Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common mental health condition (Kessler & Bromet, 2013) and the 3rd leading cause of disability worldwide (James et al., 2018). MDD history is a significant risk factor for relapse and recurrence of depression (Buckman et al., 2018; Burcusa & Iacono, 2007). The current study investigated resting state effective connectivity among 13 brain regions from three resting state networks (i.e., default, salience, and central executive), which had been implicated in the pathophysiology of MDD from previous studies (Kaiser et al., 2015; Mulders et al., 2015). In the current study, both within- and between-networks effective connectivity were found to be different in those with a MDD history (N=29) compared to the healthy controls (N=28), through spectral dynamic causal modeling (Friston, Kahan, Biswal, et al., 2014), Bayesian model reduction (Friston et al., 2016), and parametric empirical Bayes (Zeidman, Jafarian, Seghier, et al., 2019) analyses. Of particular interest is the finding that there is more negative effective connectivity from right anterior insula to left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left inferior parietal lobe in MDD history. Previous studies have found less causal influence from anterior insula to prefrontal cortex in currently depressed individuals (Hyett et al., 2015; Iwabuchi et al., 2014; Kandilarova et al., 2018). Given the importance of anterior insular in interoception and subjective feelings (Craig & Craig, 2009), the current study provides some preliminary evidence that altered effective connectivity between anterior insula and prefrontal cortex may be related to MDD history as well.

Cervical cancer is one of the major cancers in women living in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The resources needed to conduct the gold standard histopathological diagnosis, such as a trained personnel and lab equipment, are scarce in LMICs. Hence, low-cost approaches such as visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA) are used to diagnose cervical cancer. VIA and other low-cost approaches, however, often lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment of the patient due to their low specificity. There is an unmet need for a low-cost tool that can provide both high sensitivity and specificity.This dissertation discusses the design and development of a chromatic confocal endomicroscope (CCE) that can examine the cervical tissue in vivo with a goal of aiding the diagnosis of cervical malignancy. The novelty of this device is to use longitudinal chromatic aberration to acquire cross-sectional images of the tissue without any scanning mechanisms. A custom hyperchromatic objective lens was optimally designed to focus different wavelengths of the illumination light into different depths: 500-700 nm was focused over a depth range of 110 µm. Slit apertures were used for illumination and detection, which eliminated the need for beam scanning along the slit length direction and enabled cross-sectional, two-dimensional imaging without any mechanical scanners. A custom miniature spectrometer was used to analyze the spectrum of light scattered back from the tissue and generate confocal images. The manufactured CCE device had a small form factor with an overall device diameter and length of 9 mm and 70 mm, respectively. The material cost was less than $1,500. The measured lateral and axial resolution was 2 µm and 4 µm over an axial depth of 100 µm. The CCE device was able to visualize cellular structures of human tissue, in vivo at different axial depths. Cellular nuclei of the lower lip epithelium were clearly visualized from the CCE images, which might indicate that other epithelial tissues such as the cervical epithelium can also be visualized with CCE. This might merit clinical evaluation of CCE for the diagnosis of cervical malignancy.

Early childhood is critical for a child’s healthy development. Such development can affect children throughout the lifespan. In particular, social emotional development has been used as a predictor for school readiness, delinquency, career outcomes and earnings, and overall quality of life (Denham et al., 2009). This study examined the relationships of protective factors and at-risk factors on 3,988 children between the ages of two to six years on children’s social emotional development and if these variables are also predictive of a child’s social emotional development. Additionally, this study assessed if children’s social emotional development is predictive of children's literacy and math school readiness. This study intended to investigate a strength-based model by examining moderating effects of poverty on a child’s social emotional development in determining methods for assisting children living in poverty. Pearson’s R correlations and stepwise linear regression models were run. Results indicated that protective factors have statistically significant relationships and predict higher social emotional development scores and at-risk factors have statistically significant relationships and predict lower social emotional development scores. Lastly, implications, limitations, and future directions for research are also discussed.Keywords: social emotional development, school readiness, protective factors, at-risk factors

