From energy to materials, hydrocarbon chemistry drives our world. Stemming from the petrochemical industry, our understanding of CxHy combinations has allowed society to flourish, and hydrocarbons will likely remain valuable species in our future even as we transition to greener carbon and hydrogen sources. Currently, one of the most efficient...
Processing of sensory information in the brain is a pervasive and fundamental phenomenon across animal species and is involved in both "hard-wired" innate responses as well as learned and adaptive behaviors. Here, I show that the avoidance of hot temperature, a simple innate behavior, contains unexpected plasticity and complex processing...
The reforms called for by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (National Research Council, 2012; NGSS Lead States, 2013) involve students using scientific and engineering practices to construct disciplinary knowledge with others. For this work to be meaningful, students need to understand what they were doing and how their actions...
Reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) has enormous potential to become a paradigmatic model of individual differences. However, while its foundations in experimental genetic and neurophysiological research on nonhuman animals are among the strongest in personality psychology, it has perhaps not gained the foothold within the field that it deserves. It is...
The automobile coating industry is undergoing reformation driven by environmental regulations that demand low content of volatile organic compounds. Traditional solvent-borne acrylic resins
consisting of high molecular weight polymers that are produced at low temperatures (< 80 C) need high levels of organic solvent (70%) to be processed as coatings....
A current challenge to the civil/environmental engineering field is to assist full-scale wastewater treatment facilities through wider use of advances in modeling methods and analytical techniques. To address this challenge I applied modeling tools and, with assistance, the molecular biology analytical method of Fluorescent In-Situ Hybridization (FISH) to the high...
This dissertation develops and applies coupled marine sulfur and strontium cycle modeling to the highly dynamic Early Cretaceous demonstrating the value of increased model constraint from linkage of biogeochemical cycles with shared forcing factors. A foundation for this work is first provided by review of relevant geochemical, sedimentological, and paleontological...