The US yogurt market has been volatile in the last decade, marked by striking sales increases and dramatic market structure changes. According to an industry report, dollar sales of yogurt in 2017 reached $8.8 billion---a more than 80% increase from 2007. Such remarkable sales growth can be attributed to the...
This thesis forcuses on the development of the transition-edge sensor (TES) for various X-ray science applications, especially for synchrotron beamline experiments. The ultimate aim is to build a detector that has a higher energy resolution than semiconductor detectors, and a higher operation speed than crystal spectrometers. The possible applications include...
Histamine is a well-known potent mediator during the elicitation of IgE-mediated allergic diseases. The most robust, and potentially fatal, response of histamine is observed in patients with food allergy that undergo IgE-mediated anaphylaxis. The key mechanisms of the biology of histamine in allergic disease are well-established, however there are still...
Problems in interpersonal functioning are a major concern. In adults, interpersonal dysfunction is often investigated as it relates to personality disorders (PDs). In fact, researchers have argued that a core of interpersonal dysfunction is what defines personality disorders (Hopwood, Wright, Ansell, & Pincus, 2013). This is perhaps most evident for...
This dissertation explains the heterogeneous effects of armed conflict on sub-national governance in the North Caucasus. While acknowledging the role of inherited institutions, my multimethod investigation shows how they were strategically transformed during the breakup of the Soviet Union, creating unintended consequences and the basis for governance today. My main...
Nonlinear systems with many interacting components often exhibit behaviors that cannot be anticipated, even in principle, by only knowing the properties of the constituent parts and thereby emerge as a result of interactions between the parts. Examples of such systems range from power grids and financial markets to food networks...
The literature has established glucokinase (GCK) to be the principal hexokinase (HK) in the liver, operating as a glucose sensor to regulate glucose metabolism and lipid homeostasis. We have recently proposed Hexokinase Domain Containing-1 (HKDC1) to be a novel 5th HK with expression in the liver. Here, we reveal HKDC1...
Identifying key molecular mechanisms and targets for therapeutic development in sporadic neurodegenerative diseases has been challenging. Therefore, in-depth investigation of genetic forms of disease can provide valuable insight into pathogenic disease mechanisms. The discovery of genetic forms of Parkinson’s disease (PD) has highlighted the importance of the autophagy/lysosomal and mitochondrial/oxidative...
Public memory studies in rhetoric have typically neglected how we use shared memories to form, maintain, and pass down social norms through the objects we encounter and the practices we participate in during our everyday lives. This is especially true for children’s toys, because they are understood as essential objects...
Recent studies have begun to examine white matter connectivity aberrations in psychiatric populations, such as major depressive disorder. Several studies have found reduced white matter integrity (WMI) in depressed samples, though the location of this reduction is not clear. Incorporating symptom measures of depression severity and rumination may allow for...
New neurons are continuously produced in the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus throughout life. These newborn dentate granule cells (DGCs) undergo a stereotyped process of morphological and functional maturation during the first few weeks after differentiation that recapitulates some aspects of postnatal neuronal development. The inhibitory...
Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) are two devastating neurodegenerative diseases that affect 100,000s of people globally. They have a severe adverse impact on society, yet there are currently no early diagnostic tools or disease-modifying therapies available. Despite their clinical heterogeneity, evidence points to these diseases being on...
Biological tubes are essential for animal survival, and their functions are highly dependent on tube shape. Analyzing the contributions of cell shape and organization to the morphogenesis of small tubes has been hampered by the limitations of existing programs in quantifying cell geometry on highly curved tubular surfaces and calculating...
The presence of unwanted biofilms on surfaces is a great concern for industrial, naval, and healthcare fields, and many other settings. To better inhibit, remove, or harness the properties of biofilms, an explanation of how specific structural or chemical features of biofilm matrix components leads to enhanced adhesion and persistence...
Flowing granular mixtures with species differing in some property, such as size, shape or density of the grains, tend to segregate (de-mix) during flow. Since flowing granular materials are common in industry, and since segregation is often unwanted and costly, understanding and mitigating segregation is an important concern in industrial...
This dissertation is a history of religious conservatism between 1880 and the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Its main argument is that conservative religion in America, rather than being defined by fundamentalism, theological disputes, or cultural antipathy towards pluralism, was an outgrowth of a profound faith in capitalism...
