A major challenge in the field of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of safety-critical structures is how to effectively and efficiently detect fatigue damage, especially before there is macrocrack initiation. In this dissertation, a local ultrasonic technique is developed to assess pre-crack fatigue damage in structures. The novel feature of this...
Despite three decades of intense research into small diameter blood vessel tissue engineering, constructs developed to date lack the elastin necessary for long term patency and the prevention of aneurysms. The suboptimal biochemical composition suggests that new biochemical and mechanical culture methods must be developed. In addition, current biomaterials for...
PilD is an enzyme that processes prepilins that are part of the type II protein secretion apparatus and the type IV piliation machinery. Using a <em>Legionella pneumophila pilDlacZ</em> fusion strain to measure transcription, we observed a 20% increase in beta-galactosidase levels at 30°C vs. 37°C. At 25°C and 17°C vs....
Consumption of CO2 by chemical weathering is one of the major fluxes in the global carbon cycle that drives long-term climate. In an effort to understand silicate weathering, which is a net sink of CO2 over geological time scales, as a function of environment (e.g., exposure of parent rocks, climate,...
This dissertation addresses the structure of the group of interval exchange transformations. The two primary topics considered are:
a) the classification of interval exchange actions for certain groups; and b) properties of the interval exchange group which are reflected in the dynamics of interval exchange maps.
In Chapter 3 a...
This dissertation examines performance and textual techniques used by American and British artists to provoke discussion about the politics of viewing. I theorize a model of spectatorship which exposes the race and gender symbolism of actors' and spectators' bodies and its effects on meaning-making in the performer-spectator encounter. In contrast...
Although anxiety and depression are clearly distinct from a phenomenological perspective, discriminating these constructs empirically has often been difficult (Clark & Watson, 1991). Both the tripartite model of psychopathology (Clark & Watson, 1991) and the cognitive content-specificity hypothesis (Beck, 1976; Beck & Clark, 1988) were forwarded in an effort to...
This dissertation constitutes a re-evaluation of the popular and critical understanding of eighteenth-century libertinage. In particular, I contest the distinction between sentimentalism and libertinage, which are typically seen as two, irreconcilable approaches to emotional expression. As sentimentalism became prominent in the second half of the eighteenth century, I argue, it...
Researchers have long recognized that schools are powerful environments for shaping students' worldview and identity. The structured content, activities, and resultant culture of schools profoundly impact the way in which students learn to make sense of the world around them. In the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community this function of schooling is...
This project argues that displays of humanist learning in diplomacy served to demonstrate the extraordinary good will of the Florentine regime towards a host ruler. I call this act of surpassing previous oratorical gestures a "cultural gift". Although the singular goal of humanism in diplomacy remained offering cultural gifts in...
The use of cluster randomized experiments to study the effects of treatments on groups of subjects has increased in recent years. Many of these experiments lack the necessary statistical power to detect practically meaningful effects of treatment. One method for improving power in cluster randomized experiments that has been advanced...
We present several multiscale quantum mechanical (QM), molecular mechanical (MM), and continuum mechanical (CM) schemes to study the strength properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene sheets. A bridging domain method based on overlapping domain-decomposition schemes using the Lagrange multipliers field is developed to couple an atomistic domain with a...
The current trend of ceramic nanotechnology has motivated an ever-increasing need to achieve exquisite control over size, shape, and spatial confinement for functional oxide architectures, in an equivalent manner demonstrated for semiconductors. However, the unique nature of ceramics has posed major challenges for most traditional nanofabrication technologies, putting the development...
The proper distribution of cellular organelles and protein complexes is important for maintaining cellular organization and function. Transport in eukaryotic cells requires three motor proteins, kinesin, dynein, and myosin, attached to specific cargoes mostly by adaptor proteins. This work focuses on the mechanism of microtubule-dependent organelle transport in vivo.
This...
Integrated circuits have been continuously scaled to increase speed and integration density as a means to improve the performance or pack more functionality. However, an extremely enormous amount of effort is needed to further scale the dimensions in deep submicron technologies. As technology scaling is slowing down and design complexity...
Integrated circuits have been continuously scaled to increase speed and integration density as a means to improve the performance or pack more functionality. However, an extremely enormous amount of effort is needed to further scale the dimensions in deep submicron technologies. As technology scaling is slowing down and design complexity...
"How did the Civil Rights Movement bring about change?" In answer to that question, this dissertation argues that the splintering of purity rhetoric within the intimate environments of home and sanctuary both inhibited and empowered white and African-American religious practitioners to seek social change. To make this argument, this project...
