Feeling Transparent: Trans Parenthood and the American Family System

This dissertation explores the contemporary lived experiences and representations of people who are transgender and parents (trans parents) in the United States. I employ an intersectional framework that primarily uses trans theory, motherhood studies, and affect theory. After conducting 36 semi-structured interviews with trans parents across the US and critically analyzing the series Transparent (2014-2019), I found that enmeshed discourses and practices of family and motherhood, or what I dub the American family system, affectively shapes who gets greater access to material and social capital. This process primarily occurs through the ways the American family system mobilizes affects like belonging, love, and fear to move people towards gender normativity via parenting language and parenting bodies, and because of this, it overwhelmingly sticks motherhood to bodies assigned female at birth. Trans parents who cannot or will not reproduce the American family system become affect aliens and misfits, or what I see as generative locations from which we can reimagine who and how we care for one another

Physics of tissue fluidity and collective cell motion in epithelia

Collective cell migration is essential in many fundamental biological processes. During morphogenesis, cells display highly coordinated shape changes, rearrangements, and motion. During wound healing, cells must coordinate their migration to close gaps in epithelial tissues to prevent infection. The efficiency of these processes is determined by the fluidity of the tissue --- the ability for cells to rearrange and remodel, which in turn is governed by the mechanics of both the cells and their environment. In this thesis, I use computational methods to investigate the origin of tissue fluidity, and its role on collective cell motion. In Part I, I investigate how tissue fluidity governs collective cell motion during wound healing. We find that the ability for cells to rearrange, preventing jamming, is essential for closure. Despite contractile tension around the gap driving closure, reducing tension in the cells increases tissue fluidity and healing rates. In Part II, I study how cells optimise their active behaviour, either contraction or crawling, to regulate tissue fluidity for rapid motion. In wound healing, we find that a balance of the two modes is most efficient over a wide range of cell, substrate, and tissue properties. In Part III, I study how tissue fluidity regulates force transmission in cell colonies. For stiff cells, the tissue acts like a giant single-cell, with traction forces distributed around the colony periphery, but as tissue fluidity increases, forces localise to the interior of the colony. Tissue fluidity requires that cells are able to rearrange and change shape, which in turn is regulated by adaptive viscoelastic properties of the junctions. Thus, in Part IV, I develop a new theory for how cell-cell junctions remodel under stress; strain above a threshold triggers tension remodelling and irreversible length changes. This enables tissue shape change and homeostasis that is robust to fluctuations in stress. Overall, this work demonstrates the important role of single cell mechanics and tissue fluidity on regulating collective cell behaviours

Social Networks and Novice Teachers: An Examination of Supports Provided Through Social Networks

The purpose of this study was to examine the support provided to novice teachers through their social networks. Data for this qualitative study were collected and analyzed through use of the Social Capital Theory of Social Structure and Action developed by Nan Lin (2001). The study participants were middle school teachers. The study participants were interviewed twice, and their responses were subsequently analyzed and compared. Data indicate that in addition to their formal supports, teachers made extensive use of informal interactions for the exchange of social capital. However, the responses also yielded that support for novice teachers, including professional development and mentoring, has room for improvement. Future studies on the exchange of social capital within a school setting, the differing needs of traditionally and non-traditionally certified educatory, how trust affect the flow of information, and a longitudinal study of how social capital is exchanged could be useful.Education (PhD

Analysis of a 17.9 kb region from Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome VII reveals the presence of eight open reading frames, including BRF1 (TFIIIB70) and GCN5 genes

We report the nucleotide sequence of a 17,893 bp DNA segment from the right arm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome VII. This fragment begins at 482 kb from the centromere. The sequence includes the BRF1 gene, encoding TFIIIB70, the 5' portion of the GCN5 gene, an open reading frame (ORF) previously identified as ORF MGA1, whose translation product shows similarity to heat-shock transcription factors and five new ORFs. Among these, YGR250 encodes a polypeptide that harbours a domain present in several polyA binding proteins. YGR245 is similar to a putative Schizosaccharomyces pombe gene, YGR248 shows significant similarity with three ORFs of S. cerevisiae situated on different chromosomes, while the remaining two ORFs, YGR247 and YGR251, do not show significant similarity to sequences present in databases

Currency depreciation and the monetary adjustment process: Reconsidering Lord King's contributions

© Oxford University Press 2018, All rights reserved. This paper investigates Lord King's contributions in light of the renewed debate on international monetary policy coordination. We argue that King's work contains refined bullionist insights concerning currency depreciation, exchange rate determination, and balance of payments adjustment. We show how King's analysis of the monetary process under different currency regimes can help elucidate the effects of unconventional monetary policy on a global scale, concerning monetary spillovers, currency wars, business cycles, and the distribution of wealth

Input and Output Inventories in General Equilibrium

We build and estimate a two‐sector (goods and services) dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with two types of inventories: materials (input) inventories facilitate the production of finished goods, while finished goods (output) inventories yield utility services. The model is estimated using Bayesian methods. The estimated model replicates the volatility and cyclicality of inventory investment and inventory‐to‐target ratios. Although inventories are an important element of the model’s propagation mechanism, shocks to inventory efficiency or management are not an important source of business cycles. When the model is estimated over two subperiods (pre ‐ and post‐1984), changes in the volatility of inventory shocks, or in structural parameters associated with inventories play a minor role in reducing the volatility of output