Tears in a Bottle

The process of writing Tears in a Bottle has been both a labor of love and a struggle. I first began writing this story—a story of compounded trauma, grief, morality, and faith- during my first year in Exhaustion. I started writing this story because I was frustrated with the books I was reading, where characters deal with insurmountable traumas and still manage to come away with a happy ending. Sometimes, people don’t get a break from trauma. It builds and builds until the person has a breakthrough or a breakdown. That is Leah Young. The thing she wants most is withheld from her in a cruel way. She simultaneously believes God will give her the children she wants while also believing God is punishing her with the multiple miscarriages she’s experienced. The beginning of this story has undergone multiple iterations, primarily focused on a change in point of view. I was trying to find the best voice to establish a solid foundation for why Leah’s losses sent her into a complete mental breakdown and set the stage for her fight with God. I want to discuss the possibility of changing this to a first-person narrative. It’s the only other point of view I think would fit with this story, but I wonder if it’s too close. I did try using the third person, present tense, but it didn’t feel right for the story as I wrote it. I kept changing between the 1st and 3rd person, using the past tense. Admittedly, I spent most of the time—until this month—on the buildup. I chose to show Leah’s miscarriages through memory. She is the only character I have written that goes back into a clear memory. And I want the memories to end once Leah breaks down and attempts to fix God’s mistakes. I don’t think I have successfully done this yet. I still feel like the memories are taking up most of the story, and I would like to focus on this during the defense. Miscarriage is such a sensitive topic, and I am trying to be respectful and careful in my handling of it. How can I do that without it taking up most of the story? I know I need to edit down the first half, but I’m struggling with it. I’ve also added the idea of a garden to this last version. I’d also like to focus on this aspect because, in the next revision, I envision the garden building on the magical and spiritual aspects of it. I think I did well with introducing the garden, but I think it fell off halfway through the novel. The garden represents both life and death, as seen in Leah and the environment. When she first got the garden, it was dead or nearing death (the apple trees), and she took time and care to nurture it back to life. The spiritual and magical aspects are tied to her memorial garden. I’m trying to find a way to make that clear with her putting the fetuses of her children in the soil of that earth. I also want to illustrate how the garden withers when Leah’s faith withers. I don’t think I did that successfully, and I would like feedback on that. While writing this, I noticed something here that is nodding at generational traumas, focusing on the women in Leah’s life. I want them to be a focal point of the story, but I’m unsure how to incorporate them without detracting from the narrative. How do you read this? Do you have any ideas on how I can successfully write about the maternal women in Leah’s life? Should Caleb’s relationships with his paternal side also be showcased? My original idea for this story was to have Leah and Caleb have a loving and faithful relationship, but I needed a way for Leah to help the women commit suicide and not have Caleb around to find out what she’s doing. I am not satisfied with the aspect of the baby being born out of wedlock that I’ve written, and I would like to find a way to change it. I would also like to focus on Leah’s faith in this story. Does it seem like she loves God before she breaks down? Or a better question: does her faith seem genuine or superficial? I’m trying to show her dedication to her religion, but I’m unsure how that’s coming off. It must be obvious to make her re-engagement with God as his adversary believable. When you read this, you will notice that the first half is more polished than the latter. When we get to Leah and helping others with suicide, it is not as built out as the first part. I found the beginning the most difficult because it’s almost the most essential part. I needed to get into Leah's psyche. But I still focused too much on this. I want feedback on what parts aren’t necessary for you, knowing that the heart of the story is Leah’s mental decline into becoming an adversary of God and the Angel of Death for mothers like her. I’m wondering if I should begin the novel at this point and weave Leah’s memories of her miscarriages throughout her interactions with the women she’s chatting with and “helping.” I would also like feedback on Caleb. What do you think of him? How is his character working or not working for the story? Does he need scenes with his parents? Is the case he’s working on taking over the story? What can I do better with the subplot and Caleb’s character? Finally, thanks for reading this. I welcome any feedback you may have that I haven’t addressed in this abstract. I’ve chosen you all as my committee because I’ve had classes with you and respect your opinions and knowledge in the area I am writing about. Please feel free to focus on the aspects of this story that matter most to you.REAL Fellowship Delaney FellowshipMaster of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)2030-05-1