The work of this dissertation was aimed at synthesizing new types of nanoparticle-DNA conjugates, investigating their chemical and physical properties, and exploring their biodiagnostic applications. Chapters Two and Three describe the synthesis of new types of nanoparticle-DNA conjugates: (1) silver nanoparticle-DNA conjugates (DNA-Ag NPs) and (2) 2-nm gold nanoparticle-DNA conjugates...
As manufacturing technology moves toward fundamental limits of silicon CMOS processing, it is increasingly important to utilize the full potential of available transistors and interconnects. While manufacturing technology faces fundamental limits inherent in physical laws or material properties, design and verification technology faces fundamental limitations inherent in the computational intractability...
In several neurodegenerative diseases, the microtubule-associated protein tau self-aggregates to form filaments that accumulate in neurons and/or glia, although the relationship between tau aggregation and cell death is a subject of debate. The amino terminus of tau is involved in conformational changes that appear critical for filament formation, hinting at...
Inactivation of tumor suppressors genes, which encode regulatory proteins critical for maintaining normal cellular function, is a common occurrence in cancer. Ikaros is a hematopoietic-specific zinc finger protein that functions as a differentiation regulator and has properties of a tumor suppressor. Ikaros functions to regulate gene expression as a component...
The set of experiments described here test the hypothesis that the declarative memory system supported by the medial temporal lobe and habit/procedural memory supported by the basal ganglia are recruited when learning novel category representations. The theory guiding specific hypotheses about these neural systems and their operation in category learning...
Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are fabricated and characterized on anodes modified by a variety of surface treatments. OLED performance response is correlated to the treatment conditions with current-voltage (I-V) measurements and impedance spectroscopy. Small-scale OLED arrays are fabricated using a novel shadow mask approach and are characterized with electrical...
The electronic properties of various transparent conducting oxide (TCO) surfaces are probed electrochemically via self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). A novel graftable probe molecule having a tethered trichlorosilyl group and a redox-active ferrocenyl functionality (Fc(CH2)4SiCl3) is synthesized for this purpose. On as-received ITO, saturation coverage by a close-packed monolayer having of 6.6...
Despite its prevalence, cost, and association with high risk for negative outcomes, there is a lack of empirically-based procedures for effective treatment of dual diagnosis in adolescents. The present study attempts to address the need for research informing effective treatment of this population. Strengths have been found to predict positive...
This dissertation examines the role of market makers in making markets for options and futures on Chicago's derivatives exchanges. Recent institutional and technological changes in the ways that financial products are traded have given rise to the possibility of markets without market makers, raising the question of how these developments...
The primary purpose of this study was to describe what comprises an undergraduate compositional identity. Building upon recent research investigating musical identities with a social psychological framework (Macdonald, Hargreaves, & Miell, 2002), I examined the confluence of socially based experiences that shaped four undergraduate composers' lives. Specifically, this study investigated...
Lead poisoning is the most common environmentally-caused disease in the United States and is threat to human health worldwide. Although efforts to prevent lead exposure have increased throughout the years, lead poisoning still remains a common problem. Lead toxicity is more prevalent in children, who suffer from permanent neurodevelopment and...
Herpesviruses require axonal transport for the successful establishment of infection in peripheral ganglia (retrograde transport), and the subsequent spread to exposed body surfaces following reactivation from latency (anterograde transport). Viral progeny are assembled and spread to other tissues or hosts during egress. I focused on viral proteins which modulate directed...
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a technique widely used in both clinical and experimental settings to produce high-resolution images of opaque living organisms without utilizing ionizing radiation. Currently, MR imaging is augmented by contrast agents; however, these small molecule Gd(III) chelates are confined to extracellular and vascular regions of the...
Let X be a quasi-projective complex variety. It follows from the work of Voevodsky that the motivic cohomology of X, denoted as $H^{p,q}(X)$ where q and p are integers with q nonnegative, can be represented in the triangulated category of motives over the field of complex numbers, denoted as $DM^{eff,-}_{Nis}$....
Separation of DNA molecules by electrophoresis through entangled polymer solutions continues to be an important tool for genetic analysis, especially Sanger-based DNA sequencing. Separations of DNA on microfluidic devices are much more efficient than in capillary electrophoresis (CE) systems, such that the implementation of DNA sequencing onto microchips promises to...
This dissertation comprises three chapters, each focusing on a different question in economic theory. The first two chapters focus on repeated games and reputations, while the third is about large games. In "Cooperation and Community Responsibility", I study whether cooperation can be sustained between communities where members interact repeatedly but...
The small heat shock protein αB-crystallin is expressed primarily in lens and muscle tissue, but it is also found in lung, kidney and many cancers. Regulators of αB-crystallin have been identified almost exclusively using mouse muscle and lens specific models. It has been well documented that αB-crystallin is expressed in...
