Browsing FAS Theses and Dissertations by Title
Now showing items 1-20 of 2924
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1,2-Selective Hydrosilylation of Conjugated Dienes
(2014-06-06)Selective 1,2-hydrosilylation of 1,3-dienes is a challenging problem to solve for transition metal catalysis. Butadiene, specifically, would be a useful substrate because 3-butenylsilane products have promise as superior ... -
The 1824 Confederation of the Equator and Cultural Production in Brazil
(2015-05-17)During the 1824 Confederation of the Equator revolt in northeastern Brazil, a middle-class junta rose to power and waged a war against the monarchy in Rio, journalists participating in creating pedagogical ideological ... -
2-Selmer groups and Heegner points on elliptic curves
(2015-05-07)This thesis studies several aspects of the arithmetic of elliptic curves. In particular, we explore the prediction of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture when the 2-Selmer group has rank one. For certain elliptic ... -
3D Bioprinting of Vascularized Human Tissues
(2016-04-26)The ability to manufacture human tissues that replicate the spatial, mechano-chemical, and temporal aspects of biological tissues would enable myriad applications, including drug screening, disease modeling, and tissue ... -
4d Spectra from BPS Quiver Dualities
(2013-09-26)We attack the question of BPS occupancy in a wide class of 4d N = 2 quantum field theories. We first review the Seiberg-Witten approach to finding the low energy Wilsonian effective action actions of such theories. In ... -
A Floating Probe Force Microscope With Sub-Femtonewton Resolution
(2017-01-13)Forces at the femtonewton level and below are poised to be highly relevant in a number of scientific disciplines– including studies in optics and photonics, molecular biology, and even microfluidics. It is highly practical, ... -
A Framework for Understanding Small Nervous Systems
(2017-01-09)How do we find important neurons and understand how their dynamics control behavior? Both of these are challenging and general problems in neuroscience. In this dissertation supervised by Sharad Ramanathan, I developed a ... -
A Portrait of Terrestrial Volatile Evolution From Mantle Noble Gases
(2016-10-31)Volatile elements and compounds provide important insights into large-scale planetary and tectonic processes. The chapters in this thesis exploit the wealth of information provided by noble gas measurements to address a ... -
A Search for Sterile Neutrinos at the NOνA Far Detector
(2016-12-08)NOνA is the current United States flagship long-baseline neutrino experiment designed to study the properties of neutrino oscillations. It consists of two functionally identical detectors each located 14.6 mrad off the ... -
A Variant Mode of Mammalian Olfaction
(2017-01-18)Olfaction – the sense of smell – informs animals about food, mates, threats, and other chemical signals. The odors most relevant to survival and reproduction vary across species and ecology; for this reason, olfactory ... -
The ABC's of Cell Division: Regulation of Peptidoglycan Amidase Activity during Cytokinesis in Escherichia coli
(2012-09-07)The bacterial cell wall, composed of peptidoglycan (PG), is an essential component of the cell envelope. This macromolecular structure fortifies the cell membrane, determines cell shape, and helps prevent osmotic lysis. ... -
Aberrant microRNA Expression in Spinal Muscular Atrophy Motor Neurons
(2015-05-18)Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) is a devastating autosomal-recessive pediatric neurodegenerative disease characterized by loss of spinal motor neurons. It is caused by mutation in the survival of motor neuron 1, SMN1, gene ... -
Abiotic Influences on Free-Living Microbial Communities in Hydrothermal Vent Ecosystems
(2016-05-18)Hydrothermal vent ecosystems are defined by steep thermal and chemical gradients. Chemosynthetic microorganisms are the primary producers in these systems, utilizing the available chemical energy to support substantial ... -
Abstract Representations of Attributed Emotion: Evidence From Neuroscience and Development
(2015-05-12)Humans can recognize others’ emotions based on overt cues such as facial expressions, affective vocalizations, or body posture, or by recruiting an abstract, causal theory of the conditions that tend to elicit different ... -
Accelerated Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging Using Radial Acquisition with Compressed Sensing
(2012-12-13)Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique that can visualize internal organs for examination and diagnosis. It is non-invasive and ionizing radiation-free, and provides good contrast between different ... -
Accelerating Markov chain Monte Carlo via parallel predictive prefetching
(2014-10-21)We present a general framework for accelerating a large class of widely used Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. This dissertation demonstrates that MCMC inference can be accelerated in a model of parallel computation ... -
Accountability and Advice in Greek Political Thought
(2013-02-15)This dissertation offers a new reading of Athenian democracy, focusing on the connection between the politics of accountability and the dynamics of political advice. I analyze Athenian institutions, norms, and practices ... -
The Achievement Gap, Revisited: An Empirical Assessment of What We Can Learn from East Asian Education
(2012-10-23)International mathematics assessments have established students in East Asia as among the best in the world and their U.S. counterparts as mediocre. What is not clear is why this “achievement gap” exists. The last major ... -
Acquiring and Aggregating Information from Strategic Sources
(2016-07-28)This thesis considers, from a theoretical perspective, the design of mechanisms to accomplish the objective described in the title. Two cases of this problem are considered: information as represented by data points in a ... -
An Acropolis in China: The Appropriation of Ancient Greek Tradition in Modern Chinese Literature
(2016-05-17)This dissertation explores the transcultural relationships between modern China and ancient Greece, with a view toward appreciating how Greek philosophical and literary visions have been received, reformulated, and repurposed ...