In the late 2000’s, scientific studies in cultural heritage saw a great advancement in macro X-ray fluorescence (XRF) imaging of paintings. These images are used to generate elemental distribution maps, which aid in identifying chemical elements and paint pig- ments as well as their locations throughout the layers of the...
We consider data-driven approaches for universal texture modeling via generative adversarial networks and inversion methods. We investigate the properties of the learned representation spaces and demonstrate that a strong link between texture analysis and synthesis is the key to successful texture modeling. First, we visit the problem of texture synthesis...
Location-aware technologies, such as personal navigation applications, location-based AR games, and artificial intelligence systems that learn from data about places, increasingly mediate our understanding of and interactions with the world. However, a number of risks associated with location-aware technologies have emerged, jeopardizing the welfare of its users. This dissertation seeks...
Recent advancements in processing and manufacturing techniques have spurred an exponential increase in use of polymer nanocomposites in a variety of applications. A key challenge in using these nanocomposites effectively is the dispersion of nanoparticles in the polymer matrix. Matrix-free assemblies of polymer grafted nanoparticles, called hairy nanoparticles assemblies(aHNPs) have...
Intelligence in humans is largely characterized by the ability to encode information into compressible representations to facilitate efficient communication for collaboration and learning. The goal of this thesis is to enable robots to both learn and act on compressible representations in real-time. I show how active exploration with respect to...
While optimization has received much attention in the machine learning community, most of them consider unconstrained supervised learning models such as neural networks and support vector machine. In this dissertation, we introduce a new class of optimization problems called scale invariant problems that include interesting unsupervised learning models such as...
This thesis focuses on applications of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) for three aspects of sequential classification. In the first chapter, a novel method to generate synthetic minority data generation to improve imbalanced classification is discussed. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have been used in many different applications to generate realistic synthetic...
Previous studies have documented a systematic discrepancy between probabilistic seismic hazard maps and historical records of shaking (Stein et al., 2015; Brooks et al., 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019; Salditch et al., 2020; Salditch, 2021). In almost every case, shaking predicted by the hazard map is higher than that historically observed....
Pragmatic language, or the use of language in social contexts, is critical to developing meaningful social relationships and is a significant contributor to mental health. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), fragile X syndrome (FXS) and Down syndrome (DS) are all genetically based neurodevelopmental disabilities characterized by deficits in pragmatic language, although...
Segregation of polydisperse granular materials remains to be a challenging problem in many industrial processes. However, most studies have focused either on bidisperse (two different particle size species) materials, which are not representative of most real mixtures, or on polydisperse materials in an idealized simple geometry. Additionally, most studies have...
One of the central challenges in solid-state chemistry is synthetic control over structure. Owing to limited reactivity of Pb with transition metals at ambient pressure and high temperature as well as the variety of properties that emerge from the few known binary transition-metal–Pb compounds, this research focuses on accessing and...
This thesis is composed of two major parts. The first major part includes the first two chapters. In Chapter 1, we go over the history and background of spin glass theory and introduce the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick (SK) model and the Ghatak-Sherrington (GS) model. In Chapter 2, we introduce the Thouless-Anderson-Palmer (TAP)...
Two major areas of research in the field of manufacturing are miniaturization and 3D printing. The trend towards miniaturization stems from the desire and need for additional functionality and improved performance for products with ever-smaller footprints. Miniaturization opens manufacturing to new applications such as tissue engineering and surface texturing. Meanwhile,...
In the first chapter I introduce the ideas that link selling information to surplus extraction. In my environment the seller may be uncertain about how much the buyer both has already learned before contracting with the seller (belief types) and is able to learn after contracting with the seller (information...
Over the last decade, a rising trend of corporations publicly acting on social and political issues has come to the fore. The issues and methods have both varied widely—from immigration to abortion, and from advertisements to boycotts. This introduces an interesting puzzle in the realm of strategy research: Where does...
Heterogeneous catalysts based on metal oxides are of significant interest for many industrial chemical reactions. These catalysts, however, often suffer from ill-defined structures that preclude better understanding of the surface phenomena. Thus, structurally well-defined catalysts have received growing attention by making it feasible to understand the kinetics and reaction mechanisms....
Prenatal alcohol exposure is a global health concern. Despite guidelines advising against it, many women continue to drink throughout their pregnancies. Exposure to alcohol can have lifelong medical, social, emotional, and intellectual consequences on a developing fetus. Women in Uruguay have demonstrated consistently high self-reported alcohol consumption during pregnancy, but...
