Digital Commons Network^™

Design, Fabrication, And Spectroscopy Of Photocatalytic Materials In Visible Spectrum, Yamuna Paudel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Heterogeneous photocatalysis has attracted research interest in sustainable energy technologies. However, achieving high photocatalytic efficiency from visible light-absorbing semiconductors is challenging due to their weak absorption, transport losses, and low activity. While multilayer approaches have been developed to enhance the surface reactivity and stability independent of electronic factors, a comprehensive framework for optimizing light-matter interactions has not yet been established. Here, we introduce a photonic strategy using semiconductor metasurfaces, which is highly effective in enhancing the photocatalytic activity of GaAs, a high-performance semiconductor with a near-infrared bandgap. Our engineered pillar arrays with heights of ~150 nm exhibit Mie resonances near …

Preschoolers’ Generation Of Quantity Implicatures, André Eliatamby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation uses the developing child as a window into the mechanisms and representations that allow us to understand the meaning of utterances in their contexts. I present three studies investigating 4- and 5-year-olds’ ability to generate two types of “quantity implicatures,” classic scalar implicatures with some that imply not all, and free choice inferences that arise with sentences like “Larry is allowed to have cake or ice-cream.” Together, the studies suggest a close relationship between pragmatic development and word learning, something not appreciated in existing literature. In the first study investigating some, I show that preschoolers interpret …

Bodies For Catastrophe: A Montage Study Of Palestinian Digital Labor, Francisco Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates Palestinian digital labor through the method of montage. Digital labor, understood as bodily activity transfigured by digital machines into exploitable information, is examined within the context of Israeli surveillance technologies used against Palestinians. The study critically explores the dual political functions of these technologies: as tools of settler-colonial domination aiming to dispossess Palestinians, and as neoliberal mechanisms seeking to profit from the surveillance of Palestinian bodies. The second half of the thesis turns to the ways Palestinians engage with such technologies and unsettle the economic and colonial logics embedded in them.

The research is structured nonlinearly using …

Moving Pictures Of The Past: Nostalgia For Classical Hollywood In The Broadway Musical, 1960–1990, Curtis Russell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I examine how Broadway staged classical Hollywood between 1960 and 1990 amid social, artistic, and industrial upheaval. While upheaval and experimentation are constants even during epochs of apparent stability, the story my dissertation tells is of an industry facing the perils of obsolescence by looking backward and westward to understand how its larger and more powerful culture industry sibling navigated similar moments of disruption. Building on Fredric Jameson’s notion of the “nostalgia film,” I contend that between 1960 and 1990 the nine “nostalgia musicals” under consideration served the same function for the Broadway musical that the nostalgia …

Measuring Intersectional Strength And Stigma Among Racially Minoritized Gender Diverse Young Adults, Joseph Carter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Racially minoritized transgender and gender expansive young adults (RMTGEYA; aged 18-26) experience mental health inequities due to intersectional, multilevel stigma. RMTGEYA communities embody intersectional strength and resilience that can mitigate the impact of stigma. Understanding and capturing strength and stigma factors to address these inequities has significant implications for clinical science research and practice. There is, however, a complete absence of instruments that are validated to do so. Objective: The goal of this study is to conduct a three-phase, mixed methods study that centers intersectional and community engaged methods of psychometric development for a measure that captures daily experiences …

Loneliness And The Urban American (Non-)Romantic, Sarah C. Cook

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Loneliness, also known as ‘perceived social isolation,’ is an increasingly common feeling among Americans. It can be critically unhealthy when chronic, and recent revelations about its health effects have garnered a significant amount of media attention. Although statistical evidence tells us that marriage is the strongest defense against loneliness, over a third of Millennials and Gen-Zers say marriage is outdated; and census data shows that living alone is both one of the fastest-growing demographics in America, as well as a relatively stable housing arrangement. After examining existing research and media reports on loneliness itself in some depth, including factors that …

Building Black Manhattan: Architecture, Art, And The Politics Of Respectability, 1857–1914, Jessica Larson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Building Black Manhattan” is the first study to examine the architectural contributions of Black women reformers to the urban development of New York City between the Civil War and the Great Migration. Through the construction of charitable and reform institutions throughout Manhattan, they articulated a strategy of racial uplift through deliberate spatial construction.

