In this study I present a new mechanism for the evolution of male display as a consequence of female choice. I use a population genetic model to show that if female preferences for better males are based on a cue that is an integral part of male adaptation, a display may evolve if it amplifies the variance in this cue, and hence increases female resolution power with respect to male quality. This evolutionary mechanism is used as a core of a theory that explains the evolution of male display and adaptive female choice (i.e. female preferences that evolve because of their association with high quality genes). I argue that because an amplifying display (termed "amplifier") decreases mating success of males of poor quality, modifiers are likely to evolve that decrease the expression of the amplifier when associated with the poor quality males. As a result, the amplifier's expression becomes an indicator of male quality, and provides sufficient conditions for the evolution of a new type of female choice that is based on the amplifier's expression. This process may lead, in turn, to further changes in both female choice and male display, emphasizing either the amplifying effect of displays or their indicating effect. I show that the direction of these changes may depend on the cost that the amplifier confers on male viability, and on the degree of polygyny of the mating system in concern. I also outline explicit predictions for empirical tests.

This dissertation describes the development of an assist-device aimed to deliver 3D graphic information to the visually impaired people. A human-in-loop approach was used to analyze whether a virtual 3D shape can be transferred correctly to the human users.The proposed device in this dissertation consists of two major parts: (a) A system of position sensors for real time localization based on magnetization, and (b) A single vibratory actuator working at varied frequencies based on its real time location. The error bound of the position measurement was tested to be 2 mm, which defined the machine resolution of the shape display. In order to realize the refresh rate of the localization that can follow user's scanning speed, the parallel data processing sequences for computer and microcontroller were designed. Additionally, vibratory electromagnetic (EM) actuators were discussed based on eddy current and permanent magnet methods. The simulation study showed that eddy current method was not applicable for millimeter size coil. Accordingly, the permanent magnet method was developed and the force detection threshold of human tactile perceptions was studied.Virtual shape perception experiments were made with participation of 3 volunteers who were not aware of the 3D shape information prior to the tests. Based on the four sets of shape tests, we conclude that the majority of the shape information is able to be delivered to users by using the proposed device. Difficulties for perceiving the local sharp profile e.g. thin plates and large curvature in small shapes may be better addressed by multiple actuators simultaneously providing shape information in the local boundary detection.The major contribution of this dissertation is the 3D shape display implemented by a miniature and low cost device. The developed device utilizes both passive stimulation and active search so that a commonly used large scale actuators matrix based on mere active touch method is avoided. The studies on the required force/energy input from the actuator showed that EM actuators can be miniaturized to millimeter scale without sacrificing the ability to induce tactile stimulation. Additional uniqueness of the proposed system is the ability to present hollow features, which is impossible to display by the existing devices.

This work presents recent advances in photorefractive polymer composites towards improved efficiency, speed, persistence of holograms and sensitivity at both visible and near infrared wavelengths. Besides the pure performance characteristics, a thin-device approach is presented to reduce operating voltage of these devices to practical levels and these materials are analyzed in both reflection and transmission geometries.The thin device operating at 1.3kV holds erasable, Bragg holograms with 80% efficiency in addition to its video-rate response time. The transition of hologram state from 'thick' to 'thin' is analyzed in detail. On the near IR portion of spectrum, new photorefractive polymer composites have been developed that enable high performance operation at 845nm and 975nm. Utilizing our novel photorefractive materials we demonstrate large diffraction efficiency in four-wave mixing experiments and video-rate response times. A major step towards achieving submillisecond response times is obtained through recording photorefractive gratings with individual nanosecond pulses at 532nm. At 4 mJ/cm2 illumination, a maximum diffraction efficiency of 56% has been obtained with a build-up time of only 300 microseconds (t1). This fast response enables applications in optical processing requiring frame rates of 100Hz or more. Due to the short duration of the writing pulses, the recording is insensitive to vibrations. Combining molecules that have different frontier orbital energies in a copolymer system and utilizing thermal fixing approach has led to long grating lifetimes of more than several hours. Later, in this dissertation, two low-glass-transition photorefractive polymer composites are investigated in reflection geometry. 60% is diffraction efficiency is observed in 105 micron thick devices of a PVK based composite. The reflection holograms are more sensitive to reading angle and slight birefringence due to the poling of chromophores has proven to cause a Bragg mismatch.

An electronic display is typically the last stage of an imaging chain before the human observer. Some of its physical properties can make it a bottleneck in the chain. This dissertation is an attempt to study and cope with certain critical properties of electronic displays, specifically spatial resolution, noise and contrast. The focus of this study lies in two parts. One is the measurement and estimation of display properties, including the spatial resolution and the spatial noise. The other is on the development of display-based image processing algorithms, which can compensate for the degradations from the specific display. The basic idea is to perform operations on the digital image before it is displayed, which will counteract the degradations that come from the action of the display systems. The properties of the display will be derived mainly from the digital images taken by a high quality CCD camera on the display. Based on the display properties estimated, several image processing techniques have been developed in this project to optimize the spatial resolution, noise and contrast resolution of the specific display under consideration. We have also developed a novel error-diffusion-based algorithm for adaptive image contrast enhancement which incorporates the properties of the display as well as the properties of the image.

