This dissertation presents an ethnographic exploration of the experiences of nontrans women professionals of color employed at U.S. medical schools, focusing on the intersectionality of gender and race and its influence on emotional labor. By conducting qualitative interviews, this research seeks to elucidate the multifaceted nature of emotional labor within the context of medical school environments and shed light on the participants' perceptions of their roles. The study's objective is to comprehend how the convergence of gender and race shapes the emotional labor of women professionals of color in medical schools, examining the intricacies of their experiences and the impact of these experiences on the broader mission of diversity, equity, and inclusion within these institutions. Thirteen women professionals of color were interviewed, encompassing various organizational positions and racial/ethnic backgrounds, to capture a range of perspectives. The findings underscore the integral role that emotional labor plays in the daily tasks and responsibilities of the women professionals interviewed. The participants' contributions to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within their respective medical schools were intricately intertwined with their emotional labor. Moreover, the data analysis revealed nuances that cut across both organizational positions and racial/ethnic identities, offering a deeper understanding of the distinct challenges faced by these professionals. A significant divergence was identified between groups with Black and Middle Eastern participants, as they reported experiencing racialized emotions in their roles. This aligns with existing scholarship on racialized emotions and supports the notion that the emotional labor of women professionals of color cannot be detached from the racial dynamics within medical institutions (Wingfield; Bonilla-Silva). Furthermore, the study illuminates the participants' agency in managing emotional labor. They exhibited self-awareness and adeptly performed their gender and race roles to navigate through the gendered and racialized landscape of medicine. Additionally, the importance of finding community emerged as a vital coping strategy, as these professionals leveraged collective support to overcome the challenges inherent in their roles. In summary, this ethnographic study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on emotional labor, gender, and race within organizational contexts, with a specific focus on U.S. medical schools. The findings emphasize the intricate interplay of emotional labor and diversity initiatives, while also highlighting the agency of nontrans women professionals of color as they negotiate their roles in a complex and dynamic environment.

Despite their prevalent use, online surveys are vulnerable to data quality problems that may be attributed to several factors, including respondent induced measurement errors that cause discrepancies between respondent attributes and their responses. This research explores how a respondent’s response generation data manifests in their human computer interaction (HCI) device usage; and how these fine-grained HCI data may be used to identify poor-quality responses in online surveys. The larger goal of this research is to establish a structured set of guidelines to address the presence, impact, and appropriate mitigation for poor-quality survey responses. To this end, this dissertation provides a framework that utilizes individual characteristics, survey characteristics, as well as other external factors to determine one's response generation process and consequently the usefulness of that response.This dissertation establishes the prevalence of poor-quality responses in survey research and examines how behavioral differences between respondents exhibiting previously known undesirable behaviors may be used to detect poor-quality responses. ‘Essay One’ examines the presence of poor quality data among professional survey respondents and how HCI based behavioral data can be used to identify them. ‘Essay Two’ examines the same problem among another common participant pool, university students. ‘Essay Three’ alleviates typical Type I concerns in ‘Essay One’ and ‘Essay Two’ by examining whether specific undesirable behaviors exhibited by respondents while answering a question may be captured using appropriate metrics. The overall results obtained suggest that behavioral differences during the response generation process may be captured through HCI devices to create appropriate metrics that identify poor quality responses.

