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"Service-learning" (SL) is an experiential pedagogy that engages students in working for, with, and in communities in need. While prior research has explored the effects of SL on second language (L2) users' (perceived) language development (e.g., Gaugler & Matheus, 2019), intercultural awareness (e.g., Sa´nchez-Naranjo, 2021), and critical awareness (e.g., Shannahan et al., 2021), to this day, little is known about SL as a social activity (but see, e.g., Perren, 2007). Furthermore, the nexus between classroom and service site practices remains largely under- scrutinized (Overfield, 2007). To make informed pedagogical decisions for L2 service-learners, it is important to understand the linkage between classroom and service site practices. This dissertation aims to fill this notable lacuna by exploring participants' interactional practices for achieving SL activities at service sites and in classrooms. Drawing on insights from a decade's worth of applied linguistics research on bridging between classrooms and the wild (e.g., Lilja et al., 2019; Lilja & Piirainen-Marsh, 2019; Piirainen-Marsh & Lilja, 2019; Theodorsdo´ttir, 2011; Wagner, 2015), the study adopts multimodal conversation analysis (CA; e.g., Deppermann, 2013; Mondada, 2016; Streeck et al., 2011) as a robust framework to investigate SL as a social activity and reciprocity as an interactional achievement. Data consist of naturally-occurring audio- and video-recorded interaction collected across different settings: service sites (15 hours), classrooms (6 hours), and focus groups (5 hours). The study only focuses on the service and classroom interaction. Participants included 14 university- level L2 users in an SL program within an intensive English language program in Hawai'i, ESL teachers, and community members. The analyses center on two interactional phenomena frequently observed in the data: (a) mobilizing others and being mobilized (Taleghani-Nikazm et al., 2020) and (b) intercorporeal co-operative practices (C. Goodwin, 2018; Meyer et al., 2017).The findings uncovered some (dis)similarities between participants' practices at the service sites and in the classroom. When mobilizing others, for example, the participants used less explicit, highly elliptical, and action-oriented mobilization designs (e.g., "cut" + an environmentally coupled gesture, C. Goodwin, 2018), contrasting with more explicit, modulated, and talk-oriented mobilization designs in the classroom (e.g., "one more time, please" + holding out an index finger). These differences indicate that the participants' mobilizing turn designs at the service sites shows an orientation to urgency, whereas in the classroom, they orient to achieving mutual access to a knowledge object. In intercorporeal co-operative practices, the participants produced synchronized and sequentially mirrored actions to achieve various interactional outcomes (e.g., stance alignment, affiliation, co-engagement on task). At the service sites, they oriented to collaborative task completion by adopting or transforming others' actions to achieve near-synchrony. On the other hand, in the classroom, they generally showed an orientation toward "wanting to be on the same page" by chiming into a choral co-production (e.g., Ehmer, 2021; Lerner, 2002; Pfa¨nder & Couper-Kuhlen, 2019). These findings suggest that SL is a fertile ground for L2 users to engage in diverse multimodal practices while orienting to reciprocity as a collaborative enterprise. The study contributes to improving our current understanding of SL as a multimodal achievement. It also hopes to expand extant SL research traditions by demonstrating multimodal CA as a productive framework for scrutinizing reciprocity at various levels: interpersonal (reciprocity among SL stakeholders) as well as programmatic and community levels (reciprocity between educational objectives and community engagement). Methodological and pedagogical implications of the findings will be discussed. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This thesis examines William Blake's illuminated books from 1794-1820, suggesting that he reinvents the traditional body politic metaphor through disabled and deformed figures inspired by Norse myth. The body politic figures society within a metaphorical body to imply that diverse parts are united within the parameters of the nation. Blake's bodies are traditionally seen as moving towards Christian ideas of renewal, a 'perfect' form, but this thesis argues that this is not always the case in the illuminated books. Typical body metaphors are predicated on wholeness, in other words, an able-body politic, however Blake disassembles this model in the illuminated books to reveal a nation body that continues to be in contention with itself. Throughout the eighteenth century, ideas of nation, identity, and 'Britishness' were topics of debate. Britain's collective anxiety over its identity was expressed within eighteenth-century Northern antiquarianism, a literary and artistic movement interested in Old Norse culture and its influence on individual nations across the British Isles. Eighteenth-century scholars, poets, and artists such as Thomas Gray, Henry Fuseli, and James Macpherson, mediated an idea of ancient Scandinavia, recasting it as a land of wild, untamed liberty from which different British heritages could source cultural narratives. This thesis proposes that Northern antiquarianism provided Blake with the necessary language and imagery to critique formations of British identity at the turn of the century.

The aims of this PhD study are to investigate the potential for enhancing one of the most popular wellbeing interventions (i.e. Mindfulness-based stress reduction: MBSR) by incorporating exposure to natural environments, and to explore the interactions leading to recovery or resilience of mental health and wellbeing. The research includes three-phase experimental research. Phase 1 is a scoping study of the main field experiment, examining the effectiveness of MBSR (i.e. MBSR vs. relaxation control group) and environmental conditions (i.e. woodland vs. parkland vs. urban setting vs. indoor) using simulated environments. Participants (n=122) were randomly assigned to one of two intervention groups (brief MBSR, relaxation control group) under different simulated environmental conditions during an intervention lasting three weeks. Phase 2 is a more extended study using 'actual' environments. In order to compare the effectiveness of the intervention in different settings, participants (n=99) were randomly assigned to a six-week MBSR programme in one of three different environments (i.e. natural outdoor, built outdoor and indoor). Finally, Phase 3 is conducted to compare the effectiveness of MBSR between simulated and actual natural environments, using secondary data analysis – qualitative (n=64) and quantitative data (n=7) from earlier studies (phase 1 & phase 2). This is one of the first studies to incorporate place-based assets into an intervention. This paper has provided a fine-grained insight into the enhancement of a common wellbeing intervention through exposure to natural environments via its experimental, factorial design and the multiple outcome measures. Overall findings of this PhD showed that a wellbeing intervention (i.e. MBSR) is more effective when carried out in natural environments – both simulated and actual natural settings. The enhancement of wellbeing interventions when combined with natural environments would encourage policymakers and clinical commissioners to support the development of interventions involving natural settings.

In this study, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been performed to study rheological properties of liquid alkanes under a range of pressures up to several GPa and high shear rates. The liquid alkane considered in this study is 2,4- dicyclohexyl-2-methylpentane (DCMP), which is a highly viscous fluid. Two further molecular motifs, octadecane (Linear) and 1,6-dicyclohexyl-hexane (Dumb- bell) were chosen as comparison. The rheological properties of DCMP under high pressure were studied using molecular dynamics simulations. A wide range of pressure (1 atm ≤ P ≤ 10 000 atm) and shear (5.47 x 10 7 s-1 ≤ y ≤ 5.47 x 10 11 s-1) conditions have been considered. Simulation parameters have been carefully chosen from preliminary simulations. MD allows access to understanding not always available experimentally. The present simulation results confirm that the density of all three motifs increase as pressure increases. The results also show that the mean squared dis- placements of molecules decrease as pressure increases. At pressures higher than 3000 atm, the movement almost ceases for DCMP and Dumbbell implying a solid- like behaviour at very high pressures. The viscosity of DCMP is higher than that of Dumbbell, but comparable to Linear. As molecules tend to adopt compact shapes at high pressures, this affects their rheological properties accordingly. The viscosity of Dumbbell is found to be the lowest among the three. Viscosities in- crease with pressure for all three molecules with larger changes with DCMP and Linear. It is found that the pressure of the systems increase when the shear is applied. The viscosity of DCMP and Dumbbell increase as pressure increases. The viscosity of DCMP is found to be higher than that of Dumbbell, especially in the high pressure region. DCMP and Dumbbell show the shear thinning behaviour. The start of a plateau is observed for DCMP and the viscosity in the plateau is at the same order of magnitude as the zero shear viscosity estimated from the Stokes-Einstein relation for low pressure systems.

