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Conflict Analysis with ChatGPT
No full textThis assignment asks students to apply the conflict mapping method to a conflict of their choice and evaluate appropriate resolution processes and strategies. Students use ChatGPT as a structured “peer” to generate alternative perspectives, then compare AI-generated recommendations with their own analysis grounded in course concepts. By designing intentional prompts and critically assessing areas of agreement and disagreement, students evaluate the usefulness and limitations of AI in conflict analysis while reinforcing analytical, evaluative, and reflective skills central to conflict resolution practice
Characterization and Advancement of Molluscan Venom Gland Cell Model Systems
No full textVenomous mollusks, including cone snails and coleoid cephalopods, produce rich repertoires of bioactive peptides with profound effects on cellular physiology, yet there are few tractable experimental systems that exist to study their development, maintenance, and venom secretion. Although therapeutics such as the cone snail peptide Ziconotide demonstrate the biomedical potential of molluscan venoms, progress in understanding how venom glands form, function, and evolve has been hindered by the lack of reliable husbandry and the complete absence of in vitro cell models. Modern comparative genomics has revealed widespread convergent evolution across venomous lineages, but molluscan datasets remain underrepresented, limiting insights into the signaling pathways and developmental mechanisms that underlie venom systems. This study represents a first attempt to define the underpinnings of molluscan model systems by integrating transcriptomics, proteomics, imaging, and primary culture development across cone snail (Conus leopardus, Conus lividus) and octopus (Octopus bimaculoides) venom gland tissues. Multi-omics analyses identified putative venoms and growth factors that may regulate venom gland differentiation and function, providing essential molecular leads in developing molluscan venom model systems, as well as two new cellular markers that are specific to C. leopardus venom tissue. Systematic attempts to establish primary cultures revealed major biological barriers in cone snails, however, methods developed in this thesis are able to derive membrane-bound granules containing nucleic acids and cytoskeletal elements uncovers a previously unrecognized component of venom gland biology and may inform future culture strategies. Additionally, this dissertation presents successful primary cultures of O. bimaculoides posterior salivary gland, and optical lobe and optical lobe connective tissues. These findings indicate cephalopods are promising candidates for establishing the first marine molluscan venom gland cell models. Overall, this work sets the foundation for generating tractable molluscan model systems by identifying molecular regulators, generation of cellular markers to improve visualization of venom tissues and uncovering practical constraints on primary culture. Establishing such systems will enable controlled, mechanistic studies of venom biosynthesis, secretion, and evolution, unlocking the full potential of molluscan venoms as tools for biology and biomedical discovery
Less Self, Less Fear: Manipulation of the Self Using Virtual Out-of-Body Experiences to Alter the Conscious and Unconscious Experience of Emotion
No full textThis study investigated whether adopting an out-of-body perspective in virtual reality (VR) reduces subjective and physiological emotional responses to vicarious pain stimuli compared to inhabiting a first-person embodied avatar. Twenty-four participants experienced two counterbalanced VR conditions: (1) Avatar Embodiment (AV), in which they inhabited a photorealistic avatar from a first-person perspective, and (2) a Virtual Out-of-Body Experience (vOBE), in which they observed their avatar from a displaced third-person perspective. In both conditions, participants viewed a standardized series of vicarious pain images while electrodermal activity was recorded and self-report measures of embodiment (AV) and disembodiment (the vOBE state), emotional intensity (a multi-item questionnaire), and emotional impact (a single item questionnaire) were collected. Results showed that embodiment was strong in both conditions, confirming the effectiveness of the illusions. As predicted, subjective emotional responses diverged by perspective: participants reported significantly higher emotional intensity and impact in AV compared to vOBE. Descriptively, emotional intensity ratings were 0.87 points higher in AV, with two-thirds of participants endorsing stronger negative reactions when embodied. Inferentially, a paired-sample t-test indicated the mean difference was 0.72 (with t(23) = 2.60, p = .016). Participants also reported feeling physically “heavier” in AV and “lighter” in vOBE, and those who described the avatar as “a body over there” (rather than “my body”, signifying a lessened sense of ownership) during vOBE showed the greatest reductions in emotional impact. In contrast, physiological measures revealed no significant differences in mean SCR amplitude between conditions. Together, these findings indicate a dissociation between subjective experience and physiological arousal. Finally, here, “less self” refers to a diminished sense of being located in and identified with one’s body, as induced by the vOBE. This reduction in bodily self-presence was associated with weaker negative emotional responses. Further, in this context, “fear” is used as a shorthand for emotional discomfort or negatively valenced affective states (e.g., unease, distress, aversion) rather than clinical fear per se. The results support the central hypothesis that less self can mean less fear, highlighting the potential of VR-based perspective shifts as tools for emotion regulation and therapeutic intervention
