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Background: Decreased resting energy expenditure (REE), activity energy expenditure, diet-induced thermogenesis, or a combination of all these components, plays an important role in the development of obesity. The positive energy balance and higher respiratory quotient (RQ) from the indirect calorimetry (IC), a proxy for substrate oxidation, subsequently predicts weight gain. The aim was (i) to evaluate the effectiveness of providing IC-guided dietary intervention (INT) versus standard of care (SC) during weight loss intervention in obesity; (ii) to evaluate if the baseline RQ or change in RQ correlates with the observed weight loss. Obesity is an independently associated risk factor for peripheral neuropathy, but its contribution in the development of peripheral neuropathy remains unclear. The aim was (iii) to evaluate the prevalence of obesity-mediated peripheral neuropathy compared to primarily hyperglycaemia-driven neuropathy in type 1 diabetes (T1D); (iv) to investigate the role of corneal confocal microscopy (CCM) in detecting diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) in diabetic neuropathic foot ulcer (DFU) in T1D. Methods: A randomized controlled trial was performed to evaluate INT vs SC in people with obesity. A systematic review was performed to evaluate current literature to address the question "Does baseline RQ or change in RQ during weight intervention correlate with observed weight loss?" A prospective cross-sectional study was performed to characterize neuropathy phenotype and compare corneal nerve morphology using CCM between people with T1D versus obesity. CCM and other measures of neuropathy were utilized to explore the large and small nerve fibre deficits between people with T1D-DPN and T1D-DFU. Results: The systematic review (ten RCTs included) demonstrated that baseline or change in RQ during weight loss intervention does not correlate with weight loss. IC-guided (INT) group had greater weight loss (P<0.001), reduced fat-mass (p<0.001), decreased REE (p=0.016) and decreased RQ (p=0.018) compared to SC. Greater centripetal adiposity was associated with peripheral neuropathy with 33% prevalence in obesity, compared with 50% prevalence in T1D. However, the RQ did not correlate with small and large fibre deficits in peripheral neuropathy. Greater small and large nerve fibre deficits were observed in a progressive manner from T1D to T1D-DPN to T1D-DFU. For the diagnosis of DFU in T1D, ROC analysis showed that corneal nerve fibre density (CNFD) (AUC of 0.92; SN 0.88; SP 0.72) and corneal nerve branch density (CNBD) (AUC 0.85; SN 0.88; SP 0.72) has high sensitivity and specificity. Conclusions: Providing EE information improved compliance to dietary intervention. Substrate oxidation alters in response to macronutrient diet composition and degree of energy restriction. Greater centripetal adiposity leads to microvascular dysfunction resulting in peripheral neuropathy. CCM is a useful biomarker to detect small nerve fibre degeneration in people with obesity and T1D, with high diagnostic sensitivity and specificity to detect DFU in T1D.

Slash fan fiction, a fan-generated literature centring on male-male romantic and/or erotic relationships based on characters from media texts, is widely popular in China. Analysing the Chinese Harry Potter (HP) slash fandom on the Slash Fan Fiction Network (SFFN, pseudonym), this thesis examines how Chinese female slash fans negotiate gender and sexuality issues in the context of cultural globalisation, domestic censorship, and the Chinese commercial online literature market, as well as the impact of their slash practices on their everyday lives in mainland China. Based on a close reading of selected Chinese HP slash fan fiction and interactions between female writers and readers on the SFFN and interviewing twelve Chinese HP slash fan writers and readers, this research, undertaken between 2016 and 2021, explores how Chinese female fans creatively rework their favourite HP texts to express their shared sexual desires and fantasies, which negotiate and even subvert hegemonic heteronormative gender and sexuality discourses. Meanwhile, I will demonstrate that going beyond leisure and entertainment, writing and reading HP slash fan fiction has become a significant part of female fans' everyday lives, and also affects their understanding and support of LGBTQ+ groups and politics in their offline lives.

