Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Yale University

Discipline
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 3481 - 3510 of 33848

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Structural Origins Of The Stiffness And Work Contributions Of The Human Foot, Ali Yawar Apr 2022

Structural Origins Of The Stiffness And Work Contributions Of The Human Foot, Ali Yawar

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Human foot mechanics have been extensively studied over the last century to understand human evolution and treat foot pathologies.Much of this understanding has centered on the foot's longitudinal arch that runs from heel to toe, especially its role in making human feet stiff enough to withstand many times our bodyweight during walking and running. But numerous studies on foot biomechanics, orthopedic surgical reconstructions, and human evolution point to substantial gaps in the understanding based on the longitudinal arch alone. In this thesis, I present two new findings related to foot stiffness and how it produces the mechanical power needed for …

Go to article

The Formats Of Spatial Representations, Sami Yousif Apr 2022

The Formats Of Spatial Representations, Sami Yousif

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Mental representations are the essence of cognition. Yet, to understand how the mind works, we must understand not just the content of mental representations (i.e., what information is stored), but also the format of those representations (i.e., how that information is stored). If we want to understand how sensory information is translated into symbolic representations, if we want to know how the mind forms ‘cognitive maps’, if we want to know how the firing of neurons can lead to the emergent phenomenon of human cognition — all of these things require us to understand how information is organized in the …

Go to article

Econometric Methods For Program Evaluation And Policy Choice, Kohei Yata Apr 2022

Econometric Methods For Program Evaluation And Policy Choice, Kohei Yata

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation presents two essays on econometric methods for program evaluation and policy choice. In Chapter 1, I develop a statistically optimal way of using data to make policy decisions when the performance of counterfactual policies is only partially identified. Specifically, I consider a class of statistical decision problems in which the policy maker must decide between two alternative policies to maximize social welfare (e.g., the population mean of an outcome) based on a finite sample. The central assumption is that the underlying, possibly infinite-dimensional parameter, lies in a known convex set, potentially leading to partial identification of the welfare …

Go to article

Mixed Methods Evaluation Of Data Systems For Tuberculosis In Uganda, Elizabeth Bennett White Apr 2022

Mixed Methods Evaluation Of Data Systems For Tuberculosis In Uganda, Elizabeth Bennett White

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Surveillance is a cornerstone of public health, providing the data required to monitor disease trends, evaluate the impact of interventions, inform policy, and guide programmatic decision making. In order for this data to be informative and useful, however, it must be timely, accurate, and complete. In the context of tuberculosis (TB), which continues to cause millions of cases of disease and deaths each year, surveillance data is known to have gaps including undercounting cases and incomplete reporting by health facilities. To accelerate TB control and elimination, reliable data is needed to improve quality of TB care. Furthermore, challenges with unique …

Go to article

Efferent Modulation Of Spontaneous Activity In Developing Sensory Systems, Yixiang Wang Apr 2022

Efferent Modulation Of Spontaneous Activity In Developing Sensory Systems, Yixiang Wang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Patterned spontaneous activity plays an instructive role in developing sensory systems. Before hearing onset, inner support cells release ATP and induce spontaneous firing of neighboring inner hair cells. This periphery-initiated spontaneous activity propagates throughout the auditory hierarchy via the afferent pathway, coordinating neural activity in distinct tonotopic zones in the central auditory system. Similarly, spontaneous retinal waves initiated in the retina by starburst amacrine cells (stage II) or bipolar cells (stage III) were observed throughout the visual system via the retinotopic visual afferent circuits. Deciphering the underlying mechanisms of patterned spontaneous activity is critical to elucidate its instructive role in …

Go to article

On Integrals Of Matrix Coefficients Associated To Spherical Models, Elad Daniel Zelingher Apr 2022

On Integrals Of Matrix Coefficients Associated To Spherical Models, Elad Daniel Zelingher

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

We define a local ingredient of the Ichino-Ikeda conjecture for isometry groups, for representations arising as local components of irreducible automorphic cuspidal representations lying in generic packets, without assuming temperedness everywhere. The representations in consideration are parabolically induced from characters and a tempered representation.