\u3cem\u3eVoces\u3c/em\u3e of Teachers and the Politics of Literacy: A Case Study of Multilingual Kindergarten in a Midwestern Urban District
No full textThe United States is home to more international immigrants than any other country in the world with about a quarter of its children learning two or more languages while growing up. This study explored teachers’ experiences with children\u27s home languages as they learned English for the first time in a kindergarten classroom. In kindergarten, children build their emergent literacy skills as they enter the beginning stages of reading, when children use letter sounds to decode words. Because teachers have largely been left out of the debate about policy formation and curriculum on teaching reading, this study focused on teachers’ experiences teaching literacy in an urban school amidst the Science of Reading (SOR) curricular mandates. The research highlights how neoliberalism, or the privatization of public services, has shifted curriculum to teach literacy as less about meaning making within a specific culture, to literacy as more of a linguistic transaction. The subject population is two kindergarten English language learner teachers and their classrooms in a Midwestern urban school that is majority recently arrived immigrant or refugee, or emergent bilingual students. Qualitative research data gathered from 2023–2025 came from various informal and formal in-depth interviews on the use of children\u27s home language, teaching methods, curriculum, and district policy related to emergent literacy and beginning reading. Approximately 8 weeks of classroom observations were conducted to capture the contextual use and purpose of home language while teaching English. Data found the free use of children’s home language in the school and classroom promoted friendship, oral language development, and translanguaging. Because the district measured student performance with the same standards and assessments as their monolingual peers, the teachers followed a rigorous teaching and assessment schedule to keep up with the standards. As a result, formal bilingual instruction was limited to one-on-one sessions with bilingual paraprofessionals and occasional teacher use of children’s home languages for procedural purposes. The research can inform teachers, schools, districts, and communities on best literacy practices for emergent bilingual students
Free Speech on the Web and Its Limits
No full textThis assignment uses ChatGPT as a learning tool to examine the democratic justification and limits of free speech on the web. Students analyze arguments for and against online free expression through Kantian respect for persons and Utilitarian maximization of overall well-being. Using AI-generated historical and controversial cases, students evaluate whether specific instances of free speech are morally justifiable, challenge their own conclusions with AI-constructed counterarguments, and critically assess AI-generated summaries. The assignment emphasizes philosophical reasoning, ethical analysis, and reflective engagement with AI as an academic tool
Analyzing Minnick v. California Using ChatGPT
No full textThis assignment in the Race and Ethnicity course asks students to critically analyze the Supreme Court case Wayne Minnick et al. v. California Department of Corrections et al. through a structured case brief and ethical use of AI. Students examine key legal elements of the case while exploring issues of race, ethnicity, and institutional discrimination in the correctional system. After briefing the case, students use AI tools to generate and revise discussion questions that deepen analysis of themes such as racial discrimination, intersectionality, sentencing, advocacy, and policy reform. The assignment emphasizes critical thinking, legal analysis, and responsible AI engagement
MECONIUM METAL CONCENTRATIONS AND INFANT TEMPERAMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
No full textBACKGROUND: Prenatal exposure to metals poses significant health consequences for early childhood development. Understanding the factors influencing metal concentrations that infants are exposed to in-utero is crucial for developing targeted interventions, particularly when maternal characteristics and environmental factors, may contribute to varying levels. Meconium offers insight into in-utero exposures for the developing infant, and the effect of each individual metal may be mediated or exacerbated by another and therefore should be studied in the context of a mixture. The effect of metal mixture exposure, as measured in meconium, on milestone and temperament outcomes has yet to be determined.
