This thesis consists of two main parts. In the first part, we study a space of symbolic dynamical systems for countable discrete ICC groups and show that minimal proximal actions in that space are generic. This study leads to a characterization of countable discrete strongly amenable groups; a countable discrete group is strongly amenable if and only if it has no ICC quotients. In the second part, we show that a countable discrete group is...

Supplementary files for Chapter 2

The physics of transport of heat-carrying atomic vibrations in amorphous and semi-crystalline solids is a topic of fundamental interest. Diverse tools have been employed to study thermal transport in these materials, including cryogenic thermal conductivity measurements and various inelastic scattering tools. However, unambiguously identifying the damping mechanisms of few THz and smaller frequency excitations remains difficult owing to the lack of the experimental probes in the frequency band. As a result, debate has remained regarding...

Chapter 1 When coated with a polymer surface layer and suspended on 3-D textured glass electrodes, the hybrid combination of polymer and graphene yields sensitive chemiresistive vapor sensors. The expansion and contraction of the polymer layer when it absorbs/reacts with the VOCs, is proposed to produce tremendous train on the suspended graphene. Hence, when VOCs permeates into the polymer layer, sizable electrical resistive changes as folds and creases is induced in the graphene due to...

Part I: Mitigating the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (RMI) is critical for energy production in inertial confinement fusion. Suitable plasma models are required to study the hydrodynamic and electromagnetic interactions associated with the RMI in a conducting medium. First, a sequence of asymptotic expansions in several small parameters, as formal limits of the non-dissipative and non-resistive two-fluid plasma equations, leads to five simplified plasma/magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) systems. Each system is characterized by its own physical range of validity...

This thesis presents a mathematical framework to model trading of financial assets on an exchange. The interaction between agents on the exchange is modeled as the Nash equilibrium of a demand schedule auction. The submission of demand schedules in the auction is meant to proxy for the submission of limit and market orders on an exchange. Chapter 1 considers this auction in a one-period setting, highlighting the importance of noisy flow for obtaining a unique...

In order to change the world, technological advancements must be made affordable and available for the general public to use. In other words, we must be able to scale our inventions effectively. Silicon integrated circuits are crucial components in scaling electronic systems because they are mass producible and offer a phenomenal cost-to-complexity ratio. This thesis summarizes the author’s work on highly scalable sensor and array systems. It presents three high precision systems, that demonstrate how...

Minor update: removed references to `line_join` in HoloViews defaults.

Mammalian gastrointestinal tract is inhabited by trillions of microbes that, in number, amount to the total number of cells in the human body. These microbes, collectively known as microbiota, are found on the skin and in body cavities, and come in close contact with the host on mucosal surfaces. Here, pivotal host-microbe interactions likely take place because close proximity to the host enhances the uptake of microbial metabolites by the host and enables direct contact....

This thesis provides bounds on the performance of quantum error correcting codes when used for quantum communication and quantum key distribution. The first two chapters provide a bare-bones introduction to classical and quantum error correcting codes, respectively. The next four chapters present achievable rates for quantum codes in various scenarios. The final chapter is dedicated to an upper bound on the quantum channel capacity. Chapter 3 studies coding for adversarial noise using quantum list codes,...

This dataset contains main output files of the numerical experiments described in the main text.

This repository contains all files for the custom PCB design used in the second generation DHM Field Instrument as referenced in the PhD Thesis of Manuel Bedrossian. Please refer to the thesis text and appendices for more information.

Area MSTd is involved in the computation of heading direction from the focus of expansion (FOE) of the visual image. Our laboratory previously found that MSTd neurons adjust their focus tuning curves to compensate for shifts in the FOE produced by eye rotation (Bradley et al., 1996) as well as for changes in pursuit speed (Shenoy et al., 2002). The translation speed of an observer also affects the shift of the FOE. To investigate whether...

Paper 1: A mapping of the phase space onto itself with the same low order resonance structure as the 3/1 commensurability in the planar elliptic three-body prob­lem is derived. This mapping is approximately one thousand (1000) times faster than the usual method of numerically integrating the averaged equations of motion (as used by Schubart, Froeschlé and Scholl in their studies of the asteroid belt). This mapping exhibits some very surprising behavior that might provide the...

Curcusone C is a tricyclic diterpenoid natural product possessing potent anti-cancer activities as well as a structurally unusual 2,3,7,8-tetrahydroazulene-1,4-dione skeleton. Herein, we report our evolving synthetic efforts toward the divergent total syntheses of ent-curcusone C and several structural congeners, which commenced with a Suzuki coupling of the peripheral carbon-based rings. Whereas the boronate partner was constructed from cyclopentenone, the halide partner could be elaborated from (S)-perillaldehyde. The alcohol coupling product was next esterified, then subjected...

Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure

Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure

Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure

Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure

Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure

Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure

Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure

Atlas of Bacterial and Archaeal Cell Structure

General Relativity predicts that gravitational radiation is purely tensor polarized and thus, gravitational waves are composed of linear combinations of two transverse polarization modes, referred to as plus (+) and cross (×) tensor modes. However, alternate gravitational theories predict the existence of up to four additional vector and scalar longitudinal GW polarization modes. In this thesis, we develop a test of the gravitational wave (GW) polarization prediction of general relativity by searching for small admixtures...

There is currently a clear gap between control-theoretical results and the reality of robotic implementation, in the sense that it is very difficult to transfer analytical guarantees to practical ones. This is especially problematic when trying to design safety-critical systems where failure is not an option. While there is a vast body of work on safety and reliability in control theory, very little of it is actually used in practice where safety margins are typically...