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Retail Environment and Hair Styling Exposure (RESTYLE) Study: Exploring the Community and Neighborhood-level Drivers of Safer Hair Product Availability and Use in Boston, MA
No full textPersonal care products commonly contain chemicals of concern including endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).1,2 Inequities in exposure to EDCs are well-documented with communities of color, specifically, Black individuals, more highly exposed to personal care product-associated EDCs (i.e., phthalates and parabens).2–5 Differences in exposure to EDCs may be driven by differences in personal care product use patterns, notably hair products.6,7 Use of certain hair products (e.g., hair oils, hair relaxers), that are reported to contain EDCs,8,9 may be a risk factor for developing a variety of reproductive and cardiometabolic outcomes, where racial/ethnic inequities persist.10–13 Previous research has predominantly considered personal care product use as an individual-level behavior and risk factor—however, various factors at the neighborhood/community and societal-level contribute to hair product purchasing and use patterns.7,14 Additionally, while previous research has documented inequities in exposure to EDCs and associated health outcomes,2,6,7 little research has used a mixed methods community-based approach to identify solutions and interventions. Through the Retail Environment and Hair Styling Exposure (RESTYLE) Study, we aimed to fill these gaps and identify barriers, facilitators, and solutions to inequities in EDC exposure from hair products among Black communities. Thus, this dissertation aimed to explore the community and neighborhood-level drivers of safer hair product availability and use patterns and to identify potential community-based interventions in Boston, MA.
The following three studies described in this dissertation were a part of the RESTYLE study, a mixed methods community-based study in Boston, Massachusetts (MA). Chapters 2 through 4 describe the three studies conducted. In Chapter 2, we detailed the process of developing a database on the safety of almost 40,000 hair products throughout the city of Boston. We then examined the role of historic and contemporary resource allocation practices (historical residential redlining and contemporary gentrification) on access to safer hair products. We found that stores in areas that were historically redlined (received Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) grades of D indicating “hazardous” or high risk for investment) and have not been contemporarily gentrified had increased access to high hazard (containing chemicals of concern, such as EDCs) hair products and decreased access to low hazard hair products. Next, in Chapter 3, we used photovoice—a qualitative community-based participatory method consisting of photography, individual interviews, and focus groups—to identify the barriers and facilitators to safer hair product purchasing and use among Black women in the greater Boston, MA area. We identified five barriers ranging from the individual to societal level (including the costs of purchasing safer hair products and unsafe ingredients allowed in US products), two concepts underlying the barriers, and two facilitators that span the individual to neighborhood/community level (including back to our community and cultural roots). Finally, in Chapter 4, we described our use of photovoice to develop a survey that aimed to identify community reflections, attitudes, and priorities regarding key actors and solutions to overcome the barriers to safer hair product purchasing and use. The survey respondents resonated with the time investment required to identify safer products from the photovoice project. Additionally, we reported the top three rank ordered key actors (including policymakers) who should be involved in developing and implementing interventions and top three rank ordered solutions (including the US government enacting stronger personal care product safety laws) identified by the survey respondents as priorities. Differences in the top three rank ordered key actors and solutions were observed based on the respondents' sociodemographic characteristics.Population Health Science
Salinity Concentration as a Potential Mitigating Factor for Harmful Algal Blooms in Bartlett Pond
No full textHarmful algal blooms (HABs) caused by cyanobacteria are a serious health risk to both humans and nonhuman animals due to the potential release of dangerous neurotoxins. With the risk of an HAB occurring in the small estuarine pond, Barlett Pond, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, mitigation factors and strategies need to be explored. One potential mitigation factor, salinity, was measured during low tide and high tide as well as at two locations around the pond to determine if the salinity level was high enough to inhibit a cyanobacterial HAB. The results of this study did not substantiate a higher salinity concentration due to the flushing of seawater as a mitigation factor for freshwater cyanobacterial growth. However, these findings may influence potential research paths for finding mitigation factors and strategies to inhibit or treat an HAB in Bartlett Pond and other at risk aquatic environments.Extension Studie
The Economics of Urban Mobility
No full textCities offer immense potential for economic growth and improved livelihoods; however, the realization of these benefits hinges critically on efficient transportation and mobility. This dissertation includes three chapters that use a combination of natural experiments and large-scale randomized controlled trials to study how barriers to physical mobility in urban settings impact the economic outcomes of low-income populations.