Asian Americans are a significant and growing population in U.S. higher education, yet their positionality within the U.S. racial landscape has often been unclear. Acknowledged as neither Black nor White, Asian Americans have occupied an often marginalized yet nonetheless racialized position, which has disguised much of their lived experience as racial beings. This study sought to understand how Asian American college students see themselves as racial beings by exploring the role and salience of race and its intersections with other social identities. Using intersectionality as a theoretical framework, this narrative inquiry study was guided by the following research questions: (a) how do Asian American college students describe and make meaning of their racial identity; (b) in what ways, if any, do their other social identities, such as gender, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, religion, ability status, socioeconomic class, and immigrant generation status, interact with the way Asian American college students describe and make meaning of their racial identity; and (c) how do Asian American college students experience the intersections of their multiple social identities? Following in-depth interviews with four Asian American college students representing a range of identity backgrounds, individual narratives were written for each participant, telling the story of how they came to make meaning of their racial identity, other salient identities, and their intersections. A metanarrative was then generated based on the commonalities of participants' stories. Through these narratives, the lived experiences of Asian Americans as racial beings were centered. For these four participants, identifying as Asian American was a conscious choice whose meaning was created through reflection on experiences with race, often in conjunction with intersecting identities. Systems of power, oppression, and privilege acted upon those intersections and indelibly shaped the way participants made meaning of their identities, as illuminated by intersectional analysis. The study's findings indicate paths for future research on Asian American identity development, particularly using critical theoretical perspectives that foreground the influence of systems of power and oppression. The findings also suggest implications for supporting Asian American students and for developing and integrating intersectional approaches in order to create more socially just and inclusive institutions. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

The South Korean criminal justice system is often described as 'Prosecutorial Justice'. Most investigative and prosecutorial powers are exercised only by prosecutors. It is decisions made by prosecutors that usually decide the outcomes of trials. On the basis of its extensive powers, the prosecution service has achieved a conviction rate exceeding ninety-nine per cent, which is one of the highest in the world. This thesis explores the Korean prosecutor's position and its impact. Three aspects are discussed: the trial which relies heavily on prosecution file and records of interview; the protection of the defendant's constitutional rights; and the relationship between the police and prosecutors. Unlike previous studies, this research has employed quantitative and qualitative empirical methods including content analysis (464 news articles), a survey based on self-completion questionnaires (1,144 police officers), and semistructured interviewing (20 legal professionals). In addition, in order to gain insight into the Korean criminal procedure, the role, power and accountability of the Korean prosecution service are compared to those of five representative systems in England and Wales, the USA, France, Germany and Japan. The findings of this study are that a ninety-nine per cent of conviction rate does not demonstrate any great capability of the prosecution service. Rather, it leads to restricted constitutional rights of the defendants and meaningless trials which serve only to confirm the prosecutorial decisions. In addition, this domination over the criminal justice system and the powers of direct investigation increase occupational stress for police officers. This in tum leads to the performance of the police being downgraded, and as a result, inefficiency in the criminal j ustice system. Justice cannot be achieved by the monopoly of one legal actor over all criminal proceedings. Rather, the criminal process needs a system of checks and balances. The powers which are currently monopolised by the prosecutors should be separated and their decisions should be reviewed by appropriate monitoring schemes including citizens, judges and independent reviewing mechanisms.

This thesis examines the recent development of the policy discourses of creativity in England and Korea. It aims to analyse the values that the word „creativity‟ represents in policy terms, challenge their underlying assumptions, and explore how the idea of creativity has been implicated in each country‟s cultural policy formations. It also provides a critical examination of the similarities and differences between the two countries. In so doing, this thesis attempts to challenge the absence of cultural policy research on creativity and provide a meaningful scholarly contribution to the existing field of cultural policy studies. In order to provide a comprehensive and critical analysis of the emergence and development of the creativity discourses in England and Korea, the study employs a social scientific method of relational thinking that draws on Pierre Bourdieu‟s field theory. By challenging the existing tradition of cultural policy discussion that is either implicitly or explicitly informed by a dichotomous thinking between intrinsic and instrumental values of culture, the study proposes a new critical approach to understanding and examining the complex dynamics of cultural policy issues surrounding the idea of creativity in policy terms. Based on the Bourdieusian heuristic tool of relational thinking, the thesis explores how the idea of creativity has become politically reconstructed so as to serve specific interests, values and dispositions that correspond to a particular political position, rather than a recognised field of cultural or creative practices. By closely examining the policy contexts of the government‟s creative education initiatives Creative Partnerships in England and Korea Arts and Culture Education Service in Korea, the thesis suggests that there are distinctive parallels between the English and Korean cases; not simply in the developmental trajectory of creativity discourses, but also in the broader aspect that relates to the shaping of cultural policy formations and recent paradigm shifts in cultural policy thinking. The study examines the extent to which these commonalities can be interpreted as an instance of „policy convergence‟ between the two countries.

This thesis explores the effect of different types of underlying network structure on the dynamical behaviour of a competitive population - a situation encountered in many real-world complex systems. In the first part of the thesis, I focus on generic, but abstract, multi-agent systems. I start by presenting analytic and numerical results for a population of heterogeneous, decision-making agents competing for some limited global resource, in which connections arise unintentionally between agents as a by-product of their strategy choices. I show that accounting for the resulting groups of strongly-correlated agents - in particular, the crowds and so-called 'anticrowds' - yields an accurate analytic description of the systems dynamics. I then introduce a local communication network between the agents, enabling them to intentionally share information among themselves. Such an interaction network leads to highly non-trivial dynamics, forcing a trade-off between individual and global success. Introducing corruption into the information being exchanged between agents, gives rise to a novel phase transition. I then provide a quantitative analytic theory of these various numerical results by generalizing the Crowd-Anticrowd formalism to include such local interactions. In the second part of the thesis, I consider a real-world system which also features competitive populations and networks - a cancer tumour, which contains cancerous cells competing for space and nutrients in the presence of an underlying vasculature structure. To simplify the analysis and comparison to real clinical data, the model chosen is far simpler than that discussed in the first part of the thesis - however despite its simplicity, the model is shown to yield remarkably good agreement with empirical findings. In addition, the model shows how different treatment methods can lead to a wide variety of unexpected re-growth behaviours of the tumour.

The current dissertation represents one of the first systematic studies of the distribution of speech errors within supralexical prosodic units. Four experiments were conducted to gain insight into the specific role of these units in speech planning and production. The first experiment focused on errors in adult English. These were found to be systematically distributed within the highest-level supralexical prosodic unit, the Intonational Phrase (IP), providing evidence for its psychological reality. The specific distribution of errors--fewest in unit-initial position, with a gradual increase in errors across the unit--was interpreted to suggest that the IP functions as a planning domain: the unit is activated as a whole, and activation gradually decays with time leading to an increase in errors. The second experiment was motivated by the idea that a decrease in IP activation is best understood in the context of working memory processes. Children's speech was examined in preference to adult speech because it is less automatized and so likely more influenced by working memory. The findings were that children with better working memories produced shorter IPs and relatively more anticipatory errors than children with poorer working memories. The results provided further evidence for the role of IPs in planning. The third and fourth experiments extended the investigation to another language, Korean, and examined the role of a mid-level prosodic unit, the Accentual Phrase (AP), in planning and production. The results indicated the same pattern of error distribution in the Korean IP as in the English IP. In contrast, more errors occurred in AP-initial position than in the second half of the unit, and the elicited errors tended to preserve AP-internal structure. The results were interpreted to suggest that the AP provides a structural frame within which elements are slotted for production. Overall, the results are consistent with the idea that these units play a critical role in the planning and production process. The results also suggest that different units within the prosodic hierarchy function differently: the IP functions as a planning domain, and mid-level units (i.e., AP) provide the structure needed to accomplish serial ordering in speech. This dissertation includes previously published co-authored material. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