Computer systems supported by photonic interconnects and photonic memory devices can reach performance and energy efficiency levels unattainable through purely electronic means across scales, from processor chips to the data center. However, the promised benefits cannot be realized through a simple replacement process; to reach their full potential, several aspects...
This dissertation includes the score and companion essay to the musical work, Untitled (March). In the composition, I endeavor to create a listening situation offering a mutually negotiated environment of quietude that challenges a listener's preconceptions of intentionality and perception by blurring the boundaries between instrumental performance, field recordings, and the...
Social factors are a major contributor to deaths in the US. The literature suggests that socioeconomic status and other social and environmental factors influence an individual’s mortality. These factors encompass six domains that comprise factors such as poverty, unemployment, poor access to healthy food, limited access to health care, limited...
The three studies in this project investigate a selected number of youth protective factors and caregiver parenting skills with reducing the risk of justice involvement for youth involved in the child welfare system without a prior history of justice involvement. All three studies used child welfare administrative data, and the...
Built from non-covalent interactions, supramolecular biomaterials are highly dynamic and tunable, and recent work has shown that they are uniquely capable of mimicking functional biological structures. In this work, supramolecular biomaterials built from self-assembling peptide amphiphiles (PA) were investigated with the goal of precisely tuning their cohesive interactions to optimize...
Due to their widespread applicability, graphs and networks appear in various contexts. The increasing scale of graphs encountered in the real-world requires the developmentof efficient algorithms that run reasonably fast and produce close to optimal solutions.
The main focus of this thesis is the development of fast graph algorithms for...
Clientelism has been largely defined as an electoral strategy in which politicians distribute resources to voters to gather their support. This study proposes a new framework to understand clientelism by inverting the perspective of this practice, focusing on voters rather than politicians. This study proposes that clientelism should be understood...
If life exists on Mars, it likely resides in a deep subsurface environment. The Martian rocky subsurface is a primary target for the search for extraterrestrial life because it offers a stable habitat for microbial life. On Earth, the continental subsurface is a key astrobiological analog for understanding what properties...
Ataxic dysarthria is a disorder affecting the naturalness of speech due to damage to the cerebellum, a neural structure critical for the timing, scaling, and sequencing of speech movements (Ackermann, Vogel, Petersen, & Poremba, 1992; Diener & Dichgans, 1992; Duffy, 2013; Rampello, Rampello, Patti, & Zappia, 2016). In healthy individuals,...
Social media and online forums provide spaces where people can gather beyond restrictions of geographic proximity. For some individuals with mental illness, these spaces are vital; providing outlets and communities where a multitude of experiences are accepted and understood, rather than judged against normative, often ableist standards. For nearly three...
Maneuvering your limbs requires both accurate commands for how to move, and accurate feedback of their true movements. Conventional prosthetic arms currently lack this sense of proprioceptive feedback, which can make daily tasks difficult without close visual monitoring. Although studies have successfully provided artificial proprioceptive feedback to improve control, this...
Newborns are particularly susceptible to severe forms of herpes simplex virus type I (HSV-1) infection including encephalitis and multisystemic disseminated disease. The underlying age-dependent differences in the immune response that explain this increased susceptibility relative to the adult population remain largely understudied. Evidence from animal studies and genetic studies in...
Individuals following a stroke suffer from a host of movement impairments that affect the upper extremity. Hand use is often significantly compromised, especially in individuals with more severe impairments, which makes it difficult for individuals to participate in activities of daily living. One of the major goals of rehabilitation is...
Machine learning-based techniques have shown great promises in perception, prediction, planning, and general decision-making for improving task performance of autonomous driving. Connectivity technology has also presented great potentials in improving the safety and efficiency of transportation systems by providing information beyond the perception and prediction capabilities of individual vehicles. However,...
Laser powder-blown directed energy deposition (DED) is an additive manufacturing process that utilizes a co-axial nozzle and laser to melt metal powders onto a substrate in a line-by-line fashion. This coupling gives rise to interactions between the laser, powder, and melt pool. To address fundamental process understanding, physical models were...
This dissertation has two main aims. The first is to show that relying on the testimony of others is not as “epistemically special” as many epistemologists have made it out to be. More specifically, I argue that relying on someone’s testimony neither provides us with a non-evidential, epistemic reason to...
