Browsing by Type "Thesis/Dissertation"

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    Analysis of the Mechanisms of Anti-DNA Antibody Binding to DNA
    (2020-05-08) Garza Reyna, Angel
    Antibodies to DNA (anti-DNA) are a canonical marker for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a prototypic autoimmune disease that is most common in young women and has highly variable immunological and clinical manifestations. Anti-DNA antibodies play a key role in the pathogenesis of lupus as they can form pathogenic immune complexes that can ultimately lead to organ damage. Prior studies showed that the antibody’s charge may influence the formation of immune complexes; DNA is negatively charged because of the phosphodiester backbone and anti-DNA antibodies are rich in positively charged amino acids. To elucidate the mechanisms of anti-DNA antibodies, we wanted to further explore how charge affects antibody binding using as a model a monoclonal antibody. In this study, we tested whether the binding properties of Val-1205, an E310 monoclonal antibody (MAb), are mediated by electrostatic interactions, similar to those identified for serum as well as monoclonal anti-DNA antibodies. For this purpose, we took advantage of this monoclonal antibody that has been re-engineered to express more charge and higher binding avidity to determine how charge affects the association and dissociation of ICs. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) were performed under distinct experimental environments to identify possible changes in antigen-antibody (Ag-Ab) interactions. We found that Val-1205 binds well to DNA in ELISAs and that changing buffer composition without altering pH did not significantly change binding activity. In addition, Val-1205 binding was unchanged by the number of times the antibody had been thawed. However, Val-1205’s binding activity was influenced by salt concentration. When compared to antibodies from SLE patient serum, the Val-1205 antibody had comparable dependence on ionic strength. These results are important since they demonstrate the exquisite dependence on the ionic strength of anti-DNA, reflecting the role of electrostatic interactions. Results presented herein provide new understandings of the mechanism of anti-DNA–DNA interaction and indicate that Val-1205 may be especially dependent on charge-charge interaction. These results also provide an important insight that Val-1205, despite its strong binding affinity, may represent anti-DNA antibodies that are primarily dependent on charge. The dependence on ionic interactions in Val-1205 may be utilized as steppingstones to better understand the immunopathogenesis of lupus.
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    Efficacy, Openness, Ingenuousness: Micro-Foundations of Democratic Engagement
    (2020-05-20) Soboleva, Irina
    What drives civic engagement in weak democracies? What are the psychological processes responsible for overcoming post-authoritarian learned helplessness? This dissertation argues that in non-Western political contexts, traditional psychological predictors of individual engagement in civic affairs---openness to experience, high self-efficacy, and low political skepticism---do not align with previously established Western patterns. Building on the results of a large-scale field experiment on a demographically diverse sample of 1,381 respondents, as well as multi-year ethnographic observation of community engagement in Ukraine, this dissertation demonstrates that perceived self-efficacy and collective efficacy improve respondents’ interest in civic engagement while suppressing their interest in running for office. In the first chapter, I explore what factors prompt citizens’ interest in joining an electoral commission, supporting a recycling campaign, establishing a civic council, and leading a homeowners’ association. Using original experimental data, I demonstrate that individual empowerment constitutes a sufficient condition for civic engagement. Moreover, contrary to most theoretical expectations, the effects of individual empowerment on involvement in local civic activities are comparable to the effects produced by civic education. This study represents one of the first experimental contributions to support the theory of democratic learning and shows that citizens benefit from democracy by practicing it and trying various civic activities rather than by learning democratic values through civic education and top-down democracy promotion. In the second chapter, I study the effects of personality traits on policy priorities and ideological preferences of Ukrainians. Previous research suggests that personality affects political attitudes by predisposing people to certain policies. Contrary to these findings, this chapter shows that personality predicts individual response to the revision of the status quo rather than preference for specific policies. I illustrate this logic by addressing one of the most counterintuitive associations between personality traits and political attitudes---the link between openness to experience and conservatism in Eastern Europe. Combining the results of open-ended coding and bootstrapped regression models, the analysis shows that openness to experience predicts both social liberalism and social conservatism. I build upon these findings to address the existing gaps in the personality theory of ideology by suggesting that those open to experience are, on average, more responsive to any policy suggestion that revises the status quo. In the final chapter, I examine the problem of nascent political ambition in weak democratic states. Building on the results of my original field experiment, I show that higher efficacy discourages political engagement in Ukraine. Specifically, increasing respondents’ collective efficacy, on average, disincentivizes them from running for city parliament. Most surprisingly, citizens with higher pre-treatment levels of internal political efficacy were the ones most dissuaded from running for office after the induction of collective efficacy. Their improved sense of collective efficacy might have discouraged them from political institutions that they consider powerless and inefficient. Altogether, these findings challenge existing wisdom in comparative political psychology by demonstrating that (1) psychological pathways to collective action are more context-dependent than previously assumed; (2) previously established effects of personality traits and self-evaluations on political behavior do not travel well beyond Western European and North American contexts; (3) self-efficacy and collective efficacy do not differ in their causal effects on individual attitudes and behavior; and (4) politically sophisticated individuals are put off from political office when reminded of alternative non-political ways of achieving collective goals, with this running from office creating a trap of declining political ambition in weak democracies. Thus, democratic promotion campaigns that increase self-efficacy or collective efficacy might suppress nascent political ambition when the population is skeptical of the quality of representative democratic institutions.