The first chapter of this dissertation studies a continuous-time agency model where the agent controls the drift of the geometric Brownian motion firm size. The changing firm size generates partial incentives, analogous to awarding the agent equity shares according to her continuation payoff. When the agent is as patient as...
One of the most commonly used techniques for classification problem is logistic regression. For example, logistic regression for a binary response assumes that the odds Pr(y = 1|x)/Pr(y = 0) = exp(a+bx). However, in reality, the pattern of the data can be so complicated that logistic regression model often fails,...
N-Heterocyclic carbene catalysis has recently emerged as an important field in organic chemistry. Two new strategies have been developed to advance the use of N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) as Lewis-base organic catalysts. The first approach utilizes NHCs to catalyze the generation of homoenolates and the conjugated Breslow intermediate is added to...
Time-resolved in situ synchrotron x-ray scattering studies of particle orientation in polymer-clay nanocomposites under simple shear and complex flow were performed. Shear flow experiments used an annular cone and plate x-ray shear cell to allow measurement of platelet orientation within the flow-gradient plane.
Intercalated nanocomposites were made by dispersing organically...
Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) is associated with malignancies of lymphoid and epithelial origin. While the precise role of EBV in oncogenesis remains elusive, latent membrane protein 2A (LMP2A) is detected in all EBV-associated malignancies, implicating LMP2A in their pathogenesis. Interestingly, LMP2A is expressed in EBV-associated malignancies such as Burkitt's Lymphoma,...
Chapter one investigates the impact of agents' expectations about future fundamental economic disturbances (news) on macroeconomic dynamics. Several intuitive tests provide insight into the information content of the yield curve and its' ability to identify these 'news' disturbances. Bayesian estimation of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model using conventional...
Tonia René Holverson The HPV genome contains a bipartite promoter system that regulates the expression of early and late gene transcripts. The early proteins include the replication proteins E1 and E2, the oncoproteins E6 and E7, and the late functioning proteins E4 and E5. The late proteins include the capsid...
Estrogens are traditionally thought to act through a nuclear receptor-mediated mechanism to regulate gene transcription in target tissues. The hippocampus has been shown to be sensitive to estrogen; estrogen regulates GABAergic inhibition and spine density of dorsal CA1 pyramidal cells. However, very few neurons expressing nuclear estrogen receptors (ERs) have...
The kinetoplastid protozoan <em>Trypanosoma brucei</em> is the causative agent of African trypanosomiasis, affecting humans, and Nagana disease, affecting cattle, prevalent in regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Our lab demonstrated that the flagellum of <em>T. brucei</em> is enriched in lipid rafts, membrane areas composed of sphingolipids, sterols, and proteins that serve as...
This dissertation explores the factors that influence the creation and interpretation of novel denominal verbs in English. Of particular focus is the potential influence of one factor, termed here the Semantic Category Distribution Effect. The Semantic Category Distribution Effect involves the type frequency distribution of existing forms of a given...
The last two decades in nineteenth-century West Africa witnessed a two-fold movement, namely the territorial expansion of French colonial empire and the first attempts to extend biomedicine through mass vaccination to control smallpox epidemics. This study provides both a deep history and conceptual framework to analyze the relationship between the...
This study examined the effects of swallow task on swallow physiology, respiratory phase relationships, and oxygen saturation in healthy adult males. This study hoped to provide a building block to clinically relevant research with individuals with compromised swallowing and respiration. Subjects included 40 healthy adult males with no history of...
High-performance scientific computing in a modern age uses parallel techniques at a scale of hundreds of thousands of processors. These large-scale applications have I/O system workloads that are primarily driven by small, sparse I/O operations. While parallel file systems have provided application developers with scalable peak I/O bandwidth for large,...
This dissertation explores a seventy-year period of community growth and activism among African Americans in nineteenth-century Iowa, showing how citizenship was defined, contested, expanded and confined. Antebellum black migrants lived on the margins of a hostile society and struggled for equal citizenship using their labor, their community institutions, the legal...
The three empirical analyses in this dissertation study the effects of workers' compensation benefits on individual behavior and household consumption as well as the impacts of workplace injuries and illnesses on economic outcomes for affected workers.
In Chapter 2, I study incentive effects of state workers' compensation programs, exploiting substantial...
Leakage currents limit the operation of high performance type II InAs/GaSb superlattice photodiode technology. Surface leakage current becomes a dominant, limiting factor to the ideal performance of a photodiode, especially at the scale of a focal plane array pixel (< 25 µm), and must be addressed. A reduction of the...