English-speaking children exhibit difficulty in their comprehension of raising patterns, such as (1), in which the NP the boy is semantically linked to the VP in the embedded clause, but is syntactically realized as the subject of the matrix clause. (1) Raising pattern: [s "The boy" seems to the girl [s _ to be happy]]. This dissertation attributes this difficulty to an intervention effect stemming from the disruption of the association between the matrix and embedded subject positions by an overt intervening NP. A parallel effect has been widely discussed in relation to other patterns, in both adult and child language comprehension. A corpus study and a set of comprehension experiments reveal several key results. First, children very rarely hear or produce raising patterns with an experiencer. Second, children have difficulty comprehending raising sentences like (2) that contain an intervening experiencer, but this difficulty disappears when the experiencer is fronted to the beginning of the sentence, as in (3). (2) Donald seems to Mickey _ to be short. [Experiment 1] (3) To Mickey, Donald seems _ to be short. [Experiment 2] Third, children's comprehension also improves when there is an intervening pronominal experiencer as in (4), but no such effect is observed in the reverse situation, with a raised pronominal and a lexical NP experiencer, as in (5). (4) Donald seems to him _ to be short. [Experiment 3] (5) He seems to Mickey _ to be short. [Experiment 4] Finally, children have difficulty comprehending copy-raising patterns such as (6) when there is no gender cue available to help them correctly interpret the referent of the pronominal copy. (6) Donald seems to Mickey like he is short. [Experiment 5]. These results show that the difficulty associated with raising patterns cannot be attributed to children's grammatical deficits, as previously suggested (Borer & Wexler, 1987; Hyams & Snyder, 2005; Orfitelli, 2012; Wexler, 2004). Rather, it leads to a theory of Performance-based Intervention Effects (PIE) that attributes the difficulty to the disruption of the semantic link between the matrix and embedded subject positions by an overt intervening NP. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This study discusses cognitive processes when speakers produce language in real time, with its focus on cross-linguistic differences in the procedural aspect of language use. It demonstrates that the syntactic characteristics of a language shape the speakers' overall process of sentence planning and production: how they construct sentential content, how they organize their lexical knowledge for efficient language use, and how they plan and complete utterances incrementally. Since speakers plan their speech incrementally, sentence planning takes not only initial but also intermediate phases. Initial planning of speech starts with conceiving the content to deliver and selecting the first few lexical items. Intermediate planning occurs after a speaker utters part of a sentence and plans the rest during the utterance. This study shows that there are distinct behavioral patterns in the initial phase between English and Korean speakers. It is reasoned that a contrast between English and Korean syntax has a direct bearing on the speakers' process of sentence planning: The subject combines with tense in English, while it combines with a postposition in Korean. This difference leads to far-reaching consequences for (non-)native speakers' speech patterns and lexicon structure, one of which is explored herein: English speakers' initial planning and utterance unit comprise a tensed verb, whereas Korean speakers settle on a subject in the first place and then draw a predicate accordingly. Three experiments were conducted with the following hypotheses: (1) Native English speakers tend to plan sentences with a verb as the pivot, and the pattern will be salient particularly when there is little pragmatic inclination for a specific perspective, and when there is a prominent verbal element in the contents. (2) In English, if an intermediate pause occurs during an utterance, it is likely to be after a pair of a subject and a tensed verb/auxiliary. (3) Native Korean speakers show a tendency to plan sentences with a subject as the pivot. Because subjects are realized as syntactic nominals, they will focus more on nouns than on verbs in the initial planning of sentences. (4) In Korean, if an intermediate pause occurs during an utterance, it is likely to be after a postposition, irrespective of tense. (5) Native Korean speakers' L1 patterns are persistent in their L2 English processing. The results have confirmed these hypotheses. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This case study addressed educators' perceptions regarding the low performance on state mathematics assessments among high school algebra students with learning disabilities in an alternative education program in a California school district. Vygotsky's theory on the zone of proximal development served as the overarching framework for mathematics content that students with learning disabilities in the alternative education environment should learn at various stages of chronological age. The central research question was: What are educators' perceptions of low performance on mathematics state assessments among high school algebra students with learning disabilities in an alternative education program in California? The methodology used was the qualitative intrinsic case study approach drawing from a sample of 60 educators at Alpha County School District in California. The data was collected from a survey, individual interviews, and archival records of student transcripts and state mathematics assessment results from 2016 to the present. A synthesis of this data analyzed generated a theme and two sub-themes for all educators in AE programs to consider when implementing math curricula and instructional strategies to support students with LD in AE settings to improve their performance on state mathematics assessments in algebra.

We explored the prevalence and the reason of quantity surcharge (QS), a counterintuitive pricing phenomenon where larger quantities of a product are sold at a higher unit price than smaller quantities. By using retail scanner data from NielsenIQ, we documented the prevalence of QS over 9 product categories. Also, by combining retail scanner data with consumer panel data, we found indirect evidence that consumer inattention could be one of the sources of QS. We applied a novel approach, so called flexible logit, to structurally capture consumer inattention and estimate underlying demand parameters robust to consumer search model. We also conducted counterfactual simulations to assess the impact of quantity surcharges on consumer surplus and firm revenue, suggesting that eliminating quantity surcharges or more attentive consumer behavior towards pricing could lead to a small increase in consumer surplus but big decrease in firm’s revenue. The findings have implications for decomposition for the different rationales of quantity surcharges.

Heterogeneity, influenced by diverse factors such as age, gender, immunity, behavior, and spatial distribution, plays a critical role in the dynamics of infectious disease transmission. Discrete mathematical structures, including matrices and graphs, can offer effective tools for modeling the interactions among these diverse factors, resulting heterogeneous epidemiological models. This dissertation explores analytical approaches, specifically utilizing eigenvalues and eigenvectors of discrete structures, to characterize heterogeneity within mathematical models of infectious diseases. Theoretical results, along with numerical simulations, enhance our understanding of heterogeneous epidemiological processes and their significant implications for disease control strategies. In this dissertation, we introduce a unified approach to establish the final size formula in heterogeneous epidemic models, based on a new concept of “total infectious contacts” as an eigenvector-based aggregation of disease compartments. This approach allows us to identify the peak of total infectious contacts, offering a novel method to pinpoint the turning point of a disease outbreak. Furthermore, we examine spatial heterogeneity through two distinct mathematical frameworks: the Lagrangian and Eulerian models. The Lagrangian model assesses the epidemiological consequences of spatio-temporal residence time matrices, while the Eulerian model investigates “Turing instability” as a new underlying mechanism for spatial heterogeneity observed in disease prevalence data.

This dissertation examines refugees’ mental health conceptualizations in their resettled contexts, their views on Western mental health services, and their perspectives on how changing experiences related to discrimination affect their mental health. Despite refugees’ social and cultural contexts changing multiple times, little is known about their views on and interactions with the dominant biomedical model of mental health in their country of resettlement and how their hybrid identities and experiences embedded in multiple locations affect their understanding of mental health and healing practices. A transnational framework emphasizing continuity between various locations and “in-between the designations of identity” across borders, and the concept of hybridity can provide a more nuanced understanding of mental health in transnational contexts (Bhabha 2012). Using postcolonial theory, this study provides a counter-narrative to prevailing assumptions underlying biomedical models that deem these understandings and approaches to mental health to be universal and marginalize non-biomedical healing practices associated with non-hegemonic "cultural" beliefs. To examine how refugees negotiate different meanings of mental health in new social contexts, this study involved qualitative semi-structured interviews with 45 refugees resettled in the United States from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and the Great Lakes Region of Africa (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Tanzania). Findings reveal that refugees generally hold narrower definitions of mental illness and frequently do not perceive mood disorders as medical conditions in the same way they are understood in the United States. Instead, they viewed many forms of psychological distress as normal reactions to war experiences and resettlement stressors, emphasizing the perceived relevance of underlying social determinants of mental health. They often resisted embracing Western diagnoses and critiqued treatments that heavily rely on the biomedical model, as they believe these approaches neglect the broader context and minimize the epistemological reasons explaining why many refugees do not utilize therapy or medications. Most refugees did not value talk therapy, as they found talking about distress to a stranger who did not necessarily share their lived experiences and having to pay for it to be culturally incomprehensible. They preferred a communal wisdom model, which involves seeking support from family members, friends, and/or community elders with lived experiences and more generous and flexible time commitments. They also focused on moving on from the source of distress rather than dwelling on the past and prioritized addressing resettlement stressors over mental health symptoms. In terms of the impact of racism on mental health, many refugees had different understandings of race compared to the predominant views within the U.S. context. While some acknowledged racism, they emphasized that language barriers exerted a more significant impact on their distress and overall quality of life. When their basic needs (e.g., paying rent) were unmet, racism and other forms of discrimination were considered “secondary.” Although most refugees did not identify a link between racism and mental health outcomes, younger Great Lake African refugees discussed the salience of racism and microaggressions in the U.S. context and their impacts on mental health. This study illuminates the agency of refugees by showing that refugees are active agents engaged in building critical understandings and approaches to address suffering and distress. Based on refugees’ hybrid identities shaped by their multiple resettlement experiences, they become transnational agents with a critical perspective on understanding and negotiating new social meanings of mental health. Refugees actively construct mental health within various structural constraints and negotiate different cultural understandings of distress encountered in the United States. They make decisions about how to make sense of these beliefs and approaches by negotiating new meanings of mental health in the U.S. context to navigate their situations and achieve meaningful understandings of their suffering. Through their meaning-making of mental health/illness and race, refugees’ narratives provide tools for individuals in countries where the biomedical model of mental health is dominant to think critically about the broad adoption of medical diagnosis and treatment of psychological distress as mental illness. Understanding refugees’ views and experiences of mental health in a transnational context can contribute to a decolonizing approach to mental health by challenging the dominant biomedical model in the United States and highlighting the limitations of medicalizing distress.

