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The 2025 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston
Full text linkSince 2020, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research has provided an in-depth snapshot and analysis of Harris County and Houston’s rapidly changing housing landscape. As each study has found, both renting and buying a home in the area has become increasingly unaffordable to many households, despite being nationally known as a city with much lower housing prices. As the region contends with this challenge, developers, government agencies, housing nonprofits, and other stakeholders are also aware of the increasing risks posed by extreme weather and climate change. This year’s report grapples with these dual challenges by monitoring core indicators of the housing market conditions and new indicators of environmental and climate impacts. Like previous reports, an array of indicators is also made available on the State of Housing Data Dashboard
New Housing System - WeHome
No full textMoving is an inevitable part of life. It often comes with significant physical, emotional, and financial challenges. From students struggling to find affordable housing to professionals facing high rents in urban areas, the current housing system fails to accommodate evolving needs across individuals' different life stages. With a focus on existing housing models and design concepts, this thesis study explores a new modular housing system, “WeHome”, designed to address these challenges by offering adaptable, flexible, and cost-effective living solutions.
WeHome is designed based on a modular unit system. This system utilizes radial arrays around a central structure to achieve decentralization for better adaptability. For interior design, WeHome features movable panels, customizable furniture, and relocation services to minimize the stress and effort associated with moving. This housing type operates by subscription, managed by corporations or governments. Users gain access to housing through subscriptions. By requesting a move or a unit modification, users are able to utilize our flexible system to meet their needs seamlessly. As WeHome facilities are available across different cities, users can enjoy consistent services wherever they relocate, simplifying the process compared with traditional moving.
Through practical examples (including student housing near universities and employee residences for tech companies), this study demonstrates how WeHome effectively addresses housing shortages while flexibly adapting to diverse living needs. The system not only provides a practical solution to the housing crisis, but also establishes a new sustainable, flexible, and user-centered living model through modular design.
Research shows that WeHome simplifies relocation processes, reduces living costs, and enhances quality of life. Beyond improving housing market efficiency, it redefines the relationship between residents and their living spaces, offering innovative approaches for future urban housing development
Engineering a chemical-dependent sulfite reductase switch to independently regulate extracellular electron transfer
Full text linkIt has been previously shown that extracellular electron transfer (EET) can be regulated by incorporating a protein switch into multicomponent, synthetic electron transfer pathways that span the cytosol and cell membranes to the extracellular environment. However, these multicomponent pathways are metabolically burdensome and do not port easily between microbial species.
To enable simpler, single-protein regulation of electron flow for use in biosensors and synthetic biology, we created bacterial sulfite reductase (SiR) switches via ligand binding domain insertion. Bacterial SiR is a good option for simplifying electron transfer pathways because it moves electrons directly from NADPH to the reduction of sulfite independently. The SiR switches respond to the presence of certain environmental chemicals by functionalizing the metabolic activity of SiR which controls the production of hydrogen sulfide, a redox-active metabolite that can diffuse across the cell membrane.
Prior to the creation of the switches by domain insertion, an insertion tolerance profile of the SiR hemoprotein subunit was first mapped using systematic octapeptide insertion followed by a selection for retained function. Then a subset of variants enriched by the selection were chosen for domain insertion. When an estrogen receptor ligand-binding domain was inserted at locations tolerant to octapeptide insertion, more than half of the resulting variants presented activity that was enhanced by an environmental estrogen agonist.
