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Sports and Inequality: Social Movements, Hiring Processes, and Crime in Sports
No full textThis dissertation addressed how sports can operate to reinforce racial narratives, stereotypes, and social inequality through three distinct papers that each contribute to the existing literature in the sociology of sports. Addressing three research themes: (1) public support for social movements in sports addressing protest during the national anthem; (2) how NFL quarterbacks are portrayed in the draft process by journalists and draft pundits; and (3) how stadiums affect theft-related crime and the social construction of the city. Feagin's white racial frame is used to guide several aspects of the dissertation. Paper one found differences in support for athlete protest by race, NFL fandom, approval of Donald Trump, and belief in colorblind ideology in police use of force. Paper two found differences in the media representations of light-skinned and dark-skinned quarterbacks in the NFL draft. Lastly, paper three found an increase in crime in the vicinity of the stadium on days that the Atlanta Falcons play home games.</p
The Interplay Between HIV Infection and the Development of the Early Life Immune System
No full textDespite the introduction of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in the prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV, there is still vertical transmission of HIV with 1.5 million children living with HIV worldwide and approximately 130,000 new infections in 2022. HIV targets CD4 T cells and causes immune dysregulation which could be detrimental for the development of the immune system during early life. Early ART initiation has been shown to limit the viral reservoir size, disease progression and partially reduce immune activation, but there is still persistent immune activation, microbial translocation, and elevated exhausted immune cells during suppressive ART therapy. Understanding the interplay between HIV and the early life immune system could provide insight into the long-term effects of infection on these children and provide information on immune-based intervention strategies for early life.To investigate the effect of HIV infection of early life immune development and the infant anti-HIV response, a group of perinatally HIV exposed infected infants (HEI) enrolled at 1 to 2 months of age that initiated ART at enrollment and a group of age-matched perinatally HIV exposed uninfected infants (HEU) were enrolled and followed prospectively during the first 2 years of life. Utilizing multiparameter flow cytometry and single cell-RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) approaches we investigated the development of both the innate and adaptive immune system and the effect of HIV infection. We observed altered distribution of major subsets in the T and NK cell compartment and elevated immune activation in T cells, NK cells, monocytes, and Dendritic cells (DC) at Pre-ART initiation in HEI compared to age-matched uninfected infants that was observed until 18 months in T cells. In addition, we identified by scRNA-seq a cluster of CD8 T cells with a gene profile consistent with CTLs in only HEI. This thesis provides insight into potential immune populations that are associated with viral replication, or control, that can be used as target for immune-based HIV cure strategies during early life.</p
Tools to Engineer and Modulate π-Conjugated Superstructures at Equilibrium and Non-Equilibrium States
No full textSupramolecular assemblies are ubiquitous in biological systems and often regulate vital complex cellular tasks. Nature has mastered the ability to engineer sophisticated hierarchical assemblies with emergent behaviors and structure-function properties. Supramolecular chemistry, drawing inspiration from the complex assemblies in biological systems, attempts to mimic nature's proficiency in creating complex materials through noncovalent interactions. This field has significantly advanced the past two decades, offering a plethora of supramolecular systems that can self-organize into tailored architectures under thermodynamic control. Yet, biological functionalities often emerge from configurations that transcend these global energy minima, venturing into non-equilibrium states where kinetic traps and metastable assemblies exist. Recent decades have seen a concerted effort to navigate the potential energy landscape with molecular precision, enabling the reconfiguration of building blocks from equilibrium to dynamic, nonequilibrium states. This exploration has been pivotal in developing materials that exhibit emergent behaviors akin to those found in living systems, which constantly consume energy to maintain non-equilibrium states. Amongst the numerous building blocks capable of self-assembly, π-conjugated chromophores stand out for their capacity to transfer energy and conduct electricity when doped, showcasing the potential for creating materials that respond dynamically to environmental stimuli. This thesis leverages such building blocks, focusing on naphthalene diamide and porphyrin systems, to generate supramolecular systems with manipulable structure-function properties in different thermodynamic states. </p
Immunotherapy with Low Dose IL-2/CD25 Prevents Beta Cell Dysfunction and Dysglycemia in Prediabetic NOD Mice
