Data from: Assessing the use of organic residue analysis to investigate plant oils in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean: An environmentally and archaeologically contextualized approach (Ph.D. dissertation by Rebecca F. Gerdes)

Please cite as: Gerdes, Rebecca F., Hanna Wiandt, Malak Abuhashim, Avery Williams, Bridget Childs, Jillian Goldfarb, Joe M. Regenstein, Despina Pilides, and Sturt W. Manning (2025) Data from: Assessing the use of organic residue analysis to investigate plant oils in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean: An environmentally and archaeologically contextualized approach (Ph.D. dissertation by Rebecca F. Gerdes). [dataset] Cornell University eCommons Repository. https://doi.org/10.7298/vg43-f202These files contain data along with associated output and instrumentation supporting all results reported in Gerdes 2024, "Assessing the use of organic residue analysis to investigate plant oils in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean: An environmentally and archaeologically contextualized approach." In the dissertation by Gerdes (2024), we found: The ways people store food and other products are intertwined with their social, political, and economic context. Reconstructing storage activities is thus an important archaeological research aim. Organic residue analysis (ORA) of lipids, the study of trace fats, oils, and similar substances preserved in the pores of pottery, can provide direct evidence for pottery use, yet ORA has often been misunderstood and overinterpreted in Mediterranean archaeology. This dissertation proposes an archaeologically and environmentally contextualized approach to better incorporate ORA into Mediterranean archaeology. A “relational assemblage” theoretical framework opens the “black box” of ORA and incorporate residues into archaeological interpretation by viewing residues as part of a “molecular scale” of the archaeological assemblage and by considering all the processes that might shape residues, including archaeologists’ interventions. A reevaluation of a 30-year-old hypothesis that olive oil storage played a role in the changing sociopolitics of early urban cities in Late Bronze Age (LBA) Cyprus (1600-1150 BCE) with this contextualized approach showed that the flaws in the ORA evidence used to argue for the storage of olive oil in monumental storerooms at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios (K-AD). A novel long-term degradation experiment showed that calcareous soil contexts, which are common in the eastern and southern Mediterranean, lead to poorer preservation of plant oils in ceramics and partial preservation of plant oil biomarkers compared to a mildly acidic soil. A new ORA study of sherds from several buildings at K-AD and an inland site, Ampelia, suggested that some (but not necessarily all) pithoi from K-AD might have contained a plant oil, but also raise the possibility that residues reflected soil contamination. The results raise new questions about the roles of storage and of plant oils in the economy and politics of LBA Cyprus. The comprehensive, contextualized approach applied in this dissertation showed how organic residues and their interpretations in archaeological narrative emerge from a wide range of contingencies, from people’s uses of pottery in the past and climatic and environmental processes where pottery is buried to the analytical interventions of archaeologists.This research was supported by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award BSC-2032037, a Research Grant from the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS, 2018), and support from the Cyprus Institute (Nicosia, Cyprus), and made use of the facilities of the Cornell Center for Materials Research, which are supported by NSF Award Number DMR-1719875. R.F.G. was supported by Sage Fellowships [years] and a Research Travel Grant (2022) from the Graduate School of Cornell University, the Florence May Smith Fellowship and Lane Cooper Fellowship as well as research travel awards from the Department of Classics at Cornell University, two International Research Travel Awards from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies (Cornell University), a Graduate Research Fellowship from the Institute for European Studies (Cornell University), and Hirsch Travel and Research Grants from CIAMS. M. A. was supported by the Engineering Learning Initiatives program (2022). A. W. was supported by a fieldwork participation scholarship from the American Society of Overseas Research (2022). The archaeological samples were exported and analyzed under a permit from the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus. The authors would also like to thank Alison South and Kevin Fisher, former and current director of excavations at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios, respectively, and Despina Pilides, director of excavations at Agios Sozomenos Ampelia, for the archaeological samples included in the dataset