Forgiveness and religion/spirituality have been studied together throughout the years. Most studies have claimed that religious/spiritual beliefs and values promote forgiveness and increase psychological well-being. However, reviews of the literature and a meta-analysis have found that these claims and results are tenuous. In Chapter 1, a narrative review of the literature on forgiveness and religion/spirituality was conducted. In the current review, I outline how well the field has answered lingering questions in the past several years. Weaknesses within the field, such as the over-reliance on cross-sectional study designs and the lack of programmatic work, are noted. The current state of the literature and possible new theories and directions for the field are also discussed. In Chapter 2, the present study proposes to examine the relationship between a more contextual religious construct, religious pressure to forgive, and decisional and emotional forgiveness over time, and its influence on psychological well-being over time. The critiques and arguments made by experts, as well as another line of thinking which has suggested that religion may not necessarily have a positive influence on forgiveness, are taken into consideration. Longitudinal data were gathered from participants who identified as being religious/spiritual, were currently in a romantic relationship and experienced a recent, hurtful offense by their partner. These individuals were surveyed over the course of 4 weeks to track their levels of forgiveness and relationship quality with their partners. Results suggested that initial decision to forgive was positively associated with more initial emotional forgiveness and generally more forgiveness over time. Also, social pressure was found to have a positive effect on initial levels of forgiveness. However, religious pressure to forgive did not have effects on forgiveness. Decisional forgiveness and social pressure also had positive effects on initial relationship quality, but there were no effects on change over time (slope). These results start raising the question on the differences between similar, yet different R/S constructs and pushes toward a better understanding of the relationship between forgiveness and R/S.

For the last decade, semiconducting nanowires synthesized by bottom-up methods have opened up new opportunities, stimulated innovative scientific research, and led to applications in materials science, electronics, optics, and biology at the nanoscale. Notably, nanowire building blocks with precise control of size, structure, morphology, and even composition in one, two, and three dimensions can successfully demonstrate high-performance electrical characteristics of field-effect transistors (FETs) and highly sensitive, selective, label-free, real-time biosensors in the fields of nanoelectronics and nano-biosensing, respectively. This thesis has focused on the design, synthesis, assembly, fabrication and electrical characterization of nanowire heterostructures for a proof-of-concept nanoprocessor and morphology-modulated kinked nanowire molecular nanosensor., Physics

The thesis examines a general framework proposed by Paul Otlet, an important figure in information science. Contrary to the “positivist” charge ascribed to him, Paul Otlet’s theory of documentation includes various frameworks alien to contemporary information science. One of the frameworks employed by Paul Otlet is what is classically known as the transcendentals, i.e., truth, good, and beauty. I will proceed to show what specific metatheoretical assumptions and commitments are entailed in the transcendental framework. Moreover, the thesis will examine the historical emergence and philosophical background of this concept and how it applies to librarianship, especially concerning the role of truth and knowledge organization. Ethical considerations will also be examined especially the responsibility and role of librarians as information professionals. The thesis is an exploration of a general philosophical framework; references to other competing worldviews will be examined.

Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), or electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), are battery-powered handheld devices designed to aerosolize a solution of nicotine and other chemicals for inhalation. The specific mechanical and chemical features of different ENDS affect the systemic exposure and bioavailability of the different chemicals in e-juices. E-cigarettes can come with different cartridge sizes, power outputs, e-liquid constituents, and nicotine delivery. User puff topography also contributes to varying toxicant exposure. ENDS have demonstrated potential as a cessation tool or alternative cigarette product due to its safety profile relative to the combustible cigarette. E-cigarettes have significantly lower concentrations of biomarkers of tobacco-related toxicant exposure and produce less and less harmful second-hand smoke compared to CC. However, ENDS users have significantly greater concentrations of those same biomarkers, highlighting that e-cigarettes do pose a harm to users’ health, even if that may be lower than CC. The same is observed in e-cigarette second-hand smoke as nicotine and aerosol particles were detected in statistically significant amounts. Its toxicity is only amplified by the misconception that they are safer than CC and thus pose no absolute risk, misleading users to use without caution. Therefore, although ENDS do have the potential in reducing smoking in adults who are already addicted to nicotine, it comes with the risk of dual use of conventional and electronic cigarettes and of attracting non-smokers, especially as seen in the youth. The rise in adolescent e-cigarette use can be attributed to its appeal, of both its flavored e-liquids and its image amongst youth that is perpetuated through the intentional marketing of e-cigarette manufacturers. The latent consequences of e-cigarettes are compounded in adolescents, who are in critical stages of brain development, habit formation, and social development. Youth report having experienced short-term clinical symptoms such as cough, lightheadedness, headache, and shortness of breath. Physiologically, vaping has been found to affect the pulmonary and cardiovascular systems. Vaping alters the equilibrium of the mucociliary clearance system in the pulmonary system and increases the risk of chronic bronchitis, cough, and phlegm. There is increased in pro-inflammatory cytokine secretions, increased alveolar macrophage apoptosis, impairment of phagocytosis, decreased ciliary beating, inhibition of the CFTR channel, and increased mucin expression. In the cardiovascular system, e-cigarette aerosol extract alters angiogenesis, oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction, sympathetic nerve system activation, platelet activation and anticoagulation inhibition, and cardiac remodeling. E-cigarettes and e-cigarette smoke have also been associated with carcinogenesis in lung epithelium and possibly urothelium. Although e-cigarettes have, on average, less nicotine compared to CC, the significant risk for adolescents to graduate to combustible cigarettes renders this moot. The factors influencing this graduation is modeled through the catalyst model, which details the transition from ‘no use’ to ‘e-cigarette use’ and the transition from ‘e-cigarette use’ to ‘tobacco use.’ Schneider and Diehl hypothesized that the first transition is facilitated through a variety of factors, including flavor, health, price, role models, concealment, and acceptance. The subsequent transition can be attributed to the addiction hypothesis, accessibility hypothesis, and the experience hypothesis. It is clear from the numerous studies conducted, which show students who used e-cigarettes were 4-7 times more likely to report CC use, that e-cigarettes play a catalytic role in enabling the transition to conventional cigarettes. And with increased nicotine exposure, adolescents are subject to impairments in working and verbal memory during abstinence, changes in drug sensitivity and reward-related manifestations in adulthood, more severe dependence during adolescence, and deficits in attentional performance, impaired serial pattern learning, impaired context conditioning and increased anxiety and depressive-like behaviors in adults. They also have reduced control of motivation, reward, and pleasure. This culminates to the gateway hypothesis which states that nicotine can serve as a gateway drug that lowers the youths’ threshold for addiction to opioids, alcohol, and other agents. Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in cases of EVALI or e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury, particularly in the adolescent population that is more likely to use illicit e-cigarettes than their adult counterparts. EVALI presents with a wide range of respiratory, gastrointestinal, and constitutional symptoms and is characterized as a sterile exogenous pneumonitis-like reaction with variable degrees of diffuse alveolar damage. Vitamin E acetate, common in illicit products, is strongly linked to this outbreak due to its presence in a vast majority of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid samples of confirmed EVALI cases. As ENDS use has increased amongst adolescents, so have its latent consequences. A coordinated effort from policy makers, public health agencies, healthcare providers, researchers, and especially parents and educators is essential for successful protection of this vulnerable population.

