Colloidal crystals engineered with DNA are fascinating structures that constitute an emerging form of programmable matter. Indeed, the use of DNA as a programmable bond has led to thousands of new crystal types, with exquisite control over crystal symmetry and lattice parameters. However, synthesizing large (> 100 µm) single-crystals has...
In the United States, those who have lower income, education level, and occupational prestige, are more likely to develop, have worse symptoms of, and die from a wide range of chronic diseases. This phenomenon prompted much research trying to delineate the underlying pathways, and inflammation has been highlighted as a...
This dissertation has three chapters. Chapter one evaluates the effects of Short-Time Workin Germany during the great financial crisis. Chapter two describes how British inventors
during the industrial revolution worked on more central technologies. This in turn resulted
in faster growth. Chapter three builds on a novel patent data set...
Deduplication, also referred to as "entity resolution", is a common and crucial pre-processing step in the construction of social networks. Traditional deduplication methods compare the attributes (such as name and age) of potential matching pairs to estimate a match probability for a pair. Recently research has used clustering techniques for...
How do exporting firms react to changes in the cost of credit? To answer this question, we exploit an exogenous variation in banking regulation which increases the cost of financ- ing for exports in the European Union. Using a unique dataset which combines customs, firm-level, and credit registry data on...
Over the past decade the market for children’s digital play activities focused on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has grown exponentially. One benefit to the growth in digital STEM play is that it can provide children opportunities to engage the cognitive skills and practices that can be valuable for...
Different features of the visual world are conveyed to the retino-recipient regions of the brain by more than 40 types of retinal ganglion cells (RGCS). Feature detection by RGCs depends on a combination of intrinsic and morphological properties where the interplay of excitatory and inhibitory inputs occurs through local retinal...
Meiosis is a specialized form of cell division that gives rise to haploid reproductive cells by replicating the genetic material once and undergoing two rounds of partitioning. While most forms of cell division require centrosomes to assemble a bipolar microtubule-based spindle that segregates chromosomes, female gametes (oocytes) are unique in...
As opposed to the nanoscale deposition techniques often used for material syntheses, here, I focus on mesoscale material depositions and how to design interfaces to efficiently manage such deposition and potential accumulation. These deposition processes include condensation, condensation frosting, particle capture, and vaporization. Through the lens of energy and sustainability,...
Mindfulness is the dynamic process of building and maintaining awareness of one’s environment and paying attention to stimuli (Langer, 1989; Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007). A cognitively effortful endeavor, mindfulness requires “the capacity to respond to unanticipated cues or signals from one’s context” (Levinthal & Rerup, 2006, p. 504). Mindful...