Objective: To evaluate patient-reported experiences of telehealth and disparities in access, use, and satisfaction with telehealth visits during the COVID-19 pandemic (aim 1), to evaluate prevalence of portal use pre-, peri-, and post-pandemic, among the C3 cohort, and investigate any disparities in use by sociodemographic factors (aim 2), and to...
Our sense of smell, or olfaction, is one of our most evolutionarily ancient senses. In vertebrates, olfaction plays a crucial role in many functions, such as detecting and evaluating food, avoiding predators, regulating appetite, spatial navigation, and selecting mating partners. In addition, the olfactory system is highly dynamic and exhibits...
This dissertation addresses the property of amenability of discrete groups and their actions. In Chapter 2, following the introduction, all necessary definitions are given to introduce amenable groups, elementary amenable groups, random walks, topological full groups, Thompson's group $F$ and to show connections between them. The chapter also briefly covers...
Findings in both humans and animal models have associated the hippocampal theta oscillation with hippocampal memory function. In animal models, previous research supports that the theta oscillation contributes to memory via phase-dependent changes in hippocampal network connectivity, wherein memory encoding versus retrieval are optimized at different phases of the theta...
This essay investigates the question under which conditions ASMR is suitable for the concert space. What can be done to ensure that those sensitive to ASMR experience the desired effect? The text compares the sounds used to induce the physiological response called ASMR to those of “Musique Concrète (Instrumentale)” by...
Materials science has been central to human advancement since time immemorial. There has always been curiosity around studying the processes required to extract materials, examine their structure, and ultimately tailor their properties to meet human needs. Over the last few centuries, the ability to tailor material properties was driven by...
The Spectral Body: Theology and Economy in Dostoevsky and Melville’s Fiction This dissertation examines the intersections and tensions between religion and economy in Dostoevsky and Melville’s fiction. I argue that Christian theology of the body—as the site of both salvation and economic production—is at the center of their concern. These...
Preschool television has historically not been representative of the world young childrenlive in. Although progress is being made, “representation matters” is still a phrase that rings true to this day. This dissertation focused on representation within STEM television shows because STEM education involves learning important skills such as problem solving...
Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most common cancer in American men and has led to approximately 29K deaths in 2018. The androgen signaling pathway plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of PCa, and androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) has been the main therapeutic approach for PCa. However, almost all...
Granular mixing has received less attention than fluid mixing due to the unique properties of granular materials and the complexity of their flow behaviors. Unlike fluid flows, where a continuum perspective accurately captures flow behavior, neither a continuum nor a discrete perspective by itself can describe the global behaviors of...
We study the complexification of Laplace Eigenfunctions on the Grauert tube of a compact real analytic manifold. Our main results concern scaling asymptotics of Fourier coefficients of the Szego kernel on the Grauert tube boundary in a Heisenberg frequency scaled neighborhood of the geodesic flow. We show that in the...
This dissertation investigates the nature of the interface between morphosyntax and cognition. My goal is to connect formal semantic theories of meaning with theories of cognition, drawing on the initial hypothesis that the interface between language and cognition is transparent. I look at different forms of adjectival comparatives -- positive...
Heterogenous catalysis is the pillar of chemical production and a crucial aspect for optimization toward a sustainable future. To improve the current design of heterogeneous catalysts of maximal activity and product selectivity, gaining fundamental understanding of the catalytic active sites is crucial. The nature of active sites has been the...
Skeletal muscle is one of the most abundant tissues in the body and makes up over 40% of the total body mass. It is important for mobility and posture maintenance as well as plays a central role in whole body metabolism. Skeletal muscle is made up of bundles of muscle...
This dissertation explores the fundamental science of flexoelectricity and its implications using a combined experimental and theoretical approach. I begin by introducing the flexoelectric effect and formalizing the basics of strain gradients, polarization, and flexoelectric coefficients. Next, I describe the development of a flexoelectric characterization system based upon three-point bending...
This dissertation consists of three papers on methods for meta-analysis with few studies. These papers are concerned with proper inference from meta-analysis models that combine data from a small number of studies using fixed and random-effects models. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to meta-analysis, the motivation for this work and...
Polymer and polymer/ceramic composites known as bone cements are commonly used in musculoskeletal reconstructive surgeries where bone tissue fixation, reinforcement, or void filling may be needed. Polymethylmethacrylate, PMMA, was the initial (and currently only) FDA-approved bone cement for bone-void filling applications yet faces many inherent material-based challenges that impacts its...
