Visual Regression is a general task in the area of computer vision, with input visual data space and continuous output space. Most learning-based visual estimation tasks, where the output variables take values in continuous space, are related to visual regression. Examples of visual regression include many emerging but very difficult...
We tackle two important theoretical problems in macroeconomics and international economics. First, in macroeconomics, especially monetary economics, the models with a standard Taylor rule have multiple equilibria. This multiplicity is problematic since we do not have a theory to determine a price level. We propose a theory to pin down...
Machine learning and symbolic reasoning have been two main approaches to build intelligent systems. Symbolic reasoning has been used in many applications by making use of expressive symbolic representations to encode prior knowledge, conduct complex reasoning and provide explanations. Recently, machine learning has enabled various successful applications by learning from...
Stringent demands in the sheet forming industry related to rapid and customized part realization coupled with rigorous requirements on geometric accuracy and product properties have outpaced the capabilities of traditional forming processes. As an emerging novel technology, Double-Sided Incremental Forming (DSIF) offers much higher flexibility with the complete elimination of...
Many phenomena that occur in the nanoscale, such as the self-assembly of charged amphiphiles, the metal extraction for recovering rare earth elements and nuclear waste as well as water purification, are driven by the electrostatic forces. Although current simulation techniques can handle the long-range Coulomb potential efficiently, the inhomogeneity in...
The dissertation consists of three separate essays that lie at the interface of social network analytics and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Essay 1 and Essay 2 cover completed research, while the research covered in Essay 3 is at a more preliminary stage.', 'Essay 1: Starting Cold: The Power of Social...
Biology is entering the exciting world of big data. Modern high-throughput experimental techniques often produce large datasets that aim to capture complex relationships often found in biological systems. While these larger data sets contain vast amounts of useful information, the answers are often locked behind a wall of numbers. As...
In the last decade, global mobile data traffic increased by more than a hundred fold times while maintaining essentially the same monthly charge to the average mobile user. Cisco predicts that overall mobile data traffic will continue to grow rapidly at a compound annual growth rate of 60 percent between...
In college, high levels of student engagement, including the formation of relationships with faculty and staff, are positively associated with learning and development. Faculty and staff, known as institutional agents, can provide critical forms of institutional knowledge, resources, and services that can enhance the college experience and encourage student success....
My dissertation is an autoethnography, tracking my experience creating the Great Chicago Fire Festival for and with the City of Chicago. The production was a nearly unprecedented collaboration between an arts organization and a major municipality. It involved 7 different city agencies and 3 federal departments; more than 6000 city...
Intermolecular charge transfer between electron-rich donor and electron-poor acceptor molecules offer great promise in the development of novel, low-cost electronic materials. It is hypothesized that control over the intermolecular interactions and supramolecular self-assembly of these systems could tune electronic properties and discover new functions. To that end, a series of...
Demands in the aerospace, automotive and biomedical sectors for low-volume sheet metal parts made from materials with high specific strength are growing due to the needs imposed by rapid product development cycles, and personalized products to mention a few. However, high strength-to-weight ratio materials, such as Ti6Al4V, are usually difficult...
Composites of metal nanoparticles encapsulated by metal-organic frameworks (NP@MOFs) have recently emerged as intriguing heterogeneous catalysts for regioselective reactions. Sharing qualities of both zeolites and enzymes, these catalysts employ the pore system of a MOF to direct reactant access to the surface of nanoparticles. This dissertation seeks to better understand...
The recent development of quantum biology results in various breakthroughs in exploring the role of quantum physics in biological systems, as well as in observing and controlling light-matter interactions in biological materials on a fundamental quantum level. We seek to combine the concept of quantum biology with quantum optics to...
Recent years have witnessed success in using mathematical models to understand complex social phenomena. In this dissertation, we develop and apply two mathematical models in the area of urban productivity and political elections. ', 'First, we investigate the puzzling superlinear scaling behavior of many outputs in urban areas, such as...
Precise assessment of long-term aging and deterioration play a major role in life-time predictions of concrete structures. One of the primary challenges in studies of cementitious materials such as concrete comes from the fact that multiple chemical reactions are happening in parallel. Environmental conditions present another challenge as they can...
The phase-field crystal (PFC) model is an exciting new method for simulating crystalline materials with atomic resolution over diffusional time scales. Unfortunately, applications of the model have been severely limited by the requirement that novel free energies must be constructed for each new material of interest. This thesis describes three...