Ionizing radiation is the collection of particles including photons, electrons, protons, andneutrons which have sufficient kinetic energy to remove bound electrons from an atomic nucleus. Thus, radiation effects can play a significant role in degrading the resiliency of technologies for a variety of applications, including those central to nuclear energy production and space travel. Radiation in these environments can be both acutely and chronically harmful to both humans and electronic and optical systems, hence the need for appropriate design of radiation protection measures and radiation resistance or hardness. In general, the three tenets of radiation protection are time, distance, and shielding. For many of these cutting-edge applications like space colonization and nuclear power generation via fission and fusion, the time within the radiation environment cannot be reduced nor the distance from the source increased, leaving radiation shielding as the primary method of exposure mitigation. The present work details and demonstrates a synergistic approach to radiation shielding design and implementation, focusing on the computation-based design of additively manufacturable composite radiation shielding materials. Monte Carlo simulations explore the shielding design space and inform optimization algorithms. The materials selected for these simulations are additively manufacturable via fused deposition modeling (FDM) into homogeneous and layered composite structures, the performance of which has been experimentally validated. Four publications are provided in the work (Chapters 4 – 7 respectively), in which the principles of this design approach have been demonstrated to address a range of radiation environments and shield design classes. The works are each presented with an assessment of their 16 contextual rationale and, when appropriate, a summary of subsequent follow-on efforts to extend the results and impact obtained beyond that of the original works. The first publication explored the effect of Cu loading on the radiation shielding performance of additively manufacturable homogeneous particle-loaded composites against monochromatic gamma and electron irradiation using GEANT4 Monte Carlo radiation transport code. Experimental validation of the GEANT4 simulations was performed for FDM printed Culoaded, Fe-loaded, and BaSO4-loaded composites. For gamma radiation between 0.1 and 15 MeV, shielding performance was essentially independent of composition because of the similarity of the mass attenuation coefficients of copper and PLA in that energy range and because the shield thicknesses investigated were less than the gamma mean free paths at each energy for each material. In contrast, for monochromatic electron radiation, the optimum composition was found to be dependent on both energy and shield areal density. This dependence was determined to correspond to the continuous slowing down approximation (CSDA) range for electrons, with pure Cu being optimal when the shield areal density is less than the CSDA range, and PLA with <10 wt.% Cu being optimal when the areal density is greater than the CSDA range. The second publication presented a material replacement case study. The total ionizing dose (TID) transmissivity of additively manufacturable homogeneous Cu-PLA composites was compared against 1 g/cm2 of aluminum (a prototypical radiation shielding for CubeSats in low earth orbit (LEO)) in the LEO trapped electron radiation environment. An optimization algorithm identified the required composite thickness to match the TID transmissivity of 1 g/cm2 of aluminum for each composite composition (increments of 10 wt.% Cu) and monoenergetic electron energy (0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 1, 2, 5 and 10 MeV). For all compositions except for pure PLA (0 17 wt.% Cu), there was at least a 60% shield mass reduction while achieving the same TID performance as 1 g/cm2 of aluminum, when the average mass reduction weighted by the LEO spectrum was calculated. A 10 wt.% Cu-loaded PLA homogeneous composite provided the same shielding effectiveness as 1 g/cm2 of Al while being 65% lighter and 24% thinner. Further volume reduction with similar mass improvements were achievable with higher Cu loaded compositions. The third publication demonstrated a simulation-based investigation of sensitive parameters for two-phase, multilayered radiation shielding against gamma and electron radiation. Similar to results of the first publication, gamma shielding is generally insensitive to number of layers, layer ordering, high-Z layer fraction, mean composition, and areal density compared to homogeneous compositions in the 0.1 to 10 MeV energy range. Experimental irradiation using a 60Co radioisotope source confirmed the gamma performance of the homogeneous composites and lack of improvement or reduction in performance from a layered composite shield. The sparce experimental results were used to reconstruct the most probable true center location of the gamma source. These results were used to determine the intrinsic mass attenuation coefficients of homogeneous composites at a mean gamma energy of 1.25 MeV. For monoenergetic electron radiation, an additively manufacturable hierarchical composite radiation shield provided the best TID reduction; 50 – 66% more than a homogeneous composite shield of identical composition. The optimum structure consisted of two layers, a PLA layer facing the incident radiation and an 83 wt.