My research examines the impacts of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Simin Daneshvar and a selection of theirintimate intellectual circle on the hegemonic masculinity of their era as it approached the “unthinkable” Iranian Revolution of 1979. Given that Al-e Ahmad became so profoundly influential as it relates to the emergence of the post-revolutionary Perso-Islamic identity, my dissertation focuses primarily on Al-e Ahmad’s life, letters and literary work. More specifically, I am interested in examining the gender practices among this selection of Pahlavi-era Iranian intellectuals in their personal lives and their literary works. Since the reconfiguration of gender practice is influenced by multiple actors in both state and civil society, my analysis utilizes a Gramscian framework of cultural change which carefully explores the significant role that intellectuals can play in the continuous renegotiations of gender practices. After establishing a working structure of Iranian hegemonic masculinity in the Pahlavi Era, Ioffer six areas of inquiry. Chapter 1 gives a brief overview of the 19th-20th century intellectuals in modern Iran and locates Al-e Ahmad in that context. Chapter 2 establishes the framework for hegemonic masculinity during the Pahlavi Era by examining the driving forces of Iran’s reconfigurations of hegemonic masculinity including the state and religious patriarchy as well as the Iranian women’s rights movement. Chapter 3 focuses on how Al-e Ahmad's relationship to Daneshvar challenged and reinforced hegemonic masculinity. Chapter 4 explores a selection of Al-e Ahmad’s short stories in the context of violence and injustice under religious and state patriarchy. Chapter 5 delves into Al-e Ahmad’s Westoxification as it relates to hegemonic masculinity and silence. Chapter 6 examines Al-e Ahmad, sex, sexuality and gendered renegotiations in the context of religiosity, secularism, and the unfulfilled rupture of sexual taboos. This research concludes by noting that while Al-e Ahmad and his intimate circle reinforced hegemonic masculinity, if we are to look at gendered performativity as something that needs repeated performance, these disruptions - however unintentional or fleeting - bring us one step closer toward a sustainable rupture of hegemonic masculinities.

This dissertation explores literature related to disability, university communication, andinequality regimes to understand the conceptualization of the ideal college student and how COVID-19 disrupted and enforced the systemic ideals of who belongs at and in the rhetoric of institutions of higher education. This study investigated how university leadership, public briefings, and email communication during the COVID-19 era were (or were not) inclusive of students with chronic illness and/or immunodeficiencies. A qualitative case study and qualitative methodologies were used to explore the communication of one university to and about the chronically ill population for 1 year as it reacted and responded to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. My analysis found that university leadership communicated in a way that excluded students with chronic illness from the college experience, and when this population was included, the rhetoric was problematic, blaming, and shaming. University communications, media, and marketing are focused on the “ideal” college student and the “ideal” college experience. Higher education institutions need to reconceptualize their perception of who and what is ideal. Inclusive communications and marketing are key in reflecting the college’s commitment to the chronically ill. It was through this dissertation, the related research and recommendations, and my own lived experiences that I began to reconceptualize the idea of being immunocompromised in college and begin to understand it as being immunocomplicated.

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) is widely acknowledged as a critical component to a healthy economy and global competitiveness. In the last decade, researchers have stressed the need for the development and implementation of instructional components to effectively engage students in STEM learning as early as possible. Previous research has suggested that parental involvement can improve academic outcomes for students. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential connection between increased levels of parental involvement and increased student STEM efficacy. The study closely followed the Hoover-Dempsey Model of Parental Involvement Processes (Hoover- Dempsey et al., 2001) that indicated that parental involvement methods are the mechanisms through which parent-level factors including parental self-efficacy predict student academic outcomes including student self-efficacy. In addition, parental efficacy, and the effects of immersion classes on parental involvement were examined. After transforming the data to correct for parental involvement measures not being normally distributed, canonical correlation analysis revealed significant correlations between the variate for the four parental involvement variables and the variate for the three student efficacy variables when run as sets. Hayes Process Macro for SPSS (Hayes, 2018) found significant direct effects of parent efficacy on student efficacy in math, but not for student efficacy in science or technology/engineering. There were no significant mediational relationships between the variables, however parental efficacy was significantly related to the three parental involvement mediators: Encouragement, Instruction, and Modeling, and Reinforcement was significantly related to student efficacy for math. Based on the results, data support that parental involvement and parent efficacy does influence STEM efficacy among students enrolled in a middle class to affluent school district. Future research needs to examine additional aspects of the Hoover-Dempsey Model in the context of STEM outcomes including how student STEM efficacy translates into student achievement outcomes accounting for the sociocultural context such as nuances of SES, age, gender, disability, and race/ethnicity. Finally, strategies such as inclusive outreach programs and SES conscious engagement opportunities are discussed along with future research to test if those approaches are effective in facilitating the strengthening of STEM outcomes in American school students.