This work presents recent progress in the area of organic photorefractive polymer composites. These materials have been previously shown to be a suitable medium for dynamic holographic displays, with multiple colors and single frame writing times on the order of seconds. However, these materials still require large electric fields and high intensity lasers to function effectively. Recent advancements in improving these areas are discussed, including a review of the history and state-of-the-art in photorefractive polymer composites.The addition of electron traps via low loading of the electron-transporting molecule Alq3 is shown to dramatically improve the diffraction efficiency and reduce the required field. The grating formation also proceeds faster by more than one order of magnitude, leading to an increase in sensitivity by a factor of 3. The dynamics of these materials also show evidence of competing gratings indicative of bipolar charge transport and trapping.The addition of an amorphous polycarbonate (APC) buffer layer is reported to have a similar effect on the steady-state diffraction efficiency, and the further doping with a fullerene derivative (PCBM) allows a 3x increase in the efficiency in the reflection geometry, which is normally poor due to the small grating spacing. These composites reveal the fundamental limits of the reflection geometry, based on the physics of high frequency gratings. A reversal in the direction and increase in the magnitude of the two-beam coupling energy transfer is also observed.The use of interdigitated coplanar electrodes, instead of the standard uniform electrodes in a parallel-plate geometry, is shown to result in large diffraction efficiency with symmetric writing beams due to the increased projection field. The efficiency is similar to that achieved in the standard samples with large slant angles and much better than those geometries typically used in applications, with the benefit that the writing beams do not have to be slanted with respect to the sample normal. Different electrode widths are examined and the trade-offs discussed. This device makes beam injection simpler and allows one to bring the benefits of highly slanted geometries, common to small area setups, to the large-area applications.

Protein kinases function as key regulators in a variety of signaling pathways by executing the phosphorylation of a variety of protein substrates. Perturbation in the activity of numerous proteins kinases has been implicated in a large number of diseases including cancer, diabetes, inflammation and neurological disorders. Therefore, selective modulation of kinase activity is highly desirable for the dissection of complex signaling pathways and substantiating therapeutic targets. To develop potent and selective inhibitors for an array of kinases, our group has developed a fragment based bivalent methodology utilizing phage display. The strategy involves an ATP active site targeted small molecule which directs the selection of cyclic peptides, from a phage displayed library, on the target kinase surface through coiled coil interactions. The selected cyclic peptides can be conjugated to the ATP mimetic to generate bivalent inhibitors. In this thesis, I have expanded the scope of the bivalent phage-display selection approach. To interrogate the generality of this approach, we targeted several kinases from different groups within the human kinome using the staurosporine warhead. Fyn and PDGFRβ represented the tyrosine kinase group and CLK2 and Pim-1 kinases represented the CMGC and CaMK groups respectively. The selections against these four kinases did not result in potent inhibitors though they provided an avenue for the refinement of the bivalent phage-display approach as well as method development. Application of this methodology to AKT2 in the AGC family resulted in bivalent inhibitors which were interrogated for their selectivity and mode of action. The bivalent strategy was further explored for its utility to target inactive kinases, and success was achieved against AKT1. Finally, we demonstrated the modularity of ATP site targeted ligand by carrying out a selection against STK33 kinase using a new small molecule warhead, sunitinib. This resulted in potent and selective bivalent inhibitors for STK33. The use of different ATP site targeting molecules potentially increases the number of targetable kinases with our strategy. In all the selections, the identified cyclic peptides inhibited the kinase and showed a non-competitive mode of inhibition with respect to the kinase substrate. This suggests that the selected peptides do not target the substrate site and possibly bind to unidentified pockets on the kinase surface, which potentially provides new methods to target kinases outside the traditional ATP binding cleft. The strategy may prove to be a robust method to discover new allosteric sites on kinases as well as other proteins. The potent and selective bivalent inhibitors obtained by our strategy have the potential to provide insight towards the design of new non-ATP targeted approaches for inhibiting protein kinases and elucidating their specific functions.

We derive the expression for the three-dimensional incoherent optical transfer function when third-order spherical aberration is present. The normalized version of the transfer function is numerically calculated for various amounts of spherical aberration. We find the effects of the aberration to be highly dependent on the spatial frequency in the longitudinal direction. We also calculate a structure content parameter, as a quality criterion, from the normalized transfer function. Remarkably, the structure content parameter dependence on spherical aberration is well-fit by a simple Cauchy curve for aberrations out to two waves at the margin.

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