Discrete molecules, linear and branched polymers, and disordered cross-linked networks are well studied objects of chemical synthesis. However, two-dimensional polymers (2DPs) have been long missing from this continuum of molecular architectures, both in chemical synthesis and in Nature. Recently, new polymerization strategies and characterization methods have enabled the unambiguous realization...
From visualizing thousands of social relationships, operationalizing measures that offer us insight into our theories, to characterizing cultural change over the span of centuries, computational methods appear to provide sociology a means to reveal patterns otherwise unknowable. While these methods are persistently critiqued for their inability to generate social theory,...
This dissertation purposely prioritizes Tibetan and Himalayan tsunmas’ perspectives on the topic of restoring a full ordination lineage for ordained women. To do so, it examines the gendered landscapes of Buddhist women’s ordination, which has been a contentious issue throughout Buddhism’s twenty-six-hundred-year history, beginning with the Buddha’s eventual acceptance of...
Young children can sometimes acquire new vocabulary words—even property terms—through indirect learning (e.g. Carey & Bartlett, 1978). We explore two factors that contribute to this ability—perceptual alignment and linguistic contrast. We propose that spontaneous comparison processes lead children to notice key commonalities and differences that facilitate indirect property word learning....
Biologically active small molecules remain the foundation for the medical management of human disease. Their impacts on human health, longevity, culture, and society are difficultly overstated. In large part, medicines derived from organic compounds are the result of the tireless efforts of chemical practitioners––both past and present––who have dedicated much...
This dissertation traces the historical development of diasporic Filipino American activism after the watershed 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and during the military dictatorship of Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippines. Using multi-country archival research and approximately sixty oral history interviews, it analyzes labor, student, anti-dictatorship, and human rights activists...
Bacteria often coordinate virulence factors to fine-tune the host response during infection. These coordinated events can include toxins counteracting or amplifying effects of another toxin or though regulating the stability of virulence factors to remove their function once it is no longer needed. Multifunctional autoprocessing repeats-in toxin (MARTX) toxins are...
Intestinal immunity is a critical contributor to host health. The immune system in the intestine maintains both defense against pathogens and homeostasis of intestinal tissue, which is exposed to environmental influences, including microbes and ingested foods. Proper regulation of the immune response is required to prevent damage to the host....
Surface appearance represents the sense impression of the surface. In visual art, the artists try to use the appearance of their artworks to express their mental state and philosophy. Researchers in the cultural heritage community has been trying to use different analysis approaches to interpret artworks. In Computer Graphics and...
Shale gas is a critical energy resource that is comprised primarily of light gases that are expensive to transport. Because these gases are geographically spread-out and there is insufficient capacity to transport them to centralized processing facilities, they must often be flared, leading to great sources of resource waste and...
The last two decades have seen tremendous growth in the development of techniquesfor molecular state control. The goal of achieving complete control over the quantum states
of a molecule is motivated by a plethora of applications ranging from many-body physics
to precise tests of fundamental physics. The level of control...
The increasing availability of large-scale scholarly datasets offers an unprecedented opportunity to understand the fundamental predictability, uncertainty, and dynamics of science and innovation. In this dissertation, I present some of my contributions to the science of science and innovation in three distinct but related settings, through a combination of canonical...
Deep learning is a new area of machine learning research that allows deep neural networks composed of multiple processing layers to learn representations of data with multiple levels of abstraction. Deep learning has helped in achieving the objective of pushing machine learning closer to one of its original goals of...
This dissertation explores our understanding of corporate credit ratings. In the first chapter I examine the issue of split ratings. S&P and Moody’s often differ in their initial ratings at bond issuance, producing what is referred to as a split rating. The consensus view in the literature and in practice...
Granular materials consisting of discrete particles, are a pervasive material in nature and play a major role in disparate fields of science and technology. To control and manipulate the granular materials in engineering, enriching our understanding of their fundamental characteristics and mechanical behavior is crucial. In this context, one of...
The escalating climate crisis is a global social problem requiring multidisciplinary and multi-institutional coordination to solve. In recent years, health practitioners and institutions have become increasingly involved in the climate crisis, recognizing that climate change poses a serious public health threat across a range of health issues. This dissertation draws...
Additive manufacturing is a promising process that has the capability to build components with complex geometries for structural and biomedical applications. Due to the rapid and localized directional solidification of molten metallic alloys, unique phase transformations occur at the melt pool that can provide for components with greater strength and...
