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Radiant Display: An Analysis of the Physical, Iconographical, and Contextual Characteristics of Middle Horizon Metalwork in the Glassell Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
No full textThe Middle Horizon period of the ancient central Andes (c. 400 to 1100 CE) presented a remarkable transition of civilization from culturally linked but politically separate city-states into large state societies. The two nations that helped define this period were Tiwanaku, centered in the altiplano (high plain) of present-day Bolivia, and Wari, in the Andean highlands of present-day Peru. This dissertation outlines a typology of the iconography, form, context, and physical properties of Middle Horizon metalworks in the Glassell Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) with the objective of understanding the role of metal objects in both cultures, but particularly Tiwanaku, within a holistic framework that includes function and performance, as well as metal’s relationship to other luxury materials. I also examine the minute details of metalworking techniques and their correlations with culture, form, and iconography. I look to the concept of the “staging of vision” explored in the important work by Adam Herring on the Inka Empire, as well as heather ahtone’s dissertation on the Indigenous thought behind contemporary art to suggest possible interpretations of my observations.
The significant and prolific role of gold, silver, and copper has been well examined in the visual cultures of other civilizations of the Central Andes region. A focus on more prominent aspects of Tiwanaku culture, however, such as monumental stone sculpture and architecture, and the fact that the Tiwanaku and Wari appear to have produced relatively little metal ornamentation, has led to a paucity of research devoted to the place of metalworks with either civilization. As a relatively unstudied field, my examination of Middle Horizon metalwork aims to establish iconographic patterns and their relationships with ethnographical and archaeological contexts and material production practices, and particularly the Tiwanaku differences and similarities with Wari. The objects examined in this typology come from the Glassell Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I also critically review and analyze the cultural and chronological affiliations of these works, seeking to clarify and rectify the potential role of museum collections in the knowledge of the field. Utilizing formal and iconographical analysis, close physical inspection, practical knowledge of metalworking, ethnographic and historical accounts, and archaeological evidence I pursue an understanding of how the Tiwanaku and Wari used metals and metalworking in their visual culture and staging of vision
Apocalyptic Poetics: Reading Ecologically Across Media After 1945
No full textApocalyptic Poetics: Reading Ecologically Across Media After 1945 argues that global literary techniques of imagination respond to the end of World War II as a time when it became imaginable for humans to cause the extinction of our own species. Tracing the development and production of new methods for imagining impossible futures, Apocalyptic Poetics makes the case that a robust attention to the formal and aesthetic limits of media gives the best insights into what it means for a world to end. To that end, I examine three media forms—novels, film, and poetry—to investigate the workings of apocalyptic poetics in their shifting sites and modalities. This dissertation connects the threads of environmental studies, nuclear criticism, and media theory to study the poetics—the artistic techniques of making—that are specific to certain media, such as the cinematics of risk, the interface of novelistic realism, and the spectrality of the lyric voice. By reading widely, with less regard for national borders than for the sociopolitical contexts that produce them, Apocalyptic Poetics highlights four sites where apocalyptic logics are at work, and in so doing offers four case studies on what we stand to gain when we take the end of the world as a starting point. Each chapter intervenes in its own micro-debate about temporality, locality, and apocalypse, demonstrating the richness of possibilities afforded by my method and sketching a loose portrait of the post-1945 literary imaginative landscape as attuned to concerns of “the end.” Among the texts in the project’s varied, multi-national archive are poems from the height of the AIDS crisis, films by Alfred Hitchcock, and a spy novel by Salman Rushdie. By refocusing the lens of apocalypse from “what” to “how,” I argue that accurate representation of crisis or the end of the world is less interesting than the methods of expression themselves
Sequence-based and structure-based methods for studying the adaptive immune response
No full textThe adaptive immune system comprises various biological mechanisms that, in unison, protect an organism against various threats, such as pathogens, viral infections, and tumor cells. One of such mechanisms involves the binding of intracellular protein fragments called peptides to class-I Major Histocompability Complexes (MHCs). The formed peptide-MHC (pMHC) complex is presented to the surface of the cell, where it interacts with the T-cell receptor, an interaction that can elicit an immune response. Knowing which peptides bind to MHCs, which peptides are presented to the surface of the cell, and which peptides elicit an immune response is crucial for successful clinical applications and therapies. Due to the advent of mass spectrometry resulting in high-throughput generation of amino acid sequence-based pMHC binding data, amino acid sequence-based Machine Learning (ML) approaches have dominated the field, showing immense potential. At the same time however, it is known that the pMHC interaction is characterized by a strong structural component that is shown to be extremely important in fully explaining pMHC binding and peptide immunogenicity.
