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CHARACTERIZING MELANOMA MICROENVIRONMENT AT DISTANT METASTATIC NICHE
No full textCancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and they can arise due to its many hallmarks. Melanoma is one of the more dangerous and more aggressive types of cancer out there, and malignant versions of melanomas are even more so. These malignant melanomas arise through a variety of factors, and when the tumors metastasize, they can invade other parts of the body, such as the brain and the lungs, and once done they will start proliferating, causing organ failure and eventually death. The older demographic is typically more susceptible to developing melanomas and metastases, as the microenvironment changes when a tumor arises, and even more so when the patient is older. Certain proteins and markers have been shown to be associated with the progress of tumors from its primary site to distal sites, and in this thesis, we will be demonstrating that certain markers are upregulated in patients with tumors than those without, and those markers are upregulated in older patients than younger patients
FROM DISENGAGEMENT TO CONNECTION: IMPLEMENTING RESTORATIVE PRACTICES TO SUPPORT ALTERNATIVE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
No full textStudent engagement, encompassing behavioral, emotional, and cognitive aspects, typically declines during the transition from elementary to middle and high school, leading to reduced participation, feelings of belonging, and motivation. This disengagement carries significant short- and long-term risks, including academic struggles, emotional well-being issues, problematic behaviors, and a higher likelihood of dropping out, which can result in unemployment, mental health problems, and involvement with the criminal justice system. Drawing on the phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory, this dossier seeks to examine the factors contributing to low levels of behavioral and emotional engagement among students. A mixed-methods needs assessment was conducted in three alternative high schools in the Northeastern United States. Administrative data, school climate survey results, and an open-ended survey were used to examine students and staff perceptions of behavioral expectations, sense of belonging, and experiences with exclusionary discipline. Data analysis revealed high levels of absenteeism, disenrollment, and exclusionary discipline in the three focal schools. Both qualitative and quantitative data revealed significant discrepancies between student and staff perceptions. Quantitative data from the School Climate Improvement Survey revealed that staff members viewed relationships and behavioral expectations more positively than students, with statistically significant differences (U = 1891.50, z = -4.23, p < .001). Emotional engagement data indicated that students’ sense of belonging was low (M = 2.74). Qualitative data revealed mixed perceptions of the value of and experiences with exclusionary discipline. To address these issues, a 3-year professional learning program focused on restorative practices is proposed. Grounded in adult learning theory and informed by high-quality professional learning research, the program emphasizes the integration of restorative practices into the three alternative high schools. Components include community-building, targeted interventions, and restorative conferences. The program aims to strengthen relationships, reduce punitive discipline, and build student agency. It is hypothesized that the professional learning program will result in sustained implementation, leading to a shift from punitive to restorative practices and aligning staff perceptions with student experiences. The project provides a model for school systems seeking to re-engage marginalized youth and promote equity through sustainable restorative practices
The Spectacular Commodity: Psychoanalytic Autonomy in Contemporary Television
Get PDFThis dissertation uses psychoanalytic theory to demonstrate that despite being more steeped in the market than any other art commodities in human history, a select few television series from the past forty years are irreducible to their ideological function in sustaining the capitalist mode of production. My primary method of analysis consists in demonstrating how certain series channel what Freud called the death drive [Todestrieb] as opposed to the dialectic of desire. Chapter 1 argues that the drive is the key concept for understanding viewers’ motivation to watch cringe comedies, which center on awkward, bungled encounters and force the viewer to see herself in their most awkward characters. Chapters 2 and 3 pursue the implications of Ryan Engley’s observation that “film is the medium of desire, television the medium of drive” by way of an extended meditation on the genre of the sitcom. Sitcoms are obliged not to allow their
characters to change much from one episode to the next, the second chapter argues, since the practice of scheduling reruns demands that episodes be able to be consumed out of order. The viewer experiences a vicarious, drive-like enjoyment from watching the characters of such programs routinely fail to find lasting satisfaction in their careers and romantic lives. I ultimately wish to render Engley's statement more complex in the third chapter, however, by revealing the
way in which desire and drive—and hence, the serial and the episodic—are dialectically interconnected and hence present in all narratives, as well as the psyches of those who watch and enjoy them. Chapter 4 turns to the streaming era, in particular the recent boom in televisual satires of the mega-rich. The conceptual focus here is less on the death drive than the opposition between left- and right-wing enjoyment. To the extent that they demonize the rich, most of these satires do not challenge the right-wing enjoyment that fuels late capitalism, even as they aspire to a progressive political stance. Through its innovative cinematography and storytelling tropes, however, HBO's Succession (2018-2023) channels left-wing enjoyment through its refusal to straightforwardly condemn its characters as enemies
Negotiating Implementation: China's Biotech Policy, The Securitization of US-China Relations & Industrial Diplomacy
No full textOver the past two decades, China has taken a nascent biopharma sector and transformed it into an industry on the cusp of becoming a global leader. China has achieved this feat through its use of industrial policy and its growing interactions with, and integration into, the global biopharma ecosystem. This study explores the cross-border implementation of China’s industrial policy for the biotech sector in the world’s leading bioeconomy, the US, over the period 2006-2024. This period has been characterized by growing geopolitical tensions between the US and China and the securitization of the bilateral relationship. To negotiate implementation across borders in this context requires diplomacy.