Synthetic Diversity for Flexible Interference-Tolerant Receivers

152 pagesWith the growing demand for higher data rates and an increasing number of connected devices, modern wireless communication systems face significant spectrum congestion and interference challenges. In particular, out-of-band (OOB) interferers can give rise to in-band artifacts (IBAs) such as reciprocal mixing by the local oscillator's (LO) spurs and phase noise (PN), third-order intermodulation (IM3) artifacts, and unwanted harmonic down-conversion (HDC) artifacts. In this work, I will present a novel receiver architecture to suppress these in-band artifacts while maintaining the flexibility to tune the reception frequency across an octave. The same architecture also enables simultaneous reception of multiple bands, making it applicable to emerging use cases such as carrier aggregation and cooperative spectrum sharing. Theoretical analysis, design methodology, and measurement results from fabricated prototype chips are presented to validate the proposed concepts. Passive mixer-first versions of the same receiver architecture are also explored for improved performance and additional capabilities.2027-06-0

SMOCKING SOFT SPACES: HYBRID WORKFLOWS FOR COLLABORATIVE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

77 pagesThis thesis explores how the historic textile practice of smocking can be reimagined as an architectural strategy for creating soft, adaptive, and participatory space. Smocking’s potential is examined through physical tests at varying scales and the development of a custom digital tool that simulates smocking behaviors to support rapid prototyping and material efficiency. Merging craft and computation, this hybrid method enables new aesthetic and structural possibilities while foregrounding collective making. Workshops and community collaborations activate smocking’s social dimension, situating it within a broader feminist framework that values softness, flexibility, and distributed authorship. Through this work, smocking is reframed not as decorative embellishment but as a scalable design system—responsive, inclusive, and materially intelligent—capable of challenging architectural norms and expanding the role of textile logic in shaping the built environment.2026-06-1

DEVELOPMENT OF A PLANT MEMBRANE-ON-CHIP PLATFORM FOR INTERROGATING PROTEIN-MEDIATED METAL TRANSPORT

101 pagesTransporter proteins are ubiquitous in nature and play major roles in the uptake, redistribution, and efflux of ions and small molecules required by organisms to maintain homeostasis. Disruptions to transporter function are associated with a variety of diseases and phenotypical abnormalities. In humans, this is evident in the case of diseases such as Menkes and Wilson while in plants, disruption of copper transporters has been associated with phenotypic abnormalities such as reduced growth, fruit yield, and death. The prevalence and association of transporter proteins to many diseases and disorders have highlighted their importance and made them the target of scientific investigation. Despite the strong interest in these proteins, transporter proteins remain a challenge to study. In plants, access to the plasma membrane is hampered by the presence of the cell wall and transport proteins may also be localized to internal organelles further limiting their accessibility. Membrane proteins contain hydrophobic regions complicating attempts to isolate and study them, as these non-polar moieties must be stabilized to maintain form and function. Traditional methodologies for measuring transporter proteins heavily rely on indirect in vivo assays that often require expression in non-native systems, possibly resulting in changes in protein behavior. Direct measurement modalities such as patch-clamp are mainly amenable to certain transporter proteins, such as ion channels, which display electrogenic and fast transport activity. This precludes the measurement of ion transport of many slower or electroneutral transporters such as transport proteins. To address the demand for characterizing this class of proteins, I developed a biomimetic system capable of the direct translation of transport protein function to measurable output, called, “Plant Membrane-on-Chip” platform. This platform leverages the properties of supported lipid membranes to recapitulate the native membrane environment of the transporter proteins through the inclusion of native membrane materials and retention of orientation and fluidity properties. The crucial addition of a biocompatible electronic chip enables the measurement of transporter function using traditional electrochemical characterization techniques that are label-free, sensitive, and non-destructive. For this dissertation, I demonstrate the use of a Plant Membrane-on-Chip device derived from Arabidopsis thaliana plasma membrane material in electrically measuring the function of the copper transporter protein AtCOPT1. Critically, this project highlighted how the use of traditional resistance-based analysis methodologies can be incorporated with new bio-mimics to detect the activity of a non electrogenic transporter previously thought to be unamenable to direct electrical analyses

THE EFFECT OF EBAY JUMP BIDDING ON FINAL PRICES

40 pagesIn this thesis, I researched the effect of eBay jump bidding on final prices based on Bodoh-Creed et al.’s (2021) dataset. I used multiple regression models to examine the effect. I found that jump bidding on eBay may have a significantly positive effect on the final prices, but the effect became insignificant after using an instrumental variable model.2027-06-1