This is a study of Yang Changji (1871-1920), whose thought exerted a profound influence on the shaping of intellectual trends in the early twentieth-century China, notably the ideology of Mao Zedong, who was taught by Yang for five years. Yang, well-versed in the Confucian and Neo-Confucian traditions, spent ten years studying Western moral philosophy and education in Japan (1903-1909), Scotland (1909-1912) and Germany (1912-1913). After returning to China he devoted the rest of his life to teaching ethics and education firstly at the First Normal School in Changsha (1913-17) and latterly at Beijing University (1918-1920), and to introducing Western philosophical, ethical and educational thought through translation and writings. How Yang Changji adopted and incorporated various Western elements, such as Kantian and Neo-Kantian ethics, the British idealism of T.H. Green, the humanistic and liberal tradition instigated by J. Rousseau, and Spencerian utilitarianism, into his socio-political and ethical thoughts, while retaining the framework of Confucian humanism, is one of the principal aims of this study. This study is divided into three parts, each of which consists of three chapters. A narrative account of the Hunanese intellectual tradition and the main trends of thought prevalent in nineteenth-century China, with particular reference to Hunan, will be outlined in chapter I. The starting point of Yang's intellectual-spiritual quest was the achievement of sagehood and self-cultivation, a goal was based on a threefold humanistic concern: man's ultimate potential as an individual, the individual's relationship to society and the realisation of man's ultimate potential. Mind-cultivation and altering natural character were particularly emphasised, and his methodology was characterised by quietness, reverence and the floating mind. During this painstaking process of self-cultivation Yang's metaphysical views of man, mind and human nature were formed, influenced mainly by Zhou Dunyi, Zhang Zai and Wang Fuzhi (see chapter 2). Between 1897 and 1902 Yang reached his intellectual maturity. His reformist thought can be seen as a syncretism of the Confucian humanistic principle of "Perpetual Renewal of Life" and Western liberal democratic ideas, such as "popular sovereignty," "people's rights" and "individual rights." These new democratic ideals, together with nineteenth-century Western evolutionary theory, provided a new authority for Yang to challenge the Chinese monarchical system, and to call for political reform. However, on a practical level, Yang committed himself to an intellectualistic-educational approach mainly influenced by his idea of seeking for radical solution and gradualism (see chapter 3). Yang Changji's life and study abroad are studied in the contexts of the movement of Chinese students abroad at the turn of the twentieth century and of cultural communication between China and Scotland. The experience in Japan was crucial for providing Yang with his first contact with Western philosophy, ethics and education. The intellectual influence of Aberdeen University can be seen in Yang's systematic exposure to the history of Western ethics and modem currents of British and German ethics, such as utilitarian and evolutionary ethics and T.H. Green's concept of self-realisation. In chapter 7 of Part Ill Yang's reappraisal of Confucianism, from the perspectives of Confucianism as religion and his attitude toward traditional culture, are discussed. In chapter 8 Yang's intellectual-education approach to China's modernisation is characterised in six aspects. His social criticism is distinctive for its application of Western humanistic values, particularly the concepts of person and personality in Kantian ethical thought. Furthermore, Yang was probably the first Chinese to introduce and advocate the idea of "sound and wealthy middle class." The influence of Western thought can also be seen in shaping the core of Yang's thought, that is, two distinctive but inseparable ideas; valuing the self and comprehending the present reality, which are the subject of the final chapter. Yang incorporated pivotal ideas and values of Western liberal individualism, particularly Kantian notions of autonomy, respect for the self and person, and subjectivity, etc., into his notion of valuing the self. While freedom was the most fundamental concern in Kantian ethics and humanism, the independence of the self or an individual was at the centre of Yang's idea of valuing the self. However, his metaphysical view of the self and person remains largely a Confucian one. His notion of comprehending the present reality shows his profound concern with reality and an overwhelming emphasis on "strenuous action." The Individual's self-realisation should be applied here and now. Underlying Yang's two ideas was Confucian threefold concern with humanity. The Confucian ideal of the sage-king or junzi still loomed large in both the form and content, of each of Yang's two ideas.