As reform work was one of the very few arenas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which women had a significant public voice, the buildings constructed to facilitate reformers’ work encoded the social, racial, and gendered demands of women into their designs. These institutions included …

Repurposing Bt-11 To Treat Alzheimer’S Disease: Exploring The Glutathione-S-Transferase Lancl2 As A Target, Emily Birnbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Approximately 99.6% of potential Alzheimer’s drugs fail, thus developing successful drugs is a high priority. The failure at developing successful drugs relates to the complex nature of the disease itself. Many components act together to trigger a cascade that ultimately results in neurodegeneration and cognitive dysfunction associated with the disease. In building a multiplex model of Alzheimer’s it is important to understand its specific biological mechanisms. One of these key pathological mechanisms is neuroinflammation. Understanding the pathways involved in neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s is an urgent need, as it poses a promising avenue for future effective therapeutics. Specifically, as many investigational …

Retinoblastoma Malignance And Exosome Mechanisms Facilitating Optic Nerve Head Metastatic Niche Formation, Cui Shi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Retinoblastoma (RB) is a rare pediatric ocular tumor that occurs before five years of age and it is the most common intraocular cancer of childhood with more than 300 children in the United States and 8000 diagnosed globally each year. RB arises from the proliferation of cone photoreceptor precursor cells in the retina as a result of mutations in the RB1 gene. The influence of RB secreted factors on cells in the retinal environment has not been fully elucidated. Cancer cell released exosomes have been shown to transform their microenvironment through transfer of metastasis promoting molecular cargo. Cancer cell extracellular …

The Film, The Stadium And The Jail: The Post-Industrial Transformation Of Downtown Durham, Seth Rose

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

By the late 1980s, Durham, North Carolina’s downtown-based industrial economy had been replaced by a powerful knowledge economy in the city’s peripheries. Downtown Durham’s vast array of tobacco and textiles manufacturing buildings stood empty, along with most of its commercial spaces, offices and sidewalks. This thesis argues that the local development of two major public works, a baseball stadium (the Durham Bulls Athletic Park) and a jail (the Durham County Detention Center), conceived and constructed on similar timelines in close physical proximity, was indicative of how—and for whom—city and county officials envisioned a revitalized downtown. The first chapter examines the …

The Effects Of Environmental Changes On The Biodiversity And Macroecological Patterns Of Bird Assemblages In The United States, Marlen Acosta Alamo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current restructuring of species assemblages and global loss of biodiversity result from species-specific responses to anthropogenic changes in climate and land cover. I investigated the effect of these two drivers on the seasonal distribution and biodiversity of birds in the United States and how human-induced habitat loss impacts macroecological patterns such as the species-area and the abundance-occupancy relationships. In Chapter 1, I examined the existence of a correlation between breeding and wintering geographic distributions of birds with different migratory strategies and the effect of changes in climate and the proportion of crop-pasture and urban land cover on this correlation. …

A Machine Learning Approach To Discovering Physical Models Of Galaxy Formation, Festa Bucinca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Galaxies are the breathtakingly beautiful starry islands of the Universe. The process of galaxy formation involves the transformation from simple initial conditions in the early Universe to the complex galaxy structures we observe today. Spanning an immense spatial range and tremendous time scales - from the vastness of the Universe to the scale of individual stars - the physics of galaxy formation is both complex and crucial for understanding the Universe we live in. However, despite significant advancements, our theoretical understanding of galaxy formation remains incomplete.

