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Dear Father: A Memoir on Love, Family, and a Complicated Paternity
No full textThe epistolary form provides a unique way for the author to shorten the narrative distance by creating a level of intimacy with the reader that one can’t quite achieve with other forms. By using this form, the author allows the audience to peer into the world they are painting in a such a way that removes the veil of distance and invites the reader to fully submerse themselves within the text, the subtext, and the story itself. Dear Father addresses a complex relationship between a daughter and her adoptive father, while using the epistolary form to create a certain intimacy that would be difficult to achieve otherwise.Extension Studie
Mania in Skamania
No full textMania in Skamania follows Colt Easton, a vagabond and bibliophile, whose survival skills pull him into the hunt for a missing game warden. What begins as a search and rescue mission through the wilderness unfolds into an investigation that uncovers poachers, corrupt public officials, and a conspiracy to take public land. As the mystery expands beyond one man’s disappearance, Colt is caught between his instinct for solitude and a growing obligation to pursue justice.Extension Studie
The Future as Warning: Narrative Voice and Literary Form in Modern Dystopian Novels
No full textSince modern dystopian fiction appeared in the wake of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, texts in the genre have warned against the dreadful consequences that could result from current sociopolitical trends and have sought to intervene in the present to prevent the manifestation of nightmarish futures. During this time, Anglophone dystopian novels have frequently eschewed the transparent first- and third-person narrators that dominate both realist literary fiction and genre fiction, instead favoring conspicuous and estranging voices. Putting narrative theory in dialogue with dystopian scholarship, “The Future as Warning” investigates this under-researched phenomenon, exploring the relationship between narratorial form, thematic content, and ideological messaging in dystopian fiction. Analyzing texts by American, British, and Canadian writers, as well as one influential Russian, this dissertation examines four narratorial forms that recur across twentieth- and twenty-first-century dystopian novels: the plural first-person we-voice, narration in an invented future version of English, the diary conceit, and the found-document conceit.Englis
Infinite root systems in algebra and geometry
Get PDFGiven a root system, we study sets of roots, called biclosed sets, introduced by Matthew Dyer to generalize the Kazhdan-Lusztig conjecture. Biclosed sets generalize the notion of a set of positive roots.
Most of their properties are standard for finite root systems and completely conjectural for infinite root systems. We prove several conjectures of Dyer about biclosed sets for affine root systems. In particular, we show that they form a lattice under containment order and coincide with the initial sections of reflection orders. Using those results, we apply biclosed sets to the study of torsion classes in Calabi-Yau categories. In particular, we show that biclosed sets give rise to generalized stability conditions on the representation category of an affine preprojective algebra and coincide with the restriction of torsion classes to the subcategory of spherical objects. In the case of type , biclosed sets case admit an explicit combinatorial model which can be interpreted (conjecturally) in terms of homological mirror symmetry; we use this model to parametrize the spherical objects of the representation category. We further use these result to give the first construction of Cambrian lattices for affine-type cluster algebras, giving a Coxeter-theoretic description of the exchange graph of the cluster algebra.