Given a smooth, complex projective variety X, one can associate to it numerical invariants by taking holomorphic Euler characteristics of natural vector bundles on the moduli spaces of stable maps to X. The study of these invariants is called quantum K-theory. Since K-theory is closely related to representation theory, it is natural to revisit quantum K-theory from the representation theoretic point of view. One of the important concepts in representation theory is level. In this thesis, we introduce the notion of level in quasimap theory and refer to it as the level structure. This thesis consists of two parts. In the first part, we define level structures in quasimap theory as certain determinant line bundles over moduli spaces of quasimaps. By twisting with these determinant line bundles, we define K-theoretic quasimap invariants with level structure. An important case of this construction is quantum K-theory with level structure. We study the basic properties of level structures and show that quantum K-theory with level structure satisfies the same axioms as the ordinary, i.e., Givental-Lee's, quantum K-theory. In the genus-0 case, the invariants are encoded in an important generating series: the J-function. We characterize the values of the J-function in quantum K-theory with level structure. As an application of this characterization, we prove a mirror theorem for toric varieties. One surprising finding is that the mirrors of some of the simplest examples are Ramanujan's mock theta functions. In the second part, we study the Verlinde/Grassmannian correspondence, which is a K-theoretic generalization of Witten's result. It relates the Verlinde algebra, a representation theoretic object, with the quantum K-invariants of the Grassmannian with level structure. To prove this correspondence, an important observation is that the Verlinde invariants and quantum K-invariants of the Grassmannian can be defined using the same gauged linear sigma model but with different stability conditions. In this thesis, we study the delta-stability condition. In particular, we construct the moduli spaces of delta-stable parabolic N-pairs and prove that they are equipped with canonical perfect obstruction theories. Using virtual structure sheaves, we define Verlinde type invariants over these moduli spaces and prove that they do not change when we vary the stability parameter delta.

New cyber-security threats and the emergence of the smart grid bring to the fore numerous performance and security challenges that need to be carefully addressed. In this dissertation, we use game theory to investigate the difficulties involved in network security issues with stealthy attacks as well as the problem of dynamic economic dispatch in smart grid, designing efficient algorithm to overcome the new challenges. From a network security perspective, we focus on stealthy attacks and the corresponding defense on a network of multiple independent components. Stealthy attacks are now a major cyber-security threat. In practice, both attackers and defenders have resource constraints that could limit their capabilities. To develop robust defense strategies, game theory is utilized to understand the fundamental trade-offs involved. Previous works in this direction, however, mainly focus on the single-node case without considering strict resource constraints. In this dissertation, a game-theoretic model for protecting a system of multiple nodes against stealthy attacks is developed. We consider the practical setting where the frequencies of both attack and defense are constrained by limited resources, and an asymmetric feedback structure where the attacker can fully observe the states of nodes while entirely hiding its actions from the defender. We characterize the best response strategies for both attacker and defender in the space of both non-adaptive and adaptive strategies, and study the Nash Equilibria of the game. We further study a sequential game where the defender first announces its strategy and the attacker then responds accordingly, and design an algorithm that finds a nearly optimal strategy for the defender to commit to. For the smart grid, we investigate the mechanism design problem in dynamic economic dispatch involving an Independent System Operator (ISO) and multiple electricity generators. The objective of the ISO is to minimize the total cost of power generation for serving a time-variant demand profile based on the set of bids from each generator which has generation cost, ramping cost and ramping capacity. Due to the selfishness, generators may not reveal their true information to the ISO. We design a mechanism with a VCG-type payment function, which guarantees that a profile of truthful bids from all the generators form a Nash equilibrium and at the same time, the ISO minimizes the actual total cost based on the bids. We further extend our mechanism to an online setting. We first show that no online algorithm can achieve sublinear bound and then prove that, if certain assumption holds, the RHC algorithm can achieve the same performance as in our offline setting . We next shift our focus on a similar scenario where power-proportional data centers can save energy cost by dynamically ``right-sizing'' the data centers based on real-time workload. Servers are activated when the workload increases while some servers can be put into the sleep mode during periods of low load. However, the activation and deactivation of servers incur an extra switching cost. In this part, we revisit the dynamic right-sizing problem for heterogeneous data centers with various operational cost and switching cost. We propose a new online algorithm based on a regularization technique, which achieves a better competitive ratio compared to the state-of-the-art greedy algorithm. We further introduce a switching cost offset into the model and extend our algorithm to this new setting. Simulations based on real workload and renewable energy traces show that our algorithms outperform the greedy algorithm in both settings.