The analytical paradigm in philosophy has as a pillar an analysis of the sentence as a basic entity. New sentences may be built from old sentences recursively through the application of logical constants, recently including intensional operators. Models are built on how these logical constants interact with each other, and...
Soft materials such as colloids and polymers often exhibit a variety of mesoscopic structures that are governed merely by weak physical interactions. Due to these intermediate structures, they can be easily taken out of thermal equilibrium by introducing external stimuli such as a shear flow and electromagnetic fields. This thesis...
While Li-ion batteries are currently the preferred energy storage technology, multivalent alternatives such as Mg should be considered. Magnesium metal has a high volumetric capacity and has been shown to cycle with no dendrite formation. However, the highly charged Mg2+ ion cannot easily diffuse into the oxide cathodes favored in...
This project traces the efforts by Scottish Protestants to achieve complete religious uniformity in the decades following the Reformation. Discontented with outward conformity, the via media that long characterized our understanding of religious reform in England, Scotland’s ministers sought to work genuine conversions among those who resisted the new order....
One of the grand challenges in science is development of soft materials that mimic living organisms to optimize the way we use energy, translate or morph reversibly or sense their envi- ronment and respond in a useful fashion. Using the insights from studying biological structures, we hope to design soft...
In this dissertation I study the effects of mortgage leverage policies. These policies have become widely used in recent years, both as a macroprudential tool and to protect consumers, yet their effects are still not well understood. In Chapter 1, I show that mortgage leverage rules implemented under the Dodd-Frank...
Deep neural networks have shown impressive performance for many applications. In this dissertation, leveraging the capabilities of neural networks for modeling the non-linearity exists in the data, we propose several models that can project data into a low dimensional, discriminative, and smooth manifold. The suggested models can transfer knowledge from...
This dissertation studies three distinct problems in econometrics. Chapter 1 proposes an adaptive randomization procedure for two-stage randomized controlled trials. The method uses data from a first-wave experiment in order to determine how to stratify in a second wave of the experiment, where the objective is to minimize the variance...
The cerebellum is involved in sensorimotor processing and motor control in the brain. What has been found across many species for many behaviors is cerebellar Purkinje (Pkj) cells and cerebellar nuclear (CbN) cells show activity that is related to and predictive of movements. Less is known about how patterns of...
Many human diseases are chronic and ultimately fatal because they damage organs and tissues beyond the body’s normal repair mechanisms. Therefore, there is significant medical interest in developing pharmaceuticals that enhance the body’s natural injury repair mechanisms and engineering organs in the lab for transplantation. However, comparatively little is known...
The emerging paradigm of quantum information science (QIS) vows to transform a wide range of fields, such as computation, communication, and sensing. The fundamental unit at the core of any QIS system is a quantum bit, or qubit. Rather than be restricted to one of two classical states (0 or...
As the global population grows, consumption of water, energy, and food will also increase, placing stresses on these sectors, raising the importance of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus (WEFN). However, operation of WEFN systems are currently not sustainable. It is thus crucial to design WEFN systems to be sustainable from local to...
This dissertation consists of three essays on corporate governance. In the first essay of the dissertation (“The Effects of Succession Planning on CEO Succession Events: Implications for Both Focal and Competing Firms”), I examine whether and how both focal and competing firms are affected by sudden CEO deaths. By using...
This dissertation examines how the maintenance and adaptation of heritage monuments and ritual traditions have contributed to the sustainability of communities on the islands of Inishark and Inishbofin along the west coast of Ireland. My analysis combines archaeological investigation of a pilgrimage tradition on Inishark, from its origins in the...
For women, age is one of the best predictors of fertility. Younger women are typically more fertile, and ability to conceive declines until a woman reaches menopause. However, the age at which an individual woman becomes less fertile varies depending on many factors unique to her individual body, including genetic...
This dissertation explores two factors that affect innovation. The first factor studied is extrinsic, namely, the legal environment. The second factor is a factor of input into innovation - culture of the inventors. The first chapter studies the impact of a weakened patent environment on research investments. Departing from the...
Location awareness will be crucial for many future wireless network applications, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and vehicular networks. In particular, the IoT will connect a massive number of new devices to wireless networks. Localization solutions that work in urban environments and have solutions which scale well with...
This dissertation argues that the U.S.’s World War I experience helped condition Americans to relate to war primarily through cinematic recreations. The country’s geographical distance from the fighting provided Americans a degree of geopolitical spectatorship from which they could imagine their nation’s role in an ever-changing world through film. Onto...
