This dissertation explores the development of public access cable television programming made by and for LGBTQ people in New York City. Through archival research, interviews with the producers of these shows, and analysis of their content and textual features, I argue that LGBTQ public access programming reflected and amplified particular...
I examine economic design issues in the realm of dynamic organ allocation for transplantation and behavioral market design/contract theory. The second and third chapters focus on two issues in the design of the U.S. deceased-donor organ allocation system, which represents the majority of transplants performed in the U.S. In contrast...
Designing intelligent systems that can answer questions has been an ongoing and active challenge for the artificial intelligence community. In the past, researchers were focused on producing specialized language systems for particular domains and datasets. Such approaches would require deeper-than-ideal amounts of expertise to design, and often necessitated the expensive...
Over the last few years, there has been a transition away from traditional engineering materials to new advanced materials that exhibit complex architectures with improved mechanical properties. Most of the inspiration for these new materials comes from nature, where organisms have evolved an immense variety of macro and nanoscale shapes...
Proteins and many other systems are often conceptualized as networks to access analysis methods from the field of network science. Several approaches use molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of proteins to construct networks using correlational statistics. However, in the field of network science, a well-established approach for network construction is solving...
Human language processing is incremental. In this dissertation, I explore how an incremental perspective can help us clarify our understanding of transformational syntax, which typically proceeds bottom-up. As part of our exploration, I develop an incremental head-driven parsing algorithm for Minimalist Grammars. The two main innovations of this parsing algorithm...
In this Thesis, I describe some recent developments in the field of artificial molecular machines to which I have made contributions. In Chapter 1, I survey the rise and promise of molecular nanotopology, a relatively new discipline focusing on molecular knots and links that offers unprecedented opportunities to access high-energy...
When a collection of individual units behave synchronously, it is often useful to describe the actions of the group. Broadly speaking in Physics, individuals are described as particles and collective actions are described using waves. However, the dynamic symphony of life ordains that orchestral sections play in harmony for a...
Popular and scholarly arguments state that uncivil discourse is bad for democracy because it hampers political trust and sharpens polarization. These same scholars see uncivil discourse as contrary to a good democratic society. However, their arguments could be overstated because incivility may be so contextual that elites can frame certain...
Knowledge combination is a fundamental component of technological invention, which is a driver of new economic opportunities and firm growth. Yet, evidence suggests that myriad organizational factors, including managers, weigh heavily on the ability of firms to productively use R&D capabilities. This dissertation argues that managerial attention plays an important...
Cells are primarily comprised of metal ions, small molecules, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids. The ability to probe these molecules in single living cells can shed new light on chemical processes inside of cells or allow disease diagnosis based on molecular profiling. However, there exists a lack of tools that...
Thermoelectric (TE) materials has been drawn broad attention given that it can enable direct conversion between thermal and electrical energies, hence is treated as a vital candidate for clean power generation as well as waste heat recycling. However, the energy conversion efficiency of TE devices used nowadays is still very...
Health literacy has been shown to be a key component of patient understanding of medical diagnoses, adherence, and self-efficacy. Limited health literacy has been associated with a number of negative outcomes— including more severe illness, increased use of emergency services, and mortality. The concept of mental health literacy has arisen...
The Escherichia coli ribosome is a molecular machine capable of sequence-defined polymerization of -amino acids into proteins, a feat unmatched by any other current synthetic catalyst. It is complex in its structure, comprised of 3 RNA parts (the 5S, 16S, and 23S ribosomal RNAs) and 54 ribosomal proteins (r-proteins). Efforts...
Sub-wavelength matter’s interaction with far-field light is highly relevant for both fundamental scientific research, as well as many commercial, medical, and defense applications. For example, quantum computation depends on single identical photons produced by quantum dots characterized by far-field sources. Exoplanet detection uses cameras on Earth comprised of micron sized...
Security and robustness are two critical problems in modern computing system. In this disserta- tion, we study these two problems in both hardware system and learning system.Firstly, we discuss the robustness problem in hardware system. Modern microprocessors suffer from significant on-chip variation at the advanced technology nodes. The development of...
Transplantation is necessary and often the only viable treatment for many forms of end stage organ failure. While advances in immunosuppressive therapies have facilitated largely blocking acute rejection, 5-10 year post-transplant attrition rates have not significantly improved in the past 30 years. The predominant antigen facilitating the alloimmune response is...
