Since their introduction nearly a century ago, protein vaccines and therapeutics have revolutionized our ability to prevent and treat human disease. However, existing production processes for biopharmaceuticals are technically complex and rely on living cells, which necessitates highly centralized manufacturing in large-scale production facilities, specialized equipment, and cold-chain distribution. With...
In 2008, the term "remix culture" is widely understood to refer to mash-up videos and movie parodies, distributed on websites such as YouTube and authored primarily by white male teenagers. This dissertation argues that digital remix was invented primarily by African American men, who, in the mid-1980s, began using digital...
This project examines the uneven adoption of therapeutic initiatives within the organizational field of American museums to ask: How do people frame museum-going as “good” for visitors’ health? Existing research on legitimation processes would predict cultural institutions respond similarly to pressures for greater accountability from their external environments, or resist...
X-ray Fluorescence Microscopy (XFM) is a useful technique for study of biological samples. XFM was used to map and quantify endogenous biological elements as well as exogenous materials in biological samples, such as the distribution of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles. TiO2 nanoparticles are produced for many different purposes, including development...
This dissertation is an ethnography that investigates how Chicago-based artists and organizations use hip-hop performance as a tool for grassroots education and communal dissent. By exploring these local artistic approaches, this research reveals the salience of hip-hop performance in cultivating social movements, embodied politics, and choreographic repertoires that respond to...
Erythropoietin-producing human hepatocellular (Eph) receptors and their corresponding ephrin ligands are asymmetrically expressed at cell-cell contacts allowing for bidirectional signaling with forward signaling through the receptor expressing cell and reverse signaling through the ligand expressing cell. Eph receptors are the largest family of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) in mammals, which...
Memory systems research has established the importance of two distinct types of memory systems in the brain: explicit and implicit. While a robust literature exists on individual differences in the explicit domain (Chapter 3), research on individual differences in implicit learning remains relatively limited. The key question guiding the investigation...
Individual plasmonic nanoparticles have the potential to revolutionize all areas of energy science, catalysis, organic electronics, and solar technology. Owing to their light trapping and focusing ability, single nanoparticles can be utilized to efficiently drive chemical reactions at the sub-nanometer scale. Much of the fundamental science regarding how plasmons can...
This dissertation endogenizes information acquisition in two-player games across three different settings. The first chapter explores when moral hazard in a principal-agent contract can lead to pareto improvements when it is preceeded by information gathering. The second chapter studies how product differentiation affects the amount of market research done by...
This thesis studies the in-hand manipulation problem of repositioning finger contacts on an object by controlled sliding. In this thesis we investigate two versions of the problem. First for a multifingered hand with circle patch contacts, we present a framework for planning the motion of the hand to create an...
The work of this dissertation seeks to enhance the understanding of DNA-driven nanoparticle assembly and introduce kinetic routes to control mesoscale crystal habit and size. Chapter 1 describes the state of the art in the field of nanoparticle assembly and, specifically, DNA- mediated nanoparticle assembly, where the concept of a...
In this dissertation, I argue that the locus of Tsvetaevaseemingly conflicted views about art and the criteria for its evaluation is the tension between the rational, ethical, and distinctively human in us, and the irrational spontaneous impulse. Tsvetaevaterm for the irrational impulse is stikhiia, a force of nature that is...
Over the past decade significant advancements have been made across the field of cancer biology resulting in transformative new therapies. Despite these advancements, treatments for metastatic cancer remain relatively ineffective. Metastasis is coordinated by various types of “healthy†stromal cells in addition to the tumor cells themselves. This requires a...
Let X,Y be algebraic varieties defined over the reals. Assume Y is smooth and X is Gorenstein. Suppose f:X -> Y is a flat R-morphism such that all the fibers have rational singularities. We show that the pushforward of any smooth, compactly supported measure on X has a continuous density...
Ubiquitous in the environment are bacteria that have evolved to adapt to the environmental niches they colonize. To this end, bacteria sensory and signaling molecules are required for processing these extracellular changes within their environment into changes in gene expression. The plague-causing pathogen, Yersinia pestis, contains a repertoire of two-component...
Nano-scale materials possess many unique physical and chemical properties which are not found in bulk materials. The ability to synthesize these materials by design is one of the greatest challenges in materials science. Advances towards meeting this challenge will lead to discoveries in fields such as plasmonics, photonics, catalysis, and...
Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi are a group of cosmopolitan symbiotic soil fungi that colonize the fine roots of tree species and play an essential role in plant nutrition and ecosystem function. In worldwide afforestation projects, the establishment of introduced trees in novel habitats has been shown to require ECM fungal associations....
I study three topics in applied microeconomics. My first chapter concerns the effect of daily school start times on academic achievement in Florida. Exploiting the sharp discontinuity in school start time relative to sunrise, I track children who move between schools on either side of the time zone boundary in...
Journalism professionals and researchers have recently argued that newsrooms adopt audience engagement as one of their chief pursuits. This term has many interpretations that stem from one underlying belief: journalists better serve their audiences when they explicitly focus on how their audiences interact with and respond to the news in...