We then turn to applications of biclosed sets in the Bruhat order on a Coxeter group, giving the first proof of EL-shellability not influenced by Hecke algebras, a generalization of the Gelfand-Serganova theorem on Coxeter matroids to infinite Coxeter groups, and a description of the faces of Bruhat interval polytopes. We also prove the broadest known case of the combinatorial invariance conjecture for Kazhdan--Lusztig -polynomials in the symmetric group, and prove a related conjecture of Google DeepMind and Geordie Williamson in the case of lower intervals in the symmetric group.Mathematic
Clinician-Client Alignment and Collaboration in Youth Psychotherapy
No full textDespite considerable progress in youth mental health research, experts have continued to call for efforts to enhance the effectiveness and acceptability of youth psychotherapy. These efforts may be enhanced by examinations of methods, such as shared decision-making (SDM), that are designed to increase clinician-client alignment and collaboration in youth psychotherapy. Transdiagnostic youth psychotherapies, such as the Modular Approach to Therapy for Children with Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, or Conduct Problems (MATCH), may be particularly strong candidates for these methods, as they involve complex decision-making processes that can influence treatment plans and outcomes. To this end, this dissertation includes a collection of studies that are positioned to advance our understanding of the role of clinician-client alignment and collaboration in youth psychotherapy, with a focus on MATCH. In the first study, I explored SDM as a tool for navigating caregiver-youth-clinician discrepancies in the selection of youth psychotherapy targets, which can serve as a barrier to clinical decision-making, as well as building inclusive transdiagnostic treatment plans that integrate the unique perspectives of clinicians, caregivers, and youths. In the second study, I extended this focus on clinician-client alignment in the selection of youth psychotherapy targets to clinician-client alignment in the selection of an initial MATCH treatment protocol. Specifically, I examined measure-based clinician-client alignment—that is, the extent to which a clinician selected a treatment option that aligned with the “best-fit” for a given youth client, based on the information shared by the youth and their caregiver in surveys—as a predictor of caregiver-reported and youth-reported severity ratings of youth symptoms and psychotherapy top problems across treatment. Overall, improvements in these outcomes were found to be greater when the clinician-selected MATCH protocol aligned with the best-fit protocol of at least one of the clients (i.e., caregiver client and/or youth client), compared to when the clinician-selected MATCH protocol did not align with the best-fit protocol of either client. Finally, in the third study, I complemented this work on measure-based clinician-client alignment with that focusing on a second form of clinician-client alignment in youth psychotherapy: interaction-based. Specifically, I examined interaction-based clinician-client alignment and collaboration—that is, the extent to which a clinician includes clients in decision-making processes during sessions—within the context of MATCH. First, I conducted a comprehensive scoping review of measures designed to capture SDM elements in healthcare and used this information to develop, apply, evaluate, and extract preliminary data from an observational coding system of interaction-based clinician-client collaboration in 222 audio-recorded MATCH sessions. Trained coders were found to achieve high levels of interrater reliability, and we identified challenges in assessing the construct validity of this measure. Overall, clinicians were observed to use at least one SDM element in most sessions with both youth and caregiver clients but to a minimal level. Additionally, clinicians were found to apply SDM elements to a greater extent with caregiver, compared to youth, clients, despite more frequently using SDM elements with youth, relative to caregiver, clients. Taken together, this work is positioned to advance our understanding of how clinicians approach decision-making in youth psychotherapy, as well as how clinicians can leverage multiple forms of clinician-client alignment and collaboration to cultivate more inclusive and responsive approaches to care. This collection of studies has the potential to inform future research, such as that examining the extent to which clinician use of SDM may impact youth psychotherapy outcomes and the potential therapeutic benefits of SDM-focused training for clinicians.Psycholog
Murder City: Crime, Crisis, and Community in Post-Industrial America
No full textThis dissertation explores the relationship between crime control and community activism in Detroit, Michigan from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s. It does so by investigating how city officials and residents thought about, debated, and acted against the most pressing symptoms of the late twentieth century urban crisis. I ask how anti-crime organizing emerged and evolved, and how that evolution shaped and was shaped by the national and local politics of crime-fighting. How urban residents responded to the problems they faced reveals the ways in which metropolitan life and politics transformed during the last three decades of the century and how the politics of crime control was emblematic of that transformation.
Struggles over safety and security were part of a nexus of ideas, policies, and social movements around assessing and improving urban life in a period of punitive state-building and social crisis. This dissertation demonstrates that anti-crime activism became a significant force in urban crime control. A neighborhood-based struggle for safety and security took place, resulting in the formation of coalitions of urban residents who demanded and sought solutions to escalating levels of violence and disorder. Anti-crime activists, the organizations they created, and the government officials they wrestled with for power played a crucial role in the public-private partnership-driven shape of crime control and urban governance that came to dominate American cities during the late twentieth century. In tracking the history of urban anti-crime activism, this dissertation reveals how police reform and crime control became one of the primary battlegrounds for politics, protest, and policymaking in American cities during the late twentieth century.Histor
Cell types of interoception and their response to acute injury
Get PDFInteroception is the ability of an organism to sense and regulate its internal states. Just as external sensory organs transduce environmental cues of various modalities, specialized cells are responsible for monitoring internal conditions within the body. However, unlike our exteroceptive abilities, the sensory mechanisms and circuits that underlie interoception are not well characterized and remain less understood.