This thesis contains results in mathematical quantum ergodicity in a probabilistic or a complex analytic setting. For the former, we show that a random orthonormal basis of spherical harmonics is almost surely quantum ergodic, in which the randomness is induced by the generalized Wigner ensemble. For the latter, we show...
In mature neurons, postsynaptic NMDARs are segregated into two populations, synaptic and extrasynaptic NMDARs, which differ in localization, function, and associated intracellular cascades. These two pools are connected via lateral diffusion, and receptor exchange between them modulates synaptic NMDAR content (NMDAR-plasticity). Here, we identify the phosphorylation of the PDZ-ligand of...
Students pursue educational and career future identities (e.g., graduating college, becoming an engineer, etc.) that are tied to their deepest wants, desires, and needs, yet many find it difficult to exert self-control and resist temptations while pursuing these identities (e.g., studying versus watching TV, paying attention in class versus scrolling...
Judiciary at the Crossroads argues that a professional judiciary was able to restrain power, and thus lay the foundation for an independent judiciary and possible the rule of law later. Historical evidence comes from the performance of courts in property ordering projects launched by the governments in Taiwan and Manchuria...
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is among the most common endocrine disorders of premenopausal women, affecting 5-15% of this population depending on the diagnostic criteria applied. It is characterized by hyperandrogenism, ovulatory dysfunction and polycystic ovarian morphology. PCOS is highly heritable, but only a small proportion of this heritability can be...
This dissertation takes up Islam’s relationship to Black nationalism across the Atlantic diaspora of Muslims that I call “the Fugitive Islamicate.” Scholars most often have described this relationship as commencing in the twentieth century with the rise of “Black Muslim religion,” a U.S. religious movement that begins with Noble Drew...
This dissertation is composed of three articles that focus on the electoral support coalitions of populist parties in Latin America. Using typologies, comparative-historical analysis, and experimental methods, the articles conceptualize and explain variation across several dimensions of these coalitions: their size and scope, their level of organization, and the identities...
Many species of rodents rely on the set of exquisitely sensitive facial vibrissae (whiskers) to guide rich behaviors in which other senses are inadequate. Although whiskers are, like all hairs, inert strands of keratin, they provide the animal with a rich landscape of tactile information which is used to guide...
Magnetic resonance imaging is a powerful research tool for studying anatomical processes in intact large organisms, as it is capable of generating high resolution images with unlimited penetration depth and excellent soft-tissue contrast. However one of the challenges faced by those seeking to use the technique to answer biochemical questions,...
Reducing the high incidence of metabolic syndrome especially among older people living in low income communities is a goal of the health system. Residents of the Austin community of Chicago suffer from a heavy burden of health issues related to metabolic syndrome leading to disproportionally higher morbidity and mortality rates...
The problem of theological normativity concerns the conflict between the purported eternal, universal, and ahistorical nature of Christian theological and ethical claims and the fact that such claims are always articulated in a particular time and place and, therefore, seem to bear the marks of cultural and historical contingency. My...
This dissertation explores the role and relation of capitalism in contemporary political life, with the aim to reveal the inherent oppression of what I refer to as capitalist culture. To this end, the project follows three main objectives: (1) to identify the widespread and pervasive nature of capitalist culture (2)...
Ultrafine particles are often used as lubricant additives because they can enter tribological contacts to reduce friction and protect surfaces from wear. They tend to be more stable than molecular additives under high thermal and mechanical stresses during rubbing. However, in lubricant oil, ultrafine particles tend to aggregate together to...
Franz Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption ranks as one of the most original and innovative works of the modern period. Thinkers as diverse as Buber, Benjamin, Levinas, Strauss and Derrida have all acknowledged its influence. Yet, there has not been any consensus on the book’s main objective or agenda. Some...
Polymers permeate almost all facets of modern life. For end use applications, these materials are typically processed into products at elevated temperatures under which molten polymers are subjected to flow. Particular interest lies in the flow-induced crystallization behavior of polymer melts under extensional flow, which is a flow type dominant...
This thesis consists of three projects, centered around the aim to better model real-world systems under uncertainty, specifically, under stochastic disruptions, using optimization. A stochastic disruption is a type of infrequent event in which the timing and the magnitude are random. We introduce the concept of stochastic disruptions and a...