Investigating how Caulobacter ClpXP Protease Adaptor PopA Interacts with RcdA and cyclic di-GMP in Order to Deliver CtrA for Degradation

Cell cycle dependent proteolysis is an extremely important process for cell viability and homeostasis. A great example of this is the ClpXP protease in Caulobacter crescentus which is responsible for maintaining quality control and timely degradation of substrates to drive cell cycle progression. ClpXP utilizes three different adaptor proteins to achieve selective degradation. This thesis will focus on the last two adaptors in this hierarchy, RcdA and PopA. Aiming to uncover the binding interface between RcdA and PopA along with understanding the full mechanism of how their interaction facilitates CtrA degradation. In the presence of cyclic di- GMP when RcdA binds to PopA it allows for delivery of CtrA, a master regulator in Caulobacter crescentus for degradation via the ClpXP protease. This thesis will also give insight into the role that cyclic di-GMP is playing in delivering CtrA for degradation. The remainder of this thesis will present the data that was collected investigating these projects.Master of Science (M.S.)2026-05-1

Generics and Quantified Generalizations: Asymmetry Effects and Strategic Communicators

Generic statements (‘Tigers have stripes’) are pervasive and developmentally early-emerging modes of generalization with a distinctive linguistic profile. Previous experimental work suggests that generics display a unique asymmetry between the prevalence levels required to accept them and the prevalence levels typically implied by their use. This asymmetry effect is thought to have serious social consequences: if speakers use socially problematic generics based on prevalence levels that are systematically lower than what is typically inferred by their recipients, then using generics will likely exacerbate social stereotypes and biases. This paper presents evidence against the popular hypothesis that this asymmetry effect is unique to generics. Correcting for various shortcomings of previous studies, we found a generalized asymmetry effect across generics and various kinds of explicitly quantified statements (‘most’, ‘some’, ‘typically’, ‘usually’). In addition, to better understand the conditions under which generalized asymmetry effects may exacerbate biases, we examine whether speakers choose generalizing sentences based simply on their acceptance conditions, or are systematically sensitive to the implications likely drawn by their typical recipients. In support of the latter view, we found that, in neutral or cooperative scenarios, speakers reliably choose generalizing sentences whose implied prevalence levels closely match the actual ones. In non-cooperative scenarios, many speakers exploit asymmetry effects to further their own goals by choosing generalizing sentences that are strictly true but likely to mislead their recipients. These results refine our understanding of the source of asymmetry effects and the conditions under which they may introduce biased beliefs into social networks

THE GLAMOR OF IT

THE GLAMOR OF IT is a collection of poems.Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)2030-05-1

Impact of Vehicle Automation on Young Drivers’ Distraction and Strategies for Mitigating Risks

Automated Driving Systems (ADS) are vehicle technologies designed to reduce human error and enhance drivers' safety and comfort. ADS can temporarily (SAE Level 3) or permanently (SAE Level 4 – 5) take over part of the driving task. At Level 3, drivers can rely on the system to handle all driving tasks, but may need to take control in certain situations. However, the use of these technologies can introduce new challenges related to human factors. Previous research indicates that drivers tend to engage in non-driving-related tasks (NDRTs) even when lower levels of automation are engaged. This behavior can lead to issues such as delayed reaction times and reduced situation awareness. This is especially risky for teenage or young drivers, who are less experienced and more likely to use NDRTs while driving. Therefore, it is important to understand how young drivers interact with NDRTs when using higher levels of automation. To address this, an observational study was conducted with 12 young drivers. The study used eye movement observations to gain insights into how young drivers interact with NDRTs and automation. Additionally, the drivers' reactions provided details on how these interactions affect their awareness of the system. These observations imply that if uninterrupted, young drivers will continue to engage in NDRTs and that drivers look to the instrument panel for better communication. The findings from this observational study were then used to design and develop two new human-machine-interaction (HMI) systems that would help mitigate distraction behaviors and improve takeover behaviors. A second simulator study was conducted involving 24 teenage drivers with the aim of thoroughly evaluating the effectiveness of two methods. In this study, participants' focus, as well as their attention on driving-related areas and the secondary tasks, were evaluated. The findings indicate that drivers who received DSM alerts were better at responding to TOR and maintained stable driving performance during manual driving. Participants given the CHMI did show an improvement in takeover response and better driving performance compared to the control group, though this was not significantly different. Providing alerts to redirect drivers' attention toward driving-related areas while approaching takeover situations may be sufficient to help them take control safely and quickly. The findings provide valuable insights into the interaction of distraction behaviors of teenagers and higher levels of automation, while also providing a deeper understanding of distraction mitigation in the context of automation.H. Clay Gabler Scholar’s Program Award by the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM)Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.

