Browsing FAS Theses and Dissertations by Title
Now showing items 1239-1258 of 6136
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Directed Evolution of Sortase Activity and Specificity
(2014-06-06)Nature employs complex networks of protein-tailoring enzymes to effect the post-translational modification of proteins in vivo. By comparison, modern chemical methods rely upon either nonspecific labeling techniques or ... -
Directional Optical Antennas, Wafer-Scale Metasurfaces, and Single Molecule Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering
(2013-10-17)Within the field of optics, one of the topics being currently investigated with considerable interest is that of plasmonics, which refers to the use of surface plasmons on metallic nanostructures to manipulate light. It ... -
Disability Democracy: The Origins of Blind-Led Organizing in the United States, 1829-1935
(2023-05-11)This dissertation considers the emergence, activities, and legacies of blind-led organizing in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century United States as a vehicle for deepening understanding of the long history of ... -
Disadvantaged by Design: The Long-Term Effects of Redlining on Census Tract-Level Outcomes in American Cities
(2021-06-17)This thesis seeks to examine the role that redlining policies initiated by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the late 1930s played in fundamentally shaping American neighborhoods and the groups that inhabited ... -
Discerning Humanity's Edges: Cleckley, Nietzsche, and the Interpretative Dilemma of Psychopathy
(2022-05-12)This dissertation explores the philosophical presuppositions of psychopathy as a diagnosis and asks whether epistemological certainty is possible in discerning the disorder. The current psychological literature on psychopathy ... -
Discipline and Ethical Formation in the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda Vinayapiṭaka
(2017-05-15)This dissertation examines the concept of vinaya, or discipline, in the Vinayapiṭaka, or Canon of Disciplinary Texts, of the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda monastic order. Discipline is a process of self-transformation toward ... -
Discipline and Publish: Jews, the Logic of the State, and the Beginning of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature in Eastern Europe (1806-1845)
(2016-09-16)Jews, the Logic of the State, and the Beginning of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature in Eastern Europe (1806-1845) investigates and connects two historical phenomena: The rise of modern Jewish literature in Eastern ... -
Discourse and Construction: Kant, Schleiermacher, and the Articulation of Epistemology's Language Problem
(2021-05-14)This dissertation establishes a theoretical framework for a critique of “textualist” interpretation, particularly as textualism occurs in theological and jurisprudential contexts. Textualists tend to use deductive reasoning, ... -
Discourse, Morality, Body: Radical Socialism in a Chinese Model Village(1946-1978)
(2013-10-14)This dissertation is based on my long-term fieldwork at Dazhai village in Shanxi Province, north China. Dazhai village was a famous national model of socialist agriculture and rural settlement during the Maoist era. ... -
Discoveries in Phononic Crystals and Acoustic Metamaterials
(2015-10-13)Phononic crystals and acoustic metamaterials are heterogeneous materials that enable manipulation of elastic waves. An important characteristic of these heterogeneous systems is their ability to tailor the propagation of ... -
Discovering Bioactive Peptides and Characterizing the Molecular Pathways that Control Their Activity
(2012-08-15)Bioactive peptides constitute a major class of signaling molecules in animals and have been shown to play a role in diverse physiological processes, including hypertension, appetite and sleep. As a result, knowing the ... -
Discovering How Youth Psychotherapies Work: Three Approaches to Identifying Mediators of Treatment Outcome
(2017-07-06)Although a lot is known about which psychotherapies work, surprisingly little is known about how they work. Understanding the processes and mechanisms through which evidence-based psychotherapies (EBPs) improve outcomes ... -
Discovering Novel Feedback and Crosstalk Mechanisms in Cellular Signaling Pathways
(2013-09-04)Multiple signaling pathways control cellular response to environmental cues such as nutrients, growth factors and stress. Interpretation of these cues requires coordinated regulation of intracellular signaling pathways. ... -
Discovering Structure in the Moral Domain
(2015-05-18)Early moral psychologists identified the moral domain with a class of actions that negatively impacted the wellbeing of others or violated their rights. However, anthropological work suggested that this view failed to ... -
Discovery and characterization of a novel dsRNA virus infecting the human parasite Trichomonas vaginalis
(2022-08-30)Trichomonas vaginalis is the most common non-viral cause of sexually transmitted infections around the world. Infection by this protozoan parasite results in trichomoniasis, a clinical inflammatory disease with acute and ... -
Discovery and Characterization of an Antimicrobial Toxin of the Gut Symbiont Bacteroides fragilis
(2018-08-17)The gut microbiota represents one of most densely populated ecosystems on earth. The trillions of bacteria that populate the gastrointestinal tract carry out essential tasks for the host, such as harvesting energy from ... -
The Discovery and Characterization of Endosomal Escape Enhancing Compounds to Improve Protein Delivery Efficacy
(2015-07-23)The inefficient delivery of proteins into mammalian cells remains a major barrier to realizing the therapeutic potential of many proteins. We and others have previously shown that superpositively charged proteins are ... -
The Discovery and Characterization of NAD-Linked RNA
(2012-09-13)Over the past few decades, RNA has emerged as much more than just an intermediary in biology’s central dogma. RNA is now known to play a variety of catalytic, regulatory and defensive roles in living systems as demonstrated ... -
Discovery and Characterization of Novel Bioactive Peptides and a Natural ERRalpha Ligand
(2013-10-17)Metabolites and peptides have a central role in biology that is often overlooked. Despite the importance of metabolites in key protein-metabolite interactions (PMIs), the extent and identity of these interactions is not ... -
Discovery and Characterization of Novel smORF-Encoded Polypeptides (SEPs)
(2016-01-04)Peptides and small proteins have essential physiological roles including metabolism (insulin), sleep (orexin), and stress (corticotropin-releasing hormone). Recent exploration of the human genome and proteome has revealed ...