% Cu-loaded PLA layer behind, the latter being 0.3 of the entire shield thickness, resulting in a mean composition of 50 wt.% Cu. An areal density greater than or equal to 3x the CSDA range at the incident electron energy was required to observe significant performance enhancement with layered shielding. 18 The fourth and final publication was a culmination of all previous publications. It centered on simulation-based design of additively manufacturable radiation shielding consisting of 10 equal areal density layers of three possible materials, PLA, B4C-PLA, and CuPLA, for the deuteriumtritium fusion neutron (14 MeV) environment. An initial random search of the layer ordering– composition parameter space led to the selection of a compositional family with low yet largely varying TID transmissivity, depending on configuration. The TID transmissivity for every shield configuration within the compositional family consisting of 6 layers of PLA, 2 layers of B4C-PLA, and 2 layers of CuPLA (77.4 wt.% PLA, 16.6 wt.% Cu, and 6.0 wt.% B4C) was measured via simulation. A novel design parameter, Z-Grading Degree (?), which expresses how monotonically increasing (+) or decreasing (–) a shield configuration is, was found to correlate negatively with dose transmissivity. Further, position of the rear-most B4C-PLA layer was found to strongly correlate (in the negative sense) with dose transmissivity, i.e., the further back the B4C-PLA layer was within the shield, the more effective the shield was at reducing the transmitted total ionizing dose from 14 MeV neutron irradiation. These findings were confirmed with experimental irradiation testing using an uncollimated deuterium-tritium fusion neutron source. Anisotropies in the neutron flux data were used to confirm the spatial extent of the source and allowed for a novel reconstruction of its most probable true center location.

Diffuse traumatic brain injury (TBI) leads to complex pathophysiological processes that result in clinical symptoms. Neuroinflammation and associated microglia activation are hallmark pathophysiological processes of diffuse TBI and contribute significantly to both damage and ensuing repair. Microglia are the resident innate immune cells in the brain and microglia function is linked to cellular morphology. Inflammatory signaling after diffuse TBI initiates microglia activation where microglia go from a ramified morphology (small soma with long, highly branched processes) to an activated morphology (swollen soma with enlarged, retracted processes). We also report an abundance of rod microglia (elongated soma with polarized processes) in the cortex after diffuse TBI. Rod microglia were first described in the early 1900’s and have since been sporadically reported in neurological conditions such as chemical exposure, viral infection, Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy Body dementia, ischemia, and TBI. Despite their occurrence across injury and disease, very little is known about rod microglia. Investigations have been limited to post-mortem histology using general microglia markers. The objective of this dissertation was to identify markers and develop tools to differentiate rod microglia from other microglia morphologies and confirm rod microglia mechanisms after TBI with the central hypothesis that rod microglia have a unique molecular profile compared to other microglia morphologies. First, we applied phage display biopanning to isolate antigen-binding domains specific to rod microglia compared to other microglia morphologies. We modified a novel discovery pipeline to develop antibody-mimetics from antigen-binding domains that can be validated for rod microglia specificity and used for downstream applications such as immunohistochemistry. Next, we investigated gene expression of rod microglia pathology with single nucleus RNA sequencing to provide insight into rod microglia function. We identified three distinct subclusters of microglia within the somatosensory cortex and inferred that those with inflammatory and neurological disease pathways may represent rod microglia. Finally, we used diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to refine a non-invasive imaging signature of rod microglia. Water restriction was visible by diffusion MRI in the somatosensory cortex and corresponding histology reported activated microglia in regions where water restriction was observed. While not a marker of rod microglia specifically, novel post-image processing was sensitive to detect changes in microglia. This dissertation is the first step in developing and validating tools to target rod microglia. Until rod microglia mechanisms can be investigated with new tools, their role in the evolution, progression, and resolution of diffuse TBI pathophysiology remains unknown.

