Integrated circuits have been continuously scaled to increase speed and integration density as a means to improve the performance or pack more functionality. However, an extremely enormous amount of effort is needed to further scale the dimensions in deep submicron technologies. As technology scaling is slowing down and design complexity...
"How did the Civil Rights Movement bring about change?" In answer to that question, this dissertation argues that the splintering of purity rhetoric within the intimate environments of home and sanctuary both inhibited and empowered white and African-American religious practitioners to seek social change. To make this argument, this project...
The work of this dissertation was aimed at synthesizing new types of nanoparticle-DNA conjugates, investigating their chemical and physical properties, and exploring their biodiagnostic applications. Chapters Two and Three describe the synthesis of new types of nanoparticle-DNA conjugates: (1) silver nanoparticle-DNA conjugates (DNA-Ag NPs) and (2) 2-nm gold nanoparticle-DNA conjugates...
As manufacturing technology moves toward fundamental limits of silicon CMOS processing, it is increasingly important to utilize the full potential of available transistors and interconnects. While manufacturing technology faces fundamental limits inherent in physical laws or material properties, design and verification technology faces fundamental limitations inherent in the computational intractability...
In several neurodegenerative diseases, the microtubule-associated protein tau self-aggregates to form filaments that accumulate in neurons and/or glia, although the relationship between tau aggregation and cell death is a subject of debate. The amino terminus of tau is involved in conformational changes that appear critical for filament formation, hinting at...
Inactivation of tumor suppressors genes, which encode regulatory proteins critical for maintaining normal cellular function, is a common occurrence in cancer. Ikaros is a hematopoietic-specific zinc finger protein that functions as a differentiation regulator and has properties of a tumor suppressor. Ikaros functions to regulate gene expression as a component...
The set of experiments described here test the hypothesis that the declarative memory system supported by the medial temporal lobe and habit/procedural memory supported by the basal ganglia are recruited when learning novel category representations. The theory guiding specific hypotheses about these neural systems and their operation in category learning...
Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are fabricated and characterized on anodes modified by a variety of surface treatments. OLED performance response is correlated to the treatment conditions with current-voltage (I-V) measurements and impedance spectroscopy. Small-scale OLED arrays are fabricated using a novel shadow mask approach and are characterized with electrical...
The electronic properties of various transparent conducting oxide (TCO) surfaces are probed electrochemically via self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). A novel graftable probe molecule having a tethered trichlorosilyl group and a redox-active ferrocenyl functionality (Fc(CH2)4SiCl3) is synthesized for this purpose. On as-received ITO, saturation coverage by a close-packed monolayer having of 6.6...
Despite its prevalence, cost, and association with high risk for negative outcomes, there is a lack of empirically-based procedures for effective treatment of dual diagnosis in adolescents. The present study attempts to address the need for research informing effective treatment of this population. Strengths have been found to predict positive...
This dissertation examines the role of market makers in making markets for options and futures on Chicago's derivatives exchanges. Recent institutional and technological changes in the ways that financial products are traded have given rise to the possibility of markets without market makers, raising the question of how these developments...
The primary purpose of this study was to describe what comprises an undergraduate compositional identity. Building upon recent research investigating musical identities with a social psychological framework (Macdonald, Hargreaves, & Miell, 2002), I examined the confluence of socially based experiences that shaped four undergraduate composers' lives. Specifically, this study investigated...
Lead poisoning is the most common environmentally-caused disease in the United States and is threat to human health worldwide. Although efforts to prevent lead exposure have increased throughout the years, lead poisoning still remains a common problem. Lead toxicity is more prevalent in children, who suffer from permanent neurodevelopment and...
Herpesviruses require axonal transport for the successful establishment of infection in peripheral ganglia (retrograde transport), and the subsequent spread to exposed body surfaces following reactivation from latency (anterograde transport). Viral progeny are assembled and spread to other tissues or hosts during egress. I focused on viral proteins which modulate directed...
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a technique widely used in both clinical and experimental settings to produce high-resolution images of opaque living organisms without utilizing ionizing radiation. Currently, MR imaging is augmented by contrast agents; however, these small molecule Gd(III) chelates are confined to extracellular and vascular regions of the...
Let X be a quasi-projective complex variety. It follows from the work of Voevodsky that the motivic cohomology of X, denoted as $H^{p,q}(X)$ where q and p are integers with q nonnegative, can be represented in the triangulated category of motives over the field of complex numbers, denoted as $DM^{eff,-}_{Nis}$....
Separation of DNA molecules by electrophoresis through entangled polymer solutions continues to be an important tool for genetic analysis, especially Sanger-based DNA sequencing. Separations of DNA on microfluidic devices are much more efficient than in capillary electrophoresis (CE) systems, such that the implementation of DNA sequencing onto microchips promises to...
This dissertation comprises three chapters, each focusing on a different question in economic theory. The first two chapters focus on repeated games and reputations, while the third is about large games. In "Cooperation and Community Responsibility", I study whether cooperation can be sustained between communities where members interact repeatedly but...
