The question of how native species diversity affects a community’s ability to resist invasive species has inspired decades of research. One of the oldest invasion biology hypotheses is that more species rich ecosystems are less invaded. While there has been strong support for this hypothesis, there is also strong evidence...
Current prediction instruments for violent recidivism lack accuracy as recidivism rates for violent offenses remain high (Fazel & Wolf, 2015). Part of the issue may be the conceptualization of violent offenders as a homogenous group as opposed to heterogeneous subgroups. Additionally, various studies suggest that cognitive abilities in violent offenders...
The role of nuclei nanoenvironment in cellular function has been a challenging problem in biology due to the lack of chromatin 3-dimension (3D) structure imaging/capturing techniques and theory connecting physical structure of chromatin to transcription. Recent studies on optical properties measurement on biological sample techniques, nanoscale imaging techniques and chromatin...
This dissertation is a case study of one midwestern city and its Latinx inhabitants. It explores the intertwined pursuit by ethnic Mexicans and Puerto Ricans of inclusion in union and electoral politics. The world of machine politics offered ethnic Mexicans and Puerto Ricans an avenue for inclusion. Central to this...
X-ray imaging at nano and micro-scale is of great importance for the material science and defense industry. Large penetration depth and low wavelength of x-rays offer an important potential to image objects at high resolution and in a non-invasive process. While the ever-growing community is pursuing novel applications and looking...
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) are important abstractions of the complex regulatory interplays between genes, proteins, metabolites, and other molecular-level entities. Comprehensive GRNs provide high-level overviews of the topology of gene-gene interactions and their purposes, thereby enabling a comprehensive understanding of their role in phenotypic variation, disease mechanisms, and other biological...
This dissertation is a collection of three papers on synthesizing and translating statistical evidence in education research. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction and executive summary, and Chapters 2 - 4 contain the three substantive papers respectively. Chapter 2 presents methods for pooling sample variances across studies to improve properties...
This dissertation examines the language of force in Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (MoE) as a site of literary self-reflection. It investigates how the text employs a constellation of “force” terms – including not only the words Kraft, Energie, and Leistung, but also images of physical and chemical forces...
Heart failure is a growing clinical problem, and inherited cardiomyopathies contribute significantly to heart failure. Among the many genes associated with inherited cardiomyopathies, mutations in FLNC, the gene encoding the cytoskeletal protein filamin C, associate with a range of cardiomyopathy and increased risk for arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death in...
In recent years, motivated by the approaching of quantum limit for classic information science, the development of quantum information science (QIS) has drawn considerable interest from chemists and physicians. Different from classical bits which can only be localized on two different states, quantum bit, which can be simplified as qubit,...
Oligonucleotides can be used to modulate the regulation of pathological genes that are associated with various diseases. However, due to biological barriers, efficient delivery of oligonucleotides, especially to extrahepatic tissues, remains a challenge. To overcome these barriers, multiple delivery strategies have been developed, ranging from medicinal chemistry to nanotechnology. Nanoparticle-based...
In this thesis we present methods for estimating network metrics via random walk sampling. More specifically, we generalize the Hansen-Hurwitz estimator and the Horvitz-Thompson estimator to estimate the shortest path length distribution (SPLD), closeness centrality ranking, and clustering coefficients of a network. Those are important metrics to a network, but...
The three-dimensional (3D) nanoscale structure of III-As nanowires is correlated with optical and electronic property measurements to deconvolve the contributions of strain, composition, and crystal structure to characteristics of interest for future electronic and optoelectronic devices. Multiple advanced two-dimensional (2D) and 3D characterization techniques are employed such as atom probe...
Sentence comprehension requires both syntactic prediction and working memory processes. Evidence suggests that both are impaired in agrammatic aphasia, and can independently contribute to comprehension breakdowns, but the relationship between them, especially during real-time sentence comprehension remains unclear. Two EEG studies investigated on-line processing of sentences with non-local long-distance dependencies...
Existing scholarship documents the low levels of political power held by the American poor, and concomitant economic elite domination of Congress. Since the poor seldom elect lawmakers that share their descriptive traits, they necessarily rely on non-poor lawmakers virtually representing their interests. A key part of this virtual representation is...
Circuit-level Dynamic Timing Slack (DTS) has emerged as a compelling opportunity for eliminating inefficiency in modern low-power systems. This slack arises when all the signals have propagated through logic paths well in advance of the clock signal. When it is properly identified, the system can exploit this unused cycle time...