Go to article

Dissecting The Contributions Of Langerhans Cells To Skin Wound Healing And The Angiogenic Niche, Renee R. Wasko Apr 2022

Dissecting The Contributions Of Langerhans Cells To Skin Wound Healing And The Angiogenic Niche, Renee R. Wasko

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Mammalian skin is complex, heterogeneous, and essential for survival. It is the primary barrier that protects us from physical, microbial, and chemical hazards, and must therefore be highly regenerative. When skin is wounded, healing occurs through a series of temporally-overlapping and tightly regulated stages of inflammation, proliferation, and remodeling. Angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels from pre-existing vessels, occurs during the proliferative phase of repair and is essential for the formation of new, healthy tissue. Blood vessels are a vital source of oxygen, nutrients, and immune cells, and failure of these vessels to regenerate after injury results in chronic, …

Go to article

A Light In The Dark: Ultralight Dark Matter Phenomenology In Simulations, Jovana Zagorac Apr 2022

A Light In The Dark: Ultralight Dark Matter Phenomenology In Simulations, Jovana Zagorac

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Of the outstanding problems in astronomy, the nature of dark matter is certainly one of the most mysterious. Containing five times more energy density than its luminous counterpart, dark matter has been shaping the large-scale structure of our Universe for billions of years. The expansion of accessible and accurate cosmological simulations has revolutionized how we visualize the imprint of dark matter in the structure of our Universe. In my Ph.D., I contributed to this revolution through the development and implementation of a new code, chplUltra: a parallel, portable, and efficient tool for HPC simulations of a promising dark matter candidate, …

Go to article

Efficient Estimation Of Signals Via Non-Convex Approaches, Sheng Xu Apr 2022

Efficient Estimation Of Signals Via Non-Convex Approaches, Sheng Xu

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation aims to highlight the importance of methodological development and the need for tailored algorithms in non-convex statistical problems. Specifically, we study three non-convex estimation problems with novel ideas and techniques in both statistical methodologies and algorithmic designs. Chapter 2 discusses my work with Zhou Fan on estimation of a piecewise-constant image, or a gradient-sparse signal on a general graph, from noisy linear measurements. In this work, we propose and study an iterative algorithm to minimize a penalized least-squares objective, with a penalty given by the ``$\ell_0$-norm'' of the signal's discrete graph gradient. The method uses a non-convex variant …

Go to article

Towards Understanding The Mechanism Of Wolbachia-Induced Cytoplasmic Incompatibility, Mengwen Zhang Apr 2022

Towards Understanding The Mechanism Of Wolbachia-Induced Cytoplasmic Incompatibility, Mengwen Zhang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Wolbachia is a vertically transmitted intracellular bacterium that infects a large number of arthropods and filarial nematodes. Many strains of Wolbachia manipulate host reproduction through cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). In its simplest form, CI is a phenomenon where male host infected with Wolbachia cannot produce viable offspring with uninfected females; this apparent sterility is restored when the male host mates with Wolbachia-infected females—a phenomenon called rescue. Since Wolbachia is transmitted through the female germline, CI helps Wolbachia propagate in the host population. These properties of CI have been utilized in Wolbachia-based methods to control mosquito-borne diseases such as Dengue and Zika …

Go to article

Resonances And Fundamental Bounds In Wave Scattering, Hanwen Zhang Apr 2022

Resonances And Fundamental Bounds In Wave Scattering, Hanwen Zhang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

In this thesis, we develop a framework for analyzing light-matter interaction by resonances, explore power concentration limits in wave scattering, and discover fundamental bounds of quantum state controls via pulse engineering. We use quasinormal modes to develop an exact, ab initio generalized coupled-mode theory from Maxwell’s equations. This quasinormal coupled-mode theory, which we de- note “QCMT”, enables a direct, mode-based construction of scattering matrices without resorting to external solvers or data. We consider canonical scattering bodies, for which we show that a conventional coupled-mode theory model will necessarily be highly inaccurate, whereas QCMT exhibits near-perfect accuracy. We generalize classical brightness …

Go to article

Bosonic Quantum Simulation In Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics, Christopher Shen Wang Apr 2022

Bosonic Quantum Simulation In Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics, Christopher Shen Wang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The development of controllable quantum machines is largely motivated by a desire to simulate quantum systems beyond the capabilities of classical computers. Investigating intrinsically multi-level model bosonic systems, using conventional quantum processors based on two-level qubits is inefficient and incurs a potentially prohibitive mapping overhead in the current "near-term intermediate-scale quantum" (NISQ) era. This motivates the development of hybrid quantum processors that contain multiple types of degrees of freedom, such that one can leverage an optimal one-to-one mapping between the model system and simulator. Circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) has emerged as a leading platform for quantum information processing owing to …

Go to article

Machine Learning Methods To Estimate Whole-Brain Effective Connectome For Asd Identification, Juntang Zhuang Apr 2022