Meiosis is a specialized form of cell division where chromosomes are duplicated once and segregated twice, in order to reduce the chromosome number by half to generate haploid gametes. In contrast to mitosis, oocyte meiosis in many species occurs in the absence of centrosomes, the microtubule organizing centers that nucleate...
This dissertation studies three topics in labor and public economics. The first chapter examines the local economic consequences of prisons using two complementary approaches. The first uses the openings of 230 prisons during the 1990s across the entire United States, and the second uses a quasi-experimental strategy that compares winning...
Electrochemical energy storage devices have become increasingly relevant to the operation and sustainability of the modern world, as proliferation of mobile electronics, renewable electrical energy generators, electrical vehicles, and various high-tech bio-medical sensing device continues. The widespread need of easier to produce, better performing, and multifunctional energy storage materials in...
This study is an examination of conservative Christian pronatalist discourse in the contemporary United States and the myriad ways it endangers American women and children. Insofar as conservative Christian pronatalism is part of broader religious and pollical movement, this study also examines related conservative Christian discourses asserting anti-intellectualism, libertarian economics,...
This dissertation provides a study of local Black media development in Detroit in the decade following the 1967 Rebellion, as Detroit became a majority Black city. I argue that Black Detroiters not only produced documentaries that challenged local white discourse within what George Lipsitz terms “a Black spatial imaginary,†but...
Reactive Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) pollution is responsible for a vast array of environmental problems, including eutrophication of nutrient limited water bodies, vast dead zones in the ocean margins, and ammonia toxicity to aquatic life. N pollution is also linked to the emission of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous...
Systems of colloids coated with high-information polymers are powerful tools for designing crystal lattice with tailorable properties or studying the fundamentals of crystallization. By changing the colloid-colloid interaction strength or colloid shape, different types of lattices can be assembled. In this thesis, I present novel coarse-grained models to describe high-information...
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a movement disorder that arises following the degeneration of dopamine-producing neurons of the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc). Patients experience a host of limiting motor symptoms such as rigidity, tremor, and a paucity of controlled movement generation. These symptoms often correspond with a predominance of abnormally...
This dissertation interrogates the relationship between affect and blackness, as it is intimated in the materiality of water and its attendant sensations. My methodology draws from black feminist theory and metaphors extracted from the natural and neurosciences. In so doing, I grapple with the following questions, as they relate to...
Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease characterized by the abnormal high blood glucose of patients. The defects in the hormonal regulation, including impaired insulin secretion, insulin action, or the combination of the two are usually the causes of such a disease. The elevated blood glucose also leads to a wide...
2018-1The human visual system has a remarkable ability for understanding material properties on the basis of texture appearance, such as', 'telling whether the food is fresh, the fabric is soft, the soil is wet, or the skin is dry. Such visual judgments of material properties mostly rely on the perception...
Ultrathin optical platform including two-dimensional materials and metasurfaces have emerged as potential candidates for novel nanophotonic applications. In this dissertation, I will present the possibility to achieve full active control of the electromagnetic waves with the platform in the flatland. We could achieve the amplitude control, which will be useful...
The use of polymeric membranes have become ubiquitous in our daily lives. From simple chip bags to million-dollar cockpits, these membranes find diverse applications in packaging, protective coating, electronic device, gas and liquid separation, and medicine. The 2-dimentional geometry of the membranes offered unique mechanical and interfacial properties that often...
This dissertation analyzes archival materials to examine the relationship between reproductive governance in India and the political and scientific dynamics of the Cold War. In 1952, India became the first country to institute anti-natalist population control as a national policy goal, concentrating its efforts on female sterilization and the building...
Gene regulatory networks contain multiple components including microRNAs (miRNAs) that coordinate regulation of genes to produce higher level cell functions. miRNAs are small non-coding RNA molecules that modulate gene expression post-transcriptionally by binding to short target motifs on mRNA transcripts to down-regulate target genes. Because miRNA regulation of genes is...
According to contemporary estimates, the 1933 Soviet famine killed six to eight million people, more than two million of them in Ukraine. This dissertation studies causes and consequences of this famine. ', 'Chapter one evaluates the causes of the 1933 famine offered by historians in Ukrainian context. Three main explanations...
Raytracing is a long-established means to simulate physically accurate light propagation. Increasing availability and power of highly-parallel computing, such as cloud-based clusters and dedicated graphics hardware, means that rendering algorithms can produce high resolution output very quickly. This means raytracing can now be used as a forward model in optimization...
