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Guardians of the Steppe: Grassroots Activism, Deliberative Democracy, and the Fight for Cautious Resource Politics in Mongolia
No full textUsing Mongolia as a case study, this thesis explores how democracy can emerge
and endure in a non-Western context through deliberative democratic theory. Mongolia’s
traditions of communal governance, culture of deliberation, and dense social networks
create social capital that supports democratic processes, while challenging the notion that
strong top-down formal institutions are necessary for democracy. The thesis utilizes
qualitative process tracing to analyze the environmental grassroots Ongi River Movement
using the deliberative criteria of authenticity, inclusivity, and consequentiality.
The thesis examines the period from 2001 to the present, tracing the Movement’s
emergence and early deliberations at the start of the century, then analyzing its
consequences that continue to unfold today. This study highlights the potential and
constraints of participatory governance in Mongolia, contributing to a broader
understanding of how political culture and institutional development interact in non-
Western contexts. By rethinking Mongolia’s place in democratic theory, this thesis offers
new insights into democratic development beyond Western models.Extension Studie
Evaluating Migration of Human Monocytes in an Inflammatory Environment Mimicking Burn-Induced Inflammation in Blood Donor Samples
No full textIn the U.S., more than half a million people are hospitalized for burn wounds every year. These wounds can progress into serious and even fatal injuries due to the immune system’s defense against harmful pathogens with access to bodily tissues through the burn injury. This invasion into bodily tissue can lead to systemic inflammation. One of the by-products of this inflammation is the activation and migration of white blood cells, specifically monocytes, to the site of injury and/or infection to eliminate the microbes and protect the surrounding tissues. While relatively small, inactive monocytes can drastically increase their size in the case of activation via pathogenic infection. Although the general mechanisms are understood, there are significant components of monocyte activity that have not been clearly elucidated. However, it has been shown that these monocytes boast significant prognostic capabilities. The severity and potential outcome of patient injuries can be predicted with considerable accuracy using Monocyte Distribution Width (MDW), or monocyte anisocytosis, which is the difference in monocyte sizes within an individual. In this research, we investigate the activity and size distribution of monocytes under various conditions. It was found that, as expected, the trigger protein (SDF-1α) induced monocyte migration dependent on the concentration used. However, the inhibitor (AMD-3100) markedly reduced migration when used in conjunction with SDF-1α. Also, the activators lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and Pam3CysSerLys4 (PAM) were shown to increase MDW.Extension Studie
Optogenetic control and monitoring of ion transport in cells
No full textIon transport is a dynamic process that is important in signaling both between and within cells. Fluorescence-based measurements are well suited for investigations of ion transport due to their high sensitivity and high spatiotemporal resolution. Optogenetic actuators can locally perturb ion concentrations via combined optical and genetic targeting. Here we combine spectrally separate optogenetic control and monitoring to probe ion transport within cells. We apply these tools in neurons where ionic signals play many important roles across a wide range of space and time scales.
In Chapter 2 I investigate the effect on the intracellular pH of repeated neuronal stimulation with a blue-shifted optogenetic actuator, CheRiff, as measured with a red-shifted fluorescent pH sensor, pHoran4. We found that repeated CheRiff stimulation acidified neurons. The acidification was due to the channelrhodopsin CheRiff passing a proton current into the cell. To reduce this acidification, we characterized new channelrhodopsin variants with low proton permeability, and showed that they reduced the neuronal acidification and are viable alternatives for neuron stimulation.
In Chapter 3 I investigate diffusion of Ca2+ in dendrites, by combining a blue-shifted Ca2+ selective channelrhodopsin, CapChR2, with a red shifted fluorescent Ca2+ sensor, FR-GECO1c. Using patterned optical stimulation, we created small Ca2+ point sources in the dendrites of cultured neurons and imaged the diffusion of the Ca2+ ions along the dendrite. After the system reached steady-state characterized the length constants of the Ca2+ spread through the dendrites. We then did a paired measurement mapping the kinetic responses of the neuron cell body and dendrites to short wide-area Ca2+ perturbations. By combining this spatial and kinetic data, we estimated the effective diffusion coefficient for Ca2+ in dendrites. We then investigated the effects of Ca2+ efflux on Ca2+ spread and kinetics. We added a pharmacological blocker of NCX1 sodium-calcium exchanger and repeated the Ca2+ transport and homeostasis measurements. These experiments showed that the NCX1 exchanger had a larger effect on calcium handling in fine dendrite than near the cell body, an effect that could be explained by the difference in surface-to-volume ratio of these structures.