DESIGN: This dissertation comprises the work of two cross-sectional analyses, a scoping review, and longitudinal study, to illuminate potential relationships between metals in meconium and developmental and temperamental outcomes and factors contributing to exposure. For Aim 1, a cross-sectional analysis was conducted on 301 mother-newborn dyads, which assessed the association between maternal characteristics, including country of origin and residential factors, and meconium metal concentration in newborns delivered at public hospitals in New York City. For Aim 2, a second cross-sectional analysis compared the concentrations of ten metals in meconium samples between an urban and a suburban hospital in New York State. Meconium samples were collected and analyzed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Lastly, for Aim 3, 48 of the original 301 mother-child dyads were followed-up with to investigate the effect of the metal mixture on infant temperament and development.
RESULTS: In the first cross-sectional analysis concentrations of metals, including aluminum, iron, manganese, nickel, and lead, varied based on demographic variables in the study population. Asian and Spanish-speaking mothers had significantly higher lead concentrations compared to White and English-speaking mothers. No significant associations were found between maternal housing characteristics and metal concentrations, potentially due to participants predominantly residing in environmental justice areas. The findings suggest that prenatal metal exposure in this population may be influenced by prior exposures in the country of origin and socio-economic factors post-immigration. The findings of the second cross-sectional study indicated significantly higher levels of toxic metals, lead and cadmium (p\u3c 0.05), in the urban samples, but higher copper, chromium, iron, and molybdenum (p\u3c 0.001) were identified in suburban samples. The scoping review identified studies in low and high pollution areas. Our study findings were comparable with the results from low pollution locations. For the follow-up study, no associations between the metals and infant temperament and development were found to be significant.
CONCLUSION: These findings highlight the need for targeted public health interventions to reduce prenatal metal exposure in vulnerable populations. Understanding metal concentrations in newborns, both toxic and nutritionally necessary, from different geographic areas is an important step in quantifying expected concentrations and ultimately determining a threshold for assessment of prenatal exposure. While each metal has its own toxic threshold, how metals act in concert with each other may decrease that threshold. Our findings provide some evidence for future research to understand fetal nutrition and toxic exposures
Design of Lithium-Based Battery Electrolyte Compositions for Extreme Operating Conditions Using Alternative Solvents, Co-Solvents and Additives
No full textLithium-ion battery utilization is widespread due to relatively high capacity and long cycle life. Advanced technologies have specific demands of their energy storage devices that traditional Li-ion batteries are unable to meet. Lithium-ion batteries utilize a graphite anode which has a limited theoretical capacity. Traditional lithium-ion batteries also utilize flammable solvents in their electrolyte mixtures. Due to the flammable electrolyte, lithium-ion batteries are not considered practical for large scale applications. Additionally, the lithium-ion battery has a narrow optimal operating temperature window. The temperature limitation of lithium-ion batteries leads to issues for many applications such as operating in extreme temperature environments, such as space exploration. These limitations have led researchers to explore other battery chemistries such as lithium metal batteries. Improving and adapting Li-ion batteries for a wider range of applications has also attracted attention.
This dissertation investigates alternative electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries as well as studying electrolytes for lithium metal batteries. To address the issue of flammability, this work iii focuses on ionic liquids as an alternative electrolyte component. Ionic liquids are molten salts at and below 100 °C, are composed completely of ions and have negligible flammability. The functionality of ionic liquids can be modified due to a vast number of cation and anion combinations, but the high viscosity and poor transport properties of ionic liquids limit their applicability as a battery electrolyte. This thesis investigates several ionic liquid-based electrolytes. The transport parameters of the ionic liquid 1-butyl-1-methyl-pyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ([Pyr14][TFSI]) was addressed through the addition of an organic co-solvent methyl propionate. The addition of methyl propionate improved the conductivity and maintained a sufficiently large electrochemical window for battery operation. Methyl propionate also facilitated an undesirable side reaction with lithium metal and the addition of a SEI forming cyclic carbonate co-solvent was used to suppress the side reaction and enable efficient lithium plating and striping behavior.