2D materials have attracted tremendous attention for a variety of properties such as ultra-low body thickness, ultra-high mobility, tunable bandgap, etc. These unique merits of the 2D materials bring in the significant improvements and new perspectives in the digital CMOS scaling, analog performance, as well as the 3D integration of the wafer stacking. In this dissertation, two kinds of 2D materials, namely the graphene and molybdenum disulfide(MoS2), have been closely examined through material synthesis, device simulation and performance optimization. Among these 2D materials, graphene is well known for its high mobility and high saturation velocity, which makes it a promising candidate in the analog device, where high transconductance and cut-off frequency is mostly appreciated. To integrate of such device into the traditional Complementary-Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor(CMOS) technology, the chemical vapor deposition of graphene sheet is reviewed and studied as a viable synthesis method. The growth of graphene using copper as catalyst has been carried out using a resistive-heating tube furnace. The Raman spectra of the thin film synthesized on the copper foil, blanket copper film and patterned copper dots are demonstrated and analyzed. It is found that the concentration of copper vapor plays a critical role in the quality of deposited graphene film. In addition, the copper-vapor-catalyzed growth directly on the insulating film has been reported and fabricated into device. Simulation on the field effect transistor(FET) using graphene as channel is carried out based on the drift-diffusion model. Simulated characteristics are compared with the experimental results based on the extracted value. By using the contact resistance model, it is found that the source/drain resistance shows substantial impact on the on-state current of the transistor. This is because the voltage drop on the resistance dominates the carrier concentration in the pinch-off region, which limits the on-current. In order to improve the contact resistance, three different metal contacts have been adopted for graphene transistor, from which, the contact resistivity is extracted with its transfer characteristic. Among Ti, Ni and Pd, palladium shows the lowest contact resistivity to graphene around 5e-6 Ohm cm^2. Meanwhile, the carbon layer directly deposited on SiO2 substrate is examined by its transfer characteristic. The similar transconductance but different level of the drain current, shows that longer deposition time only increases the thickness of the carbon layer rather than the mobility. Unlike graphene, MoS2 with reasonable band gap and the ultra-thin body exhibits its potential in improving the short-channel effect, and in return, increasing the on-current. Nevertheless, the simulation on the MoS2 transistor under drift-diffusion model shows otherwise down to the physical channel length of 10nm. Though MoS2transistor improves the short-channel behavior, such as Drain-Induced-Barrier-Lowering (DIBL) and Subthreshold Swing (SS), the on-current of the MoS2 transistor shows no increase in comparison with strained Silicon-On-Insulator (sSOI) device and FinFET structure during the brutal-force scale-down of gate length. However, MoS2 can still be a promising candidate to thin film transistor and an option in the 3D integration for integrated circuits. The synthesis of MoS2 is achieved through the sulfidation of pre-deposited MoO3 film on the insulating substrate. A post-sulfidation process is adopted to improve the quality of 2D material, which is closely related to the duration (shown by the sheet resistance in transmission line structure). The effect of rapid thermal annealing(RTA) on metal to MoS2 contact is demonstrated by the I-V curve of the transmission line structure before and after RTA process. The improved linearity shows the elimination of the gap between the metal and semiconductor. Meanwhile, different metals have been deposited as the source/drain and the contact resistances are extracted, where Ti/Au shows better overall resistance. The non-linearity between the resistance and channel length is explained and fitted by the transmission line structure on low-doped SOI (silicon on insulator). The performance of MoS2 FET has been demonstrated using Ti/Au contact.

