Three in ten people worldwide lack access to a safely managed source of drinking water, with one in ten lacking access to a drinking water service altogether. This is projected to worsen in the coming years as climate change, infrastructure degradation, and poor governance work to further increase global water...
Understanding the regulatory programs enabling cancer stem cells (CSCs) to self-renew and drive tumorigenicity could identify new treatments. Through comparative chromatin state and gene expression analyses in CSCs vs. non-CSCs, we identified FOXK2 as a highly expressed stemness-specific transcription factor (TF). Its genetic depletion diminished stemness features and reduced tumor...
Cholinergic modulation of the brain cortex is critical for cognitive processes, and altered cholinergic modulation of the prefrontal cortex is emerging as an important mechanism of neuropathic pain. Despite the known sex differences in pain prevalence and perception, the precise nature of the mechanisms responsible for sexual dimorphism in chronic...
Chromatin is the biological material that packages our genetic information. In humans, 2 meters of linear DNA is compacted into an approximately 6 μm nucleus. Our DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is then translated into proteins. Cellular phenotype, the composite of all cellular functions, is defined by the entire...
Proteins are the nanoscale building blocks of life. Their sophisticated but well-defined architectures result in complex biological functions, including ones involved in metabolism, photosynthesis, transcription, translation, and immunity. To study and improve upon the natural functions of proteins, it is desirable to develop methodology for organizing proteins into targeted architectures....
Contemporary decolonial criticism and critical phenomenological thought may be characterized as proceeding from a disenchantment with the philosophical aspiration towards universality. The overarching argument put forward in this dissertation is that there is, to the contrary, an intimate and even necessary connection between the decolonization of philosophy and the affirmation...
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made compounds containing multiple carbon–fluorine bonds. The unique properties of this strong bond simultaneously make PFAS useful for a number of industrial and consumer applications, toxic to living organisms, and difficult to remediate. Because the pervasive pollution of water sources with PFAS occurs at...
While deep reinforcement learning achieves tremendous successes in practice, its efficiencies are rarely understood in theory. The dissertation contains three parts, with each part corresponding to the study of an independent theoretical reinforcement learning problem. The three parts in all discuss the mechanism of how (deep) reinforcement learning efficiently solves...
Quantum mechanical phenomena are playing tremendous roles in many areas of chemistry and materials science research. In recent years, the potential role of coupling between electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom in photochemical processes has been widely researched. Despite its potential to improve molecular technologies, the lack of studies focusing...
Persons with spinal cord injuries can use state-of-the-art brain-computer interfaces to control robotic arms. Despite this high-tech solution, their movements are slow and imprecise, much like those made by individuals who have lost proprioception, the sense of body position and movement. Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) used to reactivate neural circuits in...