Background: Effective nurse communication at discharge is critical for safe transition to home for hospitalized children, including those with limited English proficiency (LEP), who are at high risk of reutilization. Little is known about nurse-family communication at hospital discharge. Objectives: To describe and compare the safety and family-centeredness of nurse communication and the level of family-engagement in the discharge process for English Proficient (EP) versus LEP families.Methods: This single-center cross-sectional study used direct observation of discharges for hospitalized EP and LEP patients 0-18 years of age and their parents or caregivers. Trained observers collected quantitative and qualitative details of nurse-family discharge communication focusing on 3 domains: 1) safe discharge; 2) family-centeredness; and 3) family-engagement. Descriptive statistics assessed patient characteristics and percentages of encounters where all components were discussed within each domain. Communication domains were compared between EP and LEP encounters using chi-square test and Fisher’s exact test. Field notes were reviewed to clarify and supplement quantitative findings. Results: We observed 104 discharge encounters, of which 40 (38%) were with LEP families. In the safe discharge domain, nurses discussed all 7 components in 37% of encounters; no LEP encounters had all components discussed (p

Jihoon Park (b.1973), a South Korean composer with over 500 compositions spanning multiple genres, is treasured in his motherland as the most noteworthy composer of his generation. This study provides an in-depth introduction of the gagok (Korean art songs) of Park to Western teachers and students of singing, discussing his compositional techniques and their application to the interpretation of his selected songs. Moreover, the introduction to International Korean Phonetic Alphabet (IKPA) to supplement the traditionally used International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA) serves as the foundation and model for further exploration into Korean art song literature by Western scholars.

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the understanding of engineering graduate students’ engineering identity and research identity and of how these identities influence their career intentions. This quantitative research study involves the development of a survey instrument to examine the engineering identity and research identity of students. A total of 320 master’s and doctoral students from one large public research university within three disciplines completed the survey. This dissertation is composed of three studies. The focus of the first study is to understand whether engineering identity measurement frameworks studied for undergraduate students also apply to graduate students, how the frameworks correlate with intention to complete the degree, and what predicts the engineering identity of engineering master's and doctoral students. Factor analyses identified four factors that relate to graduate engineering identity: engineering interest, engineering recognition, engineering competence, and interpersonal skills competence. In the multiple regression models, student characteristics and the four factors predict 60% of the variance in engineering identity. All four factors were significant and positive predictors of graduate students’ engineering identities. The second study focus is to investigate differences between the engineering identity development of US and non-US graduate students by utilizing t-tests interaction factors in a linear regression model. A main finding is that most of the engineering graduate identity constructs investigated were significantly different between US and non-US students, including research interest/recognition, engineering recognition, math/science competence, engineering competence, and interpersonal skills competence. This second study also presents three significant interactions between engineering graduate identity constructs and citizenship status. In the third study, the purpose is to understand engineering graduate students’ intentions in industry, academia, and government careers as it relates to their graduate engineering identities by utilizing multiple linear regression, a cluster analysis, and multinomial logistic regression. Overall, higher research interest/recognition and math/science competence were related to a greater likelihood of pursuing academia or government, while higher engineering interest and recognition were related to a greater likelihood of pursuing industry. Cluster analysis yielded three career path profiles: prefer industry, prefer academia, and open to all career options. Few students were considering academic careers exclusively

Cell-based therapeutics have become a powerful method to combat cancer. Unlike small-molecule drugs or biologics, cells are able to integrate multiple inputs to execute complex response behaviors. Although cell-based therapies are poised to revolutionize cancer treatment, the field is still in its infancy in that it is still risky and often ineffective at treating most cancers. This dissertation focuses on applying the principles and tools of synthetic biology in T cells to develop the next generation of engineered T cells that will lead to more reliable, safe, and effective therapeutics. In order for engineered T cells to safely and reliably eradicate solid tumors, we need to generate T cells that are targeted specifically enough to prevent on-target, off-tumor toxicities but flexible enough to overcome the heterogeneous antigen expression patterns. To accomplish this, we developed a two-receptor system (a “prime-and-kill” circuit) that is capable of integrating information across multiple cells such that the T cells can target and kill tumor cells without damaging normal cells. We have demonstrated in vitro and in vivo that the prime-and-kill circuit is capable of eradicating tumors while sparing the normal tissues for which they may have had on-target, off-tumor toxicity. Another limitation for CAR T cell therapy is dependence on endogenous T cell circuitry to activate T cells to kill tumor cells. Due to such dependence, it has been difficult to control the level of T cell cytotoxic response. One approach to overcome this limitation is to enable T cells to have customizable input/output functions independent of endogenous T cell signaling. We developed a new chimeric force sensing receptor (A2-Notch receptor) to allow better tuning and control of the input/output function. By engineering the T cells to tune the levels of immune response through the A2-Notch receptor, T cells may be able to overcome the immunosuppressive blockade without causing unwanted side effects.The next wave of T cell therapies will need to be programmed to autonomously regulate sensing and response behaviors. These studies demonstrate the utility of using synthetic biology principles to facilitate T cell activity in order to generate safer and effective cell-based therapies.

Experiences of love provide a rich source to reveal how people organize social life such as intimate relationships, family, and marriage, as well as how individuals perform and transform within specific cultural, historical, and gendered contexts. The primary goal of this thesis is to understand how social changes affect women’s understandings of love, or more precisely, how processes of modernization and immigration shape Korean-American women’s experiences of love and expectations of marriage cross-generationally. I explore the stories of first-generation and 1.5-generation Korean-American women in Duluth, Georgia to analyze how their different sociocultural experiences before and within immigration construct the women’s understandings of love, marriage, and most importantly, the creation of the self and family and the systems of gender and sexuality. Ultimately, I argue that the apparent dichotomy between “tradition” and “modernity” does not adequately describe generational differences nor geographic ones, as both modern ideals of intimacy and notions of Korean tradition travel between first and 1.5 generation women, though differently experienced and expressed.

This thesis explores how Korean business firms reproduce racial division and hierarchies in the face of changing immigration under new post-colonial dynamics. In my exploration, I ask the following questions: How is the idea of multiculturalism represented, framed, and carried out in their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs? Who is included as ‘multicultural’ in these programs? What racial meanings do these programs convey in the Korean context? Using qualitative content analysis of reports and websites, I analyze how the top 30 Korean firms negotiate the meanings of multiculturalism and shape notions of it through their CSR programs. Findings show that the firms represent multiculturalism by focusing exclusively upon ‘multicultural families’ composed of Korean men, foreign brides predominantly from Southeast Asia, and their children. These findings relate to racializing and gendering only certain migrant groups as ‘multicultural,’ while other racial and ethnic groups are visibly absent from multicultural discourses. Although all 30 firms actively promote multiculturalism, their discourses may contribute to creating meanings of multicultural families as inherently deficient and in need of resources, and “othering” in the Korean national imaginary. The firms also associate multiculturalism with globalization by representing themselves as global leaders. Compared to their idealized visions, some programs are superficial and can be seen as corporate public relations window-dressing. The paternalistic benign approach may further marginalize the multicultural families because the programs do not bring about fundamental changes that empower these families. Global pressure and the national interests over female marriage migrants may have caused the sudden explosion of similar CSR programs regarding multiculturalism among the elite firms.

The overarching theme of my research is on issues related to innovation, with a focus on how different firms react to technological changes. These include new markets that are developed through international trade agreements, new production technology as a product of research and development (R&D), and even new regulations and standards that change the production process of a firm. We divide these changes into several categories, by whether they are mandatory or voluntary, whether they are 'horizontal' or 'vertical', or whether they are 'direct' or 'secondary' effects of a social change. First, we look at the responses of countries when mandatory changes are exogenously imposed. In order to do this, we look at the case of how international labor standards impact bilateral trade. Through this estimation, we examine how countries react not only in terms of adopting the standards, but also how they react when their trading partners adopt more standards. The impact of such technological change is heterogeneous across conventions and industries. We find that the international standards significantly explain the extensive margin of trade, but less of the intensive margin of trade. Second, we look at the endogenous responses of firms to market forces and firm level constraints. We model a firm which has an option to invest and improve their own productivity. A theoretical examination shows that the general equilibrium effect of innovation is positive by increasing consumer welfare through lower prices and added variety of goods. The model also shows policy implications related to market entry costs such as RD subsidies. Last, we look at technological changes as an externality. The case we examine is when technology is introduced due to the behavior of other firms. We look at the case of Chile, and examine how foreign direct investment (FDI) impact the exit behavior of firms. We see that survivability of domestic firms is effected by the behavior of multinationals, and that the level of technology of the industry is a significant factor in determining exit rates.