The functionality of ionic liquids was investigated in mixtures of functionalized pyrrolidinium ionic liquids and solvate ionic liquids. Solvate ionic liquids are a subclass of ionic liquids composed of lithium salts and short polyethers called glyme. By mixing LiTFSI and tetraethylene glycol dimethyl ether (tetraglyme, G4) in equimolar amounts the solvate ionic liquid LiG4TFSI was made. Solvate ionic liquids require multidentate solvation of the glyme to Li+ to form a cation complex and achieve ionic liquid like properties with high lithium salt concentrations. Due to this requirement the functionalization of glyme and the anions are more limited than traditional ionic liquids. In this thesis, mixtures of LiG4TFSI and pyrrolidinium-based bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ionic liquids with polyether side chains containing either one ether (EO1) functional group or three ether (EO3) functional groups were studied. We sought to understand the effect of the ionic liquid functionality on the solvate ionic liquid cation complex. To further investigate the effect of the functionality of the ionic liquids the TFSI anion was replaced. The effect of (perfluoroalkylsulfonyl)imide with varying fluorination and symmetry was investigated in LiG4[X] and EO1:Li[X]:G4 1:1:0.8 mixtures. The anions studied were bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide (FSI), bis(pentafluoroethylsulfonyl)imide (BETI), (fluorosulfonyl)(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (IM01), and (trifluoromethylsulfonyl)(nonafluorobutylsulfonyl)imide (IM14). The effect of the anions on the physiochemical and electrochemical properties was investigated and analyzed. How the various combinations of cations and anions affected the [LiG4]+ cation complex was probed using spectroscopic techniques such as NMR and Raman spectroscopy.
Though lithium metal batteries and ionic liquids have many intriguing and desirable benefits, significant hurdles exist before their practical implementation for many applications is realized. Traditional carbonate-based Li-ion electrolytes remain the most reliable, high-capacity rechargeable battery chemistry for many modern uses, despite the previously mentioned concerns. This work also highlights adapting the Li-ion battery electrolyte for 100 °C operation for harsh environments found in space. The high temperature performance of the Li-ion was improved using salt additives and a highly fluorinated co-solvent, 1,1,2,2-tetrafluoroethyl-2,2,3,3- tetrafluoropropyl ether (TTE). The formulation studied in this thesis was identified by team member Jonah Wang through careful screening of different electrolyte formulations. Through variable temperature cycling paired with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, it was determined that the additives and co-solvent helped form a stable interphase at the cathode which facilitated improvements in 100 °C cycling capacity retention
Revolutionary Governance, Culture, and the Party-State in Postcolonial Guinea: Political Thought and Practice Under Ahmed Sékou Touré
No full textThis thesis reexamines the political thought of Ahmed Sékou Touré by taking seriously the theoretical ambition of the Guinean revolution. Rather than treating Touré as either a failed democrat or a mere ideologue, the study reads his writings and political interventions as a sustained attempt to resolve a core postcolonial problem: how to construct collective power and mass participation in societies fractured by colonial rule, economic dependency, and weak institutional capacity.
Through close readings of Touré’s major texts and the ideological materials of the Parti Démocratique de Guinée, the thesis reconstructs his theory of the Party-State as a distinctive model of mass democracy grounded in political formation, moral discipline, cultural integrity, and organized unity. Democracy, in this framework, is not defined by competition among elites or procedural neutrality, but by the continuous production of political subjects capable of governing themselves and defending sovereignty. The study situates this project within broader debates in African socialism and Marxist thought, placing Touré in dialogue with figures such as Kwame Nkrumah and Amilcar Cabral in order to highlight shared concerns over state power, popular agency, and the fragility of postcolonial freedom.
At the same time, the thesis offers an immanent critique of the Party-State, showing how measures introduced to consolidate popular participation—centralization, ideological unity, and moral authority—generated effects, unintended or inherent, that often ran against their original purpose and gradually eroded the conditions of collective agency. Drawing on contemporary Guinean accounts, the study shows how political communication became increasingly one-directional, how leadership hardened into command, and how dissent was reinterpreted as ethical deviance rather than political disagreement.
By highlighting the tension between political formation and political domination, this thesis argues that Touré’s legacy cannot be reduced to either repression or idealism. Instead, it reveals an instructive experiment in revolutionary governance whose unresolved questions about unity, authority, and democracy continue to shape postcolonial political thought today
Metamaterials that Perform Computation Using Light
No full textRapid advancements in nanotechnology, coupled with the increasing demand for unconventional computing systems that are faster, more compact, and more energy-efficient than traditional classical computers, have sparked a surge of research interest in developing innovative light-based computing nanotechnologies. These technologies aim to leverage light’s inherent parallelism, analog mode of operation, and ultra-fast computing speeds enabled by light-speed propagation. In my dissertation, I present some of our research findings focused on light-based computing paradigms utilizing artificial photonic nanostructures known as metamaterials. These can be directly integrated into ultra-compact imaging systems for full-analog wave-based computations or into hybrid computing schemes that incorporate classical computers as optical computing hardware accelerators. This integration aims to enhance state-of-the-art digital processing for large-scale, real-world problems by executing components of computations as light-based operations, such as matrix multiplication, Fourier transforms, differentiation, and integration, which can be made passive, parallel, and instantaneous by using light.