No full textLow-dose IL-2 is a promising immunotherapy in clinical trials for treating type 1 diabetes. A new IL-2 analog, IL-2/CD25 fusion protein, has been shown to more efficiently delay or prevent diabetes in NOD mice by expanding the population of activated regulatory T cells. This therapy is intended for use before clinical diagnosis, in the early stages of type 1 diabetes progression. During this prediabetic period, there is a chronic decline in beta cell function that has long-term implications for disease pathogenesis. Yet, to date, the effects of IL-2/CD25 on beta cell function have not been evaluated. In this study we treated prediabetic NOD mice with low-dose mouse IL-2/CD25 over 5 weeks and determined its impact on beta cell function. This treatment limited the progressive impairment of glucose tolerance and insulin secretion typical of the later stages of prediabetes. Intracellular Ca2+ responses to glucose in beta cells became more robust and synchronous after treatment, indicating that changing the local immune cell infiltrate with IL-2/CD25 preserved beta cell function. Our study thus provides mechanistic insight and serves as a stepping stone for future research using low-dose IL-2/CD25 immunotherapy in patients.</p
Alterations in Gene Expression and Mitochondrial Mutation Levels Associated with Carcinogenesis in Damselfish Neurofibromatosis
No full textDamselfish neurofibromatosis (DNF) found in bicolor damselfish, Stegastes partitus, is caused by an etiologic agent infecting and replicating within mitochondria of host cells. This pathogen, termed the damselfish virus-like agent (DVLA), initiates the development of chromatophoromas and neurofibromas ultimately resulting in the death of the host. Previous studies have demonstrated significantly reduced mitochondrial DNA and oxidative phosphorylation levels associated with DVLA infected cell lines. However, these studies have not examined how DVLA infection results in carcinogenic transformation necessary for DNF formation. To investigate how DVLA alters the mitochondria and the cell causing cellular transformation, RNA sequences were used to examine mutation, differential expression (DE), and co-expression of healthy and tumor samples. The RNA sequence analyses revealed significant impairment of the mitochondrial genome and mitochondrial associated functions, supporting previous studies. Additionally, qPCR analyses highlighted competition between the mitochondrial and viral genome occurred only for replication machinery. Furthermore, DE and co-expression analyses identified upregulation of pathways identified in cancer development and survival. Taken together the results of this study indicate DVLA infection causes severe depression of mitochondrial related pathways and functions, causing overall cellular stress promoting tumor formation.</p
A Modernism of One's Own: Speculative Sexuality in Radclyffe Hall, Djuna Barnes, and Virginia Woolf
No full textLiterary critics have established the importance of 1914 for the formation of modernism as a movement whose precepts would lead to the dominant aesthetic of the twenties. As artists grappled with the consequences of the First World War, the questioning of institutions achieved a greater priority than ever before. With respect to this cultural upheaval, of no small importance is the questioning of traditional sex and gender politics that led to women receiving British suffrage in 1918, with America following two years later. This unprecedented period of freedom for women allowed for the exploration of speculative sexuality: fiction that upends sex and gender conventions to present alternative narratives which challenge the normative and prescriptive models of the day. These attitudes coalesce in 1928 with the publication of three works of fiction: Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, Djuna Barnes’ Ladies’ Almanack, and Virgina Woolf’s Orlando. Examining the relationship between speculative and science fiction, I argue for the generative potential of reading Hall, Barnes, and Woolf as science fiction, when science fiction is broadly interpreted as literature engaged with the “science” of emerging late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sexological discourse.</p
Introduction Archives, Temporalities, and Spaces of Revolution
No full textWhat is the relationship between theater and revolution? This introduction proposes a critical framework by integrating comparative approaches to revolutionary studies and approaches to historiography and cultural memory rooted in theater and performance studies, within the large body of scholarly literature on theater and revolution. Acknowledging the volume's broad global and temporal scope, it poses a series of generative, transferable questions for teasing out performance's role in the unfolding and anticipation of political revolutions, as well as in the aftermath, including the inscription of past events as "revolutionary." Analyses from the revolutionary contexts of 1790s France, the history and legacy of the Haitian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, the United States in the 1960s, and twenty-first-century Tunisia and Egypt help to elucidate these questions while establishing global points of reference. The Introduction also presents three key paradigms for understanding the relationships between theater and revolution across cultural contexts: (1) theater as an archive of past revolutions, (2) revolutionary time, and (3) revolutionary spaces. These three paradigms make up the thematic organization for the volume. Brief chapter summaries display the breadth of revolutionary contexts featured and each author's methodological approach and answers to the questions raised, within the theoretical framework of the selected paradigm
Videos and Vocabulary: How Digital Media Use Impacts the Types of Words Children Know