Adult women’s age differences in links between behavioral and physiological indicators of cognitive regulation.

The Neurovisceral Integration (NVI) model has demonstrated that there are many associations between physiological and behavioral indicators of cognitive regulation including among respiratory sinus arrythmia (RSA), frontoparietal coherence (FPc), and executive function (EF). EF is associated with both RSA and FPc, and each shows a developmental pattern that could be explained within the Selection, Optimization, and Compensation (SOC) model. Specifically, all develop in childhood, become more efficient in adulthood, and decline in old age. But how all three of these variables interact – especially in adult women – is still unknown. This dissertation consisted of three studies that tested the additive and interactive effects of age, RSA, and FPc on EF in adult women from both a variable- and person-centered approach. We expected to see age moderated interactions between RSA and FPc that predicted EF. Indeed, the Study 1 results indicated age moderated an RSA and FPc interaction that predicted EF. And those results seemed to follow a SOC type pattern. However, Study 2 did not generally replicate those findings. In addition, there were no significant person-centered results from Study 3. Despite the non-replication and lack of person-centered significant results, we caution against concluding with confidence that there are no developmentally based patterns between these physiological and behavioral indicators of cognitive regulation. We acknowledge that there are limitations in this series of studies that might account for the findings.Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Grants HD57319 and HD60110, and National Science Foundation Grant BCS-1917857. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), R01HD049878.Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.

SLO-Aware Power Management for Elastic Cloud Applications

The enormous power consumption of cloud data centers poses severe financial and environmental concerns. Server consolidation, server throttling, and power capping emerge as several of the numerous approaches proposed to manage the power consumption of data centers. While these methods notably increase data center power efficiency by reducing the power consumption of data center servers, they also negatively impact the performance SLOs of hosted applications. Thus, data center operators must grasp and navigate the tradeoffs between power and performance. The motivation behind this thesis is to design techniques for managing power-performance tradeoffs in cloud data centers. To such an end, this thesis investigates the connections between the power usage of cloud data center servers and the performance SLOs of applications hosted on the servers, designs models that capture these connections, and develops controllers aimed at controlling the power usage of data center servers while considering application performance SLO targets. This thesis presents the following three key contributions. First, I design techniques to automate the process of power-performance controller generation for latency-sensitive web applications, ensuring that the generated controllers control power allocation while meeting application performance SLOs and offer improved performance compared to state-of-the-art techniques. I achieve this by designing DDPC, an autonomous data-driven controller generation system for power-performance management. Second, I introduce SLO-Power, a framework for effectively coordinating elastic resource provisioning and power management techniques under performance constraints. SLO-Power shows improvements over the standalone state-of-the-art elastic resource provisioning and power management methods. Finally, I design PADS, a hardware-agnostic power capping technique that integrates horizontal and vertical scaling of CPU resources—termed diagonal scaling—with the power-performance models of applications to keep the total power consumption of servers under power cap while respecting application SLOs. I show that PADS outperforms the state-of-the-art power capping solution in the literature regarding dealing with power cap violations and keeping application performance under control.Republic of Türkiye Ministry of National Education YLSY ProgramDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.