Machine Learning Methods To Estimate Whole-Brain Effective Connectome For Asd Identification, Juntang Zhuang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is widely used to study neural-developmental diseases such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). There are mainly two types of connectome to analyze fMRI: the Functional Connectome (FC) and the Effective Connectome (EC). FC is typically derived as the correlation between fMRI time-series from different brain regions, while EC is derived by fitting the measurement time-series to the Dynamical Causal Model (DCM) described by a system of Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs). FC is typically easier to compute yet can not reveal the causal relations among brain regions; EC reveals the causal relations yet is much harder …

Go to article

From Secret War To Cold War: Race, Catholicism, And The Un-Making Of Counterrevolutionary Mexico, 1917-1946, Ricardo Jose Alvarez-Pimentel Apr 2022

From Secret War To Cold War: Race, Catholicism, And The Un-Making Of Counterrevolutionary Mexico, 1917-1946, Ricardo Jose Alvarez-Pimentel

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation examines the rise and fall of Catholic women’s opposition to the secularizing efforts and seemingly progressive gender and racial politics of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and its nascent state apparatus. Through rigorous discursive analyses of state and Catholic print media published between 1917 and 1946, it traces middle- and upper-class women’s ideological production and argues that their counterrevolutionary religious movement was both driven and un-made by gendered constructions of whiteness. The first half of this dissertation (Chapters 1-3) analyzes the Mexican Church-state conflict prior to 1930 as a transnational struggle between two racialized and competing forms of …

Go to article

Essays On Regulation, Antitrust, And Managers, Jinjie Lin Apr 2022

Essays On Regulation, Antitrust, And Managers, Jinjie Lin

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

In the first chapter of my dissertation, I present the evidence of the effect of financial regulators’ social media use on corporate and individual behavior. Using the staggered launch of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regional offices’ Twitter accounts, I find that financial regulators’ presence on social media reduces opportunistic insider trading, customer complaints against investment advisers, and financial misreporting. Additional tests suggest that the salience and dissemination of regional offices’ enforcement activities via Twitter play a role. The deterrence effect of SEC regional offices’ Twitter use is concentrated among offices with more followers, firms with more retail investors, …

Go to article

Genetic Covariance Analysis Reveals Heterogeneous Etiologic Sharing Of Complex Traits: Theory, Methodology And Applications, Yiliang Zhang Apr 2022

Genetic Covariance Analysis Reveals Heterogeneous Etiologic Sharing Of Complex Traits: Theory, Methodology And Applications, Yiliang Zhang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Over the past fifteen years, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified tens of thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with complex human traits and diseases. Besides the success in finding risk loci, the estimation of genetic covariance based on collected GWAS data also provides insights into the genetic basis of complex traits/diseases. Genetic covariance is the covariance of genetic effects contributing to two phenotypes. Methods based on linear mixed model (LMM) in conjunction with the restricted maximum likelihood (REML) algorithm have been developed to estimate these two quantities of significant genetic interests. However, methods based on LMM have only gained …

Go to article

Modulation Of T Cells To Promote An Anti-Tumor Response: Activation And Inhibition Of T Cells For Efficacy In T-Cell Lymphomas And Melanoma, Samuel Robert Kerr Apr 2022

Modulation Of T Cells To Promote An Anti-Tumor Response: Activation And Inhibition Of T Cells For Efficacy In T-Cell Lymphomas And Melanoma, Samuel Robert Kerr

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Cancer is the leading cause of premature death in the United States and other developed countries. Current decreases in cancer mortality rates are largely being driven by immunotherapies, which leverage an understanding of T cell activation and inhibition to produce an anti-tumor response. T-cell-based therapies may help decrease mortality rates even further. CAR T cell therapies and T cell activators like bispecific T-cell engagers and dendritic cell vaccines have increased survival in patients otherwise out of treatment options. While these therapies have been successful for niche patient populations, applying these therapies to wider patient populations has been difficult. In a …

Go to article

Dissecting The Impact Of Clonal Hematopoiesis On Age-Related Disease, Seyedeh Maryam Zekavat Apr 2022

Dissecting The Impact Of Clonal Hematopoiesis On Age-Related Disease, Seyedeh Maryam Zekavat

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Aging is the strongest risk factor for a number of diseases. Despite current risk prediction, prevention, and therapeutic strategies, age-related diseases including coronary artery disease (CAD), cancer, and now COVID-19, are the leading causes of death in the US and worldwide. The aging hematopoietic system is characterized by increased prevalence of acquired somatic variants predisposing to clonal expansion. Carriers of somatic mutations predisposing to clonal expansion in hematopoietic stem cells (clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential, CHIP) are at increased risk for not only hematologic cancer but also atherosclerosis. Other classes of somatic variation besides CHIP, including larger somatic structural variants …