This dissertation addresses the 6-DOF consensus control problem of multi-agent rigid body systems. The consensus protocols are designed using two different attitude representations: rotation matrices and principal rotation vectors (exponential coordinates). The control objective is stabilizing the system of rigid bodies to a configuration where all the rigid bodies have a common attitude and prescribed relative positions with velocity synchronization. In this work, for the most part, a fixed and undirected communication topology is considered for the consensus control design and analysis. However, the stability of consensus in multi-agent systems with periodically switched communication topology is also studied using Floquet theory. In addition, the application of Floquet theory in analyzing cases such as switched systems with joint connectivity, unstable subsystems (antagonistic interactions), and nonlinear systems is also studied. As the first methodology for consensus control of multi-agent rigid body systems, the configurations of the rigid bodies are described in terms of the exponential coordinates associated with the Lie groups SO(3) and SE(3). Moreover, the stability of the consensus in multi-agent rigid body systems with periodically switched communication topology is studied using Floquet theory and linearizing the closed-loop systems. The second type of protocols for consensus control of a multi-agent system of $N$ heterogeneous rigid bodies are proposed in the framework of the tangent bundles TSO(3) and TSE(3) associated with Lie groups SO(3) and SE(3), respectively. The feedback control design uses the rotation matrix as opposed to various attitude parameterizations. Almost global asymptotic stability of the consensus subspace is demonstrated using an extension of the Morse-Lyapunov (M-L) approach. Also, the presence of unstable non-consensus equilibria in the closed-loop dynamics is discussed and shown in illustrative examples. A new strategy for full pose and velocity consensus control of multi-agent rigid body systems in the presence of communication delays is presented in this dissertation. Specifically, consensus protocols are proposed on the Banach manifold associated with the tangent bundle TSE(3)^N. The stability argument is strengthened from that used in prior studies by using an extension of Morse-Lyapunov-Krasovskii (M-L-K) approach, and sufficient conditions are derived to achieve almost global asymptotic stability of the consensus subspace. This work also investigates the finite-time pose consensus control of multi-agent rigid body systems using Morse-Lyapunov analysis in the framework of the tangent bundle TSE(3) associated with SE(3). Almost global finite-time stability of the consensus subspace in the nonlinear state space is demonstrated. As another finite-time consensus control problem, the prescribed-time consensus of multi-agent rigid body systems using exponential coordinates is also studied. Specifically, the control objective is to stabilize the relative pose configurations with velocity synchronization of a multi-agent rigid body system in a user-defined convergence time. In this dissertation, the consensus control of multi-agent rigid body spacecraft in orbital relative motion is explored using two approaches. In the first approach, a proportional-derivative (PD) consensus control method, an extension of the Morse-Lyapunov analysis in the framework of the tangent bundle TSE(3) associated with Lie group SE(3) is used. In the second approach, a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) consensus control protocol is introduced where the configurations of the rigid bodies are described in terms of the exponential coordinates associated with the Lie group SE(3). In general, the rigid-body attitude control problems are formulated in terms of full attitude configurations. However, in cases involving control objectives stated in terms of pointing the rigid body, reduced-attitude configurations defined in S^2 are exploited. In this dissertation, distributed control algorithms are proposed for asymptotically stable synchronization and balancing of a multi-agent rigid body reduced-attitude system using Lyapunov analysis. The control objective in the balancing problem is the maximization of the minimum relative angular distance between each pair of rigid body reduced attitudes.

Despite their disparate subjects, the following essays share a number of common themes. Chief among these are complexity, evolution, and institutions. The first two essays examine Hayek's social theory, an examination that brings to light two basic points about complex societies. First, they are difficult to predict and control. Second, they adapt to internal and external changes. These features lay the groundwork for section II, which examines the proper form of governance structures for a complex, adaptive society. The first essay of part II applies multilevel selection theory to the problem of governing complexity. It concludes that polycentric political organization, supplemented by a few additional ``design principles,'' facilitates a socially beneficial process of competition and evolution. The second essay of part II uncovers a related benefit of polycentric governance. Due to its decentralized and competitive nature and due to the vast amount of relevant and constantly changing information generated in a complex society, polycentric governance institutions utilize information more effectively than centralized modes of governance. There is a substantial welfare benefit to utilizing this information by implementing reforms that seek to address the concerns and satisfy the preferences of millions, or perhaps billions, of citizens. Moreover, centralized governance becomes increasingly difficult as increasing numbers of increasingly interdependent variables become relevant to any given problem. Polycentricity is an adaptation of the state in response to the problem of social complexity. Like biological adaptations, this adaptation may be blind and unintentional. It may even precede the phenomenon to which it proves adaptive. Yet, it is adaptive nonetheless, since it provides an effective response to the problems posed by its environment. Finally, part III begins to examine some of the normative, philosophical consequences of these social scientific investigations. If society is in a constant state of flux, if it is evolving in response to fluctuating variables, then the traditional task of political philosophy may stand in need of amendment. Philosophers from Plato to Rawls have attempted to characterize a conception of justice, a political summum bonum, that transcends the institutional variations of time and place. If justice is, at least in part, a project of reconciliation, and if the values held by citizens continue to evolve, then there may not be a stable conception of justice that transcends societal dynamism. We may, instead, need to content ourselves with identifying certain general desiderata that better enable society to coordinate on a shared conception of justice, however ephemeral this conception might prove to be.

