<p> The internet's original design, guided by the end-to-end design principle, pushed all application-specific logic and complexity to the edges of the network and kept the core of the network focused on the simple task of delivering data. The original end-to-end principle, however, did not explicitly account for trust and security. There are several central points of trust and failure on the traditional internet. These include root servers for the Domain Name System (DNS) and public-key infrastructure like Certificate Authorities (CAs) that publish security certificates. Further, the success of cloud hosted services in the last decade means that most user data is stored on remote servers and end-users need to trust these remote servers for correct execution of their applications. </p><p> In this thesis, we present a new internet architecture that explicitly follows the trust-to-trust design principle, i.e., end-users don't need to trust the core of the network for anything, and end-users can use applications and services in a fully decentralized way. We make the observation that cryptocurrency blockchains, like Bitcoin, can be used to bootstrap trust for new nodes joining a network. We identify the various limitations, like high latency and limited bandwidth, of contemporary blockchains and discuss how our architecture can scale by moving most operations outside of the blockchain layer. </p><p> We detail our experience of running a large production system on top of a cryptocurrency blockchain and how that experience guided our design. We present the implementation of a new decentralized internet, called Blockstack, that takes the trust-to-trust architecture from a theoretical concept to a production system. Deploying new systems by modifying production blockchains is hard because it requires coordination and agreement from several parties. We introduce virtualchains, a virtual blockchain constructed by processing data from underlying blockchains, to enable the seamless introduction of new functionality on top of blockchains without requiring any consensus-breaking changes. Blockstack is already powering several fully decentralized applications, like OpenBazaar; it's released as open-source software and, to date, more than 70,000 domains have been registered on it.</p><p>

<p> Privacy, in the modern connected world, has become a much discussed topic in society ranging from privacy concerns to impacts, attitudes, practices and technologies. In today&rsquo;s environment of vast social media and revelations of government spying, personal privacy is being highlighted as either non-existent or something that can be achieved to different degrees with knowledge or awareness of how our private information is collected and used. This research strives to answer the question <i>Using Alan Westin's privacy categories, what is the general awareness of privacy issues in social media and smartphone usage and how does it change when knowledge is provided over a fixed period of time?</i> A longitudinal study was conducted to collect data from 257 participants. Surprisingly, the percentages in each of the three categories: Privacy Fundamentalist, Privacy Pragmatist, and Privacy Unconcerned, are not significantly different from Westin&rsquo;s last research in 2003. However, the results show, that with knowledge of what type of private information is collected and how it is used, the category of an individual is likely to change over time.</p><p>

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, textual analysis, and data culled from interviews, this manuscript explores how Islamic ethics shape the epistemic approaches of Muslim intellectuals to liberal democracy and corollary paradigms of western modernity. Specifically, it examines a critical discursive field of resistance generated by Muslim intellectuals in Turkey affiliated with Islamist NGOs and publishing houses. In response to the promotion of a ‘mild Islam’ compatible with democracy and liberalism in the context of Turkey, itself represented as the ‘model country’ in such regional schemes of democratization as the Greater Middle East Project, a radical movement emerged that appropriates the Islamic identity as a basis of resistance to the processes of hybridization, identitarian eclecticism and postmodern pluralism. The significance of this activism resides in the articulation of a discursive domain that (a) does not conform to the liberal protocols of intelligibility but (b) is produced through contact with liberal-democratic discourses of moderation. How does moderation as a normative standpoint create a space for political intervention? Through this question, I map out the processes and mechanisms by which ‘moderation’ as a transcendental and universal concept, concomitant with democratic subjectivity, operates as a political discourse and a moral-political practice of governmentality, functioning to suture democracy with liberal norms of conduct. My objective here is threefold: first, I detail the interaction between global paradigms of a neo-liberal, democratic postmodernity (with its ideals of tolerance, dialogue, religious pluralism) and local modalities of resistance embedded in Islamic piety. Second, by excavating local efforts at defamiliarizing the democratic paradigm within the intellectual community of Qur’anic Generation, I draw the contours of an Islamic epistemology of resistance, an antidiscipline which reinvents civil society as a space for moral resistance to democratic norms. Third, I problematize the extent to which scholarly production reinforces the liberal-democratic universal imaginary, which I accomplish by highlighting the ubiquity of liberal epistemological commitments found in democratic theory and empirical studies on civil society in the Middle East. Perceptible in western democratic theory is a recurrent ontopolitical pattern in theorizing the democratic subject through an ascetic norm of dispassionateness and moderation.

