The Metamorphosis of Faith in Philia, Thessaly: The Sanctuary of Itonia Athina from Polytheism to Christianity

In the region of Thessaly in central Greece lie the remains of the sanctuary of Athena Itonia, a regional incarnation of the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom and craftwork. From the Bronze Age through the Byzantine Period, the site was a focus of religious worship, but its nature changed as it transformed from pagan to Christian. The international archaeological collaboration “The Metamorphosis of Faith in Philia: Thessaly: The Sanctuary of Itonia Athina from Polytheism to Christianity” aims to study the sanctuary and its evolution throughout its chronological phases. The project is in the second year of a three-year archaeological permit granted by the Greek government to an international team of researchers from CWRU, the University of Marburg, Germany, and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Karditsa (the regional branch of the Greek archaeological service).

Democracy’s (Dis)Advantages

Democracy advocates and many citizens throughout the world desire evidence that democracy provides tangible benefits, such as better economic, environmental, health, and security outcomes. In the last 20 years, the number of studies examining possible tangible benefits of democracy and, to a much lesser extent, advantages of other regime types, reached 607 studies by one count (Gerring et al. 2022). However, we still cannot answer the question, when are democracies, or other regime types, more successful at mitigating problems? The obstacle is that most studies examine a single outcome, such as economic inequality or air pollution, and thus have not provided a general framework for understanding regime types’ success at solving problems. Examining numerous economic, environmental, health, and security problems and guided by an initial theoretical framework, this project will provide an answer to the

Cationic π -conjugated polymers for next generation of electronic devices

π -Conjugated polymers have attracted a lot of attention as they enable new inexpensive, flexible and lightweight electronic devices. However, to reach their potential, novel chemistries are urgently needed to create air stable n-type π conjugated polymers with high electron conductivity. This proposal will test two new strategies that we hypothesize will create cationic conjugated moieties with high electron affinity and stable electron conductivity. The cationic moieties will also add interesting ion conductivity that may enable new applications. To achieve this ambitious goal, we will combine Protasiewicz’s expertise in inorganic chemistry with Sauve’s expertise in π-conjugated polymers and organic electronic devices. Students from both groups will collaborate to design, synthesize and study new cationic conjugated materials. The findings will be used as preliminary results to obtain external funding. This project will provide new materials with unique properties for enhanced sensors, solar cells, thermoelectrics and solid- state batteries.

Deciphering the chemical biology of toxic mixtures from cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms

Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cyanoHABs) pose an increasing threat to food and drinking water resources because a warming planet is expected to increase the number and intensity of cyanobacterial harmful algal bloom events. This may be best exemplified by the Toledo Water Crisis of 2014 in which a Do Not Drink/Do Not Use advisory was given to over 450,000 people who relied on the Toledo public drinking water supply due to a cyanobacterial harmful algal bloom in the western basin of Lake Erie. The organisms in these bloom events produce an elaborate suite of toxic compounds that primarily affect the liver and brain. In this research project, we will determine how mixtures of these toxins represent an increased risk to human and public health compared to the four toxins currently monitored by resource management agencies (microcystin-LR, anatoxin-a, saxitoxin, and cylindrospermopsin). The new toxins that we have isolated from cyanoHABs have shown liver toxicity and they appear to act through distinct mechanisms, which indicates that mixtures of these toxins could exacerbate liver toxicity and the development of severe liver dysfunction such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma. The results from this research project will advance environmental health sciences by informing public health agencies of the most potent cyanobacterial toxins, which they may not be currently monitoring and the impact of toxin mixtures, which is an understudied area and priority area for the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Electron transport layers based on naphthalene diimides

Perovskite solar cells (PSC) are very promising thin film photovoltaic technologies that are poised to revolutionize the way we generate electricity. Of the several types of PSC architectures, the planar p-i-n type has recently gained interest because of its relative stability, ease of fabrication, and compatibility with multijunction device fabrication. One issue that is currently limiting this type of PSC is the nature of the electron transport layer (ETL), whose function is to drive electrons to the top electrode while blocking holes. The ETL must not only conduct electrons well, but it must also have aligned energy levels with the perovskite layer and must be deposited on top of the perovskite layer without damaging it. Currently, fullerene-derivatives are commonly used as the ETL layer, but they have limited electron conduction, high energy losses and relatively poor longterm stability. Alternative ETL materials are urgently needed. One promising class of alternative ETL materials are naphthalene diimides (NDI), but further research is needed to reach their potential. Here, we propose to modify NDI with strategic functional groups to optimize performance. Undergraduate students directly mentored by the PI will synthesize and characterize new NDI-based molecules.

Social Cascade Following Midlife Serious Illness or Disability

Midlife is a critically important time in the life course. Society places many demands and roles on midlife adults including manging intergenerational relations, caregiving, work, and volunteerism. Importantly, a successful midlife balancing these many demands depends on having reliably good health. Spells of ill health or degenerating conditions can place pressures on the time, money, and energy that midlife individuals need to give to their myriad roles. The purpose of this EHI project is to develop a first-of-its-kind database with the health, disability, and work histories of more than 10,000 adults from age 16 to 60. Then, using sequence analysis, we will develop a typology of joint health-work trajectories in midlife to capture the most common patterns following a triggering health event. These could include clusters such as: (1) irregular employment punctuated with recurring health issues; (2) a period out of the labor force while recovering than returning fulltime; (3) unemployment while awaiting SSDI decisions.