Impacts of Microbial Diversity on Soil Carbon and Ecosystem Function

Climate change induced biodiversity loss threatens to diminish the ability of diverse microbial communities to promote the stability and productivity of soils. These communities not only sequester carbon by producing microbial necromass, but also serve as the underpinning for the critical functions that drive terrestrial carbon cycling. Understanding how ecosystems and soil carbon stocks respond to shifts in microbial community composition and diversity will influence the role of soils as a carbon sink or source on a warming planet. Using both laboratory incubations and observational field samples from the Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, I investigated how microbial diversity affected the persistence of microbially-derived soil organic matter and ecosystem function. Overall, taxonomic diversity appears to have little effect on either necromass persistence or ecosystem function. The diversity of the microbial community producing soil organic matter is not a driver of the carbon use efficiency of microbial necromass, suggesting that the microbially-transformed soil organic matter bears similar susceptibility to decomposition, regardless of the community composition that produces the necromass. Additionally, bacterial taxonomic diversity was not a driver of ecosystem function at the Harvard Forest LTER. However, bacterial functional diversity, in particular acquisition trait richness, had a negative relationship with ecosystem function in soils exposed to chronic warming. Altogether, these results indicate that the microbial taxonomic diversity has little impact on the persistence of microbial necromass in the short-term or on ecosystem function at the Harvard Forest LTER. However, microbial acquisition trait richness did have a negative relationship with ecosystem function in soils exposed to chronic warming. Together these results highlight that microbial functional diversity, not microbial taxonomic diversity, may be a better approach to understanding how microbial diversity drives ecosystem function in a changing climate.Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)2026-02-0