Purpose. The purpose of this quality improvement (QI) project was to develop and implement an accessible, culturally sensitive educational intervention, a brief PowerPoint presentation designed for healthcare providers and staff of the Sells Hospital ED who provide care to members of the Tohono O’odham Nation (TON).Background. In rural areas of the United States (US), many barriers are present that hinder and complicate access to quality and culturally sensitive healthcare. Within rural and remote settings, the Emergency Department (ED) often becomes the sole source of accessible medical care for a broad range of both acute and chronic healthcare needs. Although the ED is critical for ensuring emergency care for rural populations, it can be a fast-paced and intimidating clinical environment, making it difficult for patients to effectively advocate for their healthcare needs. The ED is focused on delivering acute, critical, vital and lifesaving interventions however, of equal importance is the delivery of culturally sensitive healthcare. Healthcare staff and providers employed in Native American (NA) healthcare settings must possess cultural sensitivity, interpersonal etiquette and be aware of the historical and present-day intergenerational impact of historical trauma experienced by Native communities across the US. Purpose. The purpose of this QI project was to collaborate with TON cultural experts to develop, implement, and evaluate the impact of an educational intervention designed for healthcare providers who provide care for the TON. Methods. This project utilized a descriptive quality improvement design. Results. The educational presentation was co-created with consultation from five (N=5) Tohono O’odham cultural members and experts. These results of the post survey demonstrated that the educational material had a positive and influential impact on six (N=6) healthcare providers who work in the Sells ED. Conclusions. Participatory co-creation of culturally aligned educational material was a valuable aspect of this project. The outcomes of this quality improvement project offer an exemplar of a co-created educational video designed for healthcare providers working on the TON. This project has the capacity to improve cultural sensitivity and enhance quality of patient care and patient outcomes in the Tohono O’odham Healthcare system.

Central nervous system (CNS) disorders, including neurodegeneration and chronic pain, and many respiratory diseases would greatly benefit from the specific and potent peptide pharmaceuticals and their low inherent toxicity. The delivery of peptides to target the brain is challenging, principally due to peptides' low metabolic stability, which decreases their duration of action, poor penetration of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), and their incompatibility with oral administration, typically resulting in the need for parenteral administration. These challenges limit the clinical application of peptides and explain the interest for alternative routes of peptide administration, particularly: delivery to the respiratory tract (upper and lower). Upper to target the brain through the olfactory route bypassing the blood-brain barrier (BBB), i.e., needle-free nose-to-brain delivery (N-to-B), which offers protein and peptide drugs the possibility to reach the brain noninvasively. N-to-B delivery can be a convenient method for rapidly targeting the CNS, bypassing the BBB, and minimizing systemic exposure. In addition, delivery to the lower respiratory tract as inhalation aerosol offers attractive advantages in delivering the drug locally to treat lung diseases; and to the CNS to treat its disorders at a low dose while minimizing systemic adverse effects. The lung is a low metabolic organ compared to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. It allows rapid and high drug absorption due to the large surface area, the high blood flow, and the absence of the first-pass metabolism. In this study, several peptides and glycopeptides with different pharmacological mechanisms were developed. Some of these compounds were synthesized using the SPPS strategy and formulated as dry powders with characteristics tailored to target the respiratory tract (upper and/or lower) to treat various CNS and lung diseases. Advanced organic closed mode spray drying technique was used to produce microparticulate/ nanoparticulate formulations utilizing sugar-based excipients. The solubility and lipophilicity of all included compounds were determined computationally using molecular operating environment (MOE) software and experimentally using the shake-flask method (SFM). The raw and formulated compounds were comprehensively characterized in the solid-state. The safety of all peptides and glycopeptides covered in this dissertation was evaluated in vitro using the human nasal, brain, and pulmonary cell lines. The in vitro aerosol dispersion of the raw and spray-dried compounds was tested using an FDA-approved human inhaler device, and the influence of spray drying process conditions on the aerosol dispersion was evaluated.