Popular histories of United States mass incarceration often focus on federal wars on crime, law and order policing, and the passage of harsh sentencing laws to explain how the United States transformed into the world’s leader in incarceration. My dissertation on the crisis of state prison overcrowding and prisoner resistance...
In this thesis, we discuss classical and recent results around the damped wave equation on compact and noncompact manifolds. We firstly show that on asymptotically cylindrical and conic manifolds, the geometric control condition and the network control condition give exponential and logarithmic decay rates respectively. We then show that a...
Stimulation of the cGAS-STING (cycle GMP-AMP synthase-Stimulator of Interferon Genes) pathway increases T cell activation and tracking into the tumor and reverses the immunosuppressive phenotype of myeloid cells. Direct targeting of the STING receptor using synthetic cyclic dinucleotide (CDN) ligands represents an attractive immunotherapeutic strategy for the treatment of lymphocyte-depleted...
This dissertation focuses on two topics in international macroeconomics: the identification of the international spillovers of US interest rate shocks, and the study of its main transmission channels. In Chapter 1, I present the Spillover Puzzle of US Monetary Policy - the fact that in response to a US interest...
Bio-integrated electronics with advanced monitoring capabilities have garnered considerable interest as a means of expanding patient care beyond traditional hospital and clinic settings. These mechanically soft microsystems, many of which are bioresorbable and wireless, have the potential to replace bulky, rigid, and wired medical technologies by matching or exceeding their...
Every day, we communicate through computers on projects ranging from a group lunch order to booking a flight to learning critical medical information. And every day, we also miscommunicate through computers: We don’t pick up on an intentionally humorous response, or we miss the criticality of a request. This is...
The basal ganglia operate largely in closed parallel loops, including an associative circuit for goal-directed behavior originating from the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) and a somatosensory circuit important for habit formation originating from the dorsolateral striatum (DLS). An exception to this parallel circuit organization was proposed to explain how information is...
Pediatric high-grade gliomas (pHGGs) are aggressive pediatric CNS tumors and an important subset are characterized by mutations in H3F3A, the gene that encodes Histone H3.3 (H3.3). Substitution of Glycine at position 34 of H3.3 with either Arginine or Valine (H3.3G34R/V), was recently described and characterized in a large cohort...
Social networks play a crucial role in developing economies. One of their most important functions is facilitating the flow of information, particularly about the efficacy of new technologies. This dissertation explores three aspects of this research agenda. First, I study how economists can estimate the structure of a social network...
Colloidal crystals engineered with DNA are fascinating structures that constitute an emerging form of programmable matter. Indeed, the use of DNA as a programmable bond has led to thousands of new crystal types, with exquisite control over crystal symmetry and lattice parameters. However, synthesizing large (> 100 µm) single-crystals has...