Environmental heat stress represents a worldwide problem for ruminant production, negatively impacting areas such as lactation, fetal development, and muscle growth. The aims of this dissertation were to determine the impact of environmental heat stress during gestation on the lactation performance of ewes, and the consequences of maternal heat stress on the post-natal performance of their offspring. Further, we tested the effect of supplementation with ß-adrenergic agonists on the growth performance of beef cattle exposed to environmental HS. To determine the influence of maternal heat stress (HS) on milk production, nineteen Columbia-Rambouillet pregnant ewes carrying singleton were exposed to hot ambient environment (n=7) or thermoneutral (TN) conditions during mid-gestation. Dry matter intake (DMI) and water intake (WI) were measured daily. At lambing, placental weight and colostrum production were measured, and for 21 days, daily milk yield was evaluated. Heat stressed ewes had lighter placental and fetal weight than TN ewes; however, colostrum production was not different. TN ewes had a similar total milk production than HS ewes. Daily milk production was higher on TN ewes on days 2, 5, and 6. HS during gestation negatively affects placental mass and milk production, impacting the nutrient sources for the fetus and causing growth restriction. In order to determine the impact of maternal heat stress on the offspring's growth performance and insulin response, twenty-one Columbia Rambouillet crossbred lambs (TN=12 and FGR=9) were used. Milk, feed, and body weights were recorded daily for eight weeks. Body measurements were taken weekly for eight weeks. Glucose tolerance tests were performed at four and eight months of age to evaluate the insulin response. HS fetuses were growth-restricted because HS lambs were 27% lighter than TN lambs at birth, indicating maternal HS caused FGR. Body weight of FGR lambs was lighter than that of TN lambs for the next eight weeks or until weaning. However, the average daily gain (ADG) and gain to feed (G:F) were not different between groups. FGR lambs presented smaller body measurements than TN lambs, except for head length (HL), which was similar between group treatments. After the intravenous glucose challenge, insulin concentrations were lower in FGR lambs than in TN lambs at four and eight months of age. FGR lambs presented asymmetric growth restriction in utero and had abnormal insulin secretion response. The use of ß-adrenergic agonists was evaluated with twenty-four Brahman steers exposed to two environmental conditions, TN and HS, and supplemented with or without Zilpaterol hydrochloride for 21 days. DMI, water intake, respiratory rate (RR), and rectal temperature (RT) were measured daily. After 21 days of supplementation, Brahman steers were relocated to the feedlot and harvested at an average weight of 544 kg post supplementation/environmental treatment, and carcass merit was evaluated. RR was higher on Brahman exposed to HS. Non-supplemented Brahman steers exposed to HS presented higher RT than TNZL steers on day eight. Heat-stressed steers supplemented with ZL had higher RT on day eleven than TNCN steers. ADG and G:F did not present significance nor carcass merit. No negative impact on growth and carcass characteristics was seen on Brahman steers exposed to HS. Zilpaterol supplementation did not affect the carcass merit, demonstrating an option to mitigate HS's adverse effect on Bos indicus. Environmental heat stress is a global problem that affects all stages of ruminant production and impacts the economy. Maternal heat stress during gestation results in a smaller placenta, decreasing the nutrients available to the fetus and fetal birth weights, causing asymmetric growth and a decrease in insulin secretion concentration. Maternal heat stress also affects milk production in lactated ewes, directly impacting the availability of milk nutrients. Similarly, HS postnatally decreases muscle growth in ruminants.

Modeling of X-ray pulse profiles from millisecond pulsars offers a promising method of inferring the mass-to-radius ratios of neutron stars. Recent observations with NICER resulted in measurements of radii for two neutron stars using this technique. In this dissertation, I explore correlations between model parameters and the degree to which individual parameters can be inferred from pulse profiles, using an analytic model that allows for an efficient and interpretable exploration. I introduce a new set of model parameters that reduce the most prominent correlations and allow for an efficient sampling of posteriors. I use this framework to show that the uncertainties in the model parameters for neutron stars for which the polar cap temperature falls outside of the NICER energy range are significantly degraded. I also demonstrate that the degree of beaming of radiation emerging from the neutron star surface has a large impact on the uncertainties in the inferred model parameters. In particular, when a model with an incorrect beaming function is used to fit data, the inferred neutron star mass-to-radius ratio can be significantly larger than the true value. This has important implications for interpreting and assessing the radii of neutron stars inferred through pulse profile modeling.

Dominick Argento was an American contemporary composer who achieved great fame as a composer of vocal music, especially lyric opera. The theatrical devices in his works make his compositions distinctive, and Argento's use of symbolic motivic cells is one of the main characteristics that drives the narrative structure in his works. Dominick Argento's I Hate and I Love is an intricate choral work in which Argento masterfully blends twelve-tone techniques with traditional harmonic language to convey the complex emotional interplay between love and hate as expressed in the poetry of Gaius Valerius Catullus. In this document, I explore Argento's compositional methods, focusing on his use of symbolic motivic cells, harmonic structures, and dramatic elements that align with the text. By analyzing these techniques, I reveal how Argento's music serves not only as a reflection of Catullus's emotional turmoil but also as an omniscient commentary that adds layers of meaning beyond the explicit text. This research contributes to the broader academic discourse on Argento's choral works, providing deeper insights into his innovative approach to choral composition and his unique integration of serialism with sonorism.

