Prebiotic Chemistry and Molecular Origins of Life

This proposal builds on the successes of the PI’s group in investigating the excited state dynamics of nucleic acid derivatives. It aims to explore new areas, such as the role of excess electronic and vibrational energy in the formation of photoproducts in RNA nucleobases. The proposal challenges the conventional view that ultrafast internal conversion to the ground state equals high photostability in uracil (2,4-dioxopyrimidine) and cytosine (2-oxo,4-aminopyrimidine). It also examines whether the identity of the amino and oxo substituents plays a key role in controlling whether photoproducts are formed.

Student Support for Spatial and temporal variations in the mass accumulation of sediment

Preliminary evidence indicates sediment accumulation varies significantly across the off-shore areas of Lake Erie’s central basin in ways that are surprising and poorly understood. This variation is important for understanding and managing hypoxia and storm erosion. Students will take part in a research cruise to collect sediment cores, will travel with the research team to the Continental Scientific Drilling Facility (CSDF) in Minnesota to scan and sub-sample the cores, and will play lead roles in 210Pb/137Cs and pollen dating of the top ~20 cm of sediment.

Chemical ecology and Hawaiian Flora

While there have been targeted studies of some species, to date, no broad survey of the volatile chemical diversity of Hawaiian flowers exists. I propose to broadly investigate the evolution of floral volatiles in the Hawaiian flora to improve our understanding of the reproductive biology of Hawaiian plants and the nature of their chemical adaptation to their island biomes. This knowledge is critical to conservation efforts and will also contribute to an under-investigated aspect of evolutionary biology in Hawaii. This proposal is to conduct an initial study on approximately 20 taxa in two contrasting native genera, one (Hibiscus) with visually diverse, showy flowers, and another (Kadua) with small inconspicuous flowers. This study will test the hypothesis that these lineages radiated to fill different chemical niches just as lineages often radiate to fill morphological niches and that Kadua, despite its lack of showy morphology, harbors substantial floral scent diversity.

Measuring the isotope effect for chromium in Earth’s mantle

This proposal is for seed funding that would enable PhD student Zhihua Xiong to develop chromium (Cr) isotopes as a tool for investigating high-temperature geochemical processes in Earth and planetary interiors. We propose to determine the isotope effect for Cr diffusion in olivine, the primary constituent of Earth’s upper mantle, by measuring the isotope ratios along Cr diffusion profiles that have already been generated in well-characterized laboratory experiments.

Visible and Invisible: Merging Human and Computer Vision in Art Historical Analysis

Expanding our capability to include attribution across paintings would create an opportunity to use those paintings as primary sources for understanding workshop practice and the training and development of individual artists, many of whom remain unknown. By discerning the hand of an artist over a number of works, we can trace their development as a mentee within the workshop, and in some instances, given enough data, follow them to other workshops or as they become a master in their own right. Additionally, our method could help reconstruct the lives and oeuvres of lesser-known artists, particularly female artists, who remain understudied in the history of art of the Renaissance and Early Modern period.

“Embodied Religion and Extended Reality: The Impact of Emerging Technologies
on the Humanistic Study of Sacred Space”

Throughout human history, material replicas—whether copies of holy scriptures or souvenirs of sites of shared cultural significance–have shaped how people come to know their worlds. Mixed reality is a form of replicative and reproductive technology that, like its historical precedents, distills an extraordinary amount of information and entails a plethora of interpretive decisions to create models that construct authoritative models of “reality” that people see, inhabit, and enact. These replicative technologies represent a powerful form of world-building, particularly when applied towards those dimensions of social life that are most meaningful, such as religion, empire, or, in our modern world, consumerism.

A statistical mechanics lens for quantitative musicology

This project aims to develop and deploy physics-based analytical tools to interrogate questions in musicology. The work proposed here will proceed in a co-design framework, where the development of statistical tools will be informed by the needs of the musicological questions, and simultaneously, the questions of musicology will be refined by the statistical lens of the physics-based models.

Increasing the International Reach of my Scholarship on German

People Discrimination under the lens of Post-Colonialism and Continental Philosophy

Modified Gravity as an alternative to the Planet Nine Hypothesis

Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel

Finishing the Regional Theatre History

Fruitfulness – Subvention

Immersive Realms and Cognition

The project budget will support the goal of exploring techniques to align holographic scans onto physical object models that can be manipulated in the real world.The project is two-pronged. One, it will facilitate the final development of the three interconnected spaces in the HoloLens, one secular (the feast hall), one liturgical and public (the church apse), one devotional and private (the chapel). Two, it will allow us to adapt these MR environments to embodied modes of learning through the close study of three holographic objects.

