High relaxivity contrast agents are of great importance in the advancement of magnetic resonance imaging diagnostics for use in biomaterials. Biomaterials that are implanted into the body, with the goal of repairing or regenerating lost or damaged tissue, need to be tracked noninvasively, over time. I have completed work using...
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allows for the selective visualization of blood vessels via the intravascular injection of a paramagnetic contrast agent and the suppression of background signal. Called magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), this technique can produce three-dimensional images and is useful clinically for the noninvasive diagnosis of vascular disorders. In...
What can the theatrical use of food accomplish in performances which assert cultural, legal, or moral rights to food production and consumption in a food insecure society? Case studies comprising the USDA's 1933-34 World's Fair exhibits, the May 1933 Wisconsin Cooperative Milk Pool protest, the 1936 Federal Theatre Project living...
"Prufrock" to <em>The Waste Land</em>: T. S. Eliot's Periodical Publications, 1915-1922 Randall J. Woods This dissertation presents, in publication date order, the 167 articles published by T. S. Eliot from 1915 to 1922, most of which have never been reprinted. They include literary criticism, book reviews, poetry, philosophical essays, humorous...
I study several aspects of a game-theoretic model of persuasion. A speaker attempts to persuade a listener to take an action which is highly ranked by the speaker. The listener knows the speaker's preference but is uncertain about what the speaker can say. The listener can commit to a persuasion...
Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is an aphasic dementia syndrome caused by neurodegenerative disease in which linguistic abilities are selectively disrupted in the relative absence of other cognitive deficits in early stages. The studies presented in this thesis were designed to examine the integrity of word and object processing by contrasting...
Chinese television has gone through enormous growth and significant structural change since the economic reforms of the 1970s. The changes include an increased number of channels, the establishment of overseas channels, increased reliance on advertising, more diversified programming, and heightened market competition. The new multi-channel media environment has the potential...
Small area estimation (SAE) has been one of the most active areas in survey methodology research, due to the increasing demand for small area statistics from government agencies and the private sector. But in some areas of interest, sample sizes could be very small, or even zero, in which case,...
Commercially available electrically powered prosthetic elbows are stiff and unyielding. Making these artificial limb replacements more closely mimic human elbows by increasing their compliance may be beneficial. In addition to having increased compliance compared with current electrically powered prosthetic elbows, humans modulate the overall impedance of their joints. The author...
An understanding of how two people anticipate, adapt, and react to each other's forces and motions could aid in designing machines to work cooperatively with humans and further explain how a single human interacts with the world. Tasks, such as lifting and moving a bulky object, teaching manual skills, dancing,...