The formalism behind quantum field theory requires one to construct physical models satisfying a number of technical precepts known as Wightman axioms. In the 1970's it was discovered that the Wightman axioms can be recast into a more malleable form known as the Osterwalder-Schrader axioms. The...

Annually, about 93,000 nursing home (NH) residents die in the U.S. due to adverse drug events (ADEs), though many of them are preventable. ADEs are medication-induced injuries such as a drop in blood pressure or blood glucose, bleeding and falls. My dissertation can help identify causes of ADEs and...

Hospital personnel are routinely tasked with implementing innovations. However, little is known what activities they engage in during implementation efforts. In my dissertation, I used a two-year qualitative dataset from a group of Iowa hospitals implementing patient safety tools and identified four...

Ireland and Latin America share a close (and under-examined) relationship, inasmuch as both are predominantly Catholic, post-colonial, hybrid populations that have often intermixed over the centuries. In particular, both populations engage intimately with the dead as repositories of forgotten...

The prevalence of fat-related health problems such as obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) in the past decades has impacted millions of lives worldwide. Separating fat and water signals in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) serves as a great tool for finding the roles of fat in identifying potential...

The dissertation examines international hotels in Ghana to understand the workplace experience of Ghanaian employees, who have to learn new global cultural conduct standards. The ethnographic data show the clash between the Ghanaian and the global cultural standards to be a major source of workers’...

My dissertation uses Bakers Yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to study a double strand break repair pathway called Break- Induced Replication (BIR). This pathway is unusual because it is highly mutagenic and causes genomic rearrangements that can lead to cancer. My work demonstrates that BIR...

Stroke is the 5th leading cause of death in the United States with no preventative therapies available. Compelling evidence suggests that mitochondria, a sub-cellular organelle important for cellular energy production, may provide a new therapeutic target. Inhibiting fission of mitochondria prevents...

Proton-transfer reactions are one of the most fundamental chemical reactions; however, the chemical dynamics of these processes remain elusive due to the difficulty of modeling these reactions. This thesis highlights the work of establishing an experimental model of a ground-electronic-state proton...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease in which the cells of our own body target and attack the brain and spinal cord leading to disability and paralysis. My dissertation focuses on studying the role of an important cell of the immune system, the CD8 T-cell, in MS. Using a novel experimental system, I...

My dissertation is a qualitative exploration of untellable tales of parenthood. I offer insight into what the U.S. Master Narrative of parenthood is, the general themes that make a tale of parenthood untellable, and how parents construct and maintain an identity as a “good parent” in the face of...

Cyclic siloxanes are chemicals present in personal care products such as antiperspirants and hair conditioners. Past research of the ecological and health consequences of these chemicals has neglected the possibility of reactions that lead to airborne silicon nanoparticles. The goal of this thesis...

The Parisian suburbs have undergone radical transformation through the course of the past 150 years. From the rural landscape that characterized the area, to the heavily populated areas they have become after the Second World War, I analyze a series of novels belonging to popular literature, and...

Unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are a serious health and economic issue facing the US and Iowa. Public health initiatives have recommended promoting responsible sexual behavior (RSB) as a means to reduce the risk of an unplanned pregnancy and STIs. However, the...

This study aims to assess anxiety during the perinatal period, assessing participants during pregnancy and the postpartum period. At each time point, participants complete a structured clinical interview over current anxiety and mood symptoms as well as an online questionnaire. Online questionnaires...

Neurons of the cerebral cortex must precisely wire together to allow the flow of information that mediates cognition. Aberrations in the development of neural circuits contribute to the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders. My dissertation focuses on a family of neuronal cell adhesion...

Numerical optimization is a fundamental and necessary step in the simulation of many real world processes in the sciences, physics, engineering, and economics. Unfortunately, however, the sequential nature of the optimization process often acts as one of the greatest bottlenecks to achieving real...