This dissertation introduced a new concept, industrial diplomacy, to describe the three interdependent modes of diplomacy (economic, commercial, and corporate) necessary to negotiate industrial policy implementation across borders. The study asked two questions: First, what is China’s industrial diplomacy approach to negotiating the implementation of biotech policy in the US? Has this approach changed over time, and if so, how and why? Second, why are some firms more successful than others in implementing Chinese biotech policy through their investment and expansion activity in the US? To address these questions, this study employed qualitative methods, including interviews, observation, and comparative case studies.
The study found that China utilizes a multi-nodal negotiating approach, which leverages various network nodes and combinations of nodes to fulfill certain diplomatic functions and achieve policy implementation objectives. Over time, China’s approach has remained multi-nodal, but there have been shifts in network composition, nodal activity, and the tactics employed. These shifts occurred in response to the rapid growth of China’s biotech sector, China’s proactive efforts to shape the implementation context, and the increasingly securitized US-China relationship.
This study also identified three factors that help to explain why some firms are more successful than others. Firms with strong diplomatic capabilities, whose bargaining positions in the US are enhanced by China’s diplomatic apparatus (via economic and commercial diplomacy), and who are perceived as “givers” versus “takers” by US stakeholders (based on the benefits and costs they deliver for US prosperity, autonomy, and security) are more likely to be successful
Feedback-Enhanced Robotic Surgery: Applications in Endovascular Neurosurgery and Electrosurgical Tumor Resection
No full textThis dissertation explores the integration of real-time feedback into robotic surgical systems to enhance safety, precision, and performance in two clinically significant domains: endovascular neurosurgery and electrosurgical tumor resection. Despite advances in robotic minimally invasive surgery (RMIS), the lack of intraoperative feedback remains a major limitation. This work addresses this gap by developing and evaluating two techniques that introduce kinesthetic haptic feedback and thermal control feedback, respectively, into surgery.
First, a haptic feedback system is designed for the MagnetoSuture platform, a magnetically-actuated millirobot with potential applications in endovascular neurosurgery. Due to the poor
quality of fluoroscopic visualization in endovascular interventions, surgeons rely heavily on proprioception and tactile feedback for catheter navigation. Thus, a bilateral teleoperation interface was developed for the MagnetoSuture that provides kinesthetic force feedback to
the user. A 23-participant user study in a simulated aneurysm coiling task demonstrated that the addition of haptic feedback improved success rates by over 40%, reduced peak forces,
and enhanced control efficiency. These findings indicate that haptic feedback can restore critical sensory information in visually deficient environments, improving both safety and task performance.
Second, the dissertation presents Thermography for Electrosurgical Rate Modulation via Optimization (ThERMO), an algorithm that adaptively controls electrosurgical cutting velocity based on real-time infrared thermal imaging. Typically, robotic systems have conducted electrosurgical cuts in an open-loop fashion, which can lead to excess thermal damage or margin inaccuracy. ThERMO aims to close the feedback loop and solve these
issues. The algorithm was first validated on synthetic hydrogel phantoms, showing improved disturbance rejection and reduced cutting force. Subsequently, ThERMO was integrated into the Autonomous System for Tumor Resection (ASTR) and evaluated in an ex vivo partial glossectomy task on porcine tongues. Results demonstrated superior margin accuracy, significantly reduced thermal injury, and shorter task completion times compared to constant-
velocity cutting methods. Histological analysis confirmed that thermal imaging could be used as a reliable predictive measure for underlying tissue damage.
