Stroke affects millions of people each year and although modern medicine has improved chances of survival after stroke, it has not yet been able to affect a change in repairing damaged neural tissue leaving one to two-thirds of survivors with chronic disability in their affected upper-extremity; specifically, hemiparesis, hypertonicity, loss...
This dissertation examines caregiving contexts in early childhood. Specifically, I look at how caregiving contexts are related to or influenced by other caregiving contexts and broader social contexts. The dissertation is composed of an introductory chapter that provides a theoretical overview and summary of the dissertation followed by two additional...
Increasingly high global energy consumption demands effective approaches to high energy efficiency and, at the same time, paths to reduced release of carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas behind global climate change. Friction reduction is a vital aspect towards making energy systems more efficient and one of the most crucial...
This dissertation explores how items encountered in the comprehension of language are stored in memory and subsequently accessed. Processing and comprehending language frequently requires the retrieval of items in memory so that a current linguistic element can be assigned an interpretation. For example, in a sentence such as "Miles loved...
Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) display unique characteristics compared to their macro-counterparts that are dependent on shape, size, and attached surface molecules. Methods have been developed to precisely control both size and shape of AuNPs for specific applications. The biocompatibility, plasmonic properties, and ease of functionalization with thiolated molecules, make gold nanoparticles...
This dissertation provides evidence that reading is best explained as rational gathering of visual information to identify words efficiently. Although empirical evidence from human reading research suggests a close link between eye movements and cognitive process, it is not clear how readers decide when and where to move their eyes...
AbstractThis dissertation consists of three papers examining economic issues in developing countries.
The first paper studies how export activity affects prices in domestic consumer markets. Using extensive, spatially disaggregated data from India’s rice markets and exploiting a natural experiment provided by India’s rice export restrictions during 2007-2011, I show that,...
Active lateral force feedback is essential for haptic applications in which forces on the fingertip is perpendicular to or in the same direction of finger movement, such as virtual shape rendering and button click rendering. In this thesis, I first present a novel device, the UltraShiver, that can provide large...
Functional electronic materials have transformed modern society toward a highly digitized and interconnected global community. The ever-growing demand for electronic devices with superior functionality poses a great challenge to the state-of-the-art field-effect transistors owing to the limited charge density afforded by silicon. Materials scientists and chemists have been working closely...
The overall theme in this thesis is about eliciting and leveraging information to improve algorithms in Operations Management, with an emphasis on tractable and integrated approach of estimation and optimization. The main tool that I will be using is Robust Optimization, and the applications in my work vary from online...