Duke Dissertations
Duke migrated to an electronic-only system for dissertations between 2006 and 2010. As such, dissertations completed between 2006 and 2010 may not be part of this system, and those completed before 2006 are not hosted here except for a small number that have been digitized. For access to dissertations created prior to 2006 and those not submitted electronically, please see: https://library.duke.edu/find/theses-dissertations.
Policies & procedures governing electronic theses & dissertations can be found on the graduate school website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Recent Submissions
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Pen and Sword: Meritocracy, Conflicts, and Bureaucratic Appointments in Imperial China
(2022)Bureaucracy is a pillar of state building. I examine how new states achieve the transition from tenuous rule to consolidated rule. Rulers can diversify the selection system to recruit agents who have different skill sets ... -
Labored Romance: The Contemporary Novel and the Culture of Late Capitalism
(2022)Just over 300 years have passed since John Locke proposed that the basis of the individual was property and, in turn, that the labor which was the individual’s first property in his own person was the source of all property ... -
Motion Boundary and Occlusion Reasoning for Video Analysis
(2022)With the increasing prevalence of video cameras, video motion analysis has become an important research area in vision. Motion in video is often represented in the form of dense Optical Flow fields, which specify the motion ... -
FAULT MODELING, DESIGN-FOR-TEST, AND FAULT TOLERANCE FOR MACHINE LEARNING HARDWARE
(2022)The ubiquitous application of DNNs has led to a rise in demand for custom artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators. Domain-specific AI accelerators for machine-learning inferencing applications are homogeneous designs composed ... -
Data curation of a findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable polymer nanocomposites data resource - MaterialsMine
(2022)A polymer nanocomposite (PNC) is a composite material consisting of a polymer matrix and stiff fillers with at least one dimension smaller than 100 nm. With the addition of a small amount of filler to the polymer matrix, ... -
Augmentations vs. Restoration: A computational study of the effects of bacterial sodium channels on cardiac conduction.
(2022)Cardiac arrhythmias, including ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, and atrial fibrillation, are associated with ectopic triggers such as those resulting from afterdepolarizations and structural changes within ... -
Engineering of Microbioreactors and Microbiomes for the Biodegradation of Volatile Organic Compounds
(2022)Some of the worst air quality is found in enclosed indoor spaces that do not have the capability for sufficient ventilation. Despite the major health risk of indoor air pollutants, such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), ... -
Advances in Real-time 3D Single Particle Tracking Microscopy for Particle-by-Particle In-Situ Characterization of the Nanoparticle Protein Corona
(2022)Single-molecule spectroscopic (SMS) measurements have revolutionized biological science due to their ability to directly observe exactly one molecule in the crowd. This single molecule observation removes the ensemble average, ... -
Molecular Dynamics and Machine Learning for Small Molecules and Proteins
(2022)Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is an extremely powerful, highly effective, and widely used approach to understand the nature of chemical processes in atomic details for small molecules, biomolecules, and materials. The ... -
Andreev conversion in the quantum Hall regime
(2022)High quality type-II superconducting contacts have recently been developed for a variety of 2D systems, allowing one to explore superconducting proximity in the quantum Hall (QH) regime, which is one of the routes for creating ... -
Population Genomics of an Introduced Ectomycorrhizal Fungus Suillus luteus
(2022)Human migrations over many centuries have resulted in considerable movements of organisms beyond their natural ranges. Study of these exotic introductions can help us to understand their ecology and biology as well as provide ... -
Design Optimization of Encapsulating 3D DNA Nanostructures with Curvature and Multi-layers
(2022)DNA origami has been a paradigm-shifting technique for synthesizing and manipulating matter with nanoscale precision. The simple design principle of using numerous short (<100 nts) oligonucleotides to "fold" a long (>1000 ... -
MICROWAVE IMAGING FOR WALK-WHILE-SCAN SECURITY SCREENING
(2022)Microwave imaging is an important tool for security screening applications. Low-power microwave radiation is used to safely and noninvasively form high resolution images of people to screen for concealed threat objects. ... -
Cellular Signaling Mechanisms Underlying the Angiogenic Response to Mycobacterial Infection
(2022)Pathological angiogenesis is a widespread biological phenomenon that influences the progression of various diseases, including autoimmune conditions, cancers, and microbial infections. One infection in particular, tuberculosis, ... -
Structural, Functional, and Behavioral Outcomes of Stimulus-Dependent Transcription in Nucleus Accumbens Parvalbumin-Expressing Interneurons
(2022)Learning and memory are mediated by changes in synaptic and neuronal function within brain circuits, and is supported by dynamic waves of stimulus-dependent transcription in the nucleus of neurons. Stimulus-dependent ... -
The Influence of Environment on the Foraging Strategies of Cetaceans
(2022)The processes of locating and capturing food are critical components of a predator’s fitness, but can be difficult to observe, particularly in marine environments where foraging behavior is not often visible from the surface. ... -
Light parton energy loss in a hard-soft factorized approach
(2022)Quark-gluon plasma is a deconfined state of quarks and gluons, which can be produced in heavy ion collisions. Highly energetic partons, which are generated at the early time of a heavy ion collision, propagate through the ... -
Joint Data Modeling Using Variational Autoencoders
(2022)Nervous systems are macroscopic nonequilibrium physical systems that produce intricate behaviors that remain difficult to analyze, classify, and understand. In my thesis, I develop and analyze a statistical technique based ... -
Switched Controller Synthesis for Constrained Nonlinear Systems
(2022)Given a system's mathematical model, controller synthesis involves designing inputs to ensure desired responses. As models get more complicated to capture systems' behavior, so does synthesis. For instance, nonlinearities ... -
Essays in Empirical Macroeconomics
(2022)This dissertation is comprised of two chapters in empirical macroeconomics. In Chapter 1, I study whether employer mergers cause harm to employee outcomes. Employer mergers within the same labor market increases ...
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