Because of the low-expense high-efficient image collection process and the rich 3D and texture information presented in the images, a combined use of 2D airborne nadir and oblique images to reconstruct 3D geometric scene has a promising market for future commercial usage like urban planning or first responders. The methodology introduced in this thesis provides a feasible way towards fully automated 3D city modeling from oblique and nadir airborne imagery. In this thesis, the difficulty of matching 2D images with large disparity is avoided by grouping the images first and applying the 3D registration afterward. The procedure starts with the extraction of point clouds using a modified version of the RIT 3D Extraction Workflow. Then the point clouds are refined by noise removal and surface smoothing processes. Since the point clouds extracted from different image groups use independent coordinate systems, there are translation, rotation and scale differences existing. To figure out these differences, 3D keypoints and their features are extracted. For each pair of point clouds, an initial alignment and a more accurate registration are applied in succession. The final transform matrix presents the parameters describing the translation, rotation and scale requirements. The methodology presented in the thesis has been shown to behave well for test data. The robustness of this method is discussed by adding artificial noise to the test data. For Pictometry oblique aerial imagery, the initial alignment provides a rough alignment result, which contains a larger offset compared to that of test data because of the low quality of the point clouds themselves, but it can be further refined through the final optimization. The accuracy of the final registration result is evaluated by comparing it to the result obtained from manual selection of matched points. Using the method introduced, point clouds extracted from different image groups could be combined with each other to build a more complete point cloud, or be used as a complement to existing point clouds extracted from other sources. This research will both improve the state of the art of 3D city modeling and inspire new ideas in related fields.

With the advent of the laser, its applications have been extended to many areas including material processing, such as welding, cutting and drilling; and medical procedures, such as eye surgery and cosmetic skin treatments; and other applications such as lithography, semiconductor manufacturing, optical data processing. Among the many kinds, laser diodes have been the most developed in recent years, due to its multiple features like low cost, compactness, electronic compatibility, broad range of wavelengths, and high Pulse Repetition Frequency values. However, the beams from the laser diodes must be shaped before they can be widely used commercially. This is because the beams produced by the laser diodes are characterized as having elliptical beam spot shape along the transverse directions. Also, the intensity profile is Gaussian, not evenly distributed energy profile as commonly preferred in industry applications. In this work, a system that reshapes the beams of an array of laser diodes from elliptical shaped to rectangular shaped and from Gaussian energy distribution to uniform energy distribution. The output beam is also collimated. This system employs 4 sets of lenses, either aspheric, cylindrical or lenslets, which treat the light rays respectively in both perpendicular and parallel planes to achieve the goal. Besides, this lenslet technology used in this system can also be applied to multi laser diode sources to generate a single bunch of high-energy and collimated beam with rectangular beam spot shape. In this way, the disadvantage of the low-energy output of the laser diode will be overcome. In addition, the resultant ray bunches are highly adjustable and can be applied to many more different areas of industrial world. In addition, a detailed derivation process designing the proposed system is shown in this thesis. A series of MATLAB codes are developed to calculate the system parameters according to the derived equations and to simulate the resultant system performance. ZEMAX is also employed to verify the simulation results. A comparison between the simulation results of MATLAB and that of ZEMAX is discussed.

Introduction Immune repertoire diversity is largely achieved by a process termed V(D)J recombination, during which functional antigen receptor genes are assembled from discrete gene segments through site-specific DNA rearrangements. The V(D)J recombinase includes two lymphocyte specific proteins: recombination activating gene 1 (RAG1) and recombination activating gene 2 (RAG2). They form a protein complex (RAG1/2) that recognizes recombination signal sequences (RSSs) flanking each receptor gene segment and introduces a DNA double-strand break (DSB) at the border between a RSS and a coding gene segment. The RSS contains highly conserved heptamer and nonamer motifs separated by either 12- or 23-base pairs of poorly conserved sequence (12RSS and 23RSS, respectively). Efficient recombination occurs only between a 12RSS and a 23RSS, which is called the 12/23 rule. Illegitimate V(D)J recombination, however, can occur outside of antigen receptor loci to form chromosomal abnormalities, such as translocations and deletions. Some of these breakpoints containing an RSS-like motif are proposed to be mis-targeted by the RAG1/2 proteins to form DSBs. Other breakpoints are believed to undergo RAGmediated structure-specific cleavage.|Specific aims The purpose of my thesis study is to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying RAG1/2-mediated cleavage of breakpoints that cause chromosomal abnormalities in lymphoid malignancies. This study consists of two aims: (1) defining molecular mechanisms for RAG1/2-mediated sequence-specific cleavage of cryptic RSSs (cRSSs); (2) defining molecular mechanisms for RAG1/2-mediated structure-specific illegitimate cleavage of cryptic RSSs.|Background information, results and conclusions for each sub-study are summarized below: (omitted here)