No full textThe last decade has seen an exponential rise in children's digital media use, as well as growing evidence that it is associated with changes in children's vocabulary. However, while high rates of low-quality digital media have been associated with lower amounts of words a child says, little work has examined whether digital media alters the types of words a child knows. Here, we explore whether differences in the amount of digital media exposure are associated with differences in the composition of children's vocabulary. The current study surveyed 388 caregivers of children 17-30 months (M = 23.9 months) on their children's productive vocabulary and technology use. Multiple regression models predicted the proportion of words children knew in different semantic categories based on the time they spent watching videos/TV, controlling for total noun vocabulary size, age, and income. Increased video watching was associated with producing a smaller proportion of body part words and more people and furniture words, but not other semantic categories. Increased video watching was not associated with differences in shape- or material-based nouns. The results suggest that differences in children's video watching are associated with differences in overall vocabulary size, but also with the particular types of words children know. This may have implications for supporting children's future language in a technology-filled world. SUMMARY: Digital media exposure has been associated with changes in children's vocabularies. However, little work examines whether the media alters the types of words a child learns. The current study explores whether differences in the amount of digital media exposure are associated with differences in the composition of children's vocabulary. Increased video watching was associated with producing fewer body part words, more people, and more furniture words, but no difference in shape- or material-based nouns. The results suggest that differences in children's video watching are associated with differences in overall vocabulary size, but also with the types of words children know
GPT-5 and open-weight large language models: Advances in reasoning, transparency, and control
No full textThe rapid evolution of Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs) has revolutionized natural language processing, enabling models to generate coherent text, solve mathematical problems, write code, and even reason about complex tasks. This paper presents a scientific review of GPT-5, OpenAI’s latest flagship model, and examines its innovations in comparison to previous generations of GPT. We summarize the model’s architecture and features, including hierarchical routing, expanded context windows, and enhanced tool-use capabilities, and survey empirical evidence of improved performance on academic benchmarks. A dedicated section discusses the release of open-weight mixture-of-experts models (GPT-OSS), describing their technical design, licensing, and comparative performance. Our analysis synthesizes findings from recent literature on long-context evaluation, cognitive biases, medical summarization, and hallucination vulnerability, highlighting where GPT-5 advances the state of the art and where challenges remain. We conclude by discussing the implications of open-weight models for transparency and reproducibility and propose directions for future research on evaluation, safety, and agentic behavior.
•Reviews GPT-5, OpenAI’s latest generative language model.•Details innovations: hierarchical routing and long-context windows.•Examines tool-use and benchmark performance in academia.•Introduces GPT-OSS: open-weight experts with transparent design.•Synthesizes findings on reasoning, bias, hallucination, summarization.•Explores transparency and reproducibility with open-weight models.•Suggests future work on evaluation, safety, and agentic behavior.•Contributes to discourse on information systems and AI transparency
Hydrogen Storage: A Nano Sorbent Development, Capacity Assessment, and Structure-Property Relationship Investigation
No full textThe increased consumption of fossil fuels for energy production has led to higher greenhouse gas emissions, necessitating sustainable, low-carbon energy solutions. Efficient hydrogen storage plays a crucial role in this transition, offering promise for energy storage applications. Adsorption-based storage gas (AGS) systems can reduce high-pressure requirements, and improve energy density, cyclability, and system efficiency. However, conventional hydrogen storage technologies face challenges related to cost, safety, and efficiency. This dissertation aims to develop high-performance nanoporous adsorbents optimized for hydrogen uptake and delivery, addressing these limitations. The goal is to meet the Department of Energy’s 2025 hydrogen storage targets of 40 g/L volumetric and 5.5 wt.% gravimetric capacity with intermediate binding energies (ΔH = 15–25 kJ/mol). This research focuses on three key objectives: (1) developing advanced nanoporous sorbents, (2) assessing hydrogen storage capacity under different conditions, and (3) investigating the structure-property relationships for optimizing material performance. Key challenges for AGS technologies include low room-temperature capacities, stability, and efficiency over repeated cycling. This work explores the synthesis and functionalization of advanced nanoporous materials to balance gravimetric and volumetric storage capacities, focusing on working capacities, adsorption-desorption kinetics, binding strength, packing density, and cyclic stability. The dissertation is organized into three phases: (1) enhancing gravimetric storage in activated carbon (AC) at reduced pressures, (2) improving volumetric capacities in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) through densification, and (3) optimizing graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) for hydrogen storage via combined physisorption and chemisorption mechanisms. This dissertation enhances the design of nanoporous adsorbents, offering scalable hydrogen storage solutions for a sustainable, low-carbon energy future.</p