In the era of big data available from hydrodynamical simulations and observations, Machine Learning …

Structural Insights Into Bacterial Helicase Loading At A Replication Origin By Cryogenic Electron Microscopy, Abhipsa Shatarupa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

DNA replication is a meticulously regulated and intricate process crucial for cellular viability. Replicative helicases, essential for unwinding DNA during replication, rely on helicase loader proteins for efficient loading and assembly at replication origins. In Escherichia coli, the replicative helicase DnaB forms a complex with six copies of the bacteriophage Lambda λP loader, resulting in a B₆P₆ conformation. The conformation of the BP complex, with a 6:6 stoichiometry, indicates that the isolated DnaB is initially captured by λP (B₆P₆) through its carboxy-terminal domain lassos/grappling hooks, serving as an early intermediate before transitioning …

Variability In Associations Among Seabirds And Marine Mammals: Causes And Consequences, Samantha A. Monier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Marine predators today face multifaceted stressors from changing climate to changing prey availability, and these changes are occurring at unprecedented speeds. Any alteration to a species’ environment has the potential to disrupt social networks and thus, how animals obtain and transfer information. Interspecific social interactions in the form of local enhancement and facilitation are a critical, but not yet well-understood, component of seabird foraging; of immediate concern is that anthropogenic changes may be altering the quantity and quality of positive species interactions, with consequences for the species involved.

While we know these interactions are not immutable, less is known about …

Bodies That Traverse: Colonial Fantasies Of Oriental Incorporations In Late Medieval England, Soojung Choe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Bodies that Traverse: Colonial Fantasies of Oriental Incorporations in Late Medieval England” shows how a picture of a proto-colonialist England arises from popular romances of the period, particularly those featuring the Crusades and the “Orient,” or the fictional Near East, as its central narrative locus. While the historical Crusades to the Holy Land mainly took place between the eleventh and twelfth centuries, English fictional writing on the Crusades flourished in the “post-crusade” period of 1200–1450. My project argues that the Orient in these writings, especially popular vernacular romances, serves as a colonial ‘contact zone,’ a fetishized site for England to …

Active Galactic Nuclei - The Arrhythmic Beat Of A Galactic Heart, Henry James Best V

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are generally believed to be supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of galaxies which are actively accreting material from the host galaxy. Through this process, they emit radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum both as a smooth continuum and emission lines. However, there is a great variety of the signals we observe–some faint, some bright, some variable and others steady. The wide array of signals produced by AGN is believed to encode both the geometry and the physics surrounding these SMBHs, making them a valuable target for understanding the high gravity limit, their feedback mechanisms to …

Winning The War While Losing Their Souls: The Crisis Of Honor And Discipline Within The French Army In Algeria, Thomas A. Schellhammer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From 1939 to 1962, the French military fought in continuous conflicts. In 1961, in the midst of the Algerian War, these wars would result in military coup attempts and mutiny, as well as the formation of a breakaway terrorist group of army officers known as the Organisation de l’Armée Secrete (OAS), dedicated to the political overthrow and assassination of President of France Charles de Gaulle. While both the insurrectionists and the OAS and its adherents were ultimately unsuccessful, for members of a stable, functioning military to even contemplate such dire political action, these events illustrated a profound breach of military …

Historiography Of The Body And Corporeality In Indonesian Theatre: The Search For Decolonial Aesthetics, Mohamad Ugoran Prasad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A study on Indonesian theatre historiography, this dissertation explores how and why the body and corporeality serve as the dominant means of theatre-making in Indonesia. Tracing and locating the bodily practice in theatre and performance from Indonesian independence until the turn of the twenty-first century, it locates the frictional relationship between the body and corporeality with modernity and the coloniality of language. That friction occurs in the process of adapting and translating modern theatre in the 1950s as much as during the heyday of folk popular theatre in the 1960s, preferring the body and corporeality as a refuge from ideological, …

Understanding Primate Immunity To African Trypanosomes Through The Characterization Of Trypanosome Lytic Factor Formation And Function, Sara Fresard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