Together, these contributions advance the state of robotic surgery by enhancing both teleoperated and autonomous procedures. The results support enhanced robotics in surgery,
which in turn will reduce cognitive burden on surgeons and enable safer, more effective interventions
RECONTEXTUALIZING DISCOURSE FOR POLITICAL VIOLENCE: THE RHETORICAL DIMENSION OF NIGERIA’S INSURGENCIES (2006-2017)
No full textThis dissertation investigates how extremist narratives contribute to the emergence and persistence of political violence, drawing on two case studies from Nigeria: Boko Haram and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). This study redirects focus from conventional conflict theories to the discursive processes that legitimize, normalize, and make political violence cognitively plausible. It makes a conditional proposition: that the introduction of sustained, targeted, incendiary narratives and discourse often precedes, and can trigger or sustain, political violence.
To explore this argument, the study develops and applies a Recontextualization Analysis Framework (RAF), which integrates critical discourse analysis with structural topic modeling (STM), enabling a mixed-methods approach that captures both the evolution of violent narratives and their resonance with audiences. The analysis reveals that Boko Haram’s use of religious justification, moral boundary-making, and delegitimization of external actors played a central role in shifting grievances into a totalizing vision of conflict. In contrast, MEND’s discourse, while rooted in deep structural grievance, relied more heavily on legal, environmental, and historical appeals, maintaining discursive pathways open to negotiation and international engagement.
This research contributes to both theory and practice. Theoretically, it advances an interpretive, discourse-centered understanding of political violence that moves beyond static typologies of grievance or ideology. Methodologically, it offers a replicable approach for tracking discursive transformation over time and space. Practically, it underscores the value of narrative analysis in early warning systems, disarmament and reintegration planning, and counter-extremism efforts, especially in contexts where legitimacy is contested and communicative environments are rapidly evolving
MODERN FARE: LABOR, CONSUMPTION, AND THE RISE OF THE UNITED STATES FOOD SYSTEM, 1886-1906
No full text"Modern Fare: Labor, Consumption, and the Rise of the United States Food System, 1886-1906" examines intersections and dissonances between labor and consumer politics around food at the turn of the twentieth century. The story focuses on Chicago between the Haymarket Affair in 1886—when the urban middle class garnered a renewed skepticism of the labor movements—and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906—the first major national legislation on food system regulation. The 1893 World's Fair, which introduced visitors from around the world to new ideas and practices around food and provided unique opportunities for workers to organize and air grievances, provides an important narrative throughline. The Exposition was a place of networking and communication, yielding rich archives from individuals, organizations, and businesses. Journals, letters, memoirs, meeting minutes, pamphlets, and advertisements as well as trade publications, newspapers and periodicals, novels, and official reports reveal how bias and inequality around food access and labor protections became embedded in the modern food system. The system-based approach considers agriculture, industry, retail, public dining, and home economics.
Bridging the fields of cultural history, labor history, and food studies, "Modern Fare" examines how urban, middle-class consumers and workers in food-related trades used their relationships to the food system to stake claims to national belonging in the face of growing nativism and the rise of Jim Crow. For the urban middle class, "modern" food harnessed nostalgia for a mythical agrarian past alongside unbounded potential for technological advancement. Consuming goods that represented the democratic ideal of independent producerism or the promise of a Progressive industrial society took on its own claim to civic virtue. While agrarian and industrial visions may have seemed at odds, both appealed to urban consumers and both tended to misrepresent or elide entirely the workers involved in food production, distribution, and service. On the other hand, professions like farming and independent business ownership—long rooted democratic ideals—and wage labor and service sector employment presented their own pathways for citizenship claims, especially for Black and immigrant Chicagoans. In response to middle-class apathy and, at times, hostility, workers in food-related trades used alliances, associations, and unions to advance their rights as workers and citizens
ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN HIV CELLULAR RESERVOIRS AND CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM OUTCOMES