Cells that comprise the sensory tissues important for interoception are highly specialized and express unique proteins that confer their ability to perform their specific function. Single-cell RNA (scRNA) sequencing provides a snapshot of the transcriptome of individual cells and provides a comprehensive and unbiased approach to interrogating molecular diversity that enables transduction and transmission of internal status. To gain a better understanding of the molecular diversity that permits interoception, I have worked on multiple projects atlasing interoceptive sites. The first site assayed mixed primary and higher-order sensory neurons of the Area Postrema, an anatomically privileged brain region that is responsible for conveying the sense of visceral malaise. The second site includes enteroendocrine cells (EECs) - primary sensory cells of the gut responsible for communicating nutrient status in the digestive tract. Collaborative work on these projects highlights the advantage single-cell transcriptomics offers to the facilitation of scientific discovery.
One major body-to-brain connection that has benefited from cell-type analysis in recent years is the vagus nerve. In the mouse, the vagus nerve is fused with the glossopharyngeal nerve. Afferents of these cranial nerves (CN IX and X) serve a wide array of physiological functions, helping establish tonic control of breathing, nutrient intake, blood pressure maintenance, and more. The cell bodies of CN IX and X reside in the nodose, petrosal, and jugular ganglia (NPJg)
and are diverse in their transcriptomic landscapes. However, mapping the transcriptionally defined identity of a neuron to its physiological role has proven difficult. My thesis work combines the anatomy and physiology of interoception with single-cell transcriptomics, focusing on adding more biological context to NPJg scRNA data. Using single-nucleus RNA sequencing, we provide the first detailed molecular characterization of the response to acute axotomy in the NPJg. We observe that a common transcriptional program is activated in response to injury. We further investigate vagal subtypes based on transcriptomic profiles and their branch contributions, offering new insights into the relationship between molecular identity and the complex branching anatomy of the vagus and glossopharyngeal nerves.Biological and Biomedical Science
Power and Enterprise
Get PDFThis thesis examines the interplay between State Power and Multinational Enterprise behavior at the intersection of International Relations and International Business. Adopting a Realist framework emphasizing anarchy, security, and power competition, integrated with Dunning’s OLI paradigm (ownership, location, and internalization advantages), it addresses the question: How do the observed actions of multinational enterprises challenge or reinforce prevailing theories in International Relations and International Business, and under what conditions does an integrated Realist–OLI mechanism best explain outcomes? Using a qualitative multiple case study design, the analysis draws on historical and contemporary examples—the Dutch East India Company, United Fruit Company, Huawei, and Emirates Airlines—to explore coproduced outcomes through theoretical triangulation, chronological narratives, and cross-case synthesis.
Findings reveal patterns of convergence, such as state-corporate symbiosis and control of strategic chokepoints, enabling mutual gains in power and profit, alongside divergences like asymmetric time horizons and moral hazards that expose tensions in agency and logic. These dynamics highlight Multinational Enterprises as pivotal actors in geopolitical arenas, blurring state-firm boundaries and fostering institutional innovations like charters and compliance architectures.
This thesis contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship by refining a hybrid framework while reflecting on the evolution of sovereignty in a fragmenting world order.Extension Studie
T cell evolution in the blood and organs during acute graft-versus-host disease
Get PDFHematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) can be curative for a variety of diseases, including hematologic malignancies, immunodeficiencies, and bone marrow failure syndromes. Graft-Versus-Host Disease (GVHD) remains one of the deadliest complications of HSCT. Even with the use of current GVHD prophylaxis regimens, which are broadly acting, non-targeted agents, GVHD still occurs in 50-80% of allogeneic transplant recipients. There is a need for more selective therapies to prevent GVHD while still preserving the protective effects of the immune system. T cells are the main instigators of acute GVHD (aGVHD), given that their removal ameliorates this disease. However, their removal does not decrease transplant mortality, due to diminished engraftment, increased relapse, and higher risks of infection. Considering the essential protective effects of T cells as well as their role in GVHD, better understanding and targeting of alloreactive T cells while preserving non-pathogenic T cells will be important for the future of HSCT.
