This work argues that Latina/o immigrant Charismatic Catholicism does not encourage passive hope for heavenly rewards but rather emphasizes active strategies for transforming the self and the world. This study responds to two major concerns in the field of religious studies: the concern that Pentecostal forms of Christianity emphasize an...
The purpose of this research is to apply a sociocultural lens to examine students’ perceptions of usefulness in mathematics. It is important to explore perceptions of usefulness, as teachers are increasingly being encouraged to help their students view mathematics as useful. However, we know little about how students – and...
This dissertation reports on novel theoretical concepts as well as experimental efforts toward laser cooling of semiconductors. The use of quantum well system brings the opportunity to engineer bandstructure, effective masses and the spatial distribution of electrons and holes. This permits the incorporation of novel quantum mechanical phenomena to manipulate...
Interprotein electron transfer (ET) occupies a central role in both chemistry and biology, as it is important in a variety of functions including cellular respiration, metabolism, and energy transduction during photosynthesis. Consequently, understanding the protein-protein recognition and docking that controls interprotein ET is an important field of scientific research.
One...
An atom interferometric gyroscope (AIG) made with an uncorrelated ensemble of N two-level atoms, rotating at a rate ΩG about an axis normal to the area Θ accrues a phase ϕ = 2ωCΘΩG/c2 due to the Sagnac effect. Here ωC is the Compton frequency of the atoms used, and c...
Herpes stromal keratitis (HSK) is a potentially blinding inflammatory condition initiated by corneal infection with herpes simplex virus (HSV). As its name suggests, the host receptor herpes virus entry mediator (HVEM) facilitates HSV entry through interactions with a viral envelope glycoprotein. HVEM also bridges several signaling networks, binding ligands from...
A stroke can occur at any point throughout the lifespan, including in utero. The timing of the injury relative to neural development can have implications on the type of lesion, plasticity, and motor deficits. However, associated reactions, which refer to involuntary movement in one limb in response to voluntary activity...
Client-server architectures have been used for years, and many modern applications rely on this approach to be able to present rich and complex information to users without needlessly encumbering their local device with computation, and also to be able to keep all data in a (more-or-less) centrally available location, as...
This dissertation studies a variety of consumer behaviors and their strategic implications for firm profit maximization. The first chapter discusses how bundle pricing (via shipping policies) allows firms to achieve higher profits than component pricing when consumers's tastes for products are correlated. The second chapter illustrates how durable good producers...
Recent advances in optical switching have yielded an all-fiber, all-optical, device capable of routing single-photon quantum signals at high rates (≈25 GHz), with almost immeasurably small degradation of the quantum state[1, 2, 3]. These switches can facilitate complex quantum networking and quantum information processing schemes. However, the complexity of these...