This thesis presents methodologies that attend to both the amino acid sequence component and the structural component of the pMHC interaction. Focusing on the sequence component first, we present TLStab and TLImm, two ML-based tools that predict peptide kinetic stability and peptide immunogenicity respectively. Developed through adopting transfer learning methodologies, TLStab and TLImm outperform state-of-the-art approaches in their respective tasks. Next, focusing on the structural component, we present APE-Gen2.0, a new pMHC structural modeling tool. APE-Gen2.0 outperforms other approaches in the literature in regard to modeling accuracy. It also expands the pMHC structural modeling repertoire to peptides exhibiting post-translational modifications, as well as peptides that assume non-canonical geometries in the MHC binding cleft. Finally, we present RankMHC, a novel, Learning to Rank-based pMHC binding mode identification tool. RankMHC outperforms both classical protein-ligand scoring functions and pMHC-specific scoring functions in predicting the most representative peptide conformation among an ensemble of conformations. Overall, acknowledging the potential of both pMHC sequence and pMHC structure information, our work expands on both areas, through novel and effective computational contributions
Characteristics and Profiles of Pre-K Classrooms and Teachers in the Houston Region
No full textThe Kinder Institute for Urban Research’s Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC) examined the characteristics of public pre-K teachers and classrooms in school districts in the Houston region in 2021-22 to better understand how well the programs align with research-based indicators that have been shown to produce positive student outcomes. This research examined characteristics of pre-K classrooms and teachers and analyzed them to identify and describe common profiles of classrooms and teachers
Synthetic manipulation of mammalian secretory phenotypes for augmented bioproduction and neuroendocrine-like regulated secretory function
No full textThe secretory machinery of mammalian cells is an essential aspect of their use case as cell factories for biopharmaceutical production, as well as having implications on the performance of engineered cell-based therapeutics. Virtually all recombinant drug products derived from mammalian cells must be secreted prior to purification steps, and many cell-based therapeutic platforms manage patient physiology via secretion-based signaling. In this work, we present a strategy for manipulating the mammalian secretory phenotype via overexpressed secretory factors to enhance bioproduction capacity, principally but not exclusively of HEK293T cells. Our work demonstrates the potential of secretory pathway engineering to enhance bioproduction yields of biologic medicines and viral vectors for gene therapy, as well as augmenting the secretory productivity of cell types useful for therapeutics (e.g., mesenchymal stem cells and retinal pigment epithelial cells).1 In addition, we demonstrate how secretory phenotype reprogramming can produce artificial neuroendocrine-like Ca2+-inducible regulated secretory responses in nonendocrine HEK293T cells. Finally, we engineer circuits for controlling Ca2+ channel activation with small-molecule inputs, as well as ongoing progress towards linking these circuits to our synthetic regulated secretory program outputs. Engineered regulated secretory circuits, especially those with reversible “sense-and-secrete” functionality and programmable and tunable inputs, have the potential to enhance the therapeutic capacity of cell lines
Storm Preparedness: Actions of Houston-Area Residents Ahead of Hurricane Beryl
No full textTo better understand Houston and Harris County residents’ experiences with and attitudes toward disaster preparedness, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research surveyed over 5,000 residents across the region in the spring of 2024 and in the weeks following Hurricane Beryl. This report provides a descriptive overview of disaster preparedness in the region ahead of and during the 2024 hurricane season, as well as additional contextual information about how institutions prepared specifically for Beryl. These observations are used to build a set of recommendations aimed at improving preparedness in the future
Microfluidics-based 3D Bioprinting for Salivary Gland Tissue Engineering
No full textRegeneration therapy for the salivary gland (SG) remains as an unmet clinical need and the complex branched organ structure has presented challenges to tissue engineering approaches. Xerostomia (“dry mouth”) due to hyposalivation can result from injury or disease to the salivary gland, such as salivary acinar death caused by radiation therapy (RT) for head and neck cancer (HNC) or Sjögren's syndrome. Currently only palliative treatments exist for xerostomia, and many patients endure deteriorated oral health and inferior quality of life. Tissue engineering could offer a permanent solution for salivary gland replacement by isolating healthy SG tissues prior to RT, expanding its cells in vitro, and recreating a functional SG neogland for implantation post-RT. Prior research has shown that 3D hydrogel-based encapsulation of primary human salivary stem/progenitor cells (hS/PCs) promoted their expansion and organization into acini-like spheroids but lacks spatial control over cell position. 3D bioprinting methods potentiate spatial cell deposition into defined architectures mimicking the thin epithelia developed during the branching morphogenesis of salivary gland.
By leveraging a microfluidics-based bioprinter with coaxial polymer and crosslinker streams, I printed cells within a biocompatible hydrogel to recapitulate characteristics of the salivary gland. Refined hydrogel fibers of around 100 μm or hollow tubes with <100 μm wall thickness can be generated. Innovative bioprinting designs enabled spatial deposition of kinetically slower gelling thiolated hyaluronic acid, and selective deposition of hS/PCs and salivary fibroblasts (hSFs) in Janus hydrogel fibers. These epithelial-mesenchymal 3D co-cultures enabled direct intercellular communication. Cell phenotypes and functions in the 3D bioprinted hydrogel environment were characterized to demonstrate the formation of specific salivary gland tissue microdomains. The completion of the thesis work offers the potential to address the need for creating microscale glandular tissue implants that can restore salivary function
Meal-based Clustering for Population and Personalized Analysis of Type 1 Diabetes
No full textIndividuals with Type 1 Diabetes encounter significant challenges in self-care management due to the complexity of the disease and the need for personalized, multi-faceted care. The research proposes a new approach to analyzing meal time-scale events. We leverage open datasets with multiple temporal streams of data, including blood glucose, exercise, insulin, and dietary intake. By clustering the meal event profiles, we identify four distinct meal event profiles, providing insight into factors influencing glycemic control and its relationship to overall glycemic control. We then leverage the population data to build a personalized recommendation system that can provide real-time guidance for individuals to self-manage their glucose
Incorporating Anti-Racist Pedagogy into a Foreign Language Classroom
No full textConference presentation on anti-racist pedagog