The small heat shock protein αB-crystallin is expressed primarily in lens and muscle tissue, but it is also found in lung, kidney and many cancers. Regulators of αB-crystallin have been identified almost exclusively using mouse muscle and lens specific models. It has been well documented that αB-crystallin is expressed in...
The first chapter of this dissertation studies a continuous-time agency model where the agent controls the drift of the geometric Brownian motion firm size. The changing firm size generates partial incentives, analogous to awarding the agent equity shares according to her continuation payoff. When the agent is as patient as...
One of the most commonly used techniques for classification problem is logistic regression. For example, logistic regression for a binary response assumes that the odds Pr(y = 1|x)/Pr(y = 0) = exp(a+bx). However, in reality, the pattern of the data can be so complicated that logistic regression model often fails,...
N-Heterocyclic carbene catalysis has recently emerged as an important field in organic chemistry. Two new strategies have been developed to advance the use of N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) as Lewis-base organic catalysts. The first approach utilizes NHCs to catalyze the generation of homoenolates and the conjugated Breslow intermediate is added to...
Time-resolved in situ synchrotron x-ray scattering studies of particle orientation in polymer-clay nanocomposites under simple shear and complex flow were performed. Shear flow experiments used an annular cone and plate x-ray shear cell to allow measurement of platelet orientation within the flow-gradient plane.
Intercalated nanocomposites were made by dispersing organically...
Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) is associated with malignancies of lymphoid and epithelial origin. While the precise role of EBV in oncogenesis remains elusive, latent membrane protein 2A (LMP2A) is detected in all EBV-associated malignancies, implicating LMP2A in their pathogenesis. Interestingly, LMP2A is expressed in EBV-associated malignancies such as Burkitt's Lymphoma,...
Chapter one investigates the impact of agents' expectations about future fundamental economic disturbances (news) on macroeconomic dynamics. Several intuitive tests provide insight into the information content of the yield curve and its' ability to identify these 'news' disturbances. Bayesian estimation of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model using conventional...
Tonia René Holverson The HPV genome contains a bipartite promoter system that regulates the expression of early and late gene transcripts. The early proteins include the replication proteins E1 and E2, the oncoproteins E6 and E7, and the late functioning proteins E4 and E5. The late proteins include the capsid...
Estrogens are traditionally thought to act through a nuclear receptor-mediated mechanism to regulate gene transcription in target tissues. The hippocampus has been shown to be sensitive to estrogen; estrogen regulates GABAergic inhibition and spine density of dorsal CA1 pyramidal cells. However, very few neurons expressing nuclear estrogen receptors (ERs) have...
The kinetoplastid protozoan <em>Trypanosoma brucei</em> is the causative agent of African trypanosomiasis, affecting humans, and Nagana disease, affecting cattle, prevalent in regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Our lab demonstrated that the flagellum of <em>T. brucei</em> is enriched in lipid rafts, membrane areas composed of sphingolipids, sterols, and proteins that serve as...
This dissertation explores the factors that influence the creation and interpretation of novel denominal verbs in English. Of particular focus is the potential influence of one factor, termed here the Semantic Category Distribution Effect. The Semantic Category Distribution Effect involves the type frequency distribution of existing forms of a given...
The last two decades in nineteenth-century West Africa witnessed a two-fold movement, namely the territorial expansion of French colonial empire and the first attempts to extend biomedicine through mass vaccination to control smallpox epidemics. This study provides both a deep history and conceptual framework to analyze the relationship between the...
This study examined the effects of swallow task on swallow physiology, respiratory phase relationships, and oxygen saturation in healthy adult males. This study hoped to provide a building block to clinically relevant research with individuals with compromised swallowing and respiration. Subjects included 40 healthy adult males with no history of...
High-performance scientific computing in a modern age uses parallel techniques at a scale of hundreds of thousands of processors. These large-scale applications have I/O system workloads that are primarily driven by small, sparse I/O operations. While parallel file systems have provided application developers with scalable peak I/O bandwidth for large,...
This dissertation explores a seventy-year period of community growth and activism among African Americans in nineteenth-century Iowa, showing how citizenship was defined, contested, expanded and confined. Antebellum black migrants lived on the margins of a hostile society and struggled for equal citizenship using their labor, their community institutions, the legal...
The three empirical analyses in this dissertation study the effects of workers' compensation benefits on individual behavior and household consumption as well as the impacts of workplace injuries and illnesses on economic outcomes for affected workers.
In Chapter 2, I study incentive effects of state workers' compensation programs, exploiting substantial...
Leakage currents limit the operation of high performance type II InAs/GaSb superlattice photodiode technology. Surface leakage current becomes a dominant, limiting factor to the ideal performance of a photodiode, especially at the scale of a focal plane array pixel (< 25 µm), and must be addressed. A reduction of the...