The first chapter studies how the spatial market segmentation of minibus associations in Johannesburg, South Africa, impacts service provision and commuter mobility. The need for coordination between associations results in inefficiently low and rigid supply of minibuses, leading to large increases in wait times for commuters. The second chapter uses a field experiment to study whether reducing public transit fares improves mobility and socioeconomic outcomes for low-income residents in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Completely subsidizing transit fares leads to mode substitution away from private vehicles and into public transportation, and increases employment for participants that were unemployed at baseline. The third chapter documents a new barrier to urban mobility: lack of exposure. Using a field experiment, we find that workers in Nairobi, Kenya, require a wage premium to work in neighborhoods they are not already familiar with, an effect that disappears after a single visit to the neighborhood. This familiarity premium implies that lack of exposure to parts of a city restricts residents’ access to economic opportunities.
Together, these three chapters offer new insights into how the design of urban transport systems shapes economic behavior and outcomes.Economic
Application of chemical biology for the discovery of inducers of autophagy
No full textHuman genetics have unveiled many coding variants in proteins that are implicated in health and disease. Many of these targets require novel methods of correcting the phenotypes caused by the mutations, in which the advances in chemical biology offer promising approaches. Phenotypic screens combined with target deconvolutions provide new chemical starting points for therapeutic discovery, while uncovering under-appreciated regulators of biological pathways of interests. Chemical-inducers of proximity, on the other hand, confers new functionalities to small molecule depending on the recruited proteins, allowing for precise methods to modify a protein of interest.
Autophagy, a cellular recycling process important for homeostasis and cell maintenance, has been implicated in a wide range of diseases. This dissertation details our efforts in employing the new tools in chemical biology to discover chemical starting points for developing autophagy inducers. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the process of autophagy, and our motivations for modulating this pathway. A literature survey of the available chemical modulators of autophagy highlights the need for more selective targeting of the autophagy machinery.
Chapter 2 describes our efforts to identify autophagy inducers using phenotypic screens. Employing a high throughput microscopy screen, we monitored LC3 puncta formation and identified BRD3217 and BRD3808 as autophagy inducers. We characterized the biological profiles of BRD3217 and BRD3808, and demonstrated that the compounds enhanced the host cells’ ability to clear intracellular bacteria in an autophagy-dependent manner. We performed medicinal chemistry to improve the potency of the compounds, and conducted target identification using a bead-base pulldown method and a photo-crosslinking probe. Unfortunately, our efforts did not result in meaningful increases in compound potency, and we did not identify putative targets for BRD3217. Using a diversity-oriented synthesis inspired photo-stereoprobe library from the Cravatt lab, we identified DBK-032A as a stereoselective inducer of autophagy. Integrating structure-activity relationship studies and chemical proteomics, we demonstrated DBK-032A modulate autophagy by engaging the mitochondrial serine protease CLPP.
Chapter 3 describes an approach to screen for Chemical inducers of proximity (CIPs) and its application in identifying an autophagy potentiator. CIPs are molecules that recruit one protein to another and introduce new functionalities toward modulating protein states and activities. While CIP-mediated recruitment of E3 ligases is widely exploited for the development of degraders, other therapeutic modalities remain underexplored. We describe a non-degrader CIP-DNA-Encoded Library (CIP-DEL) that recruits FKBP12 to target proteins using non-traditional acyclic structures, with an emphasis on introducing stereochemically-diverse and rigid connectors to attach the combinatorial library. We deployed this strategy to modulate ATG16L1 T300A, which confers genetic susceptibility to Crohn’s disease, and identified a compound that stabilizes the variant protein against Caspase-3 cleavage in a FKBP12-independent manner. We demonstrate in cellular models that this compound potentiates autophagy, reverses the xenophagy defects and increased cytokine secretion characteristic of ATG16L1 T300A. This study provides a platform to access unexplored chemical space for CIP design to develop therapeutic modalities guided by human genetics.Chemistry and Chemical Biolog
Fourth Down and Forward: Predictive Modeling and the Future of Football Analytics
No full textThis thesis explores the analytics behind fourth-down decision-making in football, with the goal of building a data-driven framework that can recommend the best option—go for it, kick, or punt—based on game context. While debates about fourth-down strategy have grown in recent years, most conversations lack a structured model that links outcome probabilities, expected field position, and long-term value into a single decision-making pipeline. This project takes on that challenge, building out a modular system of predictive models designed to work together to simulate and evaluate real fourth-down scenarios.
