Smart Point-of-Sale Automation

A smart assistant that can pull up the history of purchases for the customers by remembering their faces. It works by combining Face recognition with database management

Dynamically Tunable Plasmonic Structural Color

Functional surfaces which can control light across the electromagnetic spectrum are highly desirable. With the aid of advanced modeling and fabrication techniques, researchers have demonstrated surfaces with near arbitrary tailoring of reflected/transmitted amplitude, phase and polarization - the applications for which are diverse as light itself. These systems often comprise of structured metals and dielectrics that, when combined, manifest resonances dependent on structural dimensions. This attribute provides a convenient and direct path to arbitrarily engineer the surface\u27s optical characteristics across many electromagnetic regimes. But while many of these plasmonic systems struggle to compete with the efficiency of pre-existing technologies, the ability to tune plamsonic structures post-fabrication is a distinct advantage which may lead to novel devices. In this work, I will summarize fundamental and applied aspects of tunable plasmonic systems as applied to the visible and infrared regimes. I will demonstrate how liquid crystal may be used to dynamically and reversibly tune the plasmonic resonances of metallic surfaces on a millisecond time scale. For the visible, this results in dynamic color-changing surfaces capable of covering the entire RGB color space and which is compatible with active addressing schemes. I will then show the application of these concepts to infrared absorbers through the use of liquid crystal and phase change materials. The later of these devices can find use in infrared data/image encoding, thermal management and camouflage. Together, these works explore the limits of tunable plasmonic systems and the novel devices they might lead to

Chinoiserie in the novels of Robert Hans van Gulik

This thesis considers the cultural transactions that occur in Robert Hans van Gulik\u27s Judge Dee stories, a set of Chinese investigative fiction works written by a Dutchman in English. These works are investigated through the interpretive lens of chinoiserie --an extension of Edward Said\u27s Orientalism, named for a design aesthetic that featured the creation of Chinese goods by European artisans who were less interested in closely emulating Chinese styles than in creating fashionable exotica for the domestic market. Chinoiserie investigates the alterations done to foreign cultural products as they are changed to meet the domestic culture\u27s preferences and expectations. The object of this thesis is to explore the ways in which van Gulik\u27s Chinese investigative fiction was adapted to his Western audience by focusing on his presentation of the ideological domains of rationality versus the supernatural and the religious traditions of Buddhism and Daoism. Using his authority as a scholar of Chinese culture, van Gulik wrote these works in opposition to the popular misconception of China. The study demonstrates that van Gulik catered to Western preferences by positioning Judge Dee as a far more rational investigator than was the norm for Chinese investigative fiction, and that van Gulik wrote with Western expectations in mind, replicating in his works the position held on Chinese religions by the Western scholars of his day. In so doing, he disseminated his own conception of China and also demonstrated how removed a work can be from its origins and still be called Chinese