This data was used to compare the performance of a urine point-of-care assay and interviewer-administered timeline follow-back to the gold-standard for measuring recent and longer-term adherence of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in dried blood spots (DBS). This data was used to produce the research findings presented in the peer-reviewed journal cited...
Data for manuscript submission to PLoS ONE entitled:
Prior Uncertainty Impedes Discrete Locomotor Adaptation
Authors:
Jiang, Aojun
Grover, Francis M.
Bucklin, Mary
Deol, Jasjit
Shafer, Anna
Gordon, Keith E.
Human skin oils are significant scavengers of atmospheric oxidants in occupied indoor environments. Many techniques used to study gas-phase transformations of surface films indoors have been limited to off-line bulk analysis, although more surface-selective methodologies are emerging. Here, we present a multi-prong analytical approach to characterizing skin oil ozonolysis. Skin...
The Operating System (OS) kernel is a key component of modern computing infrastructure, yet it is prone to numerous vulnerabilities, many of which cause memory corruptions that can be exploited by attackers to perform malicious activities. While various techniques have been introduced to secure the Linux kernel, it still constantly...
In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, we have witnessed a surge of public interest in and discussion around racial reckoning. Universities in the United States and across the globe are grappling with their historical associations with transatlantic and chattel slavery. This dissertation takes up the question of...
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are porous, crystalline materials synthesized by combining metal nodes and organic linkers through self-assembly. The diverse range of building blocks available allows for extensive tunability of MOFs, enabling the optimization of these materials for various applications, such as gas storage, separations, and catalysis. This study aimed to...
Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common aggressive primary malignant brain tumorin adults with a median age of onset of 65 years of age. Although advanced age is often associated with worse GBM patient survival, the predominant source(s) of maladaptive aging
effects remains to be established. Here we studied intra-tumoral and...
Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs) is a class of material comprising organic linkers and inorganic, metal-ion-containing nodes, with diverse functionalities and wide-range of applications. Because of their porous nature and functional nodes and linkers, they are competent candidates for gas storage, separation, catalysis, and so on. Most MOFs, however, are intrinsically insulating,...
In recent years, we have seen the embryo of Industry 4.0 which has been promoting manufacturing processes towards the future with better efficiency, higher accuracy and better reliability. However, manufacturing precision has been restricted by the precision of metrology and material characterization. In other words, one can only manufacture parts...
Stairs and curbs often present as an exhausting environmental barrier for individuals with bilateral cerebral palsy (CP) due to their lower limb motor impairments. Indeed, performance in stair-climbing in this population has a higher correlation with disruption of mobility than walking. Community members affected by CP consider impaired mobility a...
Anthropologists engaging with biopolitical theory have commonly assumed that biomedicine is a tool for enacting state-based policies to manage population health. Recent insights in medical anthropology have troubled this assumption, calling into question the role of physicians as “handmaidens” of state-based health policy. I use my position as a physician-anthropologist...
The role of providing care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease can expose friends and family caregivers to significant stress over an extended period of time, resulting in a host of negative outcomes like increased depression and anxiety, and diminished quality of life. However, previous studies have found that...
This thesis document is comprised of three research projects. The first investigates the active vibrational modes involved in twisted intramolecular charge transfer in a Julolidine-BODIPY dyad using two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy along with DFT calculations. We identified two types of vibrations, compression and torsional motion, as playing an important role in...
Renewable energy technology, more so than ever before, is critical to the survival of humanity. For decades, concentrated efforts into designing and developing such novel devices resulted in the innovation of solar-driven photovoltaics that were competitive with nonrenewable alternatives. This thesis explores the dynamic behavior of alternative material candidates that...
The work presented in this thesis is to describe the fabrication of the nano-composites of carbonaceous materials (e.g. graphene oxide) and metal oxides (e.g. Titanium dioxide TiO2) for two specific applications in the field of public health protection: 1.) removal of micropollutants (MPs) in the aqueous environment; 2.) antimicrobial coating.The...