This dissertation is a performance ethnography that chronicles the experiences of Black and Latinx transgender women in the ballroom scenes of Chicago, Illinois and London, England. The dissertation engages 65 Black and Latinx transwomen and offers a theory of embodied knowledge—that is, the harnessing of lived experiences of racial, gender,...
Although electrostatics interactions in fluids have been studied for many decades, new results in this field are still challenging our classical understanding of electrolytes. The combination of electrostatics and self-assembly yields many interesting yet challenging problems that are of fundamental scientific interest and show promise for industrial applications. In this...
This dissertation introduces several novel computational imaging techniques that capture and analyze the 3D surface shapes and internal layered materials. The research proposes user-friendly and non-invasive imaging systems, constructed using only commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components, which provide accurate measurement of 3D information that was previously inaccessible. The dissertation focuses on...
This dissertation studies the pricing of jump risk in the cross-section, which builds on understanding the cross-sectional structure of jumps at market jump times, develops nonparametric measures of idiosyncratic jump risk, and investigates its asset pricing implications. Chapter 1 is joint work with Professor Viktor Todorov, in which we study...
This dissertation explores the poetry and culture of the late-Soviet era of Stagnation (1964-1985) through a broadly conceived cultural metaphor of stagnation. The five Russian poets and one American poet in this study- Viktor Krivulin, Alexei Parshchikov, Aleksandr Eremenko, Ivan Zhdanov, Elena Shvarts, and Lyn Hejinian- each engage with a...
In nature, materials with complex architectures are formed through hierarchical self-assembly. Therefore, the study and design of hierarchically assembling materials is important in producing materials that mimic biological structures and is a key challenge in biomaterials science and engineering. In articular cartilage, hierarchical assembly of extracellular matrix (ECM) components provides...
Soft materials are inherently fluxional, with morphologies and behaviors that are dictated by their solvation state. Thus, many organic systems cannot be reliably imaged by static dry state or cryogenic-transmission electron microscopy (TEM). This motivated us to pursue liquid cell (LC) TEM method development to study our own materials and...
Stress, trauma exposure, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are associated with chronic health conditions. In the U.S., women of color face trauma at up to four times the national rate. They also contend with chronic stress from the intersectional hardships of racism, discrimination, sexism, and economic hardship that is the...
This dissertation is about three of Cicero’s notable projects in ideal theory in his middle and late periods (between roughly 54-43 BCE). It comes during a resurgence in interest in Cicero’s contributions as a philosopher. First, I discuss Cicero’s philosophical account of vera gloria (true glory) in contradistinction to mere...
Economic activity is mostly performed by groups of agents that form organizations and collectives. In this dissertation I explore the effects of two frictions, namely conflicting preferences and contracting with externalities, on the characteristics of agents that jointly constitute a given organization or collective. First, in many professional environments workers...
Androgen receptor pathway inhibitors are the mainstay treatment for advanced prostate cancer, but resistance is common. Here, we used a CRISPR activation screen to identify genes that promote enzalutamide resistance in the metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer cell line LNCaP. We found that activation of the TGF-β target gene, PRRX2, promoted...
This dissertation consists of three chapters on contract theory. In Chapter 1, ``Agency in Hierarchies: Middle Managers and Performance Evaluations'', I study the optimal joint design of incentives and performance rating scales in a principal-manager-worker hierarchy. The principal wants to motivate the manager and the worker to exert unobservable effort....
Advancements in the understanding and synthesis of transition metal compounds have allowed materials engineers to design functional materials with a range of properties, such as ferroelectricity, non-linear optical activity, colossal magnetoresistance, and superconductivity. Conventional routes to tune and design functional materials includes chemical cation substitution and heterostructuring of oxide thin...
Individuals experience a wide variety of emotions in their everyday lives. Some experience more variety, or complexity, than others, called emotional complexity. There is a body of research that suggests that emotional complexity is beneficial for mental and physical health; yet more recent work has called these associations into...
This dissertation proposes an oracle efficient estimator in the context of a sparse linear model. Chapter 1 introduces the penalty and the estimator that optimizes a penalized least squares objective. Unlike existing methods, the penalty is differentiable – once, and hence the estimator does not engage in model selection. This...
Global energy demands are expected to increase by about one-third between 2014 and 2040 and will surely be met from a combination of wind, solar, and among other renewable sources. The shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energies will ensure a clean and sustainable future. The main issue...