Reason, Matter and Form: Using computer vision to disentangle the elements of artistic practice

Many art historians are critical of the application of AI-based tools to data in the humanities, citing, among other things, the notion that rendering artworks in a digital space alienates them from their original form. Dr. Van Horn and Clara Pinchbeck, a graduate student in the Department of Art History and Art, disrupt this established narrative by first using the initiative’s work on The Baptism to demonstrate the similarity between the human visual perception and the analysis of patterns in art historical research on the one hand and the conversion of cultural artifacts into digital objects and the subsequent analysis of those data, to produce new information, on the other.

Poetry in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

This project will explore the implications of artificial intelligence for the study of poetry. The analysis of poetic designs—for example, Shakespeare’s famous iambic pentameter—has long relied on extensive reading and rarefied study. But the interdisciplinary importance of poetic meter goes beyond counting syllables or unpacking metaphor: the movement of forms such as the sonnet, or the transformation of medieval English into modern English, offers unique insight into the foundations of human creativity, the maps of cultural transmission, the interchange of ideas and languages, and the effects of linguistic patterns on action and behavior. With its command over hundreds of years of poetry, artificial intelligence raises new and complex questions about methods for research into poetry. We will take up two questions: 1) What are the promises, and the limitations, of computational approaches to studying poems? 2) How are existing accounts of writing poetry– which have often assumed an external inspiration in a muse or a divinity–illuminated by the advent of artificial creativity?

Book publication: Icon Dresden: Baroque City, Air War Symbole, Political Token

 The Unique Reactivity of EKODE Lipid Peroxidation Products Allows in vivo

Detection of Inflammation

Maryam Jameelah and the Global Muslim Imagination

I Came, I Saw, I Collected: A History of the Souvenir

“MEND THE WORLD WITH WORDS: An Anthology of Works by Marjorie Agosín”

Two is better than one: Studying nanoconfined ionic liquids in porous materials using super-resolution imaging

Composite materials that mix special solvents with very porous substances can capture carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air to address climate change. In this process, CO2 is absorbed into the solvent within the solid porous material. Ionic Liquids (ILs) are a type of solvent consisting of charged species (positively charged cations and negatively charged anions) that are stable and can dissolve a high amount of CO2 selectively from other gases with reduced energy requirements. Although there has been significant progress in using ILs on their own in a liquid phase, there is not much understanding of their performance when they are combined with solid materials. Solid supports can make these processes practical to handle the ILs and increase the amount of CO2 that can be captured since ILs alone can be viscous. This research aims to understand how ILs behave when they are inside porous materials that have a high surface area, such as mesoporous silica and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). It’s not clear how ILs spread over these surfaces or how their interactions with the walls of the pores can affect the capture of CO2.

Exploratory Optoelectronic Characterization and Simulation of Graphyne

This proposal explores the innovative potential of graphyne, a two-dimensional carbon material with a unique combination of electronic, mechanical, and optical properties. Graphyne is predicted to have similar mechanical properties as its close cousin, graphene, but markedly different optical properties. However, credible reports of the synthesis of graphyne appeared only recently, so many of these properties are yet to be explored experimentally. The team assembled for this proposal are planning an interdisciplinary effort combining polymer synthesis, optical and electronic characterization, and quantum chemistry calculations to unravel the synthetic mechanism of graphyne synthesis and to experimentally measure optoelectronic properties for the first time. However, graphyne is a tricky material to work with experimentally—it is only sparingly soluble and prone to laser-induced damage—and computationally—it is intermediate between being molecular, where traditional quantum chemistry methods work well, and being a bulk crystal, where traditional solid state physics methods work well. This EHI proposal will lay the groundwork for the team’s success by answering two key questions: 1) “what experimental protocols are needed to study graphyne spectroscopically”, 2) “which quantum chemistry or solid state physics methodologies can predict the structural, electronic, and optical properties with sufficient realism that the structure-function relationships in graphyne mixtures can be rationalized?

γ-Graphyne: Electronic Measurements and Devices

Two-dimensional (2D) materials with layered van der Waals (vdW) crystal structures have grown into a vast research field over the past decade. Graphene, a single-atom thick layer of carbon crystal extracted from graphite, represents the earliest and most notable example 2D material and has demonstrated many novel properties and application potentials. The semi-metallic nature of graphene has motivated the research community to actively search for new 2D semiconductor materials beyond graphene. Graphynes, a family of 2D carbon allotropes different from graphene, were theoretically predicted more than three decades ago. Models suggest that some graphyne structures (e.g. the γ-graphyne) exhibit compelling semiconducting properties, in contrast to graphene which is always metallic, making them attractive for future semiconductor nanoelectronics applications.

Illusory Riches performance review

In the Era of the #MeToo Movement: Memory, Sexual Assault, and TraumaRelated Outcomes on Campus

The #MeToo movement has highlighted the pervasiveness of sexual assault and the widespread distrust in the reliability of women’s assault narratives.The present study aims to assess memory processing across multiple indices over time in order to better understand their role in conferring risk or resiliency for negative psychological and functional outcomes following sexual assault. We will assess pre-event, event-based, and post-event memory processing in 20 additional college-aged women who have and who have not experienced unwanted sexual contact, to increase the sample size of an ongoing longitudinal study (assessment points at baseline, 1, 3, 6, and months). Relevant baseline characteristics (e.g., prior trauma exposure), memory processing (e.g., event narrative recall, working memory, autobiographical memory, forgetting), and mental health symptoms (e.g., PTSD, depression, alcohol use) will be examined via an online survey. By bridging the areas of clinical and cognitive science, this research will promote a more practical conceptualization of traumatic memory processing and allow for better identification of risk for psychopathology following a sexual assault. This knowledge could inform better training for sexual assault advocates and intervention efforts on our campus and beyond.