As more communities work to create new speakers of their languages we are seeing a new linguistic environment develop and, from that, particular styles of language use emerge. This dissertation adds to the growing literature on studying and supporting the process of language revitalization (e.g. Stebbins et al. 2017, Zuckerman 2021), by describing the process of documenting and analyzing Tunica (tun ISO 639-3), a reawakening language spoken in central Louisiana, USA. ‘Reawakening languages’ are languages whose usual transmission has been interrupted and the community is looking to learn them through existing documentation, meaning looking at their revitalization process has the potential to be both incredibly illuminating and in- credibly disruptive to language learners and language workers. With these concerns in mind, this dissertation presents a method for documenting languages as they are being revitalized that minimizes disruption and maximizes support by centering the documentation around language revitalization activities and output. The first chapter introduces key terms and situates current research in language revitalization. Chapter 2 provides background on Tunica, the revitalization efforts in the community, and the language structure. Chapter 3 provides general recommendations for documenting the process of languages being reclaimed and reawakened. Chapters 4 and 5 focus specifically on documenting Tunica, with Chapter 4 describing the process of documenting Tunica in the classroom, through the creation of podcasts, and with more traditional elicitation. Chapter 5 turns to the types of questions we can look at using documentation of reawakening languages by considering trends in three morphological and syntactic phenomena in the language: the use of gender-number-agreement clitics, the use of overt subjects, and the structure of questions. Chapter 6 ties this all together and looks towards future projects.

The limitations of current day electronics have created a tremendous drive to find new materials for more advanced electronic devices. However, without a fundamental understanding of key interfacial processes, such as electron transfer or charge carrier dynamics, developing practical devices becomes an impossible task. It therefore is of vital importance to comprehend the fundamental physics that governs these interfacial processes to fulfill the practical need for more advanced electronic devices. In this dissertation, I mainly focus on the class of inorganic 2D materials called transition metal dichalcogenides that present a wide range of electronic properties based on their composition. I begin by exploring the ultrafast charge carrier dynamics at the interface between an organic and inorganic semiconductor (C60/WSe2). The interfacial charge transfer, which results in an interfacial electric field, reveals new opportunities to control the different spin degrees of freedom inherent to the inorganic semiconductor (WSe2) and provides a novel mechanism to create spin-polarization in a nonmagnetic heterostructure. Next, I investigate the temperature-induced electronic phase transition between the semimetallic 1T’-phase of MoTe2 and the topological Weyl semimetal Td-MoTe2. The platform provided by this phase transition constitutes a new opportunity for systematic control of the electronic structure. As a result of the more exotic electronic properties of Td-MoTe2, new scattering pathways are available and I demonstrate how the electronic structure influences the ultrafast charge-carrier dynamics in the two phases. Finally, I demonstrate the importance of the electronic structure and its influence on the luminescent properties of two types of lanthanide-doped metalorganic complexes. The energy level alignment between the ligands and the rare earth centers in the complexes determines not only the efficiency of the material’s luminescent capabilities but also its influence on the emissive color properties. Overall, the case studies presented in this dissertation highlight how the electronic structure governs the ultrafast charge carrier dynamics and electron transfer properties, presenting new opportunities towards advanced electronic devices.

This study explores the establishment and evolution of an informal online community, tracing how it developed and evolved. More specifically, the study analyzed the characteristics of the online space, as well as how members engaged within the community, including participation patterns, preferences, and opinions and identity construction. The community members were made up of multilingual and global participants; the space was creativity-driven, free, and open to all. Free navigation mirrors how informal communities work in the digital wilds where interaction is voluntary and interest-driven. Using descriptive methods, this research looked at language learning as the product of social interaction as participation varied across asynchronous posting, responding, and engagement in live conversations. One hundred eighty-eight participants came from different ethnic, linguistic, and geographical backgrounds, and explored their shared and individual interests and learning opportunities within the virtual space. All online activities were situated in a dynamic system of interactions that developed over time in response to participation patterns and preferences. Four participation profiles were developed by calculating members’ weighted activities which included post clicks, cheers, messages, comments, and participation in live Zoom events. Analysis revealed characteristics and preferences of the Power, the Motivated, the Curious, and the Attentive member. Findings from this study suggest expanding opportunities for self-directed and collaborative work in member-driven online communities that encourage incidental language learning and the exploration of different perspectives and cultures. Implications address the importance of incidental language learning, which should be carried over into formal language learning environments. In informal spaces where language learning is not explicit, learners can make their own decisions, explore the world on their own terms and make their own conclusions on what is valuable or meaningful for themselves as they interact with others. Keywords: online community, informal learning, incidental language learning, Ecological Approach, Critical Relationality, global interaction, communication, multimodality, creativity.