This thesis examines the role of the media in stock markets and the role of transparency in investment decisions. In the first two chapters, I investigate how the contrasting trends in media coverage and earnings guidance have affected stock price informativeness over the past two decades. I develop a model...
Numerous insights into the sensorimotor systems that guide the control of voice have been garnered by observing how the system responds to manipulations of its auditory feedback. However, current approaches may be limited in the exploration of more complex parameters of volitional and adaptive voice control due to their limited...
Rationally assembled nanostructures exhibit distinct physical and chemical properties beyond their individual units. The development of nanofabrication tools enables precise structural defining of nanomaterials scalable to large areas. This dissertation focuses on plasmonic nanoparticle arrays that show unique diffractive coupling with lattice spacings engineered close to the wavelength of light....
Since its discovery in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), efforts have beenmade to measure and characterize the properties of the Higgs boson. Among these efforts
have been searches for rare decays of the Higgs predicted by the standard model (SM) of
particle physics. One such decay is the...
The lanthanides, with their limited orbital effects and high oxophilicity, represent a class of catalytic metals highly distinguished from more commonly-utilized transition metals. Homogeneous lanthanide catalysts often afford high catalytic rates and impressive selectivity. However, challenges regarding the synthesis and utilization of highly air- and water-sensitive organo-lanthanide complexes have limited...
In this thesis, we study pushforwards of canonical and log-pluricanonical bundles on projective log canonical pairs over the complex numbers. We partially answer a Fujita-type conjecture proposed by Popa and Schnell in the log canonical setting. Built on Kawamata’s result for morphisms that are smooth outside a simple normal crossing...
Body size is one of the most discernible ways in which animal species vary. The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), the largest animal on earth, can reach up to 30 m in length and weigh up to 200 tonnes. At the other extreme, a species of frog called Paedophryne amauensis is...
How we remember, narrate and teach the past is an inherently political and ethical act. This is especially true when teaching about race and racism within the context of United States history. In this dissertation, I ask: how do young people narrate the durability of racial inequality in the United...
Cells are complex, autonomous machines that integrate many environmental cues to execute a desired response. Though this property makes cells versatile, it presents significant design challenges when, to treat diseases, we must alter cellular responses. To understand changes to the complex regulatory pathways that cause diseases, studies often investigate the...
Scalable processing of well-defined interfaces is key not only for wider application of two-dimensional (2D) materials in technology but also for improved fundamental understanding. Atomic layer deposition has useful characteristics, especially self-limited growth at low temperatures, that make it well suited for the production of uniform interfaces. Related processes, such...
This dissertation analyses the ways in which football, known as soccer in the United States, has historically served as a diasporic space for the articulation of black politics in the second half of the twentieth century. While modern sport is characterized as an apolitical cultural practice, I am interested in...
How do people make meaning of risk-taking? The present dissertation proposes a normative lay theory of risk-taking. The proposed model promotes the following core ideas: (a) Risk-taking is generally an ambiguous construct and requires the illumination of at least some dimensional parameters to disambiguate the risk behavior and risk-taker; (b)...
The study of employee engagement and its consequences in the workplace has gained traction in the business world over the past decade, with dramatic claims of the direct consequences of engagement including lower absenteeism, higher sales, improved productivity, and increased profitability for organizations that are more engaged (The Gallup Organization,...
Polyolefins are the most versatile and widely used polymers worldwide. Depending on the polymer microstructure, polyolefins can exhibit a wide range of useful and tailored properties and applications. Metal-catalyzed coordinative olefin polymerization plays a center role in advancing polyolefin synthesis. This dissertation explores two strategies to modulate the polymer microstructures...
In this dissertation I examine the entanglement between female literacy and female sexuality in nineteenth-century Brazilian novels. I investigate the ways in which male authors used literature as a mechanism for policing female sexuality and stabilizing the traditional family. I argue that nineteenth-century Brazilian fiction exhibits a recurring preoccupation with...
In this dissertation I explore the applications and test the limitations of surface haptics technology in producing tactile experiences akin to those encountered in the real world. The goal of this work is to build intuition around physical aspects of touch that contribute to perception of tactile textures in...
There is considerable technical interest in the improvement of battery technology, as it would allow for the enhancement and realization of many different applications, including the continued miniaturization of portable computational devices, plug-in electric vehicles, and intermittent power storage. Lithium metal represents a theoretical limit on the anode energy density...