<p> The practice of restoration has been called the acid test for ecological theories, as theoretical outcomes may or may not occur in real life scenarios. Regardless, the need for increased communication between theory and practice is necessary to mutually benefit both disciplines. My dissertation research used several major ecological theories to formulate questions regarding environmental constraints on the establishment and expansion of several species of freshwater tidal macrophytes (Schoenoplectus acutus, Schoenoplectus californicus, and to a lesser extent, Typha latifolia). I investigated the response of these species at different life-history stages to various environmental stressors (i.e., degree of soil compaction, flooding duration, and nutrient availability) in both field and controlled greenhouse settings. These studies revealed that adult individuals are more tolerant to environmental stressors than their rhizome or seedling counterparts. Schoenoplectus californicus exhibited superior performance than S. acutus or T. latifolia in when subjected to extreme flooding and stressful abiotic conditions. My research regarding silicon and nitrogen nutrient availability emphasizes the role that Si plays in sustaining Schoenoplectus spp., especially in the presence of high nitrogen concentrations. Finally, my research showed that the species of concern are powerful ecosystem engineers and are capable of ameliorating their abiotic conditions over time. The information presented in my dissertation research provides specific, useful information for freshwater tidal marsh restoration managers and emphasizes the utility of incorporating theory to improve our understanding and stewardship of ecosystems. </p>

<p> This investigative study demonstrated the benefits of addressing human considerations during the system development life cycle in order to have had long-term benefits to program managers and systems engineers. The approach was to use a retrospective content analysis of documents from weapon system acquisition programs, namely Major Defense Acquisition Programs, in order to seek the presence of terminology relating to Human Systems Integration. There is only a small amount of published research to date on the relationship between program documents that included terminology relating to Human Systems Integration and any eventual cost change or schedule change for Department of Defense weapon systems. Binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate the effect of the presence of words relating to Human Systems Integration on the success of programs. The presence of terminology about human factors engineering, habitability, and survivability in a weapon system acquisition program&rsquo;s documents was a good indicator that schedule slippages and cost overruns would be avoided. Furthermore, the presence of terminology about human factors engineering, habitability, and survivability in a program&rsquo;s documents prior to the Milestone B decision point was a good indicator that schedule slippages and cost overruns would be avoided.</p>

<p> This study assed the impacts of 17&alpha;-ethinylestradiol in Heterandria formosa. These impacts were addressed through chronic, life-cycle exposures of individuals and populations of least killifish to 0, 5, or 25ng/L EE2. Development, growth, reproduction, survival, and population dynamics were monitored and evaluated for EE2 effects on their health, reproductive success, and population sustainability. </p><p> Exposing pairs of least killifish to EE2 resulted in similar increases in time-to-sexual maturity for both sexes. The EE2-exposure had a sex-dependent effect on body size, with standard lengths and wet weights of females significantly reduced and standard lengths of males markedly increased. Offspring production decreased by 50% and 75% for fish exposed to 5 and 25ng/L EE2 respectively. Sexual development was even further delayed in EE2-exposed offspring of exposed fish. EE2-exposure also affected the gonadal and liver development in least killifish. Males exposed to EE2 had delayed sperm maturation and severe intersex (a phenomenon in which eggs and sperm are produced within the same male). These effects were more severe at the 5ng/L than at the 25ng/L EE2 concentration. Exposing females to EE2 resulted in delayed egg maturation. Furthermore, EE2 exposure resulted in changes in liver morphology in both males and females. For both the delay in egg maturation and the changes in liver morphology, the effects were strongest at the higher EE2 concentration. </p><p> Effects of chronic EE2-exposure on populations were assessed at the 5ng/L concentration. EE2-exposure caused significant reductions in population size and population growth rates, and caused other changes in population dynamics. Exposed populations had a pronounced female-biased sex ratio and significantly reduced abundances of males and newborns. These responses were observed within one breeding season. </p><p> This is the first report demonstrating a variety of negative impacts resulting from chronic EE2-exposure in least killifish at both the individual and population levels. Effects were evident in all stages of development and in all life history stages. This study demonstrated that, similar to the case for other fish, live-bearing fish are likely to be severely affected when their environment becomes contaminated by EE2 and that steps are needed to prevent exposure to this endocrine disrupting chemical.</p>

