As the title suggests, this dissertation is composed of three major topics. The first two are optimization problems focusing on developing effective solution methodologies, while for the last topic we present a large-scale information retrieval system in the domain of sports. With the algorithms and frameworks developed in this dissertation,...
The development of metal-based probes has provided major benefits to understanding basic biological process and clinical outcomes. Metals offer access to geometries that carbon alone cannot attain, along with valuable magnetic, optical, and binding properties. Metals have proven to be particularly useful in advancing molecular imaging, a field that seeks...
Scholars have noted that food marketing significantly impacts the lives of children, influencing what foods they request and consume. However, the impact of food marketing on low-income children has only been explored minimally. This project explores both media-based and in-store food marketing to low-income families, along with potential outcomes of...
Advancements in nanotechnology have led to the production of devices with components with sub-100 nm size scales. Studies have investigated how properties of polymers change when confined to nanoscale dimensions. However, stiffness-confinement studies have reported increases, decreases, and invariance with confinement for different polymer/substrate pairs, making it difficult to obtain...
We studied the nonlocal effects of intraspecific prey competition on the stability of the critical points of the Rosenzweig-MacArthur model and the Holling-Tanner model, respectively, using linear stability analysis. In particular we focused on the study of the stability of the coexistence state influenced by the nonlocality for both models....
Algebras and their bimodules form a 2-category in which 2-morphisms are certain zero-th Hochschild cohomology groups. When we derive this structure (i.e., use Hochschild cochains instead of HH^0 for 2-morphisms), we find that algebras form a category in dg cocategories. The Hochschild-Kostant-Rosenberg theorem and non-commutative calculus give a rich algebraic...
With the dual challenges of meeting global energy demand and mitigating anthropogenic climate change, significant effort is being applied to generating power from renewable sources. The dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) is a photovoltaic technology capable of generating electricity from sunlight, but suffers losses in efficiency due to deleterious electron transfer...
Patients born with severe heart defects need regular monitoring of the complex hemodynamics in their heart and vasculature. 4D flow MRI has emerged as the state-of-the-art technique for comprehensively evaluating cardiovascular hemodynamics. This imaging technique allows for the dynamic visualization of 3D blood through the cardiac cycle and the quantification...
Radiation is a ubiquitous health risk. Contemporary populations are exposed to several hundred milliSieverts per person over their lifetimes from both natural and human made sources such as radon, cosmic rays, CT-scans, etc. Risk estimates based on studies of atomic bomb survivors suggest that these exposures induce excess cancer mortality...
Kainate receptors (KARs) are expressed throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems. One of three subfamilies of ionotropic glutamate receptors, KARs are localized both pre- and post-synaptically and exert important modulatory control over neural circuits. This modulatory role in circuit function makes them a potential actor in wide variety of...