During movement, the dendrites of spinal motoneurons receive steady excitatory and inhibitory synaptic input from supraspinal sources, interneurons, and sensory afferents. Motoneurons also have dendritic voltage sensitive ion channels. Most notable is a persistent inward current (PIC), which can enhance the amplitude of synaptic input by several fold. PICs are...
Filopodia play a central role in proper cell navigation; they extend from the cell surface and scan the local environment to guide the cell to its proper destination. These dynamic events require precise mechanisms for the turnover of key molecules which determine the morphology of filopodia. As of yet, such...
Chapter 1 describes the homopolymerization of styrene and the copolymerization of ethylene and styrenic comonomers mediated by the single-site bimetallic "constrained geometry catalysts" (CGCs), (µ-CH2CH2-3,3'){(η5-indenyl)[1-Me2Si(tBuN)](TiMe2)}2 [EBICGC(TiMe2)2; Ti2], (µ-CH2CH2-3,3'){(η5-indenyl)[1-Me2Si(tBuN)](ZrMe2)}2 [EBICGC(ZrMe2)2; Zr2], (µ-CH2-3,3'){(η5-indenyl)[1-Me2Si(tBuN)](TiMe2)}2 [MBICGC(TiMe2)2; C1-Ti2], and (µ-CH2-3,3'){(η5-indenyl)[1-Me2Si(tBuN)](ZrMe2)}2 [MBICGC(ZrMe2)2; C1-Zr2], in combination with the borate activator/cocatalyst Ph3C+B(C6F5)4- (B1). Under identical styrene homopolymerization conditions,...
Influenza virus assembly and budding is a complex process involving the organization of viral membrane proteins on the cell surface, incorporation of the segmented RNA genome, and formation of viral particles that must bud from the cell by pinching off from the plasma membrane. Interactions between the soluble influenza virus...
Metal nanoparticles in polymeric matrices are of particular scientific interest due to their useful ability to self-assemble into complex nanocomposites. Recent examples involve using ultrathin diblock copolymers coupled with metal nanoparticles in the fabrication of novel electronic, magnetic and photonic devices. As this ordering process takes place far from equilibrium...
Short-range stiffness (SRS) of a skeletal muscle describes the muscle's capability to resist external perturbations before the nervous system can intervene. Knowledge of the SRS of individual muscles is critical in understanding their contributions to single joint stiffness and whole limb stability. While the dependence of SRS on muscle force...
Two main topics are addressed in this dissertation: (1) adhesion in hydrogels; (2) interfacial interactions between model glassy polymers. A self-assembly technique for the formation of hydrogels from acrylic triblock copolymer solutions was developed, based on vapor phase solvent exchange. Structure formation in the gels was characterized by small angle...
In urban areas, an accurate evaluation of ground deformations from various construction activities requires one to properly consider both the probable ground strain level under expected working conditions and the recent stress history of the soil. For well-designed projects, the levels of ground strains typically are less than 0.5%, emphasizing...
Upward influence is an important vehicle for employee participation in work and decision-making. Research suggests that the forms and success of upward influence vary according to agent attributes, the supervisor-employee relationship, and the work context (Waldron, 1999; Wilson, 2002). Unexamined within this array are employee attempts at shaping their own...
Multi-hop wireless networks hold promise for increasing network capacity, lowering power requirements, and improving coverage over traditional cellular networks. However, their widespread adoption is hampered by challenges that include: 1) unreliable and complex routing protocols due to the transient nature of wireless nodes, 2) difficulties in guaranteeing quality of service...
Metal nanoprisms are a novel class of anisotropic nanomaterials with unique optical properties dependent on their size, shape, and composition. Silver nanoprisms are of particular interest because their surface plasmon resonance bands are readily tunable in the visible and near-IR region. The objectives of this thesis research focus on photochemical...
A novel cryogenic variable temperature UHV STM has been constructed and utilized to investigate the dynamical behavior of isolated organic molecules covalently bound to silicon surfaces.
The microscope can be operated from 8-300 K, and exhibits extremely low drift rates. A new design has been implemented for the rails (used...
This dissertation demonstrates how self-assembly can direct nanoscale ordering and optimize electronic properties of organic semiconductors, as well as organic-inorganic hybrids. In excitonic solar cells, controlling the ordering and interfaces between electron-transporting (n-type) and hole-transporting (p-type) domains is crucial. In addressing this challenge, hybrid nanostructures were designed by mineralization of...
This dissertation, "Myth and the Modern Problem: Mythic Thinking in Twentieth-Century Britain," argues that a widespread phenomenon best described as "mythic thinking" emerged in the early twentieth century as way for a variety of thinkers and key cultural groups to frame and articulate their anxieties about, and their responses to,...
IL-6 is a pleiotropic cytokine involved in both immune and non-immune functions. In the immune system, IL-6 induces terminal differentiation of B cells into plasma cells, thereby promoting antibody production. IL-6 stimulates growth of T cells by enhancing the expression of the IL-2 receptor, and IL-6 also causes differentiation of...