Browsing FAS Theses and Dissertations by Title
Now showing items 1-20 of 3102
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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 Discriminative Model to Predict Comorbidities in ASD
(2016-06-21)Children with autism spectrum disorders face a higher comorbidity burden than the general pediatric population. Machine learning applications have been applied to structured medical data, specifically electronic health ... -
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 Formalization of Elements of Special Relativity in Coq
(2017-07-14)We present a formalization of elements of special relativity in Coq beginning from a set of first-order axioms, towards demonstrating that Coq may be used to formalize physical reasoning at the level of introductory physics. ... -
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 Graphical Theory of Musical Pitch Spelling
(2018-06-29)Based on the conventions of staff-based music notation, musical passages that sound alike can often be written down in multiple ways, with each representation being considered a different "pitch-spelling". In this thesis, ... -
A Living Extracorporeal Device for Proximal Tubule Reabsorption
(2017-07-14)Currently, 700,000 patients suffer from end-stage renal disease (ESRD) with treatment costs over $42B in the US, yet the 5-year survival of patients on dialysis is only 35% while that of full-organ transplantation is over ... -
A Markov Approach to Modeling Baseball At-Bats and Evaluating Pitcher Decision-Making and Performance
(2016-06-21)The author models baseball at-bats using absorbing Markov chains, formed based on pitch-by-pitch data for 90 pitchers from the 2015 season. These matrices are used to reverse-predict performance statistics that compare ... -
A Neural Framework for Low-Shot Learning
(2017-07-14)There has been a growing interest in developing machine learning models that are capable of low- shot learning, the machine learning problem of learning from little data. Progress on low-shot learning has important practical ... -
A Nuclear Option for Climate Change: Historical lessons for the future of advanced fission energy in the United States
(2018-06-29)As the largest source of emissions-free electricity in the United States, nuclear energy plays a pivotal role in efforts to combat climate change by decarbonizing our energy system. However, as the climate-energy challenge ... -
A Portable Microfluidic Paper-Based Device for Performing ELISA
(2016-06-30)Standard diagnostic tests for the detection of diseases typically cannot be performed in low-resource settings because they require equipment and conditions found in a laboratory. To address this problem, rapid test devices ... -
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 Regional Study of the Relationship Between Rainfall and Violent Conflict in Ethiopia
(2017-10-13)This paper presents an exploration of the relationship between Ethiopian precipitation anomalies and violent conflict. Interest in a possible connection between climate and conflict is booming. However, there is disagreement ... -
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 Tale of Two Cities and Many Villages: Urban Development and Social Networks in India
(2018-06-29)I examine the relationship between urbanization, proximity to urban centers, and the size and structure of village social networks, using data from 66 villages in Karnataka, India. I find that urbanization (as measured by ... -
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 ...