Contactin associated protein like 2 (CNTNAP2) has emerged as a prominent susceptibility gene implicated in multiple complex neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders (ASD), intellectual disability (ID), and schizophrenia (SCZ). The presence of seizure comorbidity in many of these cases, as well as inhibitory neuron dysfunction in Cntnap2 knockout (KO)...
Understanding how spin waves propagate through ferromagnets is an important component of a wider international effort to create spintronic devices. In this thesis, we develop a propagating spin wave spectroscopy to make a variety of measurements on thin films of Yttrium Iron Garnet (YIG), a material known for having long...
In this dissertation, I cover three different topics in macroeconomics. In Chapter 1, I explore the macroeconomic implications of an increase in business competition and its micro transmission channels. In Chapter 2, I document a rise in savings and cash holdings by non-financial corporations across advanced economies and show that...
The concealed information test (CIT) has garnered more empirical support than other methods of recognition detection and has a firm theoretical foundation. Because it occurs involuntarily, even when recognition is denied, P300 amplitude is a robust indictor of concealed information. Although the P300-based CIT shows great promise for field use,...
The tension-spoke bicycle wheel owes its stiffness and strength to a cooperative relationship between the rim and the spokes: the rim holds the spokes in tension to prevent them from buckling under external loads, while the spokes channel external forces to the hub and prevent the rim from becoming severely...
The structure of the North American crust and mantle was investigated using P wave teleseismic tomography and the links between seismic tomographic models, locations of volcanism, sediment isopachs, and continental scale crustal structures via plate reconstruction modeling. Nearly 50,000 teleseismic P wave delay times were measured from seismograms recorded by...
Infidel(itie)s of Colour: Unruly Black Bodies, Modernity and Performance in Post-Apartheid South Africa focusses on the ways that queer and feminist artists of colour draw upon their traditional black cultural heritage and spiritual practises as a means of laying claim to cultural citizenship and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa. I...
Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and their associated Cas proteins provide an immune-like response in many prokaryotes against extraneous nucleic acids. CRISPR-Cas systems are classified into different classes and types that vary widely in composition, target recognition, and overall mechanism. The main division of CRISPR-Cas systems occurs between...
The focus of this thesis is on evaluating, designing, and applying statistical methods that elucidate molecular mechanisms by seeking to understand the pathways that contribute to disease. Chapter 1 introduces the field and motivates the work in this thesis. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 describe original work. Chapter 5 recapitulates...
The halide perovskites AMX3 (A = large cation, B = Sn or Pb, and X = halide) have been the subject of intense investigation due to their outstanding optical and electronic properties, which have enabled high solar cell efficiencies thanks to a beneficial electronic structure and long charge carrier lifetimes....
Motor planning is fundamental to the performance of everyday reaching movements. The influence of planning is not limited to voluntary movements but extends to involuntary movements initiated in response to sensory stimuli, such as postural perturbations applied to the arm. Stroke alters voluntary reaching and the involuntary response to perturbations,...
This dissertation concerns the probabilistic aspects of diffusion processes generated by a family of differential operators, which is similar to the family of hypoelliptic Laplacian operators, acting on the tangent bundle of a compact Riemannian manifold. By lifting the processes to the product of the frame bundle and the euclidean...
Despite improvements to diagnostics and treatment methods, colorectal cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Colonoscopies, the gold standard for colorectal cancer screening, can significantly increase the patient’s chance of survival through early detection. However, colonoscopy cost, surgical complications, and patient bowel preparations limit...
This dissertation is a wide-ranging study on real estate and the effect of financial constraints on economic activity. In the first chapter, I use granular data on home builder housing developments to provide new evidence that firms spread negative revenue shocks across projects via their internal capital markets. I analyze...
This dissertation explores the interrelationship between time, labor, and literature during the rise of British industrial capitalism. By tracing a tradition of social criticism from Percy Shelley to William Morris that runs through the Chartist movement, Thomas Carlyle, and Charles Dickens, it isolates and explicates a distinctive existential mood, or...
The physical boundary layer, or interface, between two different phases of matter is the site of chemical and physical processes that are critical to many research fields. Many of these interfaces contain electric charge, which influences the structure and composition of the interfacial region and the interactions between the interface...
Supported vanadium oxide materials have been extensively studied for alkane oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) reactions due to their high activity and selectivity. The catalytic activity of supported VOx materials is influenced by the surface coverage of VOx sites and hence the distribution of V=O, V-O-V, and V-O-S (S, support) bonds. The...