My dissertation defends a hermeneutic conception of ideology and its critique that situates both in the world-disclosing function of language.I argue that we must conceive of ideologies as world-disclosing embodied interpretive schemas insofar as they guide our cognitive, affective, and conative access to reality by providing the background knowledge, meanings,...
Over a decade has passed since Hurricane Katrina impacted the Gulf Coast. The city of New Orleans, was one of the more severely damaged areas in the region, experiencing 80% damage. This dissertation analyzes the rebuilding of New Orleans and it questions the role that colonial legacies play in that...
The field of robot design mostly focuses on careful construction of complex control and planning algorithms (e.g., tuning neural network weights) which bear sole responsibility for improving task performance, while the robot’s body is often assumed to be part of the environment. In nature, however, biological organisms co-evolve both their...
Spherical Nucleic Acids (SNAs) are unique class of nanomaterial characterized by a dense nucleic acid shell conjugated to a nanoparticle core. This radial orientation of oligonucleotides and architecture distinguishes SNAs from the components from which they are comprised. Specifically, unique chemical and biological properties emerge that are not observed with...
Background: Glioblastoma (GBM) tumors are the most malignant brain cancers and are characterized as Grade IV astrocytomas by the World Health Organization. GBM tumors can be classified into three molecular subtypes known as proneural, classical, and mesenchymal. In addition, GBM tumors also have a small population of cells known as...
Two unique structures make up the nucleus of our Galaxy on different scale sizes. On a broad scale of a few hundreds of parsecs, there is the well-known central molecular zone which comprises a substantial component of the gas in the Galaxy. The other, known as the mini-spiral, is streamers...
This dissertation examines the remediation of video game music from their source games to the concert hall. I argue that while not unique in their repositioning from popular to classical registers, the classicalization of video game music offers a contemporary challenge to the current norms of classical music institutions. I...
This thesis describes the relationships between nanoscale structure and particle transport in two systems: i) the transport and conversion of excitons in colloidal quantum dot (QD) assemblies and ii) the transport of carriers in flashing electron ratchets. One major crux in the creation of efficient photocatalytic systems is the low...
People evidence behaviors that engender hope for future behavior change, but also evidence this hope when there is no reason to believe that any behavior change will occur. For example, prior research suggests that temporal factors make people susceptible to change their minds over time, and a confluence of cognitive...
Mitochondria-derived reactive oxygen species (mROS) are required for the survival, proliferation, and metastasis of cancer cells. The mechanism by which mitochondrial metabolism regulates mROS levels to support cancer cells is not fully understood. To address this, we conducted a metabolism-focused CRISPR/Cas9 genetic screen and uncovered that loss of genes encoding...
Elemental powder blends are an emerging alternative to prealloyed powders for high-throughput alloy design via additive manufacturing techniques due to their flexibility, low cost, and ease of customization. This dissertation investigates elemental alloying elements (Sc and Zr) which are high-melting and highly reactive, unlike previous work which focused on more...
CD95/Fas ligand (CD95L) is a well characterized activator of extrinsic apoptosis. CD95L protein binds to its cognate receptor, CD95/Fas/APO-1, inducing apoptotic signaling in sensitive cells. However, expression of CD95L is toxic even in the absence of CD95. We previously reported that the CD95L open reading frame (ORF) is enriched for...
Pattern formation of biological structures involves the arrangement of different types of cells in an ordered spatial configuration. Patterning is thought to involve the spatial organization of molecular pre-patterns that precede and drive subsequent cell differentiation and coinciding morphogenesis. These molecular prepatterns are often, although not exclusively, organized through Turing...
Bias pervades all stages of the American criminal justice system. The system is a human creation, run by fallible people who bring prejudices and biases to their work just like everyone else. The first step to ridding the system of those biases is to fully understand the way they manifest...
Involuntary motor activities such as spasms arise from hyperreflexia in about 70% of individuals with spinal cord injuries (SCI). Despite this prevalence and the negative impact on health and safety, it is unclear what determines the severity of the spasms that develop. This study investigated the impact of injury severity...
One of the most pressing open questions in star formation is the role of magnetic fields relative to turbulence and gravity, and how these three processes set the stellar initial mass function and star formation efficiency. In this work, we present the state of BLAST-TNG (the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter...
Critical pedagogies offer a particular orientation towards education that understands the process of learning as inherently political. These frameworks demand explicit political attention by teachers to support student development of practices needed to create a liberatory world. Recent work evidences the positive impact critical pedagogies have on students academically, civically,...