The need for complex and sophisticated materials continues to grow as society becomes more advanced. For many chemists, the design of these materials begins by looking towards model molecular systems for the identification of desirable properties and functions. As such, restricting oneself to C, H, N, O, and the other...
Each neuron in the primary motor cortex (M1) is like a musician in an orchestra, contributing to a larger harmony under the constraint of a “neural manifold”—a geometric score describing the correlated signals produced by the neural musicians that drive movement. Despite the widespread recognition of the importance of M1...
Interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) are multicomponent materials that enhance the compatibility of otherwise immiscible polymers by trapping the microstructure in a non-equilibrium state. By combining polymers with vastly different moduli, IPNs effectively disperse rigid polymers within a soft matrix, resulting in a reinforced elastomer. This approach significantly increases the modulus...
Large scale adoption of sustainable technologies for energy productionand storage can be greatly facilitated by scientific advances impacting efficiency, cost and availability. The study of materials is instrumental in both upgrading the performance of existing technologies and enabling the development of new ones, and ab-initio methods and machine learning represent...
Chronic stress is a significant risk factor for the development of numerous psychiatric disorders, including major depressive disorder (MDD). Individuals with MDD exhibit impairments in reward processing and decreased motivation to engage in previously-rewarding activities. Importantly, there is a large sex disparity in MDD diagnosis, such that it affects nearly...
The rise in children’s media use (Rideout & Robb, 2020) and the prioritization of STEM learning (Fayer et al., 2017) has led to the development of new STEM-related apps, TV shows, and other media for young children. One topic in this area gaining popularity is computational thinking (CT). Researchers refer...
A proliferation of new media platforms have upended the traditional roles that journalists have played in society, placing their work into content streams that are populated by creators who mimic the surface features of their work but not their methods. As a result, journalists’ practices and news media that they...
In this dissertation, we aim to develop a theoretical understanding of foundation models and reinforcement learning. We delve into a comprehensive analysis of specific aspects within these domains. The focal points of our study are as follows: • Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning (GAIL) with Neural Networks: GAIL is poised to...
Rivers and streams play a critical role in connecting major global carbon pools – land, oceans, and atmosphere. The longitudinal flow in rivers and streams allows for the integration and transport of fluvial particulate organic carbon (POC) from various sources and its continual transformation. A continuum-oriented perspective suggests longitudinal variations...
Kaposi’ sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) causes primary effusion lymphoma (PEL). PEL cell lines require expression of the cellular FLICE inhibitory protein (cFLIP) for survival, although KSHV encodes a viral homolog of this protein (vFLIP). Cellular and viral FLIP proteins have several functions, including, most importantly, the inhibition of pro-apoptotic caspase 8...
The relationship between the structure and function of proteins is a fundamental problem in biology with implications for the future of biotechnology and global health. For example, changes to the structure of a coronavirus spike protein led to a global pandemic where our best defenses were vaccines that could only...
Scholarly inquiry has yielded a wealth of evidence in support of narrative-based strategies for persuasion, and yet support for this approach is less consistent in relation to contentious or controversial issues. To better understand why this might be the case, the first part of this dissertation reports a theoretically-guided content...
Prisoner reentry has become an increasingly popular topic of research in the past few decades due to the phenomenon of mass return as a result of the era of mass incarceration. While research has been done on the experiences of the returning population before mass incarceration, few contemporary researchers have...
Ankle sprains are the most common musculoskeletal injury. After an ankle sprain, about 40% of individuals develop Chronic Ankle Instability (CAI), resulting in recurrent sprains, the ankle giving way, or feelings of instability. Most sprains occur due to excess inversion of the ankle. Frontal-plane ankle stiffness quantifies the ankle’s ability...
“National Acts: Performance, Commemoration, and the Construction of American Public Memory” explores how sites of public commemoration created during and after the American Civil War crafted conceptions of American public memory and identities through performative processes. This dissertation looks at three commemorative efforts: the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln,...
Dental enamel is a complex bio-composite with compositional and structural features across a wide range of length scales. Defects in these features can compromise enamel’s ability to protect the tooth, resulting in adverse health outcomes. Acquired defects like tooth decay are familiar to most people and are the subject of...
