This dissertation, based on roughly eighteen months of fieldwork in two laboratories at Princeton University, examines how practitioners of synthetic biology orient themselves vis-à-vis organic systems, by both engaging with and displacing biological knowledge. It also explores experimental methods in…

Academic-industry partnerships in biomedical research come in many forms, but
those that occur around clinical research are the most prominent. Researchers at academic
medical centers have historically conducted a large proportion of industry-sponsored
clinical trials, as they alone had the…

This dissertation investigates the relation between Mies van der Rohe and cinema. Its purpose is to elucidate, both historically and theoretically, the association between the architect Mies and the pioneers of abstract film Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling during the…

Similarity search systems are designed to help









people to organize multimedia non-text data and find valuable









information. The multimedia data intrinsically has…

This dissertation maps the ethnographic and archaeological work of the Dutch architects Aldo van Eyck and Herman Haan between 1947 and 1967, including van Eyck's writings, editorial work, and encounter with the sub-Saharan Dogon people, and Haan's expeditions and ethnographic…

Since China’s opening up in 1978, internal migration from rural villages to cities has
accelerated on a scale unprecedented in history. Though China now boasts over 262 million
migrant workers who are discriminated against under China’s household registration (
hukou)…

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan forced a revolution in military thinking that brought
stability operations to the forefront while coloring the military as one-part warrior, onepart
reluctant architect of peace. Despite years of experience in stability operations of
this…

Childhood obesity is heavily documented as a public health crisis in the United
States. Today, more than one-third of American youth can be medically classified as
overweight or obese. Of those children, a disproportionately high number are Hispanic.
There is…

The United States education system is not meeting the needs of today’s youth, and
this is especially the case for minority and low socio-economic status youth. Although
there are a number of policy proposals that could improve youth academic performance,