Two modeling pipelines were developed: one based on generalized linear models, and another using XGBoost. Each approach included multiple components: success probability classifiers, expected yard line regressors, expected points calculators, and a decision bot that combines outputs to recommend the optimal play. The generalized linear models provided a solid baseline, particularly in structured scenarios like field goal predictions. The XGBoost models, however, showed stronger performance in complex or nonlinear situations, thanks to more tailored feature engineering and specialized model design, especially the use of separate expected points calculators for first-and-10 versus fourth down.
Results showed that many of the bots’ decisions aligned with standard coaching logic, while others revealed opportunities for more aggressive or unconventional play-calling. Still, both modeling pipelines struggled with extreme edge cases, highlighting the need for future models to better capture sharp drop-offs and rare outcomes. This thesis closes by outlining a roadmap toward reinforcement learning as a more dynamic solution—one capable of reasoning across entire drives, adapting to context, and optimizing for long-run reward.
By connecting predictive modeling with real-world strategy, this work offers both a proof of concept and a foundation for future systems that aim to bring more clarity, consistency, and context to in-game decision-making.Computer Scienc
Learning Low-Dimensional Structures in High Dimensions
No full textAlthough researchers nowadays deal with increasingly high-dimensional datasets, lower-dimensional structures often exist and learning them effectively play a crucial role. This dissertation contributes to this effort by developing theories and methodologies for learning low dimensional structures in high dimensions, developed by the author and collaborators. The first two chapters focus on learning one-dimensional functionals in the proportional asymptotics setting, where the number of observations grows proportionally with the number of features. The theories developed in this asymptotic regime reveals surprising new phenomena and exhibit remarkable accuracy in finite samples of high dimensions, where classical theories fail. Chapter 1 investigates heritability estimation under this framework. We study the joint distribution of debiased Lasso and Ridge estimators under proportional asymptotics, and consequently propose a heritability estimator that features an adaptive tuning procedure. Empirical studies confirm its efficiency and robustness compared to previous methods. Chapter 2 focus on transfer learning in linear models. Within proportional asymptotics framework, we precisely characterize the generalization error of min-norm interpolators under both design and model shifts, and confirm the finite sample accuracy via simulations. This analysis identifies regimes where transfer learning is beneficial, and provides relevant guidelines for practitioners. Chapter 3 shifts focus to unsupervised learning of high-dimensional Poisson process arrival data. We propose an end-to-end pipeline that not only reconstructs underlying (inhomogeneous) rate functions of Poisson processes, but also learns low-dimensional representations that are valuable for downstream learning tasks.Statistic
(re) Interpreting Visions, (re) ConceptualizingTime: An Akamba Hermeneutic of Syokimau na wathani wake (her visions) and consequential Akamba location within the very long yùa ya mundù (Anthropocene)
No full textIn the age of the Anthropocene, ecological crises are sewing destruction in tandem with (or perhaps by causing) social unrest, economic inequity, and political instability. One of the narratives the Akamba rely upon in the Anthropocene is that of the famous muthani (seer) Syokimau. Stories passed down from Akamba elder to Akamba younger recall how Syokimau foresaw and warned of the arrival of British colonialism and its devastating and dismantling influence and impact on the Akamba. Through this story, the Akamba share a collective memory of a time gone by, in which contemporary adversities and future uncertainty are suspended to recall a moment in time before the commencement of a prior world ending calamity. However, in straying from the consensus interpretation amongst the Akamba, this dissertation argues that Syokimau’s wathani (visions) must not be understood to speak exclusively to the crisis of 19th and 20th century British colonialism and its aftermath. Employing Jacob Ọlúpọ̀nà’s methodological theory of indigenous hermeneutics, this project embraces the non-dualism and contradiction inherent within Akamba