This project provides a comprehensive analysis of Jacques-Féréol Mazas’s contributions to violin pedagogy through his extensive oeuvre, particularly focusing on the educational and artistic value of his violin duos. It explores Mazas’s life, his pedagogical methodologies, and his influence on the violin duo genre, framing these within the context of broader music education trends. By dissecting works such as the foundational Violin Method, Op. 34, his intermediate collection of Six duos faciles et progressies, Op. 46, Twelve Little Duets, Op. 38, and his most demanding duo compositions, Six duos concertans, Op. 71 and Six grands duos, Op. 41, the study illustrates how Mazas’s duos effectively prepare students for advanced solo violin and diverse chamber music performances. The project outlines a developmental trajectory for violin students, from basic techniques to complex performance skills, highlighting Mazas’s unique approach to integrating technical proficiency with expressive musicality through duo works. The research underscores Mazas’s lasting impact on violin pedagogy, providing insights into the use of his duos as a structured pathway from foundational training to professional artistry.

In the context of identity development, hair is a large factor in how women and girls feelabout themselves and serves as a base for their personal merit, value, and worth (Mbilishaka, 2018). Messaging around hair in media, communities, and schools can impact the quality of the lens girls use to evaluate themselves. Black parent’s child rearing sets the tone for the formation of their child’s self-conceptualization and racial identity development (Davis Tribble et al., 2019; Mbilishaka & Apugo, 2020). This study aimed to bring light to issues that are relevant and prevalent to the lived experiences of Black adolescent girls regarding their hair. Using womanism and critical narrative inquiry, the stories of five Black girls were collected and analyzed for notable themes. Through their stories, the girls indicated that their mothers served in primarily supportive roles for their hair experiences, and they used shared and varied hair stories of female family members to make sense of their own hair stories. The findings also indicated hair as a powerful medium for self-expression for Black girls and they revealed how the girls transform negative hair experiences into dreams for a better future. The findings of this study suggest deeper exploration of hair’s role in Black girl identity development, especially as it relates to family experiences and school dynamics, to ensure the fullest and widest breath of support for Black girl sense of self. This study adds to existing literature, highlighting hair as an underutilized intervention point for building up adolescent Black girls’ positive racialized and gendered identity development.

Care and Freedom from Below examines trans do-it-yourself (DIY) health practices, with a focus on gender-affirming hormone therapy, as a communal form of care responding to oppressive, alienating, and inaccessible trans medicine. I use anarchism as my conceptual framework to theorize the political meanings, potentials, and limits of these practices. By analyzing the public texts of this community, including guides, websites, and zines, this dissertation presents trans DIY as a field of knowledge, a set of ethical principles, and a political imagination for trans autonomy. Though not an explicitly anarchist practice, I argue trans DIY shares an affinity with anarchism through its values and forms of organization, including autonomy, nonhierarchy, direct action, mutual aid, and harm reduction. Trans DIY represents a fundamental challenge to the medicalization, alienation, and gatekeeping at the heart of institutional trans medicine. Through autonomous knowledge production and communal resources, trans DIYers work to make self-medication as safe and effective as possible. Moreover, DIY enables new pathways for and meanings around transition that escape the medicalized model. Ultimately, though, DIY is not a solution to the barriers and contradictions within trans medicine, nor is it a ready blueprint for postcapitalist healthcare. Rather, trans DIY practices are imperfect experiments in autonomy, convoking a trans radical imagination of how care might look otherwise.

As one of the first Chinese composers to publish choral works in the United States, Se Enkhbayar (b. 1956) stands as a towering figure in Chinese choral music. His works are heavily influenced by folk songs and have a strong ethnic color. Mongol Shatar (Mongolian Chess) is a three-movement choral tone poem for SATB choir with divisi, tenor and bass soloists, and Guzheng (a plucked instrument) that Se Enkhbayar composed in 2002. In this composition, Se Enkhbayar uses the game of Mongolian chess as an analogy for life. In studying and performing this work, scholars and conductors can benefit from historical, musical and cultural context, including regarding the features and particular techniques of traditional Mongolian music, especially folk music; biographical information about and compositional characteristics of the composer; and information about the game of Mongolian chess. In addition, I have provided a musical analysis of the work, an English translation of the Mongolian text, and performance practice information about the traditional Khöömei and Kargyraa music featured in the work.

Realizing high luminescence dissymmetry factor (g) in circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) materials remains a big challenge, which necessitates understanding systematically how their molecular structure controls the CPL. Here we investigate representative organic chiral emitters with different transition density distributions and reveal the pivotal role of transition density in CPL. We rationalize that to obtain large g-factors, two conditions should be simultaneously satisfied: (i) the transition density for the S1 (or T1)-to-S0 emission must be delocalized over the entire chromophore; and (ii) the chromophore inter-segment twisting must be restricted and tuned to an optimal value (∼50°). Our findings offer molecular-level insights into the CPL of organic emitters, with potential applications in the design of chiroptical materials and systems with strong CPL effects.

