Recently, a myriad of applications take advantage of deep learning methods to solve regression/classification problems. Although deep neural networks have shown powerful learning capability, many deep learning applications suffer from the extremely time-consuming training of the neural networks. In order to reduce the training time, researchers usually consider parallel training...
My dissertation identifies the causes of inequality traps - i.e., high and persistent levels of economic inequality - in Latin America and explains how and why some countries manage to escape such traps and embark on paths of diminishing inequality. I argue that the Redistributive State Power shapes the main...
This dissertation examines the effects of phase transfers with thiol ligands on the optical properties of quantum dots (QDs) in water by investigating two systems: i) dihydrolipoic acid (DHLA)-capped PbS QDs and ii) thiolated DNA-capped core/shell CdSe/CdS QDs. QDs are bright, monodisperse, and tunable hydrophobic nanoparticles with high photoluminescence (PL)...
The objective of this dissertation is to examine the mutually constitutive relationship between historiography, collective memory, and cultural narratives in the representation of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) in present-day France and Algeria. Taking the turn of the twenty-first century as its point of departure, this study analyzes modern...
Decisions in naturalistic environments usually feature delayed and uncertain outcomes that can only be reached after a sequence of actions are performed. For example, canonical stalking and pursuit strategies used by terrestrial predators often involve stages of concealment, pauses where the predator remains motionless, and high speed chase sequences. The...
The investigation of ceria-related materials has a long history since 1920s. The first publication on web of science traces back to 1928. Ever since that, more studies come out and surge starting from 1987. This material has attracted extensive attention due to its wide applications in electrochemical devices, catalysis, and...
In Chapter 1, we construct a test for hypotheses about the effect of a recent policy change, when a single unit is treated and there are several control units, with time series observations of each available before and after the policy change. The goal is to incorporate information provided by...
During the antebellum and post-Reconstruction periods, Black authors were concerned with white antipathy towards the political aspirations of African Americans. For many of these authors, sonic figures of resonance, vibration, and musicality served as the key sensory modalities through which the nexus of American anti-Blackness and civil politics could be...
Evolutionary theory predicts that reproduction entails energetic costs that detract from somatic maintenance, accelerating biological aging. In women, such ‘costs of reproduction’ (CoR) are thought to arise predominantly during pregnancy and lactation, while in men the physiological effects of the steroid hormone testosterone (T) are believed to be a major...
Deep neural networks have achieved remarkable success in the past decade on tasks that were out of reach prior to the era of deep learning. Amongst the myriad reasons for these successes are powerful computational resources, large datasets, new optimization algorithms, and modern architecture designs. Most of the reasons are...