Granular solids consisting of various particle sizes exhibit the tendency to de-mix, or segregate, when caused to shear by external forces such as gravity. This well-known phenomenon is of special practical interest to many industries involved in the handling and transportation of bulk solids, where segregation can lead to adverse...
High performance structural materials are needed for Naval applications which require an excellent combination of yield strength, low-temperature impact toughness, ductility, ballistic-resistance, and weldability. This research investigates precipitation-strengthened HSLA-115 steels and ballistic-resistant 10 wt. % Ni steels, which have emerged as promising alternatives to the widely used HSLA-100 steels for...
Machine learning has been widely applied to solve intricate problems in finance. Yet in options theory, machine learning methods are less visited due to the structural complexity of the derivatives market. This dissertation focuses on using machine learning algorithms to obtain optimal decisions for three distinct option-related problems. In the...
MoS2 is a ubiquitous catalyst for hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis reactions for hydrotreating of petroleum sources for the removal of sulfur and nitrogen containing compounds. Through exploration of this activity, structural models for MoS2 as a series of stacked S-Mo-S platelets held together by Van der Waals forces has been developed....
This dissertation argues that mid-nineteenth-century definitions of personhood, citizenship, and nationality were largely constructed through the tropes and narrative structures of sentimental mourning. This argument is developed through examinations of a wide range of materials, including novels and first-person narratives, newspaper and magazine articles, medical and scientific texts related to...
The dissertation aims to explore the intersection between the artistic performance of blackness in contemporary Italian theater and the country's social stigmatization of black immigrants as a problem or national emergency. I argue that Italians live in a state of "historic forgetfulness" since they have not been able to absorb...
Growing concerns associated with global warming and the depletion of oil reserves have motivated significant research in support of sustainable polymers systems. In this thesis, biobased and biodegradable polymer blends and nanocomposites were created using a novel processing method, solid-state shear pulverization (SSSP). This process utilizes a modified twin-screw extruder...
Embryonic stem cells have the potential to differentiate into ectodermal, mesodermal and endodermal derivatives. This property makes them a valuable source of tissue specific progenitor and differentiated cells that can be used for cell replacement therapy. The first goal of this thesis is to test if cardiogenesis from embryonic stem...
The nonlinear optical technique, second harmonic generation (SHG), is applied here for the first time to probe single and double strand DNA (ssDNA and dsDNA) chemically attached to fused quartz/water interfaces. DNA interfaces are often a critical functional component of biodetection, thus, the development of molecular biosensors requires a thorough...
The adoption of surfactant replacement therapy (SRT) for the treatment of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (nRDS) is one of the main contributors to the dramatic decline in infant mortality rates observed in the 1980s. Despite the significant efficacy of animal-derived surfactant preparations, there are still some concerns associated with their...