The presented research addresses the dynamics of the transition process in laminar separation bubbles (LSBs). Two major objectives will be discussed in this work: an investigation of the natural transition process in an LSB forming in the flow along a flat plate when subjected to an adverse pressure gradient (APG) and active flow control (AFC) exploiting the inherent instabilities in the LSB shear layer to control and delay laminar to turbulent transition.Extensive characterization of the boundary conditions in the experiment indicate a low turbulence environment necessary for stability and transition research. Prior to characterization of the LSB, the boundary layer along the flat plate model is investigated in the absence of the APG. Development of Tollmien Schlichting (T-S) waves in the laminar boundary layer along the flat plate show linear growth for several tested amplitudes and frequencies. Comparison to linear stability theory (LST) calculations and accompanying direct numerical simulations (DNS) show reasonable agreement in disturbance profiles and downstream amplitude development. Differences to the numerical results increase with downstream distance and are attributed to a slight favorable pressure gradient and the onset of non-linear behavior around the first maximum in the disturbance amplitude profiles in the experiment. Results confirm adequate quality of the free-stream turbulence (FST) (Tu ≤ 0.035%) and velocity spectra in the Arizona Low Speed Wind Tunnel (ALSWT) for the subsequent LSB transition study. The flow around the displacement body, used to impose the favorable to adverse pressure gradient to the flat plate model, is investigated and flow control measures are installed to ensure smooth, attached flow along the surface of the NACA 643−618 airfoil. The resulting baseline matches the time-averaged LSB from DNS with low levels of random disturbances (Tu = 0.02%). Two major unsteady features are found in the experiment. Low frequency (6 Hz, St = 0.02) content in the shear layer is connected to a large scale ’flapping’ motion, leading to significant periodic change in the reattachment location, causing an expansion/ contraction of downstream half of the LSB. High frequency content is related to the inviscid Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, causing disturbance amplification along the separated shear layer. Finite disturbance growth leads to formation of two-dimensional vortical structures, followed by rapid breakdown to turbulence upstream of mean reattachment. The dominant frequency in the shear layer (centered at 250 Hz, St = 0.88) is found higher than in the DNS (185 Hz, St = 0.671). Linear stability calculations on the matching baseline show a broad peak of unstable frequencies, similar in shape to the experimental results, centered between the peak values found in experiment and DNS. AFC is applied upstream of laminar separation. Initial forcing further upstream in the favorable pressure gradient shows significant strengthening of the two-dimensional roller structures leading to significant reduction in bubble size. All tested AFC in the experiment was successful in suppressing the large scale, low frequency ’flapping’ in the LSB and led to a change in transition dynamics. Notable damping due to the reminder of the favorable pressure, reduces disturbance amplitudes far below the critical amplitude (Acr) suggested by secondary instability analysis (SIA) and rapid breakdown to turbulence similar to the baseline case is observed for all forcing amplitudes. Moving the actuator close to the onset of the adverse pressure gradient increases separation control authority and pressure data suggests the LSB is suppressed at high forcing amplitudes. Time resolved PIV data identifies significant amplitudes of two-dimensional roller structures, especially at low and intermediate amplitudes. Increased forcing amplitudes leads to three-dimensionality in the mean flow causing a peak valley formation predominantly in the streamwise velocity component. Spanwise periodic structures with a wavelength of λz = 1 and a frequency of half of the forced frequency, are observed in all tested cases, with decreasing amplitude at higher forcing amplitudes. Fourier amplitude development suggest an optimal set of forcing parameters at (6 kVpp). Results show a delay in secondary mode amplitude growth and signs of delay of transition in the experiment. This case is compared to numerical results and matches the wavelength of the primary and secondary instability with predictions from LST, SIA and DNS, confirming the same transition dynamics present in the experiment and numerical simulations. Addition of FST in the DNS significantly reduces the delay in transition found in the numerical simulations without FST, explaining the observed differences to the experiment.