No full textDespite sustained viral suppression with antiretroviral therapy (ART), many people with HIV (PWH) continue to experience chronic inflammation and central nervous system (CNS) complications. One explanation may be the persistence of HIV reservoirs, especially in CD4 T cells and monocytes. In this study, we assessed cognition (objective and subjective), blood-brain barrier permeability (BBB, brain imaging), immune profiles (cellular and soluble) and reservoir burden (HIV DNA) in a cohort of 102 virally suppressed PWH. The Intact Proviral DNA Assay (IPDA) was used to quantify intact, defective, and total HIV genomes in monocytes and CD4 T cells isolated from blood. Principal components analysis and hierarchical clustering algorithms were used to identify four distinct clusters of PWH based on their reservoir burden: Cluster 1 (high burden in both cell types), Cluster 2 (low burden in both), Cluster 3 (monocyte-dominant), and Cluster 4 (CD4-dominant). We observed that CD4 and monocyte phenotypes were driven by monocyte reservoir burden and that PWH with higher reservoir burden in both cell types had increased soluble markers of neuroinflammation (serum amyloid A, SAA) and BBB disruption. Interestingly, we did not find differences in cognitive performance across groups, which may reflect the relatively preserved cognitive profile of our sample. This study highlights the heterogeneity of HIV reservoir profiles and supports the idea that monocytes serve as a meaningful and functionally relevant HIV reservoir that actively contributes to ongoing immune changes in PWH
Making State Projects: Analyzing Embedded Neoliberal Transitions in Malaysia and Thailand
Get PDFThe coexistence of neoliberal economic governance with high levels of socially oriented state intervention in the Global South has been consistently portrayed as incompatible by International Political Economy scholars. Against this expectation, and drawing on empirical evidence that directly challenges it, this dissertation asks: how can countries in the Global South pursue ambitious, equitable, and inclusive developmental visions while also adapting their economies to the demands of neoliberal globalization?
To theorize the inner mechanisms of this process, the dissertation introduces the concept of State Projects, a processual-relational device which allows us to see how states redefine their economic roles over time. State Projects are clusters of tools, ideas, and practices tied to the achievement of a specific normative national vision of development, and whose continuous reproduction defines the boundaries and scope of state intervention in the economy. Through Process Tracing and Qualitative Comparative Analysis based on archival sources and selected elite interviews, the dissertation traces the emergence of “Embedded Neoliberal” State Projects in two countries, Malaysia and Thailand. It shows how in both cases, neoliberal reforms and their associated market mechanisms were encircled and tied to (embedded) larger visions of national socioeconomic development with strong pro-social components.
Together, the two cases suggest that Embedded Neoliberalism is not a singular or stable model, and is instead shaped by contingent political struggles, the work of coalitions made of domestic and international actors, institutional features, bureaucratic capacity, and the broader macroeconomic environment. The main argument that emerges from the comparative analysis is that state-led economic intervention, even during neoliberalism, can be successfully oriented to target social goals when skillful political actors can propose, gain support for, and carry out broad economic visions that frame such intervention as necessary to the survival, stability, and economic prosperity of the nation. As such, neoliberalism and social protection emerge as strategically necessary to sustain modern capitalist configurations, rather than antithetical.
Taken together, the dissertation offers a new way to think about development under neoliberal globalization, and suggests reconsidering our theories and concepts around state agency, international influence, and the politics of economic reform in the Global South
PERSISTENT READING DELAYS AMONG STRUGGLING READERS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL
No full textDespite over a century of advances in reading instruction and cognitive science, supporting older underachieving readers continues to be a persistent challenge in the U.S. Guided by bioecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998, 2006) and Krashen’s (1986) Affective Filter Hypothesis, this dissertation explored proximal processes that shape special education reading instruction. A convergent mixed methods study investigated how middle school special education reading teachers perceive their preparedness to teach reading and the degree to which affective filtering acts as a barrier to engagement with reading instruction among struggling readers in their classrooms. Quantitative findings indicated that teachers reported the lowest levels of self-efficacy in teaching foundational reading skills and engaging struggling readers. Teachers with experience using structured reading interventions reported greater confidence. Qualitative findings revealed consistent reports of affective filtering among middle school struggling readers. A professional learning intervention, Reading Instruction for Self-Efficacy (RISE), was designed in response to these findings, aiming at increasing teachers’ reading instruction self-efficacy by employing a two-strand design that builds knowledge while facilitating classroom application through utilizing AI tools. This dissertation contributes to the field by offering a scalable, evidence-informed framework for designing professional learning that advances teachers’ capacity for creating emotionally safe, instructionally responsive learning environments for neurodivergent adolescents with reading delays