Degradable Silicone Bonds

This thesis is outlined as five different projects, each of which relates to the topic of cleavage of silicone bonds in various chemical environments. Preparative chemistry was important, and multiple methods of introducing reactive silicon-based groups into silicone elastomers were developed, including syntheses of reactive group - containing crosslinkers which can function as a "Part C" in standard two-part hydrosilylation-cured silicone formulations. Studies of the degradation kinetics of these materials in different hydrolytic environments were also a significant component of the research. In addition to silicone elastomer studies, the hydrolytic stability and performance of a superspreading trisiloxane-polyethylene glycol surfactant was detailed and improved. The core message of the thesis can be summarized by the fact that there is an interplay between the local concentration of water around the reactive silicon-based group and the chemical reactivity of said groups, both of which are crucial for the cleavage of the group and degradation of the material. Local concentration of water is lowered by incorporating the reactive groups within a bulk silicone matrix or adding a small amount of an immiscible hydrophobic phase in the surfactant mixture. Reactivity can be augmented by changing the chemistry of the group to become more susceptible to hydrolysis or altering the environment to become more acidic or basic. Chapter 1, the introduction section, provides a brief overview of silicone chemistry and an in-depth review of silyl ethers and silyl esters. Chapter 2 demonstrates various methods for the synthesis of resins that contain vinyl groups bridged by silyl ethers. These resins are prepared by either modifying existing silicone resins with commercial silanes and then further reacting the silane groups with alkenols to create silyl ether-bridged vinyls, or functionalizing compounds with multiple hydroxyl groups, including natural carbohydrates, by vinyldimethylsilyl protection. These resins are capable of forming crosslinks with hydride-containing silicones by hydrosilylation between Si-H and alkenes. Their hydrolytic susceptibility under exposure to hydrogen chloride-water solution vapor is compared in terms of the degree of mechanical property change based on the crosslinker structure. Chapter 3 discusses the incorporation of silyl ester bonds into silicone matrices, which result in solids with much higher degradability than those with silyl ethers. This was achieved by two methods: 1) the vinyldimethylsilyl protection of 10-undecenoic acid followed by crosslinking with poly(dimethylsiloxane-hydromethylsiloxane) copolymer, and 2) the hydrosilylation of 10-undecenoic acid with hydride-terminated linear polydimethylsiloxane using excess polymer, which can then be oxidatively crosslinked under air exposure. Exposure of the crosslinked solids to water vapor without added acidic catalyst is able to cause mechanical property changes by cleavage of the silyl ester bonds. Chapter 4 describes studies of the hydrosilylation of alkenols by two different types of platinum catalysts, Lamoreaux and Karstedt. Although the Karstedt catalyst is widely used in silicone chemistry, the Lamoreaux catalyst, a mixture of Pt(II) and Pt(IV) in 1-octanol and 1-octanal, has been neglected in comparison. We show the results of hydrosilylation of various alkenols with hydrosilane-terminated poly(dimethylsiloxane) catalyzed by the Lamoreaux and Karstedt catalysts. The Karstedt catalyst always results in alkene silylation to form Si-C bonds as the major product, the Lamoreaux catalyst may selectively promote either the alkene silylation (Si-C bonds) or the dehydrogenative hydroxyl silylation (Si-O-C bonds) depending on the alkenol. We also establish the utility of the Lamoreaux catalyst in silyl ether materials chemistry as a catalyst with which vinyl-terminated silyl ether-containing crosslinkers can be synthesized. In Chapter 5, the hydrolytic properties of trisiloxane surfactants in aqueous solutions have been studied. Trisiloxane surfactants increase surface spreading areas compared to most other amphiphiles. However, due to the water-cleavable nature of the Si-O-Si bond, their structures are degraded over time in water, which causes the solutions to lose their spreading capabilities. Chemical evidence of trisiloxane surfactant hydrolysis when dissolved in water and exposed to high temperature and lower pH is presented. Additionally, it was found that the addition of a small amount of heptane as an immiscible second phase was able to dramatically protect the siloxane bonds from cleavage and allow the mixtures to retain their superspreading properties. In Chapter 6, cleavage of the siloxane bond between two hydromethylsiloxane groups, catalyzed by guanidine or amine in very low concentrations, is explored. With silanol-terminated PDMS as the initiator, polyhydromethylsiloxane was formed from the cyclic precursor 1,3,5,7-tetramethylcyclotetrasiloxane with only ~1% of hydrosilane groups being oxidized. This reaction was further used to synthesize crosslinked silicone solids by mixing silanol-terminated PDMS, 1,3,5,7-tetramethylcyclotetrasiloxane, methyltriacetoxysilane, and ppm levels of the guanidine catalyst, 1,5,7-triazabicyclo[4.4.0]dec-5-ene (TBD). The solid contained unreacted polyhydromethylsiloxane chains, whose presence imparted degradability to the solid under exposure to diethylamine while being stable under normal conditions.Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN)Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)2026-02-0

Investigating the Role of CMTR1 During Early Murine Embryonic Development

Cap Methyltransferase 1 (CMTR1) facilitates the addition of a 5’ methyl cap on eukaryotic mRNA molecules. Using a knock-out (KO) allele, we demonstrate that CMTR1plays an essential role during gastrulation. In the absence of CMTR1, mutant embryos undergo early lethality, arresting prior to organogenesis with severe developmental delay apparent at E7.5. Multiple molecular approaches indicate significant disruptions in the ability of the CMTR1-KO embryo to form the three primary germ layers – likely driving the observed gastrulation failure. Our analysis of CMTR1 has revealed an unexpected sexually dimorphic phenotype. Female CMTR1 null embryos are more severely delayed and have increased differentially expressed genes compared to male mutants; presumably causing a variety of downstream consequences and a more severe developmental phenotype.  Importantly, we do not observe defects in X-inactivation, suggesting that there are unidentified sexually dimorphic mechanisms active during early embryonic stages, prior to the onset of known differences between XX and XY embryos. In sum, we illustrate the necessity of CMTR1 during embryonic development and reveal novel insights into differences in gene regulation pathways between sexes prior to organogenesis.National Institutes of Health HD083311 to Jesse MagerDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)2026-09-0