Metamaterials—artificially engineered materials at sub-wavelength scales—exhibit, for our purposes, unconventional electromagnetic wave properties that enable efficient manipulation of light within highly miniaturized volumes. By manipulating the incident light waves, photonic metamaterials can produce an output electromagnetic wave profile proportional to a mathematical operation performed on the incident light wave, thereby functioning as analog optical computers. Nonlocal metasurfaces, which are two-dimensional metamaterials with angle-dependent electromagnetic responses, have recently garnered significant attention for their ability to implement arbitrary linear mathematical operations directly on incident electromagnetic wavefronts, eliminating the need for Fourier-transforming optical elements. This is achieved by engineering the angular-dependent transfer function of nonlocal metasurfaces to align with the desired operation kernel in Fourier space. Following this metamaterial design principle, operations such as differentiation, integration, and convolution have been optically demonstrated in ultra-compact, highly integrable, and easy-to-fabricate analog optical devices. While the designs proposed to date can implement a single specific mathematical operation, the potential to execute multiple operations with a single device has largely remained unexplored. As part of our research, I present a new multi-functional metasurface design strategy and demonstrate that optical analog computing for spatial differentiation and integration—useful for image processing operations like edge detection and blurring—can be achieved using a single multi-operation metasurface. This principle leverages the combination of nonlocal metasurface transmission responses to orthogonally polarized s-p plane waves, both of which arrive as components of the scattered electromagnetic fields that form the image. This results in the creation of two distinct effective isotropic Fourier filters for processing images based on the incident orthogonal x- or y-polarizations of light. The metasurface design is based on a silicon-on-glass photonic crystal slab featuring an amorphous silicon layer with etched holes placed on a glass substrate, while ensuring careful geometric x-y symmetry breaking of the metasurface unit cell. I present numerical results of multi-operation processing using the optimized metasurface designs on 1-D signals and a 2-D aperture image. Our results demonstrate, for the first time, that a single metasurface design can perform both high-pass and low-pass spatial Fourier filtering operations in both one and two dimensions with a large spatial bandwidth, thereby enabling the isotropic processing of two-dimensional images for high-quality edge detection and blurring based on this effect. Our research holds promise for profound applications in cutting-edge, highly miniaturized imaging systems such as LiDAR, automated medical microscopy, satellite imaging systems, computer vision, and other critical areas where high-throughput, rapid image processing is essential.
I also discuss the use of metamaterials as on-chip silicon photonics computing hardware accelerators, which can work synergistically with classical computers to realize photonic Ising machine platforms. Photonic Ising machines are unconventional computing mechanisms that encode Ising spin states and Ising Hamiltonians in various observable properties of light, such as phase, polarization, and intensity. Our Ising machine concept specifically belongs to a class of next-generation hybrid optical Ising machines that benefit from existing computing technology and advanced iterative algorithms, like Monte Carlo techniques, running on digital computers to reach exact Ising ground states or approach them for very large problems, and to solve several combinatorial optimization problems that are NP, NP-complete, or NP-hard and can be mapped as Ising problems. I describe our realization of a highly compact on-chip silicon photonics optical Ising machine platform using photonic inverse design to optimize the required metamaterial geometry and numerically demonstrate the operational principles for minimizing different spin graphs. Our Ising machine setup is based on a system of input and output optical waveguides connected to a metamaterial region with an engineered transmission matrix that encodes the Ising matrix of the spin graph to be emulated. A computer running a Monte Carlo algorithm, such as Metropolis or Simulated Annealing, iteratively updates the input binary phase combination (0 or π radians) of the light in each input waveguide - all of which are excited in the Ising machine platform simultaneously with equal amplitudes - such that the photodetectors in the output waveguides provide a net output intensity reading from all output waveguides, which the Ising machine uses to achieve an input phase combination that maximizes the net output intensity to a global maximum in the final step. This final input binary phase combination corresponds to the emulated spin ground state and represents the solution of the Ising machine