In this thesis, I study the effects of spillovers in all-pay auctions and the effects ofregulating wages and hours on the labor market. In the first chapter, I study a model of
asymmetric all-pay auctions with spillovers. In this model, players compete for a prize, and
the sunk effort players...
Neurons are sensitive to the mechanical properties of their environment and show better growth, survival and differentiation when they are cultured in soft environments with mechanical properties similar to those of the brain compared to other tissues. Within the central nervous system (CNS), there is also a range of mechanical...
This thesis describes a series of fundamental studies that address the role of electrostatic interactions in modulating i) the permeability of the ligand shell of a colloidal quantum dot (QD) to an anionic redox probe; ii) the resulting yield of photoinduced electron exchange within the QD ‒ redox probe complex;...
To be tempted is to be conflicted, but the conflict is not one of oscillation between two good options. Rather, it is normally easy to act on temptation and difficult to act against it. But this is puzzling, because unless temptation is a force that acts on us, it’s not...
Literature screening is the process of identifying all relevant records from a pool of candidate paper records in systematic review, meta-analysis, and other research synthesis tasks. This process is time consuming, expensive, and prone to human error. Screening prioritization methods attempt to help reviewers identify most relevant records while only...
Air pollution is a pervasive environmental issue that has significant impacts on human health. Urban areas are particularly susceptible to high levels of air pollution due to concentrated emissions and populations. Urban air pollution has been linked to a range of adverse health effects, including respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases,...
Knee injury causes a loss of stability in the joint and frequently leads to secondary degeneration of the cartilage in the months and years after injury, which can further impair joint function and cause pain and disability. Moreover, the secondary damage to the joint appears to be worse for females...
As national, state, and local educational leaders grapple with how to effectively address the needs of gender-expansive students, more research is needed to inform policy. Gender-expansive youth experience high rates of chronic social stressors such as victimization, discrimination, and rejection. These stressors have academic, mental and physical health consequences; however,...
Sensorimotor integration is a general term to describe how task-specific motor output is generated from the selective and rapid processing of sensory and motor information. The rodent vibrissal (whisker) system is an important model for the study of sensorimotor integration and active tactile sensing. This research uses the rodent vibrissal...
Neural networks have revolutionized the field of computer vision since they provide solutions to a number of previously unsolved problems and achieve promising performance both in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency. It has increasingly become recognized as providing high performance for applications as diverse as image classification, object detection,...
Multiple facets of the natural trajectory of glioma remain poorly understood, which results in a universally poor prognosis for patients with glioma. Many patients with glioma experience tumor-associated epilepsy (TAE) throughout their disease course, but the mechanism by which TAE occurs, who is at continued risk for TAE, and whether...
Biological systems that perform critical reactions like carbon dioxide reduction, water oxidation, or phosphonate ester hydrolysis consist of many separate components with many different degrees of
freedom. While the functionality of pieces of these systems can be replicated synthetically to some
degree, the integration of synthetic catalysts into an overall...
Coiled-coil helix coiled-coil helix domain containing 10 (CHCHD10) is a nuclear gene that encodes for a mitochondria-enriched protein of unknown function. This type of protein is typically imported into mitochondria via the disulfide relay system which facilitates the formation of disulfide bridges between each coiled-coil helix, resulting in maintenance of...
This dissertation examines connections between North and South Korean art during the late Cold War period. Despite the radical social and political differences between the two countries, in the 1980s and early 1990s conspicuous connections emerged between the work of state-sponsored North Korean artists and South Korean artists associated with...
The worldwide community of patients affected by Basal Cell Carcinoma of the skin (BCC) is larger than that of any other cancer. While BCC is rarely lethal, currently available treatment strategies often leave patients with disfiguring scars on their faces, heads, and necks. Moreover, the high recurrence rates of BCC...
Single-use plastic waste pollution will cause significant harm to the environment if left unaddressed. One possible mitigation strategy is to develop processes, e.g. catalytic hydrogenolysis, that can convert (i.e. upcycle) waste plastics into value-added products capable of participating in a circular economy. Platinum (Pt) catalysts on strontium titanate nanocuboid supports...
One of the fundamental observations in oncology is that the rate of cancer malignancy increases with age, which applies to most human malignancies including breast cancer. Therefore, it is crucial to elucidate the mechanistic connection between aging and carcinogenesis. The NAD+-dependent sirtuin family, specifically SIRT3, the primary mitochondrial deacetylase, which...