This conditional switching activity could be monitored electrochemically in a strain of Escherichia coli using bioelectrochemical systems, illustrating how a single protein can be used in cells to convert chemical information in the environment into an electrical signal
Engineering Nanoparticle Fate After Intrathecal Delivery: The Role of Infusion Location and Infusate Composition in Enhancing CSF Hydrodynamics
Full text linkIntrathecal (IT) drug delivery offers a promising strategy for treating disease in the central nervous system (CNS) while bypassing the blood-brain barrier (BBB). While nanoparticles (NPs) are often utilized to improve drug efficacy through encapsulation, the factors influencing their distribution within the CNS after IT administration remain poorly understood. This thesis examines NP fate in the CNS following IT administration, focusing on understanding key variables influencing NP delivery to and clearance from CNS parenchyma and subarachnoid space (SAS). Specifically, this project investigates the impact of (1) different IT administration routes and (2) varying osmolality of the infusate solution on NP dispersion. By understanding specific factors governing NP distribution, this work aims to inform strategies for optimizing NP-based therapies in the treatment of CNS disease
3.1 Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Biotechnology
No full textDeveloped from the Asilomar discussion on existing and future threats stemming from the use of AI in Biotechnology. Outlines the current state of the art globally and proposes best practices and possible risk mitigation strategies.This entreaty was created as part of The Spirit of Asilomar and the Future of Biotechnology summit (February 23-26, 2025) in Pacific Grove, CA.Integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology (AIxBio) creates revolutionary opportunities for progress in advancing the bioeconomy and addressing health concerns. AI advances promise to greatly accelerate beneficial biological discoveries and innovation and will undoubtedly be one of the deepest contributions of AI to people and society. However, AI methods can also increase risks of accidents and enable malevolent activities aimed at deliberately harmful applications such as bioweapons development. Effective AIxBio governance requires frameworks that enable the great rewards expected from AI in biosciences but that also consider more costly outcomes made possible by AI advances. Recent literature on AIxBio risk management highlights strategies that include tiered access controls, AI auditing mechanisms, and mandatory biological molecule synthesis screening and monitoring. However, many of these potential guardrails have yet to be developed and/or adequately evaluated. In addition to developing practical, technical solutions, it will also be important to develop guidelines and regulations, as well as incentives to follow these, to drive broad implementation of effective risk reduction solutions at the national and international level. Such policies can address significant gaps in national and global governance, but it will also be important to harmonize these approaches to address any regulatory divergence and inconsistencies in risk management across key world players
Controlling the taxonomic composition of biological information storage in microbial communities
No full textHorizontal gene transfer (HGT) is an important mechanism for adaptation in microbes, and the rapid dissemination of antimicrobial resistance is often associated with HGT. Existing technologies for monitoring horizontal gene transfer (HGT) are arduous, requiring reporters, processing of samples following gene transfer, and specialized instrumentation. I helped develop an autonomous barcoding device that can record information about who participates in HGT in a community. These devices record information about DNA uptake by producing a catalytic RNA (cat-RNA) that anneals to 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and splices a synthetic barcode onto the rRNA. In initial studies, this cat-RNA was able to record community-level information about HGT host range. However, it was not clear how the location targeted within rRNA sequences impacts barcoding host range.
To control which organisms are targeted by the cat-RNA, I created Ribodesigner, a program that generates cat-RNA designs optimized to target a user-defined set of microbes within a community. By designing cat-RNA guide sequences using different input sets of complete 16S rRNA sequences, Ribodesigner can generate designs that are: (i) universal for all organisms within each kingdom, or (ii) selective to specific taxonomic groups within a community while purposefully avoiding other community members. The performance of universal and selective cat-RNA designs was validated in-vivo in model bacteria. These experiments revealed that selective cat-RNA designed by Ribodesigner can target one of the most abundant orders in a wastewater microbial community, Pseudomonadales, while avoiding a second highly abundant order, Enterobacterales.
Ribodesigner can be useful for designing cat-RNA devices that program environmental communities to autonomously record the host range of mobile DNA containing cat-RNA without the need for domestication of individual microbes. By targeting select taxonomic groups for information storage in a community, this approach can increase the sensitivity of cat-RNA for studying mobile DNA host range, particularly when studying HGT in rare community members. In this way, Ribodesigner is useful to researchers seeking to deepening our understanding of HGT in situ
Unifying Instrumental and Expressive Motivations in Political Behavior
No full textThis dissertation explores topics in American political behavior. I investigate if romantic preferences for politically similar partners contribute to partisan geographic sorting, how incumbent control over policy outcomes shapes voters' motivations, and whether greater incumbent control intensifies political animosity. Inspired by modern developments in the behavioral sciences, I propose models of political behavior that integrate instrumental motivations—such as finding a romantic partner and pursuing policy outcomes—with expressive motivations rooted in shared group identity and emotions. To unify these diverse elements, I draw on modern human evolutionary biology, which provides a coherent foundation for the origin of preferences and a logical basis for when and how these motivations translate to behavior. This latter aspect is crucial, as it allows for testing of the theoretical claims.
The opening chapter establishes the theoretical foundation for the origins of political preferences and specifies how contextual factors influence the weight of different motivations. Chapter Two examines whether romantic preferences for politically congruent individuals may contribute to partisan geographic patterns and explores the role of negative out-party affect. Chapter Three evaluates if the relative importance of policy outcomes and identity motivations shift depending on the degree of incumbent control over policy outcomes. Chapter Four builds on this by investigating whether contexts in which incumbents have greater control over outcomes also heighten animosity toward political opponents. I conclude by discussing the broader implications of these findings for voter decision-making, political polarization, and democracy more broadly
Constraining Stress and Structural Development within Subduction Zones Using Rock Deformation Experiments
No full textSome of the deadliest and most destructive natural hazards occur as a result of active subduction zones. The stresses at and around the subduction interface can directly control the natural hazard potential, controlling the magnitude of ground motion translated up to the surface. Stress calculations of in-situ conditions often only provide rough estimates and are limited in their applications and fidelity. Alternatively, we can study the exhumed rock record as analog systems; however, this results in generalizations across subduction zones. Many important factors that can vary between system to system can get lost in these generalizations, such as the presence of frictionally weak materials, elevated pore fluid pressures, or thermal structures, many of which can drastically alter the expected strength and slip behaviors. We conduct rock deformation experiments to bridge our remote observations and structural evidence between active and exhumed subduction zones, correlating the microstructures and attributed mechanisms of deformations to the stress states that caused them to develop.