Thanks to advanced computing and modeling technologies, computer simulations are becoming more widely used for the reliability evaluation of complex systems. Yet, as simulation models represent physical systems more accurately and utilize a large number of random variables to reflect various uncertainties, high computational costs remain a major challenge in analyzing the system reliability. The objective of this dissertation research is to provide new solutions for saving computational time of simulation-based reliability evaluation that considers large uncertainties within the simulation. This dissertation develops (a) a variance reduction technique for stochastic simulation models, (b) an uncertainty quantification method for the variance reduction technique, and (c) an adaptive approach of the variance reduction technique. First, among several variance reduction techniques, importance sampling has been widely used to improve the efficiency of simulation-based reliability evaluation using deterministic simulation models. In contrast to deterministic simulation models whose simulation output is uniquely determined given a fixed input, stochastic simulation models produce random outputs. We extend the theory of importance sampling to efficiently estimate a system's reliability with stochastic simulation models. Second, to quantify the uncertainty of the reliability estimation with stochastic simulation models, we can repeat the simulation experiment multiple times. It, however, multiplies computational burden. To overcome this, we establish the central limit theorem for the reliability estimator with stochastic simulation models, and construct an asymptotically valid confidence interval using data from a single simulation experiment. Lastly, theoretically optimal importance sampling densities require approximations in practice. As a candidate density to approximate the optimal density, a mixture of parametric densities can be used in the cross-entropy method that aims to minimize the cross-entropy between the optimal density and the candidate density. We propose an information criterion to identify an appropriate number of mixture densities. This criterion enables us to adaptively find the importance sampling density as we gather data through an iterative procedure. Case studies, using computationally intensive aeroelastic wind turbine simulators developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approaches over alternative methods in estimating the system reliability using stochastic simulation models.

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) in larval zebrafish can be utilized as a behavioral marker for neural dysfunction. In this study, we show that application of pharmacological agents to affect the Mauthner Cell mediated startle movement in response to acoustic stimuli can be used to quantify dysfunction. By establishing a robust protocol, we were able to confirm the effects of numerous pharmacological agents on PPI. We were also able to establish that haloperidol had a negative effect on PPI. This parallels some recent mammalian PPI studies that indicate that haloperidol has mixed effect on PPI. Dose dependent effects, timing, and even the nature of the reductionist zebrafish model may be responsible for this difference. However, the large sample sizes and simple neural circuitry makes the larval zebrafish and excellent model for high throughput screens of psychotropic therapeutic agents.

The construction industry has one of the worst occupational health and safety records of all industries. In spite of stringent regulations and much attention towards reducing risks in the physical environment, the construction industry continues to be associated with high levels of accidents, injuries, and illnesses. Construction safety management activities are typically categorized into safety planning and execution processes. Despite the interdependent relationship between safety planning and execution processes, current safety planning processes lack a systematic approach because of limited safety tools and site-specific information available. As a result, safety planning and execution processes are generally segregated and, consequently, most safety execution processes rely on ad-hoc safety activities during construction. The objective of this research is to systematically formalize the construction safety planning process in a 4-dimensional (4D) environment to address site-specific temporal and spatial safety information, by leveraging project schedules and information technology to improve current construction safety management practices. Prior to developing a specific framework, this research presents a safety risk generation and control model to describe the phenomenon of dynamic safety risk, incorporating construction domain knowledge. The proposed model addresses how the inherent risk of a worker can be transformed by different measurable contexts of activities. Based on the theoretical model, this research assessed safety risk of different construction trades in a quantitative manner. By integrating multiple national injury databases, safety risks of different construction occupations were analyzed to explain common risk types, sources of injury, and risk scenarios associated with each occupation type. With results of safety risk analysis as a reference, a formalized safety planning framework to aid in developing a long-term safety risk prediction plan was proposed. The proposed framework analyzed activity, work period, and work zone safety by integrating a project schedule and a 3D model. The proposed safety planning process was tested in a real-world project. This research advances safety knowledge, integrating site-specific temporal and spatial information, and significantly affecting the construction safety planning process. The proposed safety planning approach can provide safety personnel with a site-specific proactive safety planning tool that can be used to better manage jobsite safety by predicting activity risk, work period risk, and work zone risk in advance. In addition, visual safety materials can also aid in training workers on safety and, consequently, being able to identify site-specific hazards and respond to them effectively.

OBJECTIVE: The main function of the human eye is to detect light, motion, and color from our surroundings. This information is then processed and translated in the brain as vision. However, what is less known about the eye is its ability to regulate immune function. It is this ocular immune privilege that maintains the eye's ability collect visual information. The degeneration of immune privilege causes inflammation, which can cause damage to the eye, an increased susceptibility of eye disorders such as autoimmune uveitis (inflammation of the uvea), and may lead to vision impairment. Research in ocular immune privilege can open up potential clinical applications for maladies such as uveitis, septic shock, hypersensitivity, multiple sclerosis and allograft survival. Previous research has shown the importance of the retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells for maintenance of ocular immune privilege, and has identified the use of neuropeptides to suppress inflammatory responses in macrophages. This project aims to study the role and mechanism of the RPE cells in phagolysosome activation in macrophages that mediate inflammation. METHODS: Posterior eyecups were prepared from eyes of healthy, EAU immunized, or post-EAU mice. Eyecups, which consisted of the sclera, choroid, and a single layer of RPE, were cultured in serum-free media (SFM). During a 24-hour incubation period, peritoneal macrophages were collected intraperitoneal (IP) and cultured. Conditioned media (CM) was applied to the collected macrophages along with pHrodo-red opsonized bioparticles and were incubated for 24-hours in 37°C. After incubation, cells were examined by fluorescent microscopy for phagolysosome activation. Also, this was also done with RPE CM depleted of α-MSH, NPY, and α-MSH + NPY. A viability assay was performed on macrophages treated with depleted RPE CM to investigate the possibility that removing the neuropeptides will induce cell death. To examine the cytokines involved in RPE CM--from healthy, EAU and post-EAU mice--modulation of phagolysosome activation, a mouse cytokine array was performed that assessed for twenty different mouse cytokines. RESULTS: Results from fluorescent microscopy showed that healthy RPE CM caused significant suppression of phagolysosome activity in macrophages. The RPE CM depleted of α-MSH, NPY, and α-MSH + NPY showed a significant suppression of phagolysosome activity in macrophages. However, these results may have been misrepresented as the macrophages treated with depleted RPE CM were non-viable. RPE CM from EAU mice showed the inability to down-regulate phagolysosome activity while RPE CM from post-EAU mice recovered its ability to down-regulate phagolysosome activity. The mouse cytokine array of RPE CM from healthy, EAU and post-EAU mice identified keratinocyte-derived cytokine (KC), high concentrations of interleukin-6 (IL-6), trace amounts of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and no other pro or anti-inflammatory cytokines. CONCLUSIONS: Healthy RPE cells suppress phagolysosome activation in activated macrophages. In contrast, RPE cells from mice with active EAU lose its ability to regulate phagolysosome activation, but regain this ability when the disease resolves following α-MSH treatment. RPE CM from post-EAU mice treated with MC5r agonist did not recover suppression of phagolysosome activation which suggests that α-MSH causes suppression of phagolysosome activation through other melanocortin receptors or that this suppression requires other mechanisms in conjunction to MC5r stimulation. Cytokine IL-6 may be involved in RPE suppression of phagolysosome activation; however, further study will have to be done. The results demonstrate that part of the mechanisms of ocular immune privilege is the tight control by RPE of the phagocytic process in macrophages. It is possible that this contributes to ocular immune privilege minimizing the potential of processing and presenting self-proteins, and to allow for clearance of harmful materials while suppressing the activation of inflammation.