The role of nuclei nanoenvironment in cellular function has been a challenging problem in biology due to the lack of chromatin 3-dimension (3D) structure imaging/capturing techniques and theory connecting physical structure of chromatin to transcription. Recent studies on optical properties measurement on biological sample techniques, nanoscale imaging techniques and chromatin...
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) are important abstractions of the complex regulatory interplays between genes, proteins, metabolites, and other molecular-level entities. Comprehensive GRNs provide high-level overviews of the topology of gene-gene interactions and their purposes, thereby enabling a comprehensive understanding of their role in phenotypic variation, disease mechanisms, and other biological...
This dissertation examines the language of force in Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (MoE) as a site of literary self-reflection. It investigates how the text employs a constellation of “force” terms – including not only the words Kraft, Energie, and Leistung, but also images of physical and chemical forces...
In this thesis we present methods for estimating network metrics via random walk sampling. More specifically, we generalize the Hansen-Hurwitz estimator and the Horvitz-Thompson estimator to estimate the shortest path length distribution (SPLD), closeness centrality ranking, and clustering coefficients of a network. Those are important metrics to a network, but...
Circuit-level Dynamic Timing Slack (DTS) has emerged as a compelling opportunity for eliminating inefficiency in modern low-power systems. This slack arises when all the signals have propagated through logic paths well in advance of the clock signal. When it is properly identified, the system can exploit this unused cycle time...
This dissertation is about three of Cicero’s notable projects in ideal theory in his middle and late periods (between roughly 54-43 BCE). It comes during a resurgence in interest in Cicero’s contributions as a philosopher. First, I discuss Cicero’s philosophical account of vera gloria (true glory) in contradistinction to mere...
This dissertation proposes an oracle efficient estimator in the context of a sparse linear model. Chapter 1 introduces the penalty and the estimator that optimizes a penalized least squares objective. Unlike existing methods, the penalty is differentiable – once, and hence the estimator does not engage in model selection. This...
Rationally assembled nanostructures exhibit distinct physical and chemical properties beyond their individual units. The development of nanofabrication tools enables precise structural defining of nanomaterials scalable to large areas. This dissertation focuses on plasmonic nanoparticle arrays that show unique diffractive coupling with lattice spacings engineered close to the wavelength of light....
In this thesis, we study pushforwards of canonical and log-pluricanonical bundles on projective log canonical pairs over the complex numbers. We partially answer a Fujita-type conjecture proposed by Popa and Schnell in the log canonical setting. Built on Kawamata’s result for morphisms that are smooth outside a simple normal crossing...
Cells are complex, autonomous machines that integrate many environmental cues to execute a desired response. Though this property makes cells versatile, it presents significant design challenges when, to treat diseases, we must alter cellular responses. To understand changes to the complex regulatory pathways that cause diseases, studies often investigate the...
This dissertation analyses the ways in which football, known as soccer in the United States, has historically served as a diasporic space for the articulation of black politics in the second half of the twentieth century. While modern sport is characterized as an apolitical cultural practice, I am interested in...
Polyolefins are the most versatile and widely used polymers worldwide. Depending on the polymer microstructure, polyolefins can exhibit a wide range of useful and tailored properties and applications. Metal-catalyzed coordinative olefin polymerization plays a center role in advancing polyolefin synthesis. This dissertation explores two strategies to modulate the polymer microstructures...
Over a decade has passed since Hurricane Katrina impacted the Gulf Coast. The city of New Orleans, was one of the more severely damaged areas in the region, experiencing 80% damage. This dissertation analyzes the rebuilding of New Orleans and it questions the role that colonial legacies play in that...
Spherical Nucleic Acids (SNAs) are unique class of nanomaterial characterized by a dense nucleic acid shell conjugated to a nanoparticle core. This radial orientation of oligonucleotides and architecture distinguishes SNAs from the components from which they are comprised. Specifically, unique chemical and biological properties emerge that are not observed with...
Two unique structures make up the nucleus of our Galaxy on different scale sizes. On a broad scale of a few hundreds of parsecs, there is the well-known central molecular zone which comprises a substantial component of the gas in the Galaxy. The other, known as the mini-spiral, is streamers...