Many processes in nature and human-made settings rely on the unique properties of charged metal oxide:aqueous interfaces. Despite their ubiquity, these buried interfaces are challenging to study, since any analytical technique aiming to overcome the relatively small number density of interfacial versus bulk species must be highly sensitive and surface-selective....
Caves are accessible windows into the shallow subsurface, serving as transitional ecosystems between the photosynthesis-dependent surface and the deeper subsurface. Without a source of solar energy to ultimately power carbon (C) fixation (photolithoautotrophy), cave ecosystems are either reliant on surface-derived nutrients, recovering reducing power from the microbial oxidation of redox-sensitive...
Global dementia diagnoses are steeply increasing. While advances in neuroimaging, neuropathology, and genetics research have improved our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases causing dementia, precise antemortem diagnosis, as well as sensitive and specific biomarkers that can facilitate a differential diagnosis and aid in participant recruitment in clinical trials, remains elusive. The...
This dissertation explores critiques of mass education alongside the rise of the research university as they appear in the early writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin. More specifically, it traces the development of a theory of (un)learning that inserts distance into the pedagogical relation to produce a discretized educational...
Cancer is a complex and heterogeneous disease characterized by aberrant gene regulation. Gene regulation is fundamentally orchestrated by the 3D genome organization which involves chromatin looping, compartmentalization, and the formation of topologically associating domains (TADs). Structural variations (SVs), such as genomic rearrangements, deletions, inversions, and duplications, are commonly observed in...
This dissertation explores how dominant U.S. constructions of race, class, and gender are embedded into and inscribed onto artificially intelligent virtual assistants and the labors they perform. I examine virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana, interrogating their complex relationship to humanness, the tasks they are programmed...
This thesis explores how beyond-the-Standard-Model physics interactions could lead to the detection of neutrino decay with lifetimes that are orders of magnitude smaller than a second. I mainly focused on right-handed neutrino fields, new heavy states, and non-zero daughter neutrino masses, assuming the neutrinos are Dirac fermions. An extensive description...
Clustering is a fundamental task in unsupervised learning, which aims to partition the data set into several clusters. It is widely used for data mining, image segmentation, and natural language processing. One of the most popular clustering methods is centroid-based clustering, including k-medians and k-means clustering. k-medians and k-means clustering...
This dissertation focuses on the study of the superionic state in multicomponent systems, where the smaller component exhibits delocalization and mobility while still maintaining system compactness through component attractions. Superionic behavior is widely observed in various systems and plays a crucial role in ceramic superionic conductors, which offer high ion...
One of the greatest challenges in heterogeneous catalysis is the rational design and development of new catalytic systems, due to synthetic limitations in the design of solid catalysts and inhomogeneity of chemical sites at solid surfaces. This obfuscates understanding of catalyst behavior and slows improvements of processes. One approach to...
Clean water supplies are required for industry and general life. However, water shortages dueto pollution and human activity are increasingly common, and new, more efficient, materials need
to be made to increase clean water supplies. To do this, fundamental information on the interaction
of water with ions at the atomic...
The functions of lubricants in moving interfaces are extensive; lubricants minimize friction, transfer heat, clean the rubbing surfaces, extract debris, and diminish wear. Rather than using separate lubricants for each of the functions, it is more desirable to make one lubricant serve multiple purposes, or a muti-functional lubricant. The goals...
Morality has been viewed as a core aspect of the self and even a basic psychological need. Strategies for regulating threats to moral self-views may therefore be distinct from regulating threats to other self-aspects. Consistent with research on the regulation of basic psychological needs, I hypothesized that threats to the...
The continuing increase in atmospheric CO2 to concentrations exceeding 400 ppm has attracted considerable attention from both scientists and policymakers. Industrial fossil fuel consumption generates a significant amount of CO2 emissions, and in particular, energy-intensive molecular separations that require thermal processes, such as distillation, drying, or evaporation, are responsible for...