2021 Dissertations (MU)
https://hdl.handle.net/10355/85701
2024-03-29T11:50:15ZAcademic capitalist regime in Colombia : discourses from national research policies and professors
https://hdl.handle.net/10355/90074
Academic capitalist regime in Colombia : discourses from national research policies and professors
Montes Gutierrez, Isabel Cristina
This dissertation is centered on whether and how the production (research) and transmission (education) of knowledge are considered public or private goods. Drawing on the theories of academic capitalism and neoliberalism as an important underlying ideology, this dissertation analyzed national research policies that shape professors' work as well as professors as the 'users' of these policies. Particularly, the first phase of this dissertation examined four national research policies: Quality of National Publications, Faculty Promotion, Research Groups and Researchers' Classifications, and Spin-off Policies. The second phase was based on a multicase study that examined the link between these four national research policies and professors' actions. This study found that the academic capitalist regime was reflected and accepted in Colombian national research policies and, with some resistance, among professors. The final analysis demonstrates that the academic capitalist regime generated a growing stratification at country, field and individual levels that was reproduced and perpetuated through the creation of a common sense among national research policies and professors. Theoretically, this dissertation also extended the theory of academic capitalism by adding the commercial for-profit model of academic publishing as a new layer and essential component of the academic capitalist regime that generates prestige behavior among professors.
2021-01-01T00:00:00ZAccurate, fast, and robust 3D city-scale reconstruction using wide area motion imagery
https://hdl.handle.net/10355/93247
Accurate, fast, and robust 3D city-scale reconstruction using wide area motion imagery
Yao, Shizeng
Multi-view stereopsis (MVS) is a core problem in computer vision, which takes a set of scene views together with known camera poses, then produces a geometric representation of the underlying 3D model Using 3D reconstruction one can determine any object's 3D profile, as well as knowing the 3D coordinate of any point on the profile. The 3D reconstruction of objects is a generally scientific problem and core technology of a wide variety of fields, such as Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD), computer graphics, computer animation, computer vision, medical imaging, computational science, virtual reality, digital media, etc. However, though MVS problems have been studied for decades, many challenges still exist in current state-of-the-art algorithms, for example, many algorithms still lack accuracy and completeness when tested on city-scale large datasets, most MVS algorithms available require a large amount of execution time and/or specialized hardware and software, which results in high cost, and etc... This dissertation work tries to address all the challenges we mentioned, and proposed multiple solutions. More specifically, this dissertation work proposed multiple novel MVS algorithms to automatically and accurately reconstruct the underlying 3D scenes. By proposing a novel volumetric voxel-based method, one of our algorithms achieved near real-time runtime speed, which does not require any special hardware or software, and can be deployed onto power-constrained embedded systems. By developing a new camera clustering module and a novel weighted voting-based surface likelihood estimation module, our algorithm is generalized to process di erent datasets, and achieved the best performance in terms of accuracy and completeness when compared with existing algorithms. This dissertation work also performs the very first quantitative evaluation in terms of precision, recall, and F-score using real-world LiDAR groundtruth data. Last but not least, this dissertation work proposes an automatic workflow, which can stitch multiple point cloud models with limited overlapping areas into one larger 3D model for better geographical coverage. All the results presented in this dissertation work have been evaluated in our wide area motion imagery (WAMI) dataset, and improved the state-of-the-art performances by a large margin.The generated results from this dissertation work have been successfully used in many aspects, including: city digitization, improving detection and tracking performances, real time dynamic shadow detection, 3D change detection, visibility map generating, VR environment, and visualization combined with other information, such as building footprint and roads.
2021-01-01T00:00:00ZAcrylate synthesis from carbon dioxide - ethylene coupling catalyzed by first-row transition metal complexes
https://hdl.handle.net/10355/91024
Acrylate synthesis from carbon dioxide - ethylene coupling catalyzed by first-row transition metal complexes
Uttley, Katherine Bonita
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an abundant and renewable carbon source than can be used as feedstock for the synthesis of value-added materials. One such material is acrylic acid, and acrylate derivatives, which can be used in the production of super absorbent polymers, adhesives, and coatings. The oxidative coupling of CO2 and ethylene offers a more atom-economical and sustainable approach acrylic acid formation relative to the petroleum-based synthesis currently in use. This dissertation examines the ability of the first-row transition metals Nickel (Ni) and Iron (Fe) to yield acrylate from CO2 and ethylene. A wealth of research on Ni-mediated CO2-ethylene coupling reactions laid the groundwork for a variety of in-depth investigations into ancillary ligand effects and the role of additives in the multi-component system. Moderate improvements to catalytic activity were observed but ultimately the progress of this system has stalled, and investigations turned to the development of novel Fe complexes. A family of low valent Fe complexes were found to facilitate CO2-ethylene coupling. However, the insertion of two CO2 units was observed, resulting in the formation of the dicarboxylate product methylmalonic acid (MMA). A one electron oxidation was found to slow the rate of second CO2 insertion and mixtures of propionic acid (PA) and MMA were obtained.
2021-01-01T00:00:00ZAdenosine deaminase acting on RNA (ADAR1) in the development of abdominal aortic aneurysm and atherosclerosis
https://hdl.handle.net/10355/90005
Adenosine deaminase acting on RNA (ADAR1) in the development of abdominal aortic aneurysm and atherosclerosis
Cai, Dunpeng
The main focus of this dissertation is the role of Adenosine deaminase acting on RNA (ADAR1) in the development of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and atherosclerosis. This first chapter of this document presents a review of the literature, while the second chapter focuses on experimental studies defining the contribution of ADAR1 to the progression of abdominal aortic aneurysm. The principal outcome of this study includes: 1) ADAR1 expression is induced in abdominal aortic smooth muscle cell in both mouse and human AAA tissues. 2) Heterozygous knockout of ADAR1 diminishes the Ang II-induced AAA/dissection in ApoE-/- mice. 3) Mouse aortic transplantation indicates that ADAR1 in vascular cells is essential for AAA formation. 4) SMC-specific ADAR1 deficiency reduces experimental AAA formation/dissection. 5) Mechanistically, ADAR1 physically interacts with human antigen R (HuR) to increase the stability of matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP2) and matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP9) mRNA, leading to increased MMP levels and activities. Thus, ADAR1 is a novel regulator of AAA development/dissection, and thus may represent a potentially new therapeutic target to prevent AAA growth and rupture. The third chapter focuses on defining the role of ADAR1 in the development of atherosclerosis and plague stability. In these studies, ADAR1 protein expression is found to be significantly induced in vascular SMCs in human and mouse atherosclerotic plaque and mediate MMP2 expression via the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-Akt pathway. ADAR1 further promotes flexible transcription of MMP2 via disinhibiting Z-DNA. Our data suggest that endogenous ADAR1 is an important and previously unrecognized regulator of VSMC MMP expression and atherosclerosis. Thus, ADAR1 represents a novel and promising drug target for potential treatment of atherosclerosis. In summary, our studies highlight the significance of ADAR1 in exacerbating the formation of both abdominal aortic aneurysm and atherosclerosis. Ongoing and future studies are aimed at exploring therapeutic methods by targeting ADAR1.
2021-01-01T00:00:00Z