Continual improvements to clinical breast imaging technologies have led to ever earlier detections and increasingly accurate localizations of female breast cancers. While these advancements have certainly improved the prognoses of many patients,...
Molecular optical imaging in vivo has potential for functional assessment of tumor tissue at the cellular and subcellular level. Advances in biological understanding of genomics and proteomics have increased the knowledge of possible cellular...
This thesis contains material relating to two separate subjects. The first section determines when the C*-algebra affiliated to a directed graph has continuous trace. We use groupoid methods and the focus is on producing conditions on a graph that...
This project focuses on the development of research tools and methods that are used to study the relationship between neural activity and subsequent hemodynamic responses in the human brain. This relationship, referred to as neurovascular coupling,...
In utero exposure to maternal malnutrition is associated with increase offspring susceptibility to cardiometabolic and neuropsychiatric disease. Epigenetic mechanisms mediate, at least in part, fetal adaptations to adverse in utero environments...
The focus of this thesis is the study of nuclearity and exactness for groupoid crossed product C*-algebras. In particular, we present generalizations of two well-known facts from group dynamical systems and crossed products to the groupoid setting....
Proteins are ubiquitous in cells and are essential to a wide range of biological processes. Since existing proteins occupy only a small portion of the space of possible amino acid composition, understanding their sequence-structure-function...
A fundamental question in decision neuroscience is how cognitive processes underlying decision-making give rise to efficient decisions, especially in complex situations with multiple choice options, and each option consisting of multiple attributes...
The multisubunit eukaryotic Mediator complex integrates diverse positive and negative gene regulatory signals and transmits them to the core transcription machinery. It is also involved in chromatin structure related epigenetic silencing through...
Quantum wires and dots can be created by patterning inhomogeneous strain on semiconductor quantum wells. I have used laser spectroscopic methods to study the carrier transfer from the host quantum well to quantum wires and dots. For quantum dot...
Fir waves are spatially and temporally repeating patterns of stand development and destruction in subalpine, balsam fir-dominated forests of the northeastern United States, perpetuated by downwind migration of strips of dying trees, "dieback...
GABA -- Receptors. Anabolic steroids -- Physiological effect. Androgens -- Physiological effect. Prosencephalon. Neurotransmitters -- Effect of drugs on. Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) are derivatives of testosterone originally designed for therapeutic applications to enhance anabolic potency (protein synthesis and muscle growth) while exerting low androgenic (masculinizing) effects. The...
Partially ordered sets. ; Convex polytopes. ; Representations of groups.
This thesis deals with geometric representations of ordered sets. In a geometric representation, each element of the ordered set is assigned a geometric object, with two elements incomparable in the ordered set if and only if the corresponding...
Information retrieval -- Mathematical models. ; Electronic information resource searching. ; Computer algorithms. ; Decision making -- Data processing. ; Mathematical optimization.
This thesis presents a unified method for simultaneous solution of three problems in Information Retrieval--metasearch (the fusion of ranked lists returned by retrieval systems to elicit improved performance), efficient system evaluation (the...
The problem of moving rigid bodies efficiently is of particular interest in robotics because the simplest model of a mobile robot or of a manipulated object is often a rigid body. Path planning, controller design and robot design may all benefit...
Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are synthetic derivatives of the gonadal hormone, testosterone. Despite their many untoward side effects, AAS are wildly abused for their ergogenic properties. AAS have numerous effects on many organ systems,...
Overweight persons -- Attitudes. ; People with disabilities -- Attitudes. ; Obesity -- Public opinion. ; Stigma (Social psychology). ; Self-presentation.
In the last few years, a new perspective on the management of obesity has emerged. Instead of focusing on dieting and weight loss efforts, the new approach focuses on size acceptance. The concept of positively accepting one's deviant features has...
Polynomials. Finite fields (Algebra). Algebraic functions. Number theory.
The ring of univariate polynomials over a finite field shares many foundational arithmetic properties with the ring of rational integers. This similarity makes it possible for many problems in elementary number theory to be translated 'through the...
Coherent states. Quantum field theory. Nonlinear theories.
In this thesis we study the properties of time-dependent, nontopological configurations and their effect on the macroscopic properties of a system described by a nonlinear field theory. These structures seem to be ubiquitous in relativistic field...
In this thesis we look at several problems that lie in the intersection between combinatorial and multiplicative number theory. A common theme of many of these problems are estimates for and properties of the smooth numbers, those integers not...
The ubiquitous complexity of common diseases is one of the biggest challenges facing the field of personalized treatments and precision medicine. This complexity can be attributed to various sources such as the genetic make-up of an individual,...
Rats -- Behavior. Sexual behavior in animals. Vagina -- Psychophysiology. Cervix uteri -- Psychophysiology.
The present dissertation examined the contributions of vaginal and cervical stimulation to sexual motivation and reward in female rats. New, more complex behavioral methods such as the display of paced mating behavior and the induction of a...
The proliferation of mobile devices and other consumer products has greatly expanded the market for CMOS image sensors. This in turn has promoted a trend of continued improvement in image sensor performance, as companies seek to gain an advantage...
Recent technological advances have fostered the emergence of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), which consist of tiny, wireless, battery-powered nodes that are expected to revolutionize the ways in which we understand and construct complex physical...
Across mammalian species, adolescence is characterized by a unique combination of cognitive, behavioral and neurobiological changes. Behavioral tendencies observed during this period promote a variety of flexible interactions with the surrounding...
Violent video games are immensely popular among children and adults, making it crucial to understand how these games affect the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of those who play them. The present research proposed an account by which video game...
In this thesis, we present different approaches to tying knots using robots by enforcing different types of constraints. We attack the problem from three different directions; mechanical design, motion planning with simple control strategies, and...
Partially ordered sets and permutations are combinatorial structures having vast applications in theoretical computer science. In this thesis, we study various computational and algorithmic problems related to these structures. The first chapter of...