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    Justified Cause? Assessing the Humanitarian Outcomes of U.S. Foreign Aid and Intervention Since the Cold War
    Shen, Yicheng
    This study utilizes both explicit statistical models and qualitative case studies to explore the research question: Do U.S. foreign aid and humanitarian intervention bring positive impacts to the human rights of the recipient or host states? To approach this question, I propose multiple linear regression models that suggest the extent of intervention significantly impacts how much a target state’s human rights conditions could either improve or decline in the years following the operations. Case-based explorations, in the context of Afghanistan and Syria, provide additional evidence of control variables from institutional, socioeconomic, and international relations perspectives. My resulting refined models demonstrate the relationship between the scales of current U.S. foreign assistance and the states’ future human rights: specifically, more economic aid and less military aid are the major factors associated with good human rights conditions of the recipient states, with negative abuse of military resources more likely to overshadow any progress of human rights from Western guided economic reforms. The findings of this study offer rich theoretical implications to policymakers in terms of avoiding the potential pitfalls of wasting critical resources and maximizing the positive influences of foreign aid and intervention on human rights. The paper ends by proposing future research directions and outlining constructive ways to create a favorable condition for humanitarian missions to make a difference in the long run.
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    Utilizing Principal-Agent Theory and Data Envelopment Analysis to Examine Efficiency of Resource Utilization in Undergraduate Education for Public and Private Non-Profit Four-Year Research Universities
    Blalark, Frank
    Utilizing a principal-agent model as a heuristic framework and data envelopment analysis as an analytical framework, this study examined relative efficiencies and resource utilization of U.S. Carnegie 15 (very high research activity) and 16 (high research activity) public and private non-profit four-year research universities in the year 2007/08 measured against baccalaureate degree production and graduation rate efficiency. The empirical findings reveal that, on average, overall technical inefficiency for all sets of research universities is primarily attributed to managerial decisions rather than failure to operate at most productive scale size. The results for public Carnegie 15 research universities (PCRU-15s), on average, show that resource utilization is better when measured against baccalaureate degree production than against graduation rate efficiency as indicated by LPTIE scores for all PCRU-15s corresponding with baccalaureate degree production (LPTIE % = 14.22) and graduation rate efficiency (LPTIE % = 22.65). The results for public Carnegie 16 research universities (PCRU-16s), on average, show that resource utilization is better when measured against graduation rate efficiency than against baccalaureate degree production as indicated by LPTIE scores for PCRU-16s corresponding with baccalaureate degree production (LPTIE % = 44.54) and graduation rate efficiency (LPTIE % = 40.58). Comparing the magnitude of LPTIE scores for private non-profit Carnegie 15 research universities (PNCRU-15s) corresponding with baccalaureate degree production (LPTIE %= 8.65) and graduation rate efficiency (LPTIE %= 10.69), results indicate that managerial decisions for PNCRU-15s, on average, are such that resource utilization is better when measured against baccalaureate degree production than against graduation rate efficiency. Consistent with private non-profit Carnegie 15 research universities, the magnitude of LPTIE scores for private non-profit Carnegie 16 research universities (PNCRU-16s) corresponding with baccalaureate degree production (LPTIE %= 8.53) and graduation rate efficiency (LPTIE %= 13.53), results indicate that managerial decisions for PNCRU-16s, on average, are such that resource utilization is better when measured against baccalaureate degree production than against graduation rate efficiency.