Maxwell equations are behind an incredible number of physical phenomena, explaining the behavior of light, electricity and magnetism, from Gamma rays to ultra-low frequency radio-waves. Since their inception in 1861, many approximations have been derived, many devices have been modelled and fabricated to manipulate the electromagnetic fields, and more recently...
Research shows that psychometrically-assessed spatial abilities (e.g., spatial visualization and spatial orientation) can be improved through training, and that some training yields improvements that are transferable to novel contexts and tasks (Uttal et al., 2013). While the training of these spatial abilities may be valuable for some forms of STEM...
Oxidation processes play an integral role in many industries, but questions still remain regarding the mechanisms of carbon-hydrogen bond activation and oxidation in free-radical and catalyzed processes. Microkinetic modeling is a powerful tool capable of examining oxidation processes at the mechanistic level to gain understanding and guide catalyst applications. This...
In this dissertation thesis, I introduce three-dimensional (3D) image reconstruction algorithms for multi-focus microscopy (MFM). MFM provides a fast way to obtain 3D information of the sample by simultaneously capturing multiple focal planes on a single camera shot. However, stacking the sub-images from different focal planes does not provide a...
Small molecules such as indanes, chromanes, tetralins and their derivatives play a significant role in drug discovery due to their potent biological activity. This research herein presents a facile Brønsted acid-catalyzed allylsilane annulation methodology to generate fused ring systems such as indanes. The reaction goes through a homoallylic intermediate which...
This dissertation consists of three essays in Microeconomic Theory that study the interplay between mechanism and information design, provide insights into the design of efficient dispute resolution mechanisms for partnerships, and analyze the stability of fractional matchings in two-sided markets.', "In the first chapter, we study the optimal disclosure policy...
This thesis studies three approaches for solving linear programs with complementarity constraints (LPCC). The focus of Chapter 2 lies on difference-of-convex (DC) penalty formulations and the associated difference-of-convex algorithm (DCA) for computing stationary solutions of LPCCs. We concentrate on three such formulations and establish connections between their stationary solutions and...
In this dissertation, efforts are detailed to utilize semiquinoid bridging ligands to impart strong magnetic coupling between metal centers. Chapter 1 introduces the synthetic challenge of realizing molecule-based magnets with high operating temperatures due to weak magnetic coupling between spin centers through large, diamagnetic ligands. An alternative strategy is described...
The cerebellum contributes to movement initiation, execution, and adaptation. Primary cerebellar neurons receive synaptic inputs related to sensory stimuli and motor commands, leading to modulation of their firing. Furthermore, synaptic input differs substantially between cerebellum-dependent behaviors. I have made voltage- and current-clamp recordings from Purkinje and eurydendroid neurons in the...
Chromatin organization involves a hierarchy of length scales ranging from a few tens of nanometers in nucleosomes to hundreds of nanometers for chromosomal territories. This physical nanostructure is regulated by the genetic code, differential methylation and histone modifications that comprise the histone code, as well as non-molecular factors, such as...
Understanding bridge performance and detecting structurally deficient components are of increasing concern to modern infrastructure owners and managers. Concerns over possible effects of increased truck weights led to the opportunity to monitor a highway bridge, regularly subjected to heavy traffic due to logging activities typical of its locale. A weigh-in-motion...
This mixed-method dissertation explores how companies manage competing tensions in their corporate social responsibility platforms, with an emphasis on the activity of corporate philanthropy. While existing literature has overwhelmingly focused on the post-grant financial effects of corporate philanthropy, I shift our attention to various internal contestations between social impact and...
In this thesis, I investigate how the disagreements among market participants can affect markets in various settings. In the first chapter, I study how market participants with heterogeneous beliefs and non-commitment can create and manage counterparty risk in a sequentially and bilaterally traded market. I find that the equilibrium price...
In this work, we explore the utility of the three main types of neural networks: feed forward, convolutional, and recurrent. While using these networks, we develop a new way to model multiagent trajectory data, explore the use of multiple activation functions for neurons at each layer of a neural network,...
Technology mediated experiences are becoming more common and creating new ways for us to work and learn together when separated by distance. However, these remote environments lack many of the rich non-verbal cues that we take for granted in co-located interactions, such as information about where your partner is looking....
This dissertation focuses on the topic of pseudowords and how speakers pseudoword processing relates to that of real words. Three main lines of inquiry are pursued with respect to pseudowords and real words: mechanisms of gradient well-formedness, theories of morphological decomposition, and indexical associations for morphemes in complex words. It...