Chapter two describes our investigations into T cell programming changes that occur in the liver and lungs during aGVHD in non-human primates (NHP) and identified organ-specific gene expression programs specific to the lung and liver. We demonstrated how these programs developed through clonal expansion of the T cells within the organ-microenvironment in an antigen-independent manner. These discoveries laid a foundation for better targeted and possible organ-specific treatment development for aGVHD in the future.
Chapter three describes our investigation of candidate GVHD-modifying gene edits in a xenogeneic model of aGVHD, using CRISPR/Cas9-edited human T cells transplanted into immunodeficient (NSG) mice. We edited target genes that were implicated in aGVHD T cell pathogenesis and evaluated how their deletion affected aGVHD development in the model. We focused on RGS1 for its role in aGVHD development, with results suggesting that knocking out RGS1 could decrease aGVHD.
Chapter four describes our evaluation of the differences in T cell reconstitution after clinical HSCT in two cohorts of patients treated with distinct GVHD prophylaxis regimens: tacrolimus and methotrexate (Tac/MTX) compared to post-transplant cyclophosphamide, tacrolimus and MMF (PT-Cy). Additionally, we evaluated the differences in T cell gene expression programs when patients developed aGVHD in the two cohorts. We found evidence for wholesale T cell depletion with PT-Cy, resulting in long term deficits in TCR diversity, relative enriched contributions of host-derived cells, and prolonged deficits in naïve T cells compared to patients receiving Tac/MTX. T cell subsets in patients who developed aGVHD in either cohort demonstrated distinct immune activation patterns.
The data presented in this thesis evaluate T cell reconstitution in the blood and organs of two model systems, mice and NHP, as well as human clinical trial samples, to further understand how T cells evolve throughout HSCT and the development of aGVHD. These discoveries have implications for the efficacy and toxicity of current aGVHD prophylaxis regimens, as well as for developing aGVHD prevention and treatment using targeted agents in the future.Immunolog
Mechanism of replisome-mediated parental histone inheritance
No full textInheritance of histones from parental DNA during DNA replication is important for the maintenance of epigenetic information and chromatin assembly. Decades of studies have demonstrated that parental histones are symmetrically segregated to the two newly synthesized daughter DNA strands. However, the mechanism(s) by which parental histones are inherited in coordination with DNA replication remain unclear. In my Ph.D. thesis, I use an inducible heterochromatin domain in Schizosaccharomyces pombe as a model system to study the requirement of a replisome-associated histone chaperone network for epigenetic maintenance of heterochromatin. Using this system, I demonstrated that several previously reported replisome-associated histone binding proteins and the histone chaperone FACT are required for epigenetic inheritance of heterochromatin. In addition, I discovered that epigenetic maintenance of heterochromatin requires the full fork protection complex consisting of Swi1, Swi3 and Mrc1 proteins. In particular, I showed that the non-essential DNA checkpoint factor Mrc1 is required for epigenetic inheritance through a newly identified conserved histone binding activity. Through collaborations examining the parental histone occupancy at newly synthesized DNA, we discovered that mutations in the Mrc1 histone-binding domain disrupt parental histone transfer to both the leading and lagging DNA strands. Using AlphaFold predictions, I found that the Mrc1 histone-binding domain preferentially locates at the center of the replication fork, suggesting that Mrc1 acts as a parental histone distribution site in the replisome.
With additional AlphaFold predictions, I identified multiple histone-binding domains and FACT-binding domains in the replisome. Several subcomplexes containing FACT and histones are predicted to form through these interaction interfaces. Genetic and biochemical experiments further confirmed that these newly identified interaction interfaces are required for heterochromatin maintenance. Collectively, these data led me to propose a model by which parental histones are captured by the FACT complex from the partially disassembled nucleosome induced by the replicative helicase and then inherited through multiple histone transfer intermediate sites at the replication fork.
My thesis work provides a mechanistic framework for studying the dynamics of parental histone inheritance at the replication fork. Future studies are needed to validate the presence of all parental histone transfer intermediate sites at the replication fork, determine the order of parental histone movements, and investigate the role of replisome-mediated parental histone inheritance in the development of multicellular organisms.Biological and Biomedical Science