Chapter 1. Caste, Bureaucracy, and the Limits to Political Affirmative Action. The aim of political affirmative action policies is to ensure that disadvantaged groups are represented in their governments and, in turn, that laws preferred by this group are more likely to be instituted. Often, however, they have not been...
Human olfactory function is important for a myriad of behaviors, including food seeking, social cognition, memory, emotional regulation, and detecting environmental threats. In animal models, particularly dense olfactory inputs have been shown to target orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a region involved in multimodal sensory integration, reward coding, and flexibly guiding our...
In the first part of the thesis we,given a dg-Lie algebra $\g$, a commutative
dg-algebra $A$ and a twisting cochain $\mu$ in
$A \otimes \g$, we construct a map
from the functor of curved deformations of $\g$ to the
functor of curved deformations of the twisted tensor product
$A \otimes_\mu...
Neuroblastoma is one of the most common childhood cancers with one of the lowest survival rates, accounting for 15% of childhood cancer mortality. Approximately 15% of patients do not respond to initial treatment, and about half of children treated for high-risk neuroblastoma will relapse following remission. Ionizing radiation has long...
Amyloid beta oligomers (AβOs) are a key instigator of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The work presented in this thesis includes three disease-modifying approaches to disrupt pathological AβO-related mechanisms in AD: (1) inhibiting AβO buildup, (2) blocking AβO-induced tau phosphorylation, and (3) neutralizing AβOs. These three approaches were tested in...
Technology that processes text, audio and video, as well as location data, has revolutionized many industries by enabling innovative operations for customer retention. To retain transactions for a platform and viewers for advertisers, this dissertation leverages novel digital tools to analyze consumer behavior, proposes original economic frameworks to guide platform...
The on-going demand for miniaturized optical and on-chip photonic systems of the future has led to a few potential solutions in the literature. Recent advances in van der Waals and 2-dimensional materials signal a bright future for the next generation, compact electronic and photonic devices. With reduced dimensionality and material...
Human communication has become increasingly reliant on systems made and managed by large technology companies like Google, Apple, Twitter, and Meta (formerly Facebook). These systems offer people many benefits, but they also present new challenges for society. In recent years, researchers, lawmakers, and journalists have suggested that large technology companies...
The retina detects light, processes the visual signal, and sends a complex set of parallel information channels to the brain via a functionally diverse set of retinal ganglion cells types. This manuscript examines these retinal ganglion cell types, the visual features they encode, and the computational mechanisms leading to their...
The esophagus plays a crucial role in the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract and esophageal disorders are associated with reduced quality of life. Several studies have reported that there is a high worldwide prevalence of esophageal disorders. Esophageal disorders are related to the mechanical properties and function of the esophageal...