Intracellular pathogens commonly subvert the host cell actin cytoskeleton during various points of their infection cycles. My work has focused on the exploitation of actin by pathogens that grow within the cytosol. Many such pathogens assemble actin filaments at their surface to power motility within the cytoplasm, facilitating cell-cell spread during infection. Diverse bacterial species have independently evolved this strategy, and each uses a distinct mechanisms to intercept or mimic different host proteins involved in actin polymerization. Rickettsia are one genus of bacterial pathogens that exploit actin for intracellular motility. These are Gram-negative, obligate intracellular pathogens that include the causative agents of various types of spotted fever disease and typhus. Species within the genus Rickettsia can express up to two bacterial factors that power motility at either early or late times during infection. My work has focused on orthologs of the Rickettsia late motility factor Sca2 (surface cell antigen 2). Interestingly, I have found that these exhibit significant sequence differences between species. I participated in the discovery that Sca2 from the spotted fever group (SFG) Rickettsia species R. parkeri mimics eukaryotic formins in its ability to nucleate and processively elongate actin filaments, resulting in the assembly of an actin comet tail consisting of long and bundled filaments. Furthermore, for R. parkeri Sca2, I identified a minimal truncation that retains nucleation function, and showed that it can bind to three molecules of profilin, also similar to the behavior of formins. In contrast, Sca2 from typhus group (TG) and ancestral group (AG) Rickettsia species lack the formin-mimicking domain, and the organization of the actin filaments in their comet tails is poorly defined. I found that Sca2 from the TG species R. typhi nucleates actin, though its specific actin assembly mechanism remains undetermined. I further found that Sca2 from the AG species R. bellii nucleates actin efficiently when dimerized, and binds to a single actin monomer through a WASP-homology 2 (WH2) motif. These results suggest that R. bellii Sca2 may assemble actin via a mechanism that mimics eukaryotic tandem-WH2 nucleators, and its activity may be enhanced by dimerization or oligomerization of Sca2 on the bacterial surface. Additionally, I found that during infection, R. bellii move more slowly, in more curved paths, and more frequently than R. parkeri, and generate narrower actin tails consisting of bundled actin filaments. Nevertheless, R. bellii and R. parkeri use a similar set of host actin cytoskeletal proteins for efficient motility. Together, these data support the conclusion that R. bellii Sca2 utilizes a distinct mechanism to assemble actin filaments, and yet harness a similar set of host proteins to promote a motility that occurs with distinct parameters when compared with other Rickettsia species. This work reveals that even related bacterial species exhibit a surprising diversity of actin assembly mechanisms to subvert host actin for intracellular movement.

Elderly people are recognised as the fastest growing population globally (Lutz, Sanderson, & Scherbov, 2008). Although older age can be a time of increased affluence for some, it is also linked with challenges related to health issues and costs, aged-care requirements and the relinquishing of long held responsibilities and freedoms (Bongaarts, 2004; Borsch Supan, 2003). These trends are evident in Korea, which has one of the fastest growing elderly populations as well as a higher percentage of the elderly in rural areas, compared to urban settings. Despite the Korean government’s efforts to enhance quality of life and wellbeing for the older population, existing government policies appear to have a limited capacity to cope with the rapidly increasing aged population and the context-specific needs of the elderly in rural and urban settings. One way to enhance current policies is by developing a comprehensive model of successful ageing. This is one of the most effective strategies to understand the health needs of the elderly. Among various successful ageing models, the one developed by Rowe and Kahn (1987, 1997) is one of the most influential conceptualisations. While this model overcomes previous restrictive biomedical views of ageing, it has some weaknesses, including limited consideration of psychological health and an overemphasis on physiological factors. In this regard, this study adapts this model to include psychological health as one of the dimensions and to test multiple definitions of ageing successfully. This extended model was used with the aim of examining the contributing factors of successful ageing in urban and rural Korean elderly and gaining a more in-depth perspective of how the elderly’s perceptions of ageing differ between these groups.

The plant hormone auxin plays an important role in plant growth and development. Studies in flowering plants have uncovered many aspects of auxin signaling underlying molecular mechanisms. The SGT1 protein is known to be required for auxin receptor TIR1-mediated auxin response, and known to function as a HSP90 co-chaperone. However, the precise molecular function of SGT1 in auxin responses remains unknown. In this thesis, I seek to understand the function of SGT1 in auxin responses in the moss Physcomitrella patens by taking advantage of its efficient recombination system. My experiments indicate that PpSGT1 has an important role in moss development. PpSGT1 inhibited auxin-responsive Aux/IAA gene expressions when it was induced by high temperature or ectopically expressed under a strong promoter. In addition, auxin- responsive reporter expression was suppressed by PpSGT1 overexpression. Strong growth inhibition resulting from overexpression of auxin receptor AFB2 was compromised by PpSGT1 overexpression. A reduction in auxin receptor accumulation in lines overexpressing PpSGT1 implies that the reduced auxin-responsive gene expression is caused by decreased auxin receptor level. Contrarily, HSP90 appears to have a positive effect on auxin receptor accumulation and auxin reporter expression, which may suggest independent function of SGT1 and HSP90 on the auxin receptors in moss. Overall, overexpression of PpSGT1 destabilizes auxin receptor AFB, and negatively regulates auxin signaling

The versatility of the spinal cord as a sophisticated processor of information has been continually supported by a growing body of literature, which indicates that the spinal cord, like the brain, is capable of reorganization, learning, and the au- tonomous evaluation and modulation of sensory and motor signals. These proper- ties are of particular interest to the clinical research community, as these intrinsic properties of the spinal cord are currently being leveraged to provide novel ther- apies for amelioration of neuromotor deficits such as those associated with acute spinal cord injury (SCI) or stroke. An important missing component of these efforts, however, is a detailed, behaviorally-relevant understanding of the physiology responsible for motor behavior and nominal spinal cord function. Though some isolated circuits and overall network behaviors have been identified under various experimental conditions, investigators are still limited by the quantity and quality of data relevant to in vivo contexts of motor control and the role of descending inputs and afferent sensory information that serve to modulate the spinal cords ac- tivity. Identifying the mechanistic and dynamic properties of spinal cord circuitry is thus critical to the refinement of existing technologies and the development of newer, more effective methodology to treat neuromotor dysfunction.

The Garden Spa explores the healing and sensual qualities of a space. It offers a place of relaxation for the body to be restored through an atmosphere of tranquility. The spa rooms are an intimate place of rest, and the garden is a place to wander through sculptural forms. Curvilinear forms are used to bring pleasure to the eye and touch, creating harmonies with the body