This thesis mainly consists of two parts, the synthesis of several kinds of technologically interesting crystalline metal oxide nanoparticles via high temperature nonaqueous solution processes and the formation of core-shell structure metal oxide composites using some of these nanoparticles as the core with silica, titania or polymer as shell via a modified microemulsion approach. In the first part, the experimental procedures and characterization results of successful synthesis of crystalline iron oxide (Fe3O4) and indium oxide (In2O3) nanoparticles are reported. Those nanoparticles exhibit monodispersed particle size, high crystallinity and high dispersibility in non-polar solvents. The particle size can be tuned by the seed mediated growth and the particle shape can also be controlled by altering the capping ligand type and amount. The mixed bi-metal oxides such as cobalt iron oxide and lithium cobalt oxide will be discussed as well. In the second part, the synthesis and characterization of various surface coated metal oxides, including silica, titania and polymer coated nanocomposites are reported. The silica coating process is presented as a highlight of this part. By using a microemulsion system, core-shell structure silica coated iron oxide and indium oxide nanocomposites are successfully prepared. Furthermore, the thickness of the silica coating can be controlled from 2 nm to about 100 nm by adjusting the reaction agents of the micelle system. By extending the procedure, we will also discuss the titania and polymer coating preparation and characterization.

The optimization of Fe(CO)5 promoted cyclocarbonylation of temporary silicon-tethered diynes is described. Various monomeric cyclopentadienones with hydroxyl substituents were produced in good yields as a result. Conjugate additions of carbon nucleophiles to these cyclopentadienones and their corresponding protected derivatives were studied. Chelate Mg coordinated cyclopentadienone intermediates were proposed to explain the resulting regio- and stereo-chemistry. For the mono-protected cyclopentadienone substrates, a hydroxyl-delivery mechanism was proposed. An unexpected cyclopropanation was observed during the conjugate additions of Grignard reagents to TBS protected hydroxyalkyl-substituted cyclopentadienones. It was prevented after replacing the TBS protecting group with methyl.

The objective of this research is the development of an image acquisition and processing prototype system, and its application to measuring the size and velocity distribution of moving particles in a gas-solid environment. The prototype system consists of a digital image acquisition module and MATLAB RTM image-processing module. Two specific applications were conducted. The first is the measurement of ash particle characteristics during surface regeneration of a candle filter system under room and elevated temperatures. The second application is on-line measurement of particle separation in a simulated Circulating Fluid Bed (CFB) riser system. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the prototype system for on-line measurement of particle size and velocity distribution.

Enterprise inefficiency and disguised unemployment are major concerns of the Chinese government and have motivated economic reform policies. It has been argued that the Chinese urban industrial enterprises and workers have few incentives to be productive. The major objectives of this study are; (1) to determine the extent of industrial enterprise inefficiency and disguised unemployment, (2) to relate these to government policies of state ownership, full employment and egalitarian wages, and (3) to make feasible suggestions concerning further economic reform. The methodology of this study, which combines a stochastic frontier production function and efficiency wage theory into a Zellner-Revankar generalized production function framework, is innovative, especially for analysis of the Chinese economy. Micro enterprise-level data from the 1985 Chinese Industrial Census were employed. This study found that there are substantial enterprise inefficiency and disguised unemployment within the Chinese urban industrial sector. On average, enterprise efficiency is approximately 20 percent below the best-practiced production frontier, and about 22 percent of the employees in the Chinese large and medium urban industrial enterprises are redundant. This study found two stylized facts about the Chinese urban industrial sector. First, within a specific industry, medium collective-owned enterprises exhibit the best performance, having the lowest enterprise inefficiency rates, lowest disguised unemployment rates and highest elasticities of returns to scale. Large collective-owned enterprises are second best, followed by medium state-owned enterprises. Large state-owned enterprises operate most inefficiently. Secondly, across industries, on average, the labor-intensive industries have better performances than the capital-intensive industries. The major cause of these stylized facts is the existence and intensity of the Chinese government's centrally planned economic policies of state ownership, full employment and egalitarian wages. This study also found that efficiency wage theory can play an important role in stimulating labor productivity growth and overall economic development on the "average" production technology. It does not always provide guidance for improving enterprise efficiency, especially on the best-practiced production frontier.