Finally, I discuss other optogenetic actuators and reporters that could be combined for control and monitoring of different signals of interest. I discuss the factors for choosing what tools to use together and how to ensure the proper functioning and interpretation. As more optogenetic actuators and reporters are created, there are ever more possibilities for probing important signaling pathways. However, it is also important to make sure that the molecular and optical tools are well understood and validated, as there can be artifacts which can affect cellular state and which may confound results, as seen in Chapter 2.Engineering and Applied Sciences - Applied Physic
Romeo, Juliet, and Cheetos
No full textTessa is finally able to talk to her best friend, Mia, again, which is great. The only issue is that Mia committed suicide a year ago, and the Mia that’s currently residing in Tessa’s head isn’t the same supportive friend Tessa remembers. Not to mention, the whole normal-people-don’t-have-dead-people’s-voices-in-their-heads thing.
Despite feeling crazy, Tessa is glad when Mia tries to help her navigate junior high, deal with her overprotective parents, and get a part in Romeo and Juliet. When Tessa has her first crush, starts to make friends, and gets asked to her first dance, Mia gets jealous and angry. Dark thoughts start to invade Tessa’s mind as Mia becomes harder and harder to control. Tessa deals with anxiety attacks, depression, therapy sessions, and the trauma of loss while she tries to rebuild her world and find a new sense of normal.Extension Studie
Identifying the driving factors for regenerative fibroblasts in the mouse digit tip
No full textComposite tissue regeneration is very limited in mammals; however, humans and mice can fully regenerate the distal tips of the digits following amputation. This process involves the formation of a blastema, a cellular structure that is the source of the regenerated tissue and is integral to successful regeneration. Proximal amputations beyond the nail do not form a blastema and result in fibrotic wound healing. This differential behavior makes the mouse digit tip an ideal model system to investigate the cellular and molecular factors driving each response and why complex regeneration is so limited in mammals. Chapter 1 is an overview of mouse digit fibrosis vs regeneration, discussing the roles of each cell type established in each distinct wound healing process in the digit. In particular, fibroblasts are a major contributor to the blastema and play an integral part in fibrosis; thus, they may be a cell population that drives the decision between fibrosis and regeneration.
My thesis focused on fibroblast subtypes and their role in fibrosis versus regeneration, with specific attention on the blastema enriched gene Mest. To understand Mest’s role in digit tip regeneration (Chapter 2), I further verified that it is not expressed in fibrotic tissue, indicating blastemal-specific expression, and found that Mest knock-out mice exhibited delayed bone regeneration due to an impaired neutrophil recruitment and clearance response. Additionally, I established that the locus could utilize an alternative promote to evade methylation-based transcriptional repression.