Go to article

Statistical Methods For Genetic Prediction Of Complex Traits In Single And Multiple Populations, Geyu Zhou Apr 2022

Statistical Methods For Genetic Prediction Of Complex Traits In Single And Multiple Populations, Geyu Zhou

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Genetic prediction of complex traits, also known as polygenic risk score (PRS), is constructed by combining the estimated effect sizes of genetic markers across the genome for an individual. PRS has shown great promise in biomedical and clinical research for disease prevention, monitoring and treatment. However, the development of accurate prediction models is challenging due to the wide diversity of genetic architecture, limited access to individual level data, and the demand for computational resources. The broader application of PRS to the general population is further hindered by the poor transferability of PRS developed in Europeans to non-European populations. In this …

Go to article

British Gilt: Gold In British Painting From Blake To Whistler, Tara Contractor Apr 2022

British Gilt: Gold In British Painting From Blake To Whistler, Tara Contractor

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The nineteenth century was the age of Britain’s gold standard, an era when the storied metal held new roles as currency and imperial trophy, becoming as central to the culture as glass or steel. Drawing new attention to British painters’ radical experiments with gilding, this dissertation explores how nineteenth-century artists reinvented painting for the modern age by engaging with gold’s entangled associations with colonialism, ornament and excess. Insisting upon the metal’s dual status as material and symbol, this dissertation brings object-based analyses informed by techniques from art conservation into a conversation about gold, money, and value hitherto located largely in …

Go to article

A Robotic Skin-Based Approach To Soft Robotics, Dylan Shah Apr 2022

A Robotic Skin-Based Approach To Soft Robotics, Dylan Shah

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Typical robots are designed to achieve a single function in a controlled environment and lack the ability to generalize to new tasks. In their quest to build more capable robots, engineers have explored many avenues, including artificial intelligence, reconfigurable robots, and leveraging deformable materials that naturally absorb impacts and conform to objects. In this dissertation, I build upon these latter two bodies of work and introduce reconfigurable robotic skins, working toward the long-term vision of general-purpose robots. By applying the skins to different objects, new functionalities can be obtained, and this layer-based approach to robot design allows engineers to endow …

Go to article

Fascists Without Labels: Jim Crow, Civil Rights, And The Making Of A Black Antifascist Tradition, 1933-1977, Anna Duensing Apr 2022

Fascists Without Labels: Jim Crow, Civil Rights, And The Making Of A Black Antifascist Tradition, 1933-1977, Anna Duensing

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This study unearths the transnational Black antifascist tradition that became a galvanizing force for postwar civil rights in the United States. It opens with interwar Black radical formulations of fascism as continuous with colonialism and racial slavery, then asks what became of Black antifascists, their ideas, and their allies following Allied victory. After 1945, many turned their sights fully to the United States as the postwar inheritor of “a heritage of fascists without labels.” I track antifascist efforts to define and confront this heritage across the civil rights movement and into the age of Black Power. I argue that antifascism …

Go to article

Minor Theories Of Everything: On Popular Science And Contemporary Fiction, Arthur Wang Apr 2022

Minor Theories Of Everything: On Popular Science And Contemporary Fiction, Arthur Wang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

“Minor Theories of Everything” is an interdisciplinary inquiry into the proliferation and circulation of scientific universalisms about human sociality since the 20th century, and their uses by feminists and writers of color. By considering “minor universals” about human behavior, I articulate two related concepts: the imaginative and rhetorical strategies scientific disciplines use to stage claims to universality, and the way that minoritized writers have adapted potentially alienating and exclusionary universalisms to new political and aesthetic ends. Combining literary history, science studies, and race, gender, and sexuality studies, I offer new insights into the cultural work of popular science. Chapter One, …

Go to article

A Different Worldview: Negritude, Monde, And Cosmopolitanism, Jason Hong Apr 2022

A Different Worldview: Negritude, Monde, And Cosmopolitanism, Jason Hong

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

French universalism is in crisis. A long-cherished political concept, universalism demands that French citizens relinquish pre-existing identities: to be French is to enter a collective that subsumes all ethnic, racial, and religious differences. Prominent events, such as the 2005 Paris ethnic riots and 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting, have destabilized the concept in the last two decades. To better understand universalism’s troubles, my dissertation historicizes the concept by looking at how it has been debated and negotiated by intellectuals associated with Negritude, the anticolonial movement that sought to establish a unified black identity amongst peoples of African descent. I demonstrate how …