Ecology, Attention, Action

We are a team of interdisciplinary scholars planning to create a transforma4ve program around the concept of ecological a)en+on. Ecology is the study of rela4onships among organisms and environments. A)en+on is the capacity to process relevant informa4on while excluding irrelevant informa4on. Ecological a)en+on captures the fact that what humans a:end to changes what we care about, what we care about changes what we act on. This project will allow us to learn from each other, create new courses/programs, carry out studies, generate authenic community partnerships, and secure stable funding for ongoing work.

An exploration of Ancient Babylonian Chemical Techniques

What we propose, if our project is funded, is to go beyond that initial inquisitive level, and venture into a more empirical investigation. To do so, we will focus on two cuneiform tablets, chosen for their uniqueness, and for the historical implications they suggest. The first tablet (BM 62788+) provides instructions for the dyeing of purple wool by means of cheaper (see expanded description) materials, while the second, more fragmentary, text (K 7942+) describes technical procedures involving silver, among a handful of other metals. It has been suggested that the methods described may be precursors of Hellenistic and Roman alchemical practices, and yet, given the state of our present understanding of the texts, it is difficult to assess the value of this assertion. Aligning perfectly with the Think Big pathway “Interdisciplinarity,” our study will integrate

Thermoresponsive Polymers with Unique Architecture as Ocular Adhesives

The demand for ophthalmic adhesive arises from the millions of patients seeking treatment for various eye injuries and surgical procedures. Currently, sutures are the standard for repairing ocular wounds, but they also pose risks. Adhesive materials are being developed to address these issues, particularly for emergency cases. We hypothesize that changing polymer architecture, specifically to bottlebrush form, can mitigate viscosity, increase polymer-polymer and polymer-surface interactions, enable faster response rate to temperature change, and enhance adhesive strength, making it suitable to ocular adhesives.

Overcoming the Blood-Retina Barrier for Drug Discovery

This Expanding Horizons Initiative (EHI) proposal is designed to augment a recent NIHR01 proposal that was submitted and received generally positive reviews with one notable exception. The reviewers were most enthusiastic about an observation we have made with respect to overcoming the bloodretina barrier (BRB) for drug delivery to the eye. The BRB has proven to be more stringent than even the bloodbrain barrier (BBB) for targeting drugs to ocular tissues. The caveat to this enthusiasm is that the reviewers felt the findings were too preliminary.

My translation of the award winning novel, SARA, by Maivo Suárez

I won’t play innocent

Being black and being green: An examination of the purchase decisions and experiences of black electronic vehicle owners

This project seeks to examine middle-class Blacks’sustainability-driven consumption by investigating what factors impact the purchase decisions of Black electronic vehicle (EV) owners.

Providing peer and faculty mentored research opportunities for CWRU students with historically minoritized racial identities

With direction from the communities of learning (CoL) social learning theory, we request funds to enhance opportunities for peer and faculty-mentored child-focused research for historically racially minoritized CWRU students. This objective focuses on improving racial and social justice for CWRU’s racially minoritized students and creating a campus research culture of inclusive excellence. By addressing the inequities in accessing research opportunities and providing peer and faculty mentor support for racially minoritized students, we can strengthen CWRU research activities and fully support our minoritized students.

Amplifying voices: understanding the lived experience minority caregivers of children with developmental delays

In this project, my community partners and I will use a participatory approach to understand the experiences, specifically mental health needs of African American caregivers of autistic children in the Cleveland community. Using mixed methods design to elucidate the voices of caregivers from underrepresented backgrounds, we aim to develop and validate a culturally sensitive screener to evaluate the mental health concerns and needs of caregivers in the community.

Experiential Cross-cultural Learning: Service Abroad

I aspire to create a new course that nurtures students through an experiential pedagogical model that combines service-learning, study abroad, and international education.

Resettled refugees’ experiences of domestic medical examinations

Refugees resettling to the United States, including to Northeast Ohio, are a culturally diverse population, who face particular health-related risks and vulnerabilities due to past trauma, complex migration histories, and post-migration stressors. Newly arrived refugees in the US are required to have a domestic medical examination—a comprehensive health screening—as an important part of their resettlement and integration. The domestic medical exam is very often the first interaction that refugees have with the US health care system. Minimal research has been conducted on domestic medical exams and the existing research focuses primarily on clinical requirements or cultural considerations for providers.

Lack of Access, Sudden Death: The Association Between Inequitable Access to Cardioverter Defibrillators and Mortality Among Younger Adults in the SUDDEN Study

Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) are life-saving devices for people with potentially lethal heart rhythm abnormalities. Unfortunately, previous studies have shown that many people who need these devices are not receiving them. Factors like extreme old age, terminal illnesses, advanced cancers, or severe kidney disease may play a role, but they are not the major impediments to access. Therefore, a critical question remains unanswered: Why are people who meet indications for ICDs not receiving them? My interdisciplinary research in sociocultural medical anthropology seeks to answer this question and to design appropriate, evidence-based interventions to improve access to these life-saving devices.