Purpose: Improve nursing confidence in providing care to behavioral health behavioral healthpatients in the emergency department through education and implementation of the Safe Structure template, which addresses identified nursing barriers. Background and Significance: There is substantial growth in the number of behavioral health patients presenting to the emergency department. Evidence shows there are four primary barriers to nursing care of behavioral health patients in the emergency department: physical environment, time constraints, resources, and the overall impact on the process of triage within their role. Nursing learned behaviors, stigma, and attitudes contribute to frustration and fear of caring for the behavioral health population. Nurses report lack of confidence and education in their ability to care for the behavioral health population. Methods: Descriptive quantitative study design using a retrospective post then pre-surveys to measuring nursing confidence levels post education on nursing barriers to care for behavioral health patients and the use of the safe structure template using a five-point Likert scale. Results: Post-the-pre surveys (n=28) were completed. Although findings were not clinically significant (p >.05), there was a slight overall increase in mean confidence levels post education. Pre-education, the nurses who completed the survey reported on average most confident in their ability to provide safe limitations consistent with environment and policies for behavioral health patients (M = 3.21±1.287) and least confident in their ability to create a daily routine for behavioral health patients (M=2.93 ±1.303) Confidence scores from nurses post-education were similar to the pre-confidence results with a slight rise in confidence their ability to provide safe limitations consistent with environment and policies for behavioral health patients 11 (M=3.71±0.854). Paired t test of nursing confidence levels did not reveal statistically significant findings in confidence levels (p >.05). Conclusion: Nurses continue to experience gaps and lack confidence in their ability to care for behavioral health patients in the emergency department. The limited findings of this project support the need for ongoing education, training, and support. The need for streamline education and time to complete is education based on nursing feedback.

Streptococcus pneumoniae is a Gram-positive opportunistic pathogen that typically lives asymptomatically in the human nasopharynx but can cause pneumoniae, meningitis, otitis media, and sepsis. As with any organism living within a host, S. pneumoniae must acquire all its nutrients from the host. One group of essential nutrients is metals. Metals are vital to many cellular processes where they serve as structural components or catalytic cofactors of proteins. While metals are essential for life, they can also become toxic if their concentration is not tightly regulated. Bombardment of bacteria with toxic metals is one of the strategies of the mammalian innate immune system. Two metals that are known for their antimicrobial activity are copper and zinc. The metal environment will change as the bacteria move to different host tissues or experience the host immune response. In order to overcome stresses imposed by excess metal, bacteria encode metal efflux proteins. A notable example is the cop operon, a dedicated copper export system under the control of CopY. CopY is a metal-sensitive repressor that binds more tightly to DNA in a zinc-bound state and releases from DNA upon copper binding. Due to the role of these two metals in CopY regulation and their use as antimicrobials, we studied how changes in their concentrations impact S. pneumoniae. This dissertation explores the transcriptional and metabolic profile under a range of zinc and copper concentrations. In addition, we focused on CopY as we had predicted its regulon would likely expand beyond the cop operon. However, this was not the case, and we now propose an updated consensus operator sequence for CopY. Lastly, we look at how dysregulation of the cop operon affects the cell and we present the early stages of work to predict the CopY regulon across bacteria for which a full annotated genome is available.