Delivery of naked drugs in the body faces many challenges, such as poor solubility in blood and interstitial fluids, enzymatic and proteolytic degradation in the liver, clearance by the kidneys, recognition by the immune system, inability to cross the cell membrane, and nonspecific toxicity to normal cells. Over the years, drug encapsulation and delivery through nanocarriers have been sought as a potential approach to overcome many of these obstacles. Traditionally, research in this area has been dominated by vesicles assembled from lipids. These lipid based vesicles, also known as liposomes, are currently the most widely used vesicle for drug delivery with commercial formulations (DOXIL® and MyocetTM) in the market. However, liposomes are intrinsically unstable in vivo unless they are coated with polymers such as polyethylene glycol (PEG), which decreases their clearance from the body. Even with the addition of PEG, there are limitations as the added PEG chain increases the hydrophilic head group of the lipids, increasing their tendency to form micelles instead of bilayers. Due to these limitations, researchers have investigated alternative systems, such as polymer-based vesicles or polymersomes. The disproportionality that exists between the hydrophilic PEG head group and the hydrophobic tail of a lipid can be overcome by synthesizing synthetic PEG amphiphilic polymers with longer hydrophobic segments. In addition, by synthesizing building blocks that are larger than lipids, membrane stability can be improved along with slower leakage of drugs. However, some polymersomes suffer from lacking the ability to incorporate biofunctionality without impairing their ability to self-assemble into vesicles.In order to contribute to this exciting drug delivery field and find a material that could potentially improve upon current lipids and synthetic polymers, our lab investigated the use of novel amino acid-based polymers as the building blocks for forming vesicles. The use of amino acids offers many advantages. They have an intrinsic biocompatibility, which implies great potential for low immunogenicity and toxicity. The variety of amino acids and their many possible sequence combinations can be used to custom design polypeptides with different chemical properties and biofunctionalities. Moreover, recent advances in polymerization techniques allow the synthesis of long chains of monodisperse polypeptides. Vesicles formed from polypeptides can offer increased stability over conventional liposomes by providing thicker membranes that contribute to increased attractive interactions between the building blocks. We have investigated vesicles comprised of polypeptides that have been synthesized by Dr. Timothy Deming's group (UCLA), which employs a transition metal-mediated α-amino acid N-carboxyanhydride (NCA) polymerization technique to synthesize the amphiphilic block copolypeptides. The vesicles formed from these polypeptides can be prepared in different sizes in bulk quantities. This thesis focused on investigating the potential for using these polypeptide vesicles as drug delivery vehicles. Initially, vesicles comprised of positively charged polypeptides were studied, specifically the lysine-leucine (K60L20) and arginine-leucine (R60L20) block copolypeptides. Due to their positive charge, these vesicles have a disadvantage of being toxic to cells through interactions with the net-negatively charged plasma membranes. Therefore, in order to identify a design criterion for producing positively charged vesicles with low cytotoxicity, we focused on optimizing the hydrophilic/hydrophobic ratio of the polypeptide by varying the length of the hydrophobic block while maintaining a constant length for the hydrophilic block. The K60L20 polypeptides were used for this study due to their relative ease of preparation compared to the R60L20 polypeptides. It was found that varying the hydrophilic/hydrophobic ratio in the lysine-leucine block copolypeptide affects its ability to form vesicles, where polypeptides with long hydrophobic segments formed less toxic vesicles with appropriate sizes for drug delivery. Among the copolypeptides investigated, the K60L20 copolypeptide composition showed the most potential for drug delivery applications, as this copolypeptide was able to form monodisperse nanoscale vesicles with the least amount of micelles and small aggregates that were more toxic than the vesicles themselves.The optimized block copolypeptide composition was then applied to the arginine-leucine block copolypeptide, and the ability of these arginine-based vesicles to transfect mammalian cells was systematically investigated. The arginine-leucine R60L20 block copolypeptide was studied, since the arginine residues had previously been shown to enhance the delivery of cargo into cells. Plasmid DNA was used as our model therapeutic, since only low concentrations of plasmid DNA are required for an effect. This was an important point, since high concentrations of R60L20 vesicles will lead to significant cytotoxicity. Our transfection results with our R60L20 vesicles demonstrated that there is potential for using this novel material as a transfection agent, as they were able to achieve transfection with low cytotoxicity and immunogenicity. In contrast to plasmid DNA, high concentrations of the vesicles are required when delivering small molecule chemotherapeutics due to their IC50 values being in the micromolar range. Since the R60L20 vesicles themselves become cytotoxic at high concentrations, we also investigated the negatively charged vesicle formed from the glutamate-leucine (E60L20) block copolypeptide. A main advantage of these vesicles, over the positively charged vesicles, is that they are less toxic to cells. However, this is also a disadvantage, since the electrostatic repulsive interactions between the vesicles and the net-negatively charged cell membranes can inhibit the vesicles from entering cells. We were able to overcome this limitation by conjugating the vesicle surface with transferrin (Tf), a ligand that has been commonly used for targeting many types of cancer cells. We investigated the intracellular trafficking behavior of these Tf-conjugated EL vesicles, and they were shown to recycle back to the cell surface once they were internalized. This behavior was similar to what has been observed for other nanoparticle systems conjugated with Tf.Even with this recycling behavior, other Tf-conjugated nanoparticle systems were found to exhibit improved drug delivery efficacy. Accordingly, we investigated the ability of our Tf-E60L20 vesicles to deliver the chemotherapeutic doxorubicin (DOX). Before performing the in vitro efficacy study, the vesicle surface was conjugated with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) to improve its stability for future in vivo applications. The targeting Tf ligand was then conjugated to the resulting vesicle, and DOX was then encapsulated in the vesicle interior. A previously developed mathematical model was applied to our system to predict trends that helped guide experiments and allowed for reduced experimentation and faster optimization. Once the carrier was complete, in vitro cytotoxicity studies were performed to demonstrate proof-of-concept that the newly developed Tf-conjugated vesicles exhibit a significant improvement in drug delivery efficacy over the non-targeted version.

English-speaking children exhibit difficulty in their comprehension of raising patterns, such as (1), in which the NP the boy is semantically linked to the VP in the embedded clause, but is syntactically realized as the subject of the matrix clause. (1) Raising pattern: [S The boy seems to the girl [S _ to be happy]]. This dissertation attributes this difficulty to an intervention effect stemming from the disruption of the association between the matrix and embedded subject positions by an overt intervening NP. A parallel effect has been widely discussed in relation to other patterns, in both adult and child language comprehension. A corpus study and a set of comprehension experiments reveal several key results. First, children very rarely hear or produce raising patterns with an experiencer. Second, children have difficulty comprehending raising sentences like (2) that contain an intervening experiencer, but this difficulty disappears when the experiencer is fronted to the beginning of the sentence, as in (3). (2) Donald seems to Mickey _ to be short. [Experiment 1] (3) To Mickey, Donald seems _ to be short. [Experiment 2] Third, children's comprehension also improves when there is an intervening pronominal experiencer as in (4), but no such effect is observed in the reverse situation, with a raised pronominal and a lexical NP experiencer, as in (5). (4) Donald seems to him _ to be short. [Experiment 3] (5) He seems to Mickey _ to be short. [Experiment 4] Finally, children have difficulty comprehending copy-raising patterns such as (6) when there is no gender cue available to help them correctly interpret the referent of the pronominal copy. (6) Donald seems to Mickey like he is short. [Experiment 5] These results show that the difficulty associated with raising patterns cannot be attributed to children's grammatical deficits, as previously suggested (Borer & Wexler, 1987; Hyams & Snyder, 2005; Orfitelli, 2012; Wexler, 2004). Rather, it leads to a theory of Performance-based Intervention Effects (PIE) that attributes the difficulty to the disruption of the semantic link between the matrix and embedded subject positions by an overt intervening NP.

Family psychosocial stressors are key risk factors for children’s externalizing symptoms, yet we understand relatively little of their transactional interplay or their interaction with children’s individual characteristics. Recent evidence has indicated that children’s externalizing problems exacerbate family risk factors, and that children with poor self-regulation and boys are more vulnerable to stressors that contribute to externalizing problems. My research aims to clarify the etiology and development of externalizing symptoms by examining their transactions and interactions with family psychosocial risk factors. Three longitudinal studies collectively spanning across infancy to young adulthood examined transactional models of externalizing symptoms and family stressors and tested whether self-regulation and gender moderated their relations. Study 1 examined whether infants’ functional self-regulation moderated transactions of externalizing behavior and maternal depressive symptoms in toddlerhood. Study 2 investigated whether children’s effortful control moderated transactions of maternal depressive symptoms and externalizing behavior from the preschool years to middle childhood. Study 3 examined whether adolescents’ active coping moderated bidirectional effects of their violent behavior and family conflict during high school. Structural equation modeling results demonstrated evidence of transactional processes involving family psychosocial stressors and youths’ externalizing symptoms that were moderated by self-regulatory processes and gender. Findings across the studies indicated increasingly advanced self-regulatory responses to stress that contributed to individual differences in risk, as well as elevated periods of vulnerability in early childhood. I discuss the transactional nature of maladjustment in families and individual characteristics that moderate effects of risk factors and alter vulnerability to stress. I conclude with an integrative discussion and address implications for prevention and intervention of externalizing symptoms.

This study investigated the linguistic, affective, and intercultural outcomes of a four-week study abroad program for Korean teachers of English offered through a U.S. southwestern university. In an effort to understand better what the 42 participants experienced during their study abroad, mixed methods including quantitative and qualitative data analysis, were used. To measure the participants‟ linguistic development, pretest and posttest measures of Listening, Reading, Structure, Speaking, and Writing were administered by the study abroad program. Also, participants responded to Self- Assessment questionnaires developed by the National Language Service Corps that asked them to assess the degree to which their reading, speaking, and listening had improved. The participants‟ daily journal entries were collected throughout the program, and some of the participants were interviewed at the beginning, at the middle, and at the end of the program on a volunteer basis. For the quantitative data analysis, the pretest and posttest scores of each measure were statistically compared by using MANOVA with follow-up ANOVA tests. Except for the reading scores, the other four measures showed significant improvement from pretest to posttest. For the Self-Assessment questionnaire, most participants checked only a few items as having improved. Interestingly, a few perceived that they had become less able to do some of the listening and speaking items over the program. These findings can be explained as resulting from overestimation before this program or as a result of increase in self-monitoring processes during the program. Through the constant comparison method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), four themes emerged from analysis of the qualitative data. First, many participants were motivated to improve their English proficiency and increase authentic contacts with local people, with various sources shaping their motivation. Second, they increased their awareness of cultural and linguistic differences between the United States and Korea. Third, some participants showed a feeling of resistance to the dominant culture represented by native English-speaking instructors of the program. Fourth, at the end of the program, many showed improved intercultural competence. Results provide some theoretical, methodological, pedagogical, and policy implications for study abroad researchers, participants, and program instructors.