This project addresses the uses of coalition in US political imaginaries throughout the 1930s and 1960s. Throughout this period, public familiarity with “coalition” undergoes a marked transformation: whether deployed as argument, performance, or organizational form. Analysis focuses on three case studies: accounts in the national and Black press of a...
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...
Bio-inspired materials have a distinct advantage over other materials by virtue of their mimicry of nature’s own products, which have been subjected to the inimitable tests of time and evolutionary pressure. Here we have taken instruction from natural nanostructures that are ubiquitous across the animal kingdom, namely high-density lipoproteins (HDL)....
The prospect of being evaluated by others is oftentimes psychologically crippling. At the core of feeling evaluated is perceiving other minds capable of possessing (judgmental) thoughts and feelings. While research on mind perception in evaluative situations oftentimes examines positive aspects (e.g., increased prosocial behavior), this dissertation looks into how mind...
Recent developments in deep learning have led to breakthroughs in rendering novel views from sparse input views of a scene.While the accuracy of these algorithms has improved dramatically, it has come at a huge computational cost.
While developments in graphics hardware have ameliorated some of the computational burdens, deep learning-based...
Coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) methods are techniques that image a sample by illuminating it with a coherent beam and recording the intensity diffraction pattern produced by the wavefront outgoing from the sample. These are lensless methods that are not limited in resolution by the physical characteristics of an objective lens,...
The demand for low cost, unconventional electronics requires new materials with unique characteristics that the traditionally used silicon-based technologies cannot provide. Metal oxide semiconductors, such has amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO), have made impressive strides as alternatives to amorphous silicon for electronics applications. However, to achieve the full potential...
Soft functional materials are fundamentally interesting from a chemistry standpoint and have exciting applications in robotics, chemical and biomolecule sensing, and biomedical engineering. In addition, soft materials are also useful in lithography, particularly cantilever-free scanning probe lithography (CFSPL). Because of their low modulus, biocompatibility, stimuli responsiveness, malleability, and other characteristics,...
In a new analysis of Renaissance pastoral that draws on ecocriticism, queer theory, and a historicist approach, this dissertation finds a green and inhuman world that opposes the modern view that humans differ significantly from, and enjoy a right of dominion over, nonhuman species and the environment. Through readings of...
Like many diseases, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is driven by the activity of inflammatory cells. Using molecular imaging to target and analyze populations of inflammatory cells is one promising strategy to non-invasively assess atherosclerosis progression. However, current molecular imaging contrast agents are not suited for such targeted imaging applications. Nanomaterial-based strategies...
Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of crystalline materials composed of metal nodes connected by organic linkers. Due to their high degree of synthetic tunability, MOFs have been considered for a wide range of applications, including many that rely on a change in oxidation state. While most MOFs are generally...
The purpose of this study was (1) to examine the impact that small ensemble free improvisation experiences had on dispositional empathy development when compared with other forms of collective music making; and (2) to examine the relationship between co-performing musicians’ empathy levels and their performance achievement in small ensembles using...
This dissertation imagines the near future of teamwork, when AI agents will join teams,interacting, collaborating, and completing tasks as a team member. Broadly, I seek to answer the
questions: how do humans integrate a new AI teammate onto their team, and how does the AI
teammate’s function influence this integration...
This dissertation examines the following puzzle: Why have antitrust (competition) laws and policies failed in their mission to prevent concentrations of economic power globally? Corporate monopolization has grown more acute in the last three decades and created serious problems in consumer and worker protection, economic stability, and democratic representation worldwide....
We investigated the relationships between trauma, depression, and pelvic pain severity in patients with chronic pelvic pain. Previous research has demonstrated that pelvic pain is associated with trauma history (e.g., physical and sexual abuse). As one potential mechanism of this relationship, trauma may lead to increased susceptibility to pain by...
This thesis studies Bayesian-robustness of algorithm design. The main perspective requires for a single fixed algorithm that its performance is an approximation of the optimal performance when its inputs are independent and identical draws (i.i.d.) from every unknown distribution which is an element of a known, large class of distributions....
Parasitic nematode infections are common in both humans and livestock populations around the globe. In humans, these infections cause illness which can be debilitating. In livestock, parasitic nematode infections result in poor animal health and wellbeing as well as decreases in the yield of these animals. The decrease in yield...