The advent of the Chaco World transformed the Greater Southwest, but despite centuries of study, most models of Chaco sociopolitical organization rely upon categorical types rooted in neoevolutionary schema such as chiefdoms and city-states. Many Indigenous scholars question the universal applicability of such models, arguing that knowledge and relationships serve as a more salient foundation of power in Indigenous societies. In the Pueblo World of the U.S. Southwest, this is expressed mostly clearly in performances in which cultural knowledge is shared through song, dance, and chromatic metaphor. Paint produced for performance embeds many layers of symbolism and knowledge and is produced following strict adherence to sodality-maintained protocol, making it an ideal material to explore diachronic relationships between knowledge and power. Paint is one of the oldest human technologies, yet it remains poorly understood and largely unproblematized in archaeological discourse. In this dissertation, I embrace archaeological collections of paint, paint production tools, and painted media as a material archive of relationships. Although a wide range of colors is used and rendered in paint, I focus on the technology of blue-green paint. Blue-green is one of the most significant colors, with important symbolic ties to all-important rain and vegetation, and is also one of the most challenging to render in paint. I suggest that similarities in archaeological paint compositions reflect shared production environments and can be extended to reconstruct the social groups responsible for their production. I reconstruct archaeological paint recipes using a combination of polarized light microscopy, X-ray fluorescence, and Raman spectroscopy. I accomplish this through a novel approach to analysis of archaeological paint that relies upon the non-destructive analysis of micro-samples of material that is often routinely discarded during routine museum handling. The analysis of blue-green paint from Pueblo Bonito, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo del Arroyo, Aztec West, and Kin Kletso has resulted in several key findings. First, despite archaeologists’ long-held assumption that blue-green paint was made with copper carbonate minerals, such as azurite and malachite, I demonstrate that copper sulfate minerals served as the primary colorants and is made with the closely related minerals of antlerite and brochantite. I suggest that this constitutes a single recipe for blue-green, which was circulated among great houses in Downtown Chaco, Aztec West in the Middle San Juan, and at the McElmo phase great house of Kin Kletso. Rooms with evidence for the preparation and storage of blue-green paint and painted media are strongly associated with rooms associated with Pueblo Bonito’s founding families in the northern room block, or in rooms that articulate with plaza space in symbolic spaces that show that the display of blue-green painted media was a key component of plaza-based performances. The widespread circulation of a single recipe for blue-green suggests that communities of practice involved in the production of performances cross-cut great house affiliations. Ultimately, I argue that participation in performances offered a way for members of founding families to continually legitimize their power by managing the dissemination of knowledge, but also offered a way to integrate newcomers into Chaco society through cross-cutting institutions such as sodalities. Performance in the Chaco World created a dynamic arena for the circulation of knowledge, and for the continual creation and recreation of relationships. By focusing on the role of paint as a means of reconstructing relationships of knowledge, this research calls attention to the importance of knowledge sharing and the integration of diverse people as fundamental drivers of Chaco society.

Refractive error is one of the most common eye disorders worldwide, affecting over one billion people globally. Uncorrected refractive error can lead to severe vision problems. Therefore, optimizing vision using correction schemes is essential for elevating all aspects of life. Spectacle lenses are one of the most reliable and effective ways to correct refractive errors. Various procedures need to be undertaken for eyecare professionals to prescribe spectacles accurately. Verifying the prescriptions of an existing pair of spectacles is a standard first step for obtaining an objective estimation of the prescriptions before the subjective refraction exam. Existing clinical prescription measurement approaches are limited to specialized lensmeters, which are inaccessible to a large proportion of the population. To address this gap, a novel approach to measure prescriptions of spectacle lenses is developed to be a convenient, low-cost alternative to the current standard of care. This system is presented in Chapter Two with details. The measurements are analyzed and presented as proof of concept. Correction schemes are valuable, yet they could be only a temporary solution to refractive error. To prevent refractive error on-set and progression, many attempts to find the causes of this process have been investigated over the years to find the root of the problem. This includes an extensive amount of animal model research as well as human research. One implication is the potential role of the retina in the myopia progression process, as shown by the findings of deprivation-induced, lens-induced myopia, and so on. These results give rise to the hypothesis that a purely physical stimulus on the retina level may trigger this development. Other physical stimuli, including chromatic aberration, have been investigated, but one such stimulus that has yet to be investigated is the presence of ocular distortion. In the third chapter, we will demonstrate a system that allows us to measure ocular distortion from retinal images of an artificial human eye model. Our system presents a first step towards answering the bigger question of whether distortions on the retinal level could lead to myopia progression. Besides the concept and setup, the results will be shown and evaluated in depth in Chapter 3. Ultimately, this dissertation lays the foundation for several optical imaging methods that could benefit refractive error care, enhancing patient outcomes, and improving life quality.