African trypanosomes cause an annual loss of over 1 billion USD due to their economic and agricultural burden in Sub-Saharan Africa. These parasites are unicellular, extracellular parasites, that infect humans, cattle, and other livestock. Humans and some non-human primates are protected against most species of trypanosomes due to an innate immunity factor, Trypanosome Lytic Factor (TLF). This modified High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) contains two unique proteins, Haptoglobin Related Protein (HPR), a ligand to a trypanosome surface receptor, and Apolipoprotein-L1 (APOL1), the lytic component. Our overall goal is to use our understanding of primate immunity to create genetically modified cattle that …

Intimate Partner Violence And Negotiation During Covid-19: Stressors, Resources, And Perception, Victoria P. Diamond

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a serious public health concern that affects millions across the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic created unforeseen stress, and necessitated safety policies that required social isolation, often extended exposure to one’s intimate partner, and an inability to access stress-reduction resources. These factors, along with many others, lead to an abrupt increase in IPV in many couples. Using the couple-adapted family stress model (ABCX), the current study examines both previously defined (e.g., emotional dysregulation, stress, unemployment, communication issues) and COVID-19 specific risk (e.g., quarantine, unprecedented social isolation, fear of contracting COVID-19) and protective factors (e.g., meaning in …

Future Land, Futures Lost: Planning The Crisis On The Louisiana Coast, Sheehan Moore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

South Louisiana is rapidly losing coastal land to the combined forces of subsidence, sea-level rise, and worsening storms, accelerated by the effects of flood control engineering and extractive industrial development. With erosion threatening homes and industry alike, the state has marshaled a response on a massive economic and geographic scale: its Coastal Master Plan recommends $50 billion in river sediment diversions, barrier island restoration, and other projects over fifty years. This dissertation is about the emergence of Louisiana’s coast as a place from this knot of human and environmental relations, as an object for governance and a container for political …

The Beautiful And The Bullshit: Speaker And Listener Mental Representations Influence Bullshit Receptivity, Ryan Tracy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bullshit is a topic that has enjoyed an explosion of attention in both cognitive and social psychological research domains. While the picture painted thus far suggests that receptivity to such statements (i.e., perceiving meaning where none exists) hinges upon an individual’s ability to engage in reflective (vs. reflexive) cognitive processing, little attention has been paid to how purveyors of bullshit influence one’s willingness to engage with the message. This is critical to explore, given the status of misinformation in today’s media climate. A critical step involved in determining characteristics of speakers that predict bullshit receptivity is to understand how people …

Some New Properties Of Random Groups In The Density And Few-Relator Models, Anastasiia Chorna

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, we delve into the subjects that lie in the intersection of random group theory and first-order theory, or as traditionally referred to in the field, the first-order theory of free groups (Sela (2006) and Kharlampovich and Myasnikov (2006), among others). In particular, we establish the following two findings. First, we demonstrate that for fixed k > 2, among finitely generated groups, those without finite index subgroups of index k are prevalent in the density model (as discussed in Chapter 3). Second, we show that a first-order universal sentence in the language of groups is almost surely true in …

The Epigenetic Impact Of Dietary Choline On Growth Outcomes Of Children Exposed To Gestational Diabetes Mellitus, Ismail Kadam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Maternal insulin resistance and hyperglycemia lead to gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) which can cause fetal hyperinsulinemia, ultimately leading to excessive fetal growth associated with macrosomia and increased adiposity at birth. Increased placental macronutrient transport and epigenetic changes in growth and metabolic genes affected by GDM contribute to fetal overgrowth and can result in complications such as overweight/obesity, insulin resistance/type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease risk factors, as well as cognitive impairment later in life. Choline, an essential nutrient, participates in lipid and energy metabolism by providing methyl groups for DNA methylation and thus may overcome the hypomethylation of growth and metabolic …