The treatment of AML remains to be a challenge due to the high rates of resistance and relapse experienced by patients after initial therapy. The MAPK-interacting kinases 1 and 2 (MNK1/2) have generated increasing interest as therapeutic targets for AML due to their critical role in malignant hematopoietic transformation via...
Among the most valuable applications of organometallic chemistry is its implementation in the field of catalysis. Many industrial processes rely heavily on catalysis, employing organometallic complexes in the production of commodity chemicals, fine chemicals, materials, and even in the discovery and development of pharmaceuticals. Through decades of intense study, homogeneous...
The Gram-negative Stenotrophomonas maltophilia is naturally found in water, soil and the plant rhizosphere, and is increasingly recognized as an important opportunistic and nosocomial infection. Despite its rising prevalence and drug resistance, there is little known about S. maltophilia pathogenesis. In this dissertation, I explored two aspects of S. maltophilia...
We prove the uniqueness of equilibrium states for certain potentials satisfying the Bowen property for two flows related to geodesic flows on surfaces with sufficient hyperbolicity. Our first result is the uniqueness of equilibrium states for Hölder continuous potentials and the geometric potential for products of geodesic flows of rank...
Light provides a high-speed and coherent medium for controlling quantum states. In semiconductors, coherent optical effects have been used extensively to lift spin degeneracy on ultrafast timescales and demonstrate high-fidelity control of quantum spin states. Extending this approach to novel pseudospins in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), in this thesis...
This dissertation explores ways to utilize physical parameters at the nanoscale interface to control the properties of mixed-dimensional heterojunctions (MDHJs). MDHJs combine the desirable properties of different classes of low-dimensional nanomaterials (materials that are quantum confined in at least one dimension). While MDHJs have achieved superlative performance for a variety...
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disease characterized by motor neuron (MN) degeneration and resulting in progressive paralysis and death. ALS is genetically heterogeneous, disease pathophysiology is not completely understood, and there are no effective drug therapies. To develop broadly applicable therapeutics, we examine disease mechanisms in the...
Superconducting qubits are among the leading competitors in the race towards building the first full-fledged quantum computer. Using this platform, researchers have for the first time demonstrated computational capability that is beyond the reach of the current classical machines. (This achievement is nicknamed "Quantum Supremacy".) Up to date, however, the...
The nature of dark matter (DM) remains one of the largest open questions in modern physics despite the many searches for particle dark matter around the world. The search for dark matter particles with masses above 5 GeV/$c^2$ is led by the dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber (LXe-TPC) detector technology which...
My research goal is to develop first principles frameworks to interrogate multiphase, multiscale systems. One of my main focus areas is to consistently deconstruct highly nonequilibrium problems into their fundamental components. By using analytical, computational and experimental tools to grasp the key levers controlling such phenomenon, I aim to build...
A major distinction among different skeletal muscles in the human body is the number, size, and arrangement of its cells, referred to as a muscle’s architecture. Muscle architecture is indicative of a muscle’s ability to contract and produce force and, like muscle function, is plastic. While neuromuscular plasticity is the...
This dissertation asks how can researchers more equitably design sociotechnical interventions to support the information work of sheltered emerging adults. Through two research studies, I explore the technology use in fulfilling the information needs among this population as well as how their environment impacts their strengths and information practices. I...
In an era of personalized medicine, the clinical community has become increasingly focused on understanding diseases at the cellular and molecular level. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a powerful imaging modality for acquiring anatomical and functional information. However, it has limited applications in field of molecular imaging due to low...
Movement is achieved by combining synaptic inputs from various sources and activating motor unit populations. Motor units are the quantal elements of motor control which act as a neuromechanical transducer that converts sensory inputs into motor output. Because of the tight neuromuscular junctions between motoneuron axon terminals and a large...
This dissertation addresses inter alia the problem of certain intertextual discontinuities across Thomas Hobbes’s oeuvre regarding the issue of ecclesiology. I find that these disparities did not result from a change in Hobbes’s private opinions, but from the regicide of 1649 as an event that liberated Hobbes to unveil his...
The BV Laplacian Δ, first introduced by Batalin and Vilkovisky, is a second-order differential operator that appears in the quantum master equation for quantizing gauge theories. The geometric framework for the BV formalism was later recognized by Schwarz as the setting of odd symplectic geometry and Khudaverdian showed that Δ...