Adaptive RF/mmWave Circuit Architectures for Spectrum-Dense Networks

137 pagesIn the quest for ever-increasing data rates and network reliability, Software-Defined Radios (SDRs) and massive Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) architectures have been explored. With the push towards millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies, a wide swath of bandwidth can be made available. A long-term goal of frequency-flexible SDRs is to create RF/mmWave receivers capable of operating in any band over a wide frequency range. Often, this goal is thwarted by the need to withstand large blockers at various frequencies within that same wide turning range, necessitating band-select filters, and thus limiting which band can be accessed. N-path passive mixer-first receivers have been explored to meet this need based on their easily tuned center frequency and bandwidth, combined with extremely high linearity with respect to Out-Of-Band (OOB) blockers. In addition, many radio systems today require access not only to arbitrary bands in a wide frequency range but also to multiple concurrent bands in that range with high selectivity. In contrast, massive MU-MIMO systems alleviate traffic congestion present in dense urban environments by providing spatial multiplexing and filtering, resulting in huge improvements in throughput and radiated energy efficiency. Furthermore, jammer equalization techniques can be implemented in MIMO architectures using synthesized spatial notch filters in the direction of the estimated blockers, thereby relaxing the dynamic range requirements for downstream circuitry

In-situ Trapping of Electrophilic Intermediates in the Biosynthetic Pathway of Gliotoxin

43 pagesThe metabolome, the entirety of the small molecules produced by an organism, represents a vast and still incompletely characterized world of chemical structures that serve a myriad of different biological functions. To understand mechanisms by which the abundance of metabolites, and thus their associated functions, are regulated, the elucidation of their biosynthetic pathways is of great importance. However, structural characterization of biosynthetic intermediates is challenging, because they often represent reactive electrophilic species that decompose during conventional extraction and sample preparation procedures. Due to the lack of viable methods for the characterization of such biosynthetic intermediates, the biosynthetic steps involved in the production of many important metabolites have remained unclear. In this study, a newly developed hydroxylamine-derived probe that can trap transient electrophilic biosynthetic intermediates was used to investigate the biosynthesis of gliotoxin, a fungal secondary metabolite derived from a non-ribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) pathway in the human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus. Gliotoxin is a diketopiperazine (DKP) derived from a modified dipeptide; however, the exact sequence by which the precursor dipeptide is converted into gliotoxin remains unclear. To obtain more detailed insight in gliotoxin biosynthesis, we employed TAMOHA (4-aminooxy-N,N,N-trimethylbutan-1-aminium), a hydroxylamine derivative that was recently developed in the Schroeder lab to trap electrophilic intermediates such as transiently stable thioesters as stable hydroxamic acids. In addition to a hydroxylamine moiety, the structure of TAMOHA contains a constitutively positively charged quaternary ammonium terminus, which enhances detection of the resulting hydroxamic acids via mass spectrometry. In this study, we first synthesized a sample of TAMOHA via a three-step sequence using the Gabriel amine synthesis. Next, by using TAMOHA to trap thioester intermediates of the Gliotoxin pathway, we identified the structures of previously uncharacterized biosynthetic intermediates, providing key insights into the sequence of steps converting a simple dipeptide into gliotoxin. The identified structures were elucidated based on the analysis of high-resolution mass spectra and MS/MS fragmentation data. This study demonstrates the potential of TAMOHA to identify electrophilic intermediates in diverse metabolic pathways

Managing livestock mortalities on the farm

All livestock managers must also have a plan to manage deadstock. In most states, carcasses must be disposed of within 48 to 72 hours, and a good plan is essential to ensure timely management. The most common strategies include rendering, incineration, burial, and composting. Each approach has different benefits, drawbacks, and management requirements, so it is important to choose the option that best fits your operation.This issue of The Manager is published by Progressive Dairy and printing is sponsored by Papillon

Essays on International Trade and Development Economics

332 pagesThis dissertation takes the readers through three stories that illustrate how global macro shocks and trade policies can have an extensive impact on emerging countries across worker, firm, and household-level. Building on this general theme, I offer an empirical investigation on two labor-abundant regions that utilize different economic leverages for their development. The first chapter visits Vietnam, a fast growing developing country in Southeast Asia that has the Factory Asia model embedded in its development agenda. With the U.S-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) signed in 2001, the country has gained a strong foothold into the U.S goods market and impressively exported itself out of poverty over the last three decades. Using this exogenous trade shock, I provide a novel channel of the gains from the BTA that are spatially propagated across the local labor markets through the pre-existing internal migration network. I provide a theory, and devise an empirical counterpart to argue for an important contribution of the migration-induced spillover effect from the BTA shock in (i) facilitating the structural transformation away from agriculture and toward industrialization, (ii) improving earnings among the low-educated workers, and (iii) narrowing the skill premium. Importantly, the direct effect of trade on labor reallocation nearly doubles when controlling for the spillover exposure. Further analysis on household spending and regional poverty shows that both direct and spillover exposures improve per capita expenditure for households with low educated head and effectively reduce poverty incidence, albeit with some differential timing over the short and medium run. In particular, while the direct effect reduces regional poverty immediately after the BTA implementation and quickly subsides in the subsequent years, the spillover effect gradually builds up over time and only turns significant by 2008. The second chapter, while still remaining on Vietnam, visits a more recent episode of trade protectionism that has garnered a great deal of attention from both the media and academia. Due to the interconnected global production network, a trade dispute between a few economic giants could extend its impacts on other countries in the supply chain. For developing countries, this can be either a curse or a blessing. In this chapter, coauthored with Sunghun Lim, we leverage a wide range of Vietnamese dataset and the 2018-2019 US-China trade war to show that protectionist trade policies can inadvertently create unexpected economic benefits for a bystander developing nation. We uncover a significant increase in Vietnam’s exports to the US through the channel of trade diversion opportunities arising from the trade conflict. We also find that new FDI projects in the manufacturing sectors hit by the trade war have increased by about 30% compared to other FDI destinations amid the trade war. More importantly, our analysis reveals that such unforeseen exposure to the trade war triggered significant structural transformation in Vietnam, manifested in (i) increased formality and skill upgrades at the firm level, (ii) mitigated labor market frictions through reallocation of high-skilled workers, and (iii) a labor shift from agriculture to manufacturing and informal to formal sectors in the regions more impacted by the trade war. This study highlights that the pathway toward economic growth remains open for developing economies in the era of trade protectionism, at least in the short run. The final chapter travels to a labor-abundant and resource-rich Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Instead of pursuing an export led growth through light manufacturing, due to a large deposit of natural resources and precious minerals, it is the mineral extraction sector that dominates the region’s export portfolio. This chapter, coauthored with Tsenguunjav Byambasuren, explores the role of the understudied artisanal mining sector on employment outcomes among African women. We then asks how such improvement in outside option would affect household-level outcomes such as intimate partner violence (IPV) and decision-making power. Exploiting cell-level spatial variation in gold suitability and an exogenous variation in international gold price for identification, we find that moderately severe physical IPV that are experienced less frequently by women decreases mainly due to improvement in women’s bargaining power enhanced by an increase in their earning potential from extractive and sales or retail activities relative to husbands in response to the increased profitability of artisanal mining. The IPV-reducing short-run effects of artisanal gold mining, which are opposite from the impacts of industrial gold mining, tend to persist in the long term as its driving forces sustain over time. However, sexual IPV generally increases due to artisanal and industrial gold mining

POLITICAL CONNECTION, REPORTING TRANSPARENCY, AND RISK DISCLOSURE

89 pagesI examine the effect of losing political connections on corporate reportingtransparency and risk disclosure. Political cost literature suggests that firms receiving political attention are more likely to use accounting choices to reduce reported profits, likely resulting in less transparent disclosure. One of China’s anti-corruption policies, Rule 18, took effect in October 2013 and mandated independent board directors above certain civil ranks to resign from firms, constituting increasing political costs to firms. My empirical analysis employs this policy shock and a difference-in-difference research design. Using composite textual measures of reporting transparency and risk disclosure, I find that losing political connection does not affect reporting transparency or risk disclosure significantly, providing no support to the hypothesis. More nuanced analysis reveals that firms with high R&D intensity reduce their reporting transparency after Rule 18 more saliently, aligning with the increasing proprietary cost concerns leading to a less transparent information environment after firms lose their political connection. Finally, I provide the explanations for the insignificant effect of Rule 18 on reporting transparency and risk disclosure: firms don’t consider the textual transparency a counterpart of financial reporting quality in Hope et al. (2020) and this is partly due to investors’ disinterest. Risk disclosure also lacks the information content and the regulation does not significantly affect several underlying risks. Overall, my findings provide mixed evidence related to the effect of political connections on Chinese firms’ information environment and illustrate the difference in investors’ reaction to the linguistic disclosure information between China and the US