While this study further established Mest as a pro-regenerative factor, I aimed to identify additional candidate genes and functionally test them (Chapter 3). To achieve these goals, I performed single-cell sequencing of fibrosing digits and computationally compared them to blastemal tissue. From this, we were able to identify fibroblast subtypes and genes specific to fibrosis or regeneration. We then developed an AAV gene delivery technique to functionally assess our candidate genes in vivo, which successfully drove differing wound healing outcomes. Ultimately, my thesis work advances our understanding of fibroblast heterogeneity in digit wound healing and provides a robust framework for investigating and modulating molecular factors that govern fibrosis and regeneration.Biology, Molecular and Cellula
The Context-Aware Quantization Design Space: Unlocking Scalable Training and Inference for Large AI Models
No full textThe rapid development of large AI models capable of remarkable performance in a diverse array of complex tasks has inspired its widespread application and deployment, making the demand for scalable AI models that support fast training and inference increasingly intense. Model quantization has emerged as a critical and widely applied technique for reducing the computational and memory demands of training and inference of large deep learning models. Recently, advances in GPU tensor cores for acceleration of low-precision floating point computation have driven adoption of quantized training, in addition to quantization at inference time. In tandem, the emergence of new architectures like state space models as alternatives to transformers and quadratic attention demand a diversification of our understanding of quantization dynamics beyond ad-hoc, model-specific solutions. For a given model, dataset, and downstream task--the context of quantization--we are faced with a combinatorially large and complex design space, within which any choice can have drastic implications on the stability of quantized training and accuracy degradation at inference time. This thesis proposes advances towards a unified framework for structuring the problem space of quantization, evaluating and realizing the computational gains of quantization, and for exhaustively and comprehensively characterizing quantization in a context-aware manner. We define two design principles--systems performance and model performance--as foundational objectives for quantized optimization and inference, and propose evaluative metrics and diagnostic experiments for understanding quantization dynamics from every dimension for a wide distribution of data regimes. As a proof of concept of our framework, we conduct an empirical study of FP8 quantized training of the Mamba-2 state space model, revealing new insights into the impact of quantization on its numerical stability, gradient norm dynamics, temporal and layer-wise quantization error propagation, and catastrophic degradation phenomena.Computer Scienc
How to Grow a Bamboo House
No full textHawai’i stands at a crossroads. Natural disasters—from the 2023 wildfires on Maui to the 2018 Lower Puna lava flows and historic flooding on Kauai—have exposed the limitations of conventional construction methods in Hawaii’s volatile ecosystem. In a place where flash floods, drought, and eruptions strike without warning, reliance on conventional construction and imported materials has left thousands unhoused with no clear path toward recovery.
This thesis proposes living bamboo housing as a model for inhabiting Hawai’i’s unpredictable ecosystems. Bamboo, one of the fastest-growing and strongest biogenic materials, has been cultivated for construction for over a millennium. However, the opportunities of designing with living bamboo remain a largely unexplored but promising frontier. As bamboo grows, it bends to form new shapes, stiffening over time to retain its form and support structural loads. In a single growing season, new bamboo culms reach their full height, providing perpetual construction material that allows dwellings to expand over time. Its underground rhizome system provides a rigid yet non-invasive natural foundation, resilient to both drought and flood conditions, while benefiting local ecology through erosion control and moisture retention. By embracing these processes, living bamboo housing can evolve in response to both environmental changes and increasing housing demand.
Three proposals for living bamboo housing respond to unique disaster conditions across the islands: wildfires on Maui, flash flooding on Kauai, and volcanic eruptions on the Big Island. Together, these designs illustrate how living bamboo can grow and adapt in the face of disaster to safeguard the livelihoods and well-being of their inhabitants.Department of Architectur
Cultivating School and Community Connectedness to Empower Youth to Thrive
No full textWe face an epidemic of loneliness and a crisis in youth wellness. Reflective of challenges across the education sector, youth in Reading, Massachusetts face unprecedented levels of anxiety and depression, the impact of the Covid pandemic, and disconnection. Schools and communities are a crucial part of the solution. The heart of the strategic project I carried out as a doctoral resident in Reading Public Schools is to mitigate challenges through a multi-faceted focus on connectivity: strengthening connections among young people, with families, staff, and community partners.
This capstone illustrates the power of place-based collaborative action to cultivate school and community connectedness. Through strategic alliances with Reading Public Schools, the Reading Children’s Cabinet, the Reading Office of Equity and Social Justice, and the Reading Coalition for Prevention and Support, I developed and implemented a comprehensive initiative to cultivate connectedness and resilience through four major strategies:
● Elevate youth voice and agency to build a community of belonging through youth listening sessions at Reading Memorial High School to discuss students’ sense of belonging as members of Reading Public Schools and in the greater Reading community.
● Strengthen family and community engagement through a year-long event series with Phyllis Fagell, author of Middle School Superpowers, with concrete strategies and tactics to empower middle school students to thrive.
● Build capacity among staff for healthy, respectful relationships in the workplace – at school and in the broader community.
● Leverage an array of community partners to prioritize and coordinate youth mental health services as a community-wide strategy.
