms an active barrier between the internal and external environments and has multiple roles critical to normal function of the lung. Its development and function are controlled by a network of transcription factors that regulate gene expression in response to varying stimuli. Dysfunction of this tissue plays...
While infrequent, clay slope failures caused by earthquakes result in loss of life and substantial property damage. In strong seismicity areas, it is sometimes assumed that the stability of clay deposits can be evaluated through the residual undrained strength that is applicable at large deformations. A crucial factor missing in...
A disconnect exists between the behavior of transcriptional and genetic regulation in bacterial systems when comparing phenotypic patterns and dynamics of a population to those observed at the single cell level. In this thesis, we developed a number of tools and assays to better understand, overcome, and predict the challenges...
CD1 molecules represent a class of antigen presenting molecules that present lipid antigens to cognate T cells. These molecules have been identified in all mammals examined so far. Unlike MHC molecules, which are highly polymorphic, CD1 molecules exhibit limited polymorphism and are divided in to two groups – 1 and...
Substance use and substance use disorder (SUD) may be variables that influence the course of HIV/AIDS risk behaviors as youth age. To our knowledge, no prospective longitudinal study has examined the association between categories of substance use disorders including alcohol use disorder alone, marijuana use disorder alone, comorbid drug use...
How mental representations are constructed and how they evolve are central problems for cognitive science. Representation decisions help determine what computations are hard or easy. Structured, relational representations are a hallmark of human cognition. Developmental studies show that children do not perform as well as adults in tasks that require...
This project examines the uneven adoption of therapeutic initiatives within the organizational field of American museums to ask: How do people frame museum-going as “good” for visitors’ health? Existing research on legitimation processes would predict cultural institutions respond similarly to pressures for greater accountability from their external environments, or resist...
Consider the role of waiting rooms as informal learning environments. In this thesis, I examine a pediatric hematology and oncology clinic to evaluate the patient learning experience. Through staff interviews, waiting room observations, and a review of educational materials I argue that this process is in need of redirection. Most...