This thesis describes the relationships between nanoscale structure and particle transport in two systems: i) the transport and conversion of excitons in colloidal quantum dot (QD) assemblies and ii) the transport of carriers in flashing electron ratchets. One major crux in the creation of efficient photocatalytic systems is the low...
People evidence behaviors that engender hope for future behavior change, but also evidence this hope when there is no reason to believe that any behavior change will occur. For example, prior research suggests that temporal factors make people susceptible to change their minds over time, and a confluence of cognitive...
Bias pervades all stages of the American criminal justice system. The system is a human creation, run by fallible people who bring prejudices and biases to their work just like everyone else. The first step to ridding the system of those biases is to fully understand the way they manifest...
This dissertation examines three distinct empirical questions in macroeconomics and finance. Chapter 1 studies the reasons why households file for bankruptcy. The debt relief households obtain in bankruptcy provides insurance against wealth losses, but also distorts borrower incentives to repay debt, discouraging lending. Understanding how bankruptcy filings respond to changes...
Context: Crowd logistics is a novel shipping concept where delivery operations are carried out by employing existing vehicle capacity and drivers from the crowd, relying on their planned tours, thereby offering potential for economic, social, and environmental benefits. Despite the promise of this new logistics model, little is known about...
Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is a powerful phenomenon that dictates the functional properties of transition metal complexes essential for information processing, catalysis, and magnetism. Though it is relegated to lower energy scales within the orbital description of first-row transition metal complexes, SOC impacts crucial aspects of electronic structure such as promoting...
Sexual orientation is conventionally understood as relative attraction to men versus women. It has recently been argued that male sexual orientation in particular can be extended to include other dimensions of sexual attraction besides gender, such as sexual maturity and location. With respect to the dimension of location, most men...
Millions of years of evolution have produced fascinating biological materials and structures that are optimized to perform a wide spectrum of functions essential for the survival of organisms. These biological materials have been intensively studied in order to decipher the intricate interplay between their superior material properties and structural design...
What is the role of entrepreneurship – a predominantly market-based approach – in addressing social problems such as inequality and social exclusion? How do entrepreneurial organizations with a distinctly social purpose (often referred to as hybrid organizations) manage additional imperatives, such as those related to democratic governance? Based on 70...
Despite advancing knowledge about the mechanics of earthquakes, earthquake prediction remains, and will likely remain, an unsolved problem. Hence in order to reduce the risk posed by earthquake shaking, seismologists have developed tools called earthquake hazard maps. Earthquake hazard maps communicate expected future shaking scenarios, and are used by engineers...
Many volunteer communities rely on technological systems to help their members connect, collaborate and learn the norms of how to participate in the organization. This dissertation presents research that examines technological interventions designed to support participation in three different volunteer-run communities, all of which have porous boundaries, and allow volunteers...
In this thesis, I present the development and benchmarking of several theoretical methods designed to enable the rigorous modeling of magnetic properties of molecules containing one or a few heavy atoms, particularly single-molecule magnets. The new methods use a full four-component treatment of relativity, allowing spin–orbit effects to be taken...
Using carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) to reduce vehicle weight has received growing attentions because it can effectively curtail greenhouse gas emissions and slow down global warming. The thermoforming process is among the most promising techniques for mass production of CFRP parts because it is highly automated and has relatively...
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have gained more and more attention from researchers, manufacturers, and transportation experts. When AVs become available to the public, they are expected to dramatically alter the transportation system as we know it, posing critical questions such as: How will the road network react to this change? How...
Transport along and across the grain boundaries of solid-state electrolytes has implications for a broad range of materials and in an equally broad range of technologies. Over the past 2-3 decades, a substantial body of literature has been developed to explain grain boundary transport properties within the context of space...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous disorder defined by core deficits in social communication as well as the presence of restricted interests and repetitive behaviors, including sensory processing atypicalities. Individuals with ASD also have atypicalities in integration of multiple sensory modalities (i.e., sensory integration), which are hypothesized to underlie...
Drawing from the data I collected through nine months (between 2014 to 2017) of participant observations, 120 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and archival work, the project explores the tactics that Chechen and Dagestani journalists utilize to resist state pressure and circumvent state-imposed censorship. Specifically, I explicate how these regional journalists in...
This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the dance makerspace, a learning environment designed to support STEM engagement through making and embodied experience for a group of African American youth dancers. It looks at how participants in a 4-week summer camp program at an urban creative arts center-turned-makerspace, constructed embodied...