Radon exposure has been found to be associated with an increased risk of lung cancer. The assessment of this exposure may be susceptible to measurement error, which can bias risk estimates. Our proposed method uses Bayesian techniques to assess such a relationship, while correcting for measurement...

There is a concern that many students lack the skills required for STEM careers. STEM students who are less prepared are more likely to switch majors and dropout of college. Therefore, an accurate gauge of students’ readiness for STEM coursework is needed. In addition to developing a STEM readiness...

My dissertation demonstrates that Prud’hon’s embrace of classicism from 1770 to 1808 is a transformative direction that reflects the cultural developments of the period. The significance of political changes from the ancien régime through the Revolution and into the Empire had a considerable impact...

Psychosocial problems (e.g., deficits in social communication and interpersonal interaction) are exceedingly common following traumatic brain injury, and are among the major predictors of long-term outcome. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying these issues. In my dissertation I...

Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) are composed of silicon and oxygen, have 3 nanometer pores, and >100 nm diameters. MSNs of two different pore structures – MCM-41: straight, parallel pores; and WO: interconnected, disordered pores – were synthesized for drug delivery (drug transportation to...

My dissertation focuses on organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and photovoltaic cells. OLEDs are used in many commercial displays, and solar cells are one of the most promising technologies for renewable energy production. In particular my work has focused on the question how magnetic fields...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative movement disorder that can become life threatening. PD is caused by the selective cell death of the dopamine (DA)-containing neurons, however, the cause of this cell death is unknown. The aim of my thesis is to determine important contributors to this...

The human brain is excellent at understanding speech even though it is actually a very complicated process. Speech perception is challenging because each person we come in contact with speaks slightly differently. How are we so successful? We are able to learn how men and women tend to pronounce...

The purpose of this study is to describe how students who care for a person with a disability or chronic illness cope with the demands of both roles. The way students cope with stress has an impact on overall health, which has an impact on learning, development, and retention. The number of student...

Genetic heart diseases can cause sudden death. Individuals diagnosed with a genetic heart disease are responsible for communicating the inherited risk to their relatives. However, only half of at-risk relatives are aware of their risk. Improving genetic risk communication in families of individuals...

In cancer care, not all patients receive standard guideline-recommended treatments given the uncertainty of the treatments as to the clinical benefits and harms. Especially for elderly patients who commonly encounter co-existing conditions, physicians might choose non-standard treatments. However...

Safaricom’s M-Pesa, Kenya’s leading mobile money service has become the most recognizable symbol of mobile money in the world. Using interviews, this research examined the role of mobile operators and the value of mobile money in people’s lives. Findings showed mobile money has improved livelihoods...

The change from traditional, face-to-face Spanish courses to a flipped format revealed that students are unsure how to shift their study practices from reliance on the instructor to self-regulated learning. My study investigates how students construct meaning from their out-of-class resources and...

Policy feedback theory argues that policies shape the public’s attitudes and political behavior. Research in this field typically assumes that all citizens respond to policy in the same way. But, I argue instead that policy’s effects differ across various racial and ethnic groups. In my dissertation...

We consider the Dirichlet problem of all energy sub-critical focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation on exterior domains in dimension three. We show that the solution is global well-posed and scatters. We also prove the non-squeezing properties of all mass subcritical Hartree equations on dimension...

Team norms are the most frequently argued mechanism of how teams as a system can regulate member’s behaviors. Despite such importance, issues related to how norms are enforced have received few attentions. My dissertation looks at team norm enforcement from a social network perspective by...

The suspected elevated incidence of stillbirths in Iowa, and within the same family, was identified as a concern by the Iowa Registry for Congenital and Inherited Disorders. We developed a Poisson process model to describe the point pattern corresponding to the residential addresses of the mother...

This dissertation aims to present cultural productions in both traditional media and social media in contemporary Chinese society. Specifically, I juxtapose traditional media, reality television and emerging new media, social network sites, to systematically examine cultural production via reality...