Uranium is a unique, multifaceted element that possesses rich chemistry and promise for challenging reactions. Pressing demands within nuclear stockpile stewardship and the nuclear energy sector call for development of this relatively understudied element. Uranium metal–organic frameworks (U-MOFs), a class of nanoscale hybrid materials, harness the exceptional attributes of uranium...
As demonstrated by efforts in graphene commercialization, scalable synthesis and high-quality material availability are primary limiting factors for the realization of technologies based on two-dimensional (2D) materials. Thus, in considering the fate of emergent 2D materials such as the metal chalcogenides, the challenge of scalable synthesis is a highly relevant...
This dissertation examines three distinct empirical questions in macroeconomics and finance. Chapter 1 studies the reasons why households file for bankruptcy. The debt relief households obtain in bankruptcy provides insurance against wealth losses, but also distorts borrower incentives to repay debt, discouraging lending. Understanding how bankruptcy filings respond to changes...
In the 1960s, the International Theatre Institute (ITI), the organization sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with a mission to represents the world’s theaters, was faced with a crisis of representation. After twenty years of existence, the institution had not succeeded in substantially expanding beyond...
Although there has been profound evidence showing the positive correlation between spatial abilities and math performances, we still know very little about how and why spatial thinking facilitates the learning of mathematics. This dissertation unpacks several aspects of mathematics that are embedded in learning and playing an ancient and rich...
Context: Crowd logistics is a novel shipping concept where delivery operations are carried out by employing existing vehicle capacity and drivers from the crowd, relying on their planned tours, thereby offering potential for economic, social, and environmental benefits. Despite the promise of this new logistics model, little is known about...
T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) is an aggressive disease, affecting children and adults. Chemotherapy regimens show high response rates but have debilitating effects and carry risk of relapse. Until now, no targeted therapy has been approved. In addition, 40% of patients will relapse and their treatment options are limited because...
Nanotechnology research broadly encompasses the exploration of the unique chemical,optical, electronic, or biological properties of materials with dimensions < 1 µm. Inorganic
nanoparticles are one such class of materials, with properties that are exceptionally sensitive to
particle size and structure. This is especially evident in the field of heterogeneous chemical...
Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is a powerful phenomenon that dictates the functional properties of transition metal complexes essential for information processing, catalysis, and magnetism. Though it is relegated to lower energy scales within the orbital description of first-row transition metal complexes, SOC impacts crucial aspects of electronic structure such as promoting...
In the first chapter, I present a theory of measurement of preference intensity and use this measure as a foundation for utilitarianism. To do this, I suppose each alternative is experienced over time. An individual has preferences over such experiences. I present axioms under which preferences are represented by an...
This dissertation argues that writers and artists in Britain and its Empire in the first half of the twentieth century turned time and again to games and sports to find images and forms for their literary and artistic interventions. Furthermore, it shows how, in these works, play served as a...
Sexual orientation is conventionally understood as relative attraction to men versus women. It has recently been argued that male sexual orientation in particular can be extended to include other dimensions of sexual attraction besides gender, such as sexual maturity and location. With respect to the dimension of location, most men...
In 2018, our ATRAP collaboration produced 5 trapped antihydrogen atoms per hour long trial. An apparatus with a Ioffe octupole trap and a faster magnet dump was used to confine and detect trapped antihydrogen atoms. This apparatus is unique in that four sideports spaced at 90 degrees from each other...
Millions of years of evolution have produced fascinating biological materials and structures that are optimized to perform a wide spectrum of functions essential for the survival of organisms. These biological materials have been intensively studied in order to decipher the intricate interplay between their superior material properties and structural design...
A growing body of research analyzes how corporate social responsibility programs are used to absorb and neutralize the social criticisms coming from social and environmental movements and to superficially respond to the ensuing new regulations. If companies have powerful tools to resist changes and blunt the meaning of the law,...
Episodic memory provides a means by which we reflect on the past, make decisions about the future, and form a learned identity. Episodic memory depends on the hippocampus as well as on the distributed set of regions that form a hippocampal-cortical network (HCN), including medial prefrontal, posterior cingulate, and medial...
Sulfur mustard (HD), also known as the King of the Battle Gases, was one of the earliest and strongest CWAs to be deployed in war-time conflicts. Unfortunately, its low cost and facile production have resulted consistent use in the present day by rogue elements. As a result, the development of...