Cognitive Flexibility And Stability In Bilingual Older Adults, Lia Pazuelo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lifelong bilingual individuals develop expertise in language-switching, requiring a delicate balance between cognitive stability—safeguarding goals from interference—and cognitive flexibility—adapting goals to changing demands. While some studies demonstrate the transferability of these skills to non-linguistic tasks, signifying bilingualism's impact on cognitive processes, others find no direct correlation between non-linguistic task-switching and bilingualism. Our study investigated the cognitive processes underlying bilingual speakers' performance on a switching task, exploring whether varying degrees of bilingual experience in older adults result in different tendencies towards stability (e.g., lower mixing cost and response congruency effect) or flexibility (e.g., smaller switching costs). By treating the bilingual experience …

Establishing A Murine Model Of Malaria-Associated Acute Kidney Injury And Demonstrating The Contribution Of Extrinsic Apoptosis To Tubular Necrosis, Johanna Bensalel-Lyampe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Malaria-associated acute kidney injury (MAKI) is a form of severe malaria (SM), which is usually caused by Plasmodium falciparum infection. Until recently, the impact of this particular complication of SM was severely underestimated and research in this area has been neglected. There is in fact a high prevalence (40-60%) of MAKI in SM patients and the associated risk of mortality and development of comorbidities is high. Furthermore, pediatric patients that recover often develop long-term complications such as chronic kidney disease or neurocognitive defects. The need for adjunctive therapies and early diagnostic biomarkers specific to this SM complication is critical but …

Living Color: Aesthetic Surfaces And Political Life In Brazil, Samuel E. Novacich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about the manipulation of appearances – of both the human body and the built environment – in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Focused on Afro-aesthetic makeup and tanning practices as well as urban renewal projects, this ethnographic study reveals how the making over of both the skin and the urban landscape shape social inequalities and contribute to productions of race, gender, and national belonging. While some of the aesthetic technologies examined herein may be characterized as “bottom up” – or as the self-fashioning tactics of marginalized Afro-Brazilians – others constitute “top down” infrastructural interventions led by the state …

Just Transitions: Critical Exploration Of Environmental Policy And Decision-Making Through The Lens Of Lived Stories, Mariya Marinova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research explores perspectives on just transition, what transitional policies and practices are already set in motion, the conditions necessary to achieve it, and how this knowledge can inform environmental policy. Focusing on West Virginia, it employs qualitative methodology with open-ended interviews and develops life sketches of transitions to demonstrate how deeply intertwined just transition is with the lives of the people in places marked by extractive industries. Combining guiding principles from environmental and landscape justice, energy justice, feminist energy systems framework, and place attachment theory, the findings reveal that just transitions need to be transformative, focusing on understanding how …

Misrecognition And Misrepresentation: A Critical Analysis Of The Trajectory Of Migrant Students - F1 Students, In The U.S., Domitila Dos Santos Bicudo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The influx of migrant students in the United States is reported to have increased considerably between 2022 and 2023. They are a significant asset to higher education in the U.S. and are authorized to study by the Department of Homeland Security. Despite their migratory legality, restrictions in their category as F1 students place them in a position of significant vulnerability and injustice This research analyzed how migrant students navigated and negotiated their mobility from the beginning to the end of their F1 visa status, examining their perseverance in staying on a challenging pathway toward a different migratory status or a …

Competitive And Noncompetitive Credit Assignment To Reward Cues In The Lateral Orbitofrontal Cortex, Mihwa Kang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the mechanisms underlying variations in credit assignment to reward cues, with a focus on the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC). The lOFC has long been implicated in signaling reward expectancies, with controversy as to whether it signals the economic value of future outcomes, their sensory features to guide behavior or both. However, whether the lOFC signals the relative (competition-dependent) or absolute (contiguity-dependent) credit of cues is unknown. To address this, I employed a combination of novel behavioral assays, in-vivo electrophysiological recordings and optogenetic stimulation in rats. In Chapter 2, I tested the suitability of a self-initiating variant of …