Go to article

Specification And Function Of Developmental Programmed Cell Death, Alison Kochersberger Apr 2022

Specification And Function Of Developmental Programmed Cell Death, Alison Kochersberger

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Programmed cell death is a crucial process for animal development. Within the developing nervous system neurons are removed through developmental programmed cell death (dPCD), altering neuronal architecture. In the central nervous system (CNS) where dPCD is controlled intrinsically, it is not clear how or why these particular cells are choosing to die since the decision is independent of their context within the nervous system. A similar intrinsically regulated dPCD is found in C. elegans. These cell deaths occur across the lineage and are highly stereotyped, so that the same 131 cells are removed in each individual. We have developed a …

Go to article

Race Information Influences Cognitive Processes In Brain And Behavior In Black And White Individuals, Estee Rubien-Thomas Apr 2022

Race Information Influences Cognitive Processes In Brain And Behavior In Black And White Individuals, Estee Rubien-Thomas

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Race is a prevailing social category in the United States, and physical cues that indicate race are often used as a heuristic to distinguish in- and out-group members. The salience of race can influence our cognitive processes and contribute to racially-biased behavior. The present dissertation examines the contexts in which race information biases behavior and investigates the underlying cognitive and neurobiological processes that contribute to racially-biased behavior. Furthermore, the present dissertation studies illustrate the importance of implementing diversity in participant samples and experimental stimuli in psychological research. Chapter 1 reviews the importance of race as a social group in the …

Go to article

Development And Delivery Of Genome-Editing Therapies For Improved Glioblastoma Treatment, Ann Tai Chen Apr 2022

Development And Delivery Of Genome-Editing Therapies For Improved Glioblastoma Treatment, Ann Tai Chen

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and aggressive type of primary brain cancer. Even with the current standard of care, which consists of surgical resection, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, GBM patients have a five-year survival rate of only two percent. Several characteristics of GBM hinder the development of effective treatments. First, GBM is highly invasive by nature, making complete surgical resection of the tumor impossible and tumor recurrence inevitable. Second, a subpopulation of cells within GBM, known as cancer stem cells (CSCs), significantly contributes to patient mortality. CSCs are capable of tumor initiation, invasion, and self-renewal, and are resistant to conventional …

Go to article

The Role Of Gm572 In Left-Right Patterning, Davis Li Apr 2022

The Role Of Gm572 In Left-Right Patterning, Davis Li

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Breakage of left-right symmetry is an evolutionarily conserved process in the establishment of the vertebrate body plan. In the mouse, this process is initiated at the left-right organizer and requires cilia. While some details of the steps in left-right patterning have been previously determined, the exact mechanisms for certain steps remain unclear. Therefore, the identification of new genes involved in left-right patterning would enhance the current understanding of the different steps that are involved. Here, a forward genetic screen was performed to identify new genes involved in vertebrate embryonic development. Subsequently, we identified the mouse mutant doppelgänger (dopp) that showed …

Go to article

Experimental Magnetic Imaging Study Of Novel States On Artificial Spin Ice Systems, Xiaoyu Zhang Apr 2022

Experimental Magnetic Imaging Study Of Novel States On Artificial Spin Ice Systems, Xiaoyu Zhang

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Artificial spin ice systems are two dimensional arrays of magnetic nanoislands that are designed to study the collective behavior of frustrated systems. Each nanoisland possesses a discrete magnetic moment and the interactions between moments can be controlled by modifying the nanoislands’ shape, lateral dimensions, and geometrical arrangement. This thesis focuses on the novel states of different ASI systems and probe the magnetic configurations using a variety of imaging techniques. The first step is to access the ground states through an annealing treatment. We optimize the annealing protocol using the square ice lattice. The annealing study is then extended to examine …

Go to article

Making The Most Of Polygenic Risk Scores: Risk Decomposition, Cross-Population Prediction, And Clinical Application, Yixuan Ye Apr 2022

Making The Most Of Polygenic Risk Scores: Risk Decomposition, Cross-Population Prediction, And Clinical Application, Yixuan Ye

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

An essential component of human genetics research and precision medicine is to develop robust and accurate disease risk prediction models from genetic data together with other risk factors. Accurate prediction models will have great impacts on disease prevention and early and effective treatment. With the remarkable success achieved by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in the past 17 years, numerous single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with complex human traits and diseases have been identified, and various methods, broadly called polygenic risk scores (PRS), have been proposed to utilize GWAS data to predict genetic risk. Compared to risk prediction models that require individual-level …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last