Oral Tradition to first analyze multiple retellings of Syokimau’s life and wathani (visions); investigate 7th to 19th century Akamba inhabitants of Ukambani and their participation in the Indian Ocean/Swahili trade as elephant hunters and slave traders; demonstrate, using various factors of Akamba culture including the Akamba language Kĩkamba, Akamba conceptions of time, Akamba clan system, Akamba storytelling, and Akamba rituals, that Akamba participation in a global trade rooted in extraction and exploitation was indicative of an Akamba community violating their syĩtheo (traditions); and finally engage with Sylvia Wynter’s theory on the “invention of Man” to contribute an Akamba commentary on the role of the Akamba in anthropogenic climate catastrophe.African and African American Studie
Uncle Moses: A Novel
No full textUncle Moses is an historical novel based on the 1955 kidnapping and murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till that occurred when he was visiting his great-uncle Moses Wright, a Black sharecropper and preacher in the Mississippi Delta. The fictionalized account begins the night Emmett whistles at the young white woman minding the country store where Emmett and his cousins go to buy candy.
The novel follows the tragic events that unfold after that encounter, told from the perspective of one of the murderer’s wives. In the novel, she is an autodidact—from a family of limited means with little formal education—inspired to read by the literary Percy family in Greenville, Mississippi where she grew up. She has been friends with 64-year-old Moses Wright since her childhood, when he helped with cotton harvest on the Percy plantation that her father managed.
The book places the fictionalized Moses at the center of the story as the first Black person to ever testify in open court against white defendants in a murder trial.Extension Studie
Seeing like a State or Seeing the State? A Qualitative Study of a Government Program to Support Women’s Self-Help Groups in Madhya Pradesh, India
No full textThis paper explores the interactions between state and society in rural India within a major community-based development program. We use guidelines of the state, transcripts of 90 interviews and focus groups amongst representatives of actors of all major groups, and field team workshops to construct an in-depth view of the processes and interactions within the ecosystem of six National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) self-help groups (SHGs) in the state of Madhya Pradesh. These SHGs are linked to credit and market related services and support systems provided by the state. We argue that in design, and even more in implementation, the program exemplifies two substantive tensions. The first tension is between a top-down, “engineering” approach to state delivery on the one hand, and a stated intention to mobilize community and create “institutions of the poor” on the other. The second is between a primary reliance on existing village hierarchies on the one hand, and a goal of empowering poor women from disadvantaged social groups on the other. We argue that these tensions generate an internal logic to state functioning and to on-the-ground processes that lead the SHGs and their federations in our case studies to be stuck at a low level of functioning, and in some cases to become dysfunctional. This study has implications for understanding functionality as the product of relational processes within and between state and society, and home in on a key actor at the interface of these processes - Community Resource Persons (CRPs).Version of Recor
National Response Toward Climate Change Under the US–China Rivalry: The Case of the South China Sea, Oceania, and Taiwan
No full textapplication/pdfIDP000964_001This study examines the intersection between international politics and sustainability. It focuses on how the US—China rivalry influences global climate governance. This rivalry can unexpectedly drive new normative development and regime-building through collaborations across various levels and stakeholders. This study describes this competing dynamic and explains its underlying mechanism. Moreover, this study contributes significantly to the empirical understanding on the development of climate change norms by focusing on regions wherein climate change and political tensions are pronounced. This study focuses on empirical cases in the broader Asian region, specifically the South China Sea, Oceania, and Taiwan. By incorporating alliance dynamics, this empirical investigation provides a nuanced perspective into geopolitical complexities and global issues in these areas.technical repor