What is the role of entrepreneurship – a predominantly market-based approach – in addressing social problems such as inequality and social exclusion? How do entrepreneurial organizations with a distinctly social purpose (often referred to as hybrid organizations) manage additional imperatives, such as those related to democratic governance? Based on 70...
Language models are the foundation of many natural language tasks such as machine translation, speech recognition, and dialogue systems. Modeling the probability distributions of text accurately helps capture the structures of language and extract valuable information contained in various corpora. In recent years, many advanced models have achieved state-of-the-art performance...
Despite advancing knowledge about the mechanics of earthquakes, earthquake prediction remains, and will likely remain, an unsolved problem. Hence in order to reduce the risk posed by earthquake shaking, seismologists have developed tools called earthquake hazard maps. Earthquake hazard maps communicate expected future shaking scenarios, and are used by engineers...
In the vertebrate retina, neurons process visual signals, generating feature selectivity in their activity levels. We use computational models to understand these behaviors by interpreting them mathematically. One component of this analysis is the spatial selectivity or receptive field, a property found in all visual sensory neurons. The neurons found...
Recent decades have seen fan and “geek” culture become widely popular as the science fiction, fantasy, and superhero stories that used to be the preserve of a smaller subculture of die-hard fans conquered the box office, our televisions, and the best-seller lists. In that same time period, the Internet has...
Human complex diseases such as common cancers and diabetes are characterized by high molecular heterogeneity contributed by both genetic and non- genetic factors. This molecular heterogeneity can not only complicate diagnosis, risk stratification and patient care, but also lead to differential therapeutic response and treatment efficiency. Therefore, understanding the molecular...
Having an emotion involves having an evaluative point of view on one’s circumstances. For example, there is a sense in which being angry involves taking oneself to have been wronged, and fear seems to paint the scene as one of danger. A significant debate in contemporary philosophy of mind concerns...
Monetary Policy plays a crucial role in modern economies by supporting price, financial and economic stability. Its efficacy, however, exhibits variation both over time and across space leading to partially unpredictable and inconsistent outcomes. This thesis shows that the variation in the efficacy of monetary policy crucially relates to the...
Many volunteer communities rely on technological systems to help their members connect, collaborate and learn the norms of how to participate in the organization. This dissertation presents research that examines technological interventions designed to support participation in three different volunteer-run communities, all of which have porous boundaries, and allow volunteers...
This thesis studies social protest in colonial Korea (1910-1945). In the first two chapters, I study protest by Koreans against the Japanese colonial authority. In particular, I focus on the March First Movement in 1919, the largest anti-colonial independence movement during the colonial era, and examine its propagation (chapter 1)...
Nilotinib is a highly effective tyrosine kinase inhibitor used to treat Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML). While nilotinib successfully treats CML, a common and serious side effect is development of nilotinib-induced arterial disease (NAD) even in patients without pre-existing risk factors. This side effect is not seen with imatinib, a CML...
This dissertation is about the environment, inequality, and ways of being in the world. Water is necessary for biophysical existence, but also holds symbolic and ideological power. In ancient Maya ontologies, water was a powerful social force in the landscape, necessary for both bodily functions and cosmological connections. In some...
In this thesis, I present the development and benchmarking of several theoretical methods designed to enable the rigorous modeling of magnetic properties of molecules containing one or a few heavy atoms, particularly single-molecule magnets. The new methods use a full four-component treatment of relativity, allowing spin–orbit effects to be taken...
In this thesis, we study the geometry of planar shapes and their harmonic caps. Specifically, given a compact continuum $P$, we are interested in constructing a planar cap $\hat P$ such that $P$ and $\hat P$ can be glued together along their boundary to form a topological sphere with prescribed...
Using carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) to reduce vehicle weight has received growing attentions because it can effectively curtail greenhouse gas emissions and slow down global warming. The thermoforming process is among the most promising techniques for mass production of CFRP parts because it is highly automated and has relatively...
Self-assembled monolayers for matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (SAMDI-MS) is a platform that combines self-assembled monolayers of alkanethiolates on gold and MALDI mass spectrometry analysis to report mass changes resulting from surface reactions. The synthetic flexibility of the monolayer and the use of mass spectrometry as a generalizable readout method...
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have gained more and more attention from researchers, manufacturers, and transportation experts. When AVs become available to the public, they are expected to dramatically alter the transportation system as we know it, posing critical questions such as: How will the road network react to this change? How...