The capstone and strategic project it describes shed light on the powerful potential of public education in cultivating healthy interconnectedness. In a complex and evolving context, the school district serves as a vibrant hub of community engagement, illustrating the unique convening power of schools to build healthy relationships, connections, and find common ground – for young people and their communities to thrive.Educatio
Reading the Rasavāhinī: A Religious and Literary Reading of a Buddhist Narrative
No full textThis dissertation argues for the value of reading Buddhist narratives as literature. Specifically, it argues for the value of reading them as Literature—with a capital “L”—which is to say, for their artistry and also for their enduring relevance for readers across vast time and place. I suggest that reading Buddhist narratives, not just as religious texts but also as Literature, reveals their deepest valences and full range of intellectual and aesthetic complexity. Most importantly, I contend that it is by virtue of the very affordances of Literature that Buddhist narratives have the capacity to be ethically edifying, not just as didactic texts that convey clear ethical instructions to passive recipients, but as ethically formative exercises that engage readers and provoke introspection, reflection, and meta-reflection. This manner of engaging with Buddhist narratives is at odds with the way narrative has largely been read in the history of Buddhist studies. However, I contend that its value lies in its capacity to help readers see more in the texts, and it can help scholars better understand how religious narratives shape the moral lives of their readers.
This dissertation takes as a case study a Buddhist narrative anthology composed around the thirteenth century in Sri Lanka entitled Rasavāhinī. It demonstrates how the text both implicitly and explicitly communicates its literary aims and its status as Literature, and models the benefits and pleasures of reading it as it instructs us to read it; attentively, appreciatively, and receptive to the transformative emotions it promises to bring as a conveyer (vāhinī) of aestheticized emotion (rasa). My methodology entails a two-pronged approach. The first prong deploys the tools of close reading and sensitive reading in order to attend to the text’s form, literary strategies, and creative use of language. Shifting the focus of attention from the “moral at the end of the story” to its literary dimensions, I demonstrate the text’s surplus of meanings and its related capacity to engage readers in the active production of meaning. The second prong deploys the methods of ethical reading. By modeling a self-reflectively ethical reading, I show how Buddhist narratives cultivate and heuristically educate the moral lives of readers.
The introduction distinguishes between reading Buddhist narrative “as literature” (and between literature and Literature more broadly), versus reading it as purely doctrinal or propositional, or as a source of historical or social knowledge, as narratives have long been treated in Buddhist studies. Chapter One introduces the Rasavāhinī, the text that serves as a case study at the center of this dissertation, and explores some of the ways the text signals its literariness and instructs its audience to notice and enjoy its artistic expression. Chapter Two expands on the method of close reading, demonstrating the surplus of interpretive possibilities that emerge through a slow and sensory-focused reading that is attentive to the text’s formal features, as well as its creative use of language and literary devices. Chapter Three expands on the method of ethical reading, furthering the claim that the stories are not just morally instructive texts, but also moral exercises that provide opportunities for learning through direct, embodied cognition when they are engaged with as dynamic, open works by active and personally invested readers. In the conclusion I summarize the major arguments made in each chapter, reflect on some of the conclusions arrived at through my close and ethical readings, and propose new avenues for future scholarship on Buddhist narratives and their applications to ethics.Religion, Committee on the Study o
Common Threads: The Value of Threading Salons in South Asian Diaspora
No full textThis thesis explores how South Asian–owned and operated eyebrow threading salons function as critical sites of capital, culture, and community for South Asian women living in diasporic contexts. This study addresses a lack of academic attention to personal care businesses as spaces of cultural, social, and economic value. It centers around the question: How do eyebrow threading salons serve as cultural, economic, and social infrastructure among South Asian diasporic communities? Using Jackson Heights, Queens, as a case study, I employ a mixed-methods approach including interviews and community surveys, participant observation, and spatial analysis. This study suggests that these salons serve not only as low-barrier pathways to entrepreneurship and employment, but also as informal hubs of social support and cultural identity formation. This project contributes to planning and immigrant labor scholarship by centering the everyday spaces that sustain women’s lives and livelihoods through intimate, affective, and often undervalued forms of work.Department of Urban Planning and Desig