Towards Sustainable Energy: Synthesis of Green Fuels with Integrated Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)

A large percentage of the United States energy demands are currently met using energy sources imported from politically unstable parts of the world. Such imports pose a potential threat to our national security and therefore, finding an alternative source to supply our country’s ever growing energy demand is critical. The synthesis of green fuels from domestic carboneous sources such as coal, biomass and municipal solid wastes are particularly attractive, particularly if it is integrated with the carbon capture and storage (CCS) schemes in order to achieve both energy and environment sustainability. Predictions of global energy usage suggest a continued increase in carbon emissions and rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere unless major changes are made to the way energy is produced and used. The containment of carbon dioxide involves CO2 separation, transportation, and storage. Until now, these technologies have been developed independently of one another, which has resulted in complex and economically challenged large scale designs. CO2 capture fluids based on the nanoparticle ionic materials (NIMS) are currently developed and their absorption isotherms are characterized as a function of CO2 partial pressure and temperature (i.e., combustion and gasification conditions). NIMS are a new class of organicinorganic hybrids that consist of a hard nanoparticle core functionalized with a molecular organic (sometimes polymeric) corona. NIMS are nanoscale analogs of ionic liquids (ILs), which are often nonvolatile and stable over a very wide temperature range. Once captured, CO2 is chemically fixed into solid matrix that is thermodynamically stable for permanent storage. The tailored synthesis of mineral carbonates will allow its use as carbon-neutral filler materials and this will further improve the life cycle of the CCS technology

Diversity in “the Korean Way”: Transcultural Identities in Contemporary Diasporic Korean Literature and Media in North America

Literary and visual media representations of diasporic Koreans in Canada and the U.S. have noticeably grown in the twenty-first century, (re)shaping popular culture imaginations of South Korean and Asian subjectivities. From globalized sitcoms such as Kim’s Convenience to novels, memoirs, and animated cartoons, recent portrayals of “Koreans” by diasporic Koreans increasingly depict the multifariousness of “Korean,” “Korean Canadian,” and “Korean American” identities through various lenses and vehicles such as local and trans-national/trans-historical perspectives, transnational Korean adoption, and comedy/humour. To capture the significance of what I discuss as the transculturality of diasporic Korean identities, I suggest in this dissertation that new frames of comparison and examination beyond geographical, temporal, and disciplinary borders are required. By demonstrating shared and different geopolitical histories and their effects among diasporic Korean populations in North America in tandem with the diversity and politics of representation within literatures and media produced by diasporic Koreans, I unsettle the knowledge of “the Korean Way”—being or becoming “Korean”—and simplistic nationalist imaginations of hyphenated Asian identities, within histories of Western colonialism and exclusion and marginalization against racial minorities in North America. The first chapter broadly traces: 1) the history of Korean Canadian and Korean American literature and media, 2) the respective political contexts shaping such representations in Canada and the U.S., 3) the development of anti-Asian Racism, racialization, and stereotypes in North America, 4) the modernization and economic rise of (South) Korea since the early-twentieth century. These historical and theoretical frameworks of the first chapter inform the second and third chapters, respectively exploring women’s narratives and televisual comedies of diasporic Koreans in North America since the 2010s. Chapter Two comparatively analyzes two novels and a memoir by female diasporic Korean authors, Anne Y.K. Choi, Frances Cha, and Jenny Heijun Wills. In this chapter, I pay careful attention to how Korean-born women negotiate their sense of identity and sexuality within contexts of race relations and racism, racial and gender capitalism, and postcolonial histories of marginalization and oppression in settings in Canada, the U.S., and South Korea. Chapter Three examines different forms of televisual comedies, Kim’s Convenience, Dr. Ken, and Angry Asian Little Girl, to underscore the influence of humour as an emerging strategy for diasporic representation, and at the same time, how such new vehicles of inclusion are surrounded by conditions of White-centred and commercial logics as well as internalized racism

Macrophages trajectories smoothing by evolving curves

When analyzing cell trajectories, we often have to deal with noisy data due to the random motion of the cells and possible imperfections in cell center detection. To smooth these trajectories, we present a mathematical model and numerical method based on evolving open-plane curve approach in the Lagrangian formulation. The model contains two terms: the first is the smoothing term given by the influence of local curvature, while the other attracts the curve to the original trajectory. We use the flowing finite volume method to discretize the advection-diffusion partial differential equation. The PDE includes the asymptotically uniform tangential redistribution of curve grid points. We present results for macrophage trajectory smoothing and define a method to compute the cell velocity for the discrete points on the smoothed curve