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The prevalence of malaria across the globe creates the need for the development of diagnostic devices, as many deaths caused by malaria could be prevented by early diagnosis and treatment. Since typical symptoms of malaria, such as fever and chills, are challenging to distinguish from other diseases, diagnostic tests are crucial for allowing patients to receive the appropriate medical care. While current gold-standard methods such as microscopy are able to identify the presence and species of malaria parasites, the sensitivity achieved with these methods depends on the microscopist’s training, as well as access to resources such as lab equipment and power. Disparities in supplies and training lead to late or incorrect diagnosis in resource-limited areas across the globe. This has led to the development of point-of-care devices, which provide more rapid results without the need for expensive lab equipment or training. One example of such a device is the lateral-flow immunoassay (LFA), which has commonly found use as at-home pregnancy tests and recently as COVID-19 tests. Although the LFA is simple to use and provides easy-to-read results, currently available LFAs for malaria detection suffer from lower sensitivity compared to laboratory tests. In this thesis, I investigate methods for improving the detection of the malaria antigen Plasmodium falciparum lactate dehydrogenase (pLDH). Methods to improve the detection of the LFA include biomarker preconcentration and signal enhancement. Biomarker preconcentration can be achieved using aqueous two-phase systems (ATPSs), which are liquid-liquid extraction systems composed mostly of water. Molecules that are added into an ATPS can be concentrated into the smaller of the two phases. In addition, the sensitivity of the LFA can be improved through the use of signal enhancement, which aims to increase the intensity at the detection zone with the use of additional or modified colorimetric indicators. In Chapter 2, we focus on us

This thesis examines early-twentieth century Certificates of Registration produced in New Zealand to document Chinese migrants. These identification documents were created to track sojourners who were temporarily returning to China, proving upon their return to New Zealand that they were legal residents and had already paid the expensive poll tax that was imposed under Chinese exclusion policies. Through the Certificates of Registration, the state sought to control Chinese immigration and, by extension, New Zealand’s racial and cultural identity as a White settler colony. These documents imposed a scrutinizing and alienating gaze over the individual Chinese body; they registered physical identity through textual descriptions, fingerprints, and studio photographs which the subjects were responsible for providing. These methods of registering the human body, influenced by developments in anthropology and criminology, naturalized a racial hierarchy where Chinese migrants were continuously alienated in New Zealand as unnatural, foreign entities. Because the Chinese were pictured as an inscrutable and identical hoard in the popular imagination, documentation relied upon miniscule “particularities” and still-developing fingerprint technology. However, both the physical descriptions of “particularities” and the often-smudged or irregularly applied fingerprints had very little practical use. Often vague and illegible, these technologies (and the process of documentation as a whole) can be understood as a punitive social ritual. The photographs provided by the migrants create a startling contrast with the state’s construction of Chinese identity. The collected photographs exhibit a stunning amount of variety in composition, poses, and backdrops that contrasts with the highly standardized ID photos used in government documents today. These honorific studio portraits frame the subjects as Westernized, affluent potential citizens—a striking form of self-fashioning that defies t

Over the past decades, corporate volunteering has gained importance as a strategic component of organizations’ social and environmental responsibility. Across three empirical studies (Chapters 2 – 4), I advance the literature on the antecedents and outcomes of volunteering, focusing on employees and their employers. In Chapter 1, I examine behavioral and emotional antecedents of employees’ engagement in corporate volunteering using a field experiment in a large bank. In Chapter 2, I systematize the individual-level literature on employees’ engagement in both corporate and personal volunteering using a meta-analytic approach. In Chapter 3, I switch levels of analysis and examine firm-level consequences of corporate volunteering, such as internal mobility rates and corporate environmental performance. Notably, throughout the three studies, I go beyond the traditionally examined benefits of corporate volunteering for employees, to incorporate the beneficial effects of corporate volunteering for organizations, society, and the natural environment. Thus, this dissertation advances research on both the business case and the sustainability case for corporate social responsibility.