<p> My dissertation, <i>Indigenous Rights and Constitutional Change in Ecuador,</i> is motivated by a question that has inspired a rich discussion in the political theory literature: how should democracies accommodate indigenous groups? I focus on this question in the context of indigenous participation in the 2008 Ecuadorian constitutional convention. Ecuador is an interesting case in that the constitutional convention represented an opportunity for indigenous and non-indigenous groups to discuss the very topics that concern political theorists: the ideal relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous communities, the formal recognition of indigenous groups, indigenous rights, the fair economic distribution of resources, and the nature of citizenship. However, despite the fact that indigenous groups focused on constitutional change as a vehicle for indigenous empowerment, the political theory literature is largely silent on how constitutional change can affect minority groups. This silence is indicative of a larger failure on the part of political theorists to fully consider how institutions shape the normative goals of a society. Similarly, the literature on constitutional design does not examine indigenous groups as a separate case study and, therefore, provides little guidance as to how institutions can be used to empower indigenous groups. </p><p> During the constitutional convention, indigenous people in Ecuador presented their own plan for constitutional change: plurinationalism. This paradigm combined the idea of indigenous group rights with a call for alternative means of economic development, radical environmentalism, and recognition of an intercultural Ecuadorian identity. In so doing, plurinationalism moved beyond the general parameters of group rights and/or power-sharing arrangements discussed by political theorists and constitutional design scholars. In this dissertation, therefore, I examine the underlying tenets of plurinationalism, how plurinationalism was interpreted by non-indigenous people and incorporated into the 2008 constitution, and the future constitutional implications of plurinationalism. I argue that the Ecuadorian case has implications for both the political theory and constitutional design literatures: it allows political theorists to move beyond the language of indigenous rights to consider other institutional avenues for indigenous empowerment and points to value for design scholars in considering indigenous people as a separate case study, reframing assumptions about constitution-making in divided societies.</p>

<p> In this research, we focus on identifying false identities in social networks. We performed a detailed study on different string matching techniques to identify user profiles with real or fake identity. In this thesis, we focus on a specific case study on sex offenders. Sex offenders are not supposed to be online on social networking sites in few states. To identify the existence of offenders in social networks, we ran experiments to compare datasets downloaded from Facebook and offender registries. To identify the most suitable string matching technique to solve this particular problem, we performed experiments on various methods and utilized the most appropriate technique, the Jaro-Winkler algorithm. The major contribution of our research is a weight based scoring function that is capable of identifying user records with full or partial data revealed in social networks. Based on our data samples created using metadata information of Facebook, we were able to identify the sex offender profiles with real identity and seventy percent of the sex offenders with partial information.</p>

<p> Science communication research has developed theories about the way science communication operates in practice, but further investigation is needed to understand how well these models describe the practice of science communication on the ground. This thesis explores the relationship between theoretical models of science communication and the practice of science communication in long-term ecological research sites (LTERs). In particular, this exploratory study focuses on the deficit model, the dialogue model, and the participation model. I conducted semi-structured interviews to understand how science communication practitioners&rsquo; views about their work relate to established models of science communication. In particular, I asked about how they view their roles and responsibilities, how they view their audience(s), and how they view ethical considerations of their work. Results suggested that the dialogue model was the most dominant model. The deficit and participation models also appeared, though less frequently. Many practitioners are aware of the shortcomings of deficit model approaches to science communication, but may not have the resources or experience necessary to engage in the intensive public engagement activities of participation model approaches.</p>

<p> The purpose of this quantitative research study was to evaluate and determine if significant associations and linear correlations exist between reader socio-demographics, levels of trust and affinity in online citizen writer news story article content, brand loyalty, and acuity in newspaper organizations transitioning from print to online in a heterogeneous population. Descriptive and inferential statistics for dependent and independent variables were analyzed through <i>t</i> tests, Pearson <i>r</i> