Cyprian Davis’s Contributions to the Study of African American Catholic History: Articles in the \u3cem\u3eU.S. Catholic Historian\u3c/em\u3e

In celebration of Father Cyprian Davis’s eightieth birthday, the BCTS invited his friend and fellow historian, Dr. Christopher Kauffman to reflect on the meaning of Father Cyprian’s articles published in the U.S. Catholic Historian from 1986 to 2006. Dr. Kauffman pays special attention to the relationship of these articles to Father Cyprian’s 1990 study The History of Black Catholics in the United States, to his inspirational writings, and to his ongoing research and writing of Black Catholic history

Macroeconomic Monetary Policy and Sub-macroeconomic Impacts: Evaluation across Eras

This study examines the impacts of monetary policy on regions of the United States. The purpose is to show how monetary policy decisions affect the average economy relative to disaggregate components, and to examine the effects over different periods. This will provide broader insight into the workings of the economy beyond the aggregate impacts, and should add a significant amount of information to the current literature on regional monetary effects. To allow for endogeneity between variables, the vector autoregression (VAR) method is used. Impulse response functions (IRFs) are derived to show dynamic responses of regions to a monetary policy shock. The monetary policy affects on regions are compared across time by splitting the data into two sub-samples. Also, potential transmission mechanisms for monetary policy are examined. In general, results indicate that monetary policy shocks affect regional economies differently, and that these effects have changed over time. As a monetary shock increases the federal funds rate, the real per capita personal income in regions will decrease. In addition, these negative responses to a rise in the federal funds rate differ in magnitude across the regions. Some regions, such as the Great Lakes, tend to have a greater response to a shock, while other regions, such as the Southwest, respond less to a federal funds rate shock. The sub-sample periods showed the regional responses between two periods: 1959 – 1979 and 1980 – 2003. The magnitude of the affects in period two are much smaller than those in period one indicating that monetary policy has less of an impact in the later period. This study also examined potential transmission mechanisms that convey monetary policy shocks through the economy. The results indicate that the interest rate channel, consumption channel, and credit channel are all potential mechanisms for monetary policy. However, the results also indicate that the transmission mechanisms for monetary policy may have changed and that the important mechanisms operative in the first period (1959 – 1979) were diminished in importance during the later period (1980 – 2003)

Global Stability for Charged Scalar Fields in Spacetimes close to Minkowski

In this work I prove global stability for the zero solution of the massless Charge-Scalar Field system on a background spacetime which is close to 1+3-dimensional Minkowski space. In particular, my analysis takes place in a class of background metrics which satisfy certain energy and decay estimates consistent with the behavior of small-data solutions to Einstein's Vacuum Equations in harmonic coordinates. My results are analogous to results obtained for the same system in Minkowski space by Lindblad and Sterbenz. The proof relies on a single-parameter modification of the standard null frame and Lorentz fields which depends on the mass associated with the metric. In particular, the Lorentz fields are the same as those used in previous work by Hans Lindblad and the modified null frame can be written in terms of the modified Lorentz fields in a manner analogous to the standard null frame. This dissertation is based on my paper, Global Stability for Charged Scalar Fields in an Asymptotically Flat Metric in Harmonic Gaug

Generation of very flat optical frequency combs from continuous-wave lasers using cascaded intensity and phase modulators driven by tailored radio frequency waveforms

We demonstrate a scheme, based on a cascade of lithium niobate intensity and phase modulators driven by specially tailored radio frequency waveforms to generate an optical frequency comb with very high spectral flatness. In this work we demonstrate a 10 GHz comb with ~40 lines with spectral power variation below 1-dB and ~60 lines in total. The number of lines that can be generated is limited by the power handling capability of the phase modulator, and this can be scaled without compromising the spectral flatness. Furthermore, the spectral phase of the generated combs in our scheme is almost purely quadratic which, as we will demonstrate, allows for very high quality pulse compression using only single mode fiber.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, replaced the older version with the published versio

Selinexor, a novel selective inhibitor of nuclear export, reduces SARS-CoV-2 infection and protects the respiratory system in vivo

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is responsible for the recent global pandemic. The nuclear export protein (XPO1) has a direct role in the export of SARS-CoV proteins including ORF3b, ORF9b, and nucleocapsid. Inhibition of XPO1 induces anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, and antioxidant pathways. Selinexor is an FDA-approved XPO1 inhibitor. Through bioinformatics analysis, we predicted nuclear export sequences in the ACE-2 protein and confirmed by in vitro testing that inhibition of XPO1 with selinexor induces nuclear localization of ACE-2. Administration of selinexor inhibited viral infection prophylactically as well as therapeutically in vitro. In a ferret model of COVID-19, selinexor treatment reduced viral load in the lungs and protected against tissue damage in the nasal turbinates and lungs in vivo. Our studies demonstrated that selinexor downregulated the pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10, IFN-γ, TNF-α, and GMCSF, commonly associated with the cytokine storm observed in COVID-19 patients. Our findings indicate that nuclear export is critical for SARS-CoV-2 infection and for COVID-19 pathology and suggest that inhibition of XPO1 by selinexor could be a viable anti-viral treatment option