The BCR-ABL negative Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPNs) are clonal hematopoietic stem-cell disorders characterized by abnormal proliferation of differentiated myeloid lineages. MPNs include 3 clinically distinct disorders: Polycythemia Vera (PV), Essential Thrombocythemia (ET) and Primary Myelofibrosis (PMF). 95% of MPNs are characterized by driver mutations in Janus Kinase 2 (JAK2), Thrombopoietin receptor...
Islet transplantation is a therapy in which insulin-producing beta (β) islet cells are infusedinto the liver via the portal vein to restore glycemic control. This therapy is beneficial for patients
suffering from chronic pancreatitis or type I diabetes. However, islet transplantation is not widely
implemented due to the instant blood-mediated...
Esophageal hypervigilance, or the increased awareness and amplification of esophageal symptoms, is a psychological process known to drive symptom experience in individuals with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). However, current understanding lacks a conceptual framework with known biomarkers and relationships to other psychophysiological variables. The aim of the current study is...
Aging is the greatest known risk factor for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD); however, the molecular mechanisms underlying aging and how it can initiate and or exacerbate AD, is still unknown. Epigenetic regulation has been widely accepted to play an essential role in aging or AD-related processes; however, whether dysregulations of histone...
This dissertation argues that black women’s literature on black-white multiraciality critiques public debates that celebrate the racially ambiguous multiracial child as the solution to racial conflict. Under this framework, this project investigates the popularization of multiracial identity in late 20th and 21st century United States, United Kingdom, and Jamaica, and...
Desmosomes, complex structures found at intercellular junctions, are important for the development, structural integrity, and immune barrier of the skin. Extracellular components of the desmosome connect neighboring cells and intracellular interactions amongst cadherin, armadillo, and plakin proteins anchor the desmosome to intermediate filaments. Beyond their canonical role as “spot welds”...
With the growing size of networks and datasets and the lack of centralized access to information, distributed control and optimization become inevitable. In the first part of this thesis, we develop an asynchronous Newton-based distributed optimization algorithm and analyze its convergence properties. Our algorithm benefits from the fast convergence properties...
Thermoelectric devices convert between temperature gradients and electricity, implying numerous applications, such as powering exploratory space vehicles, industrial waste-heat recovery, and solid- state refrigeration. Thermoelectric devices consist of doped p-type and n-type semiconductor legs, and the overall device efficiency depends on the transport properties of these semiconductor materials. High-performing thermoelectric...
The dissertation’s topic is the creation of quotidian judgements and practices related to food, amid the enduring social and spatial stratification of everyday life. The sites are two large and diverse cities: Paris and Chicago. The method is ethnographic and contextual.Chapter 1 documents the dietary tastes and culinary practices of...
Through analysis of visual and literary texts, “Relating Sideways: Visual Culture and Women’s Bonds, 1970-2020” constructs a historical narrative that challenges the assumption that women’s lives and relationships naturally bend toward romance and procreation, a normative lifespan that follows the function capitalism has needed women to perform in consumption and...
Object Detection is a core computer vision problem and can facilitate many image understanding problems. Object Detection has witnessed significant progress in the past decade especially after deep learning is successfully applied to this field. Most of the detection models focus on generalizing the trained model to unseen samples of...
Dilute Al-Sc-Zr-Si-based aluminum alloys retain their strength for long periods of time at elevated temperatures due to a dispersion of nanometric, coherent, and coarsening-resistant Al3(Sc,Zr) (L12 structure) nanoprecipitates that are formed upon aging. These alloys are attractive for replacement of dense steels and costly Ti alloys in the 250–400 °C...
In the early part of the 20th Century, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union implemented a program of rapid industrialization under the slogan, “the conquest of nature by man.” Ambitious engineering projects such as the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and the Northern river reversal sought to restructure...
Recent encouraging advances in computer vision and natural language understanding shed light on a very interesting yet challenging task: asking and answering questions about a given image (VQA). The study of this research problem is still in its infancy. Most existing VQA methods are neural network-based (NN-based) solutions that pursue...
In this dissertation, I provide insight into different aspects of the law and politics of trade secrecy at four levels of analysis. Part I examines trade secrecy from an international and comparative perspective. It encompasses Chapters 2 and 3 and focuses on (#1) international law and (#2) comparative national policy....