In the first chapter, we study the process of dilatant hardening, one proposed mechanism that causes slow earthquakes along faults. Previous experiments and models show that dilatant hardening can stabilize fault rupture and slip in several lithologies. However, few studies have systematically measured the mechanical behavior across the transition from dynamic to slow rupture or considered how the associated damage varies. To constrain the processes and scales of dilatant hardening, we conducted triaxial compression experiments on cores of Crab Orchard sandstone and structural analyses using micro-computed tomography imaging and petrographic analysis. Experiments were conducted at an effective confining pressure of ~10 MPa, while varying confining pressure (10–130 MPa) and pore fluid pressure (1–120 MPa). Above 15 MPa pore fluid pressure, dilatant hardening slows the rate of fault rupture and slip and deformation becomes more distributed amongst multiple faults as microfracturing increases. The resulting increase in fracture energy has the potential to control fault slip behavior.
In the second chapter, we turn to the natural rock record of the The Sestola-Vidiciatico Unit (SVU) in the Northern Apennines, an exhumed subduction zone. This unit experienced a relatively limited deformation history and serves as a rare analog to the shallowest portions of active subduction megathrusts. We use calcite twinning from shear veins along mineralized faults surrounding the exhumed subduction interface to reconstruct paleostress orientations through calcite twin stress inversion. Combining orientation data with calcite twin paleopiezometry and geothermometry, we are able to reconstruct the stress state of the SVU during peak subduction and subsequent exhumation. We note similarities in the orientation of principal stresses to those estimated for active subduction zones, and gauge the applicability and accuracy of calcite twin analytical methods.
In the third chapter, we conduct deformation experiments on calcite to better understand the role of different deformational parameters on the behaviors and morphology of calcite twinning. Many calcite twin-based analytical methods are developed over a broad range of deformation conditions, such as confining pressures, temperatures, strains, strain rates, etc.; however, there is a critical transition between different deformation mechanisms that is largely disregarded. As a result, there are large discrepancies between different analytical methods, not only with each other, but with observations in natural samples. For this study, we document differences in how calcite twinning accommodates strain at three different temperatures — 150, 175, and 200°C — spanning the semi-brittle range where different deformation mechanisms become more or less prevalent. In addition to the deformation experiments, we compile and compare our results with previous calcite twin studies to conduct statistical modeling to determine the contributing deformation parameters on calcite twin densities between brittle to semi-brittle to ductile deformation
BVAP: Energy and Memory Efficient Automata Processing for Regular Expressions with Bounded Repetitions
No full textRegular pattern matching is pervasive in applications such as text processing,
malware detection, network security, and bioinformatics. Recent studies have demonstrated specialized in-memory automata processors with superior energy and memory
efficiencies than existing computing platforms. Yet, they lack efficient support for the construct of bounded repetition that is widely used in regular expressions (regexes). This paper presents BVAP, a software-hardware co-designed in-memory Bit Vector Automata Processor. It is enabled by a novel theoretical model called
Action-Homogeneous Nondeterministic Bit Vector Automata (AH-NBVA), its efficient hardware implementation, and a compiler that translates regexes into hardware configurations. BVAP is evaluated with a cycle-accurate simulator in a 28nm CMOS process, achieving 67-95% higher energy efficiency and 42-68% lower area, compared to state-of-the-art automata processors (CA, eAP, and CAMA), across a set of real-world
benchmarks
On Quadratic Knapsack Limiting and Enforcing a Cell Entropy Inequality
Full text linkEntropy stable nodal discontinuous Galerkin methods satisfy a cell entropy inequality. One strategy to enforce such an inequality is through knapsack limiting, which solves a knapsack problem to determine an optimal set of blending coefficients which result in a semi-discrete cell entropy inequality while preserving nodal bounds. In this work, we provide a slight modification of this approach, where we utilize a quadratic knapsack problem instead of a standard linear knapsack problem. We prove that this quadratic knapsack problem can be reduced to efficient scalar root-finding. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed quadratic knapsack limiting strategy is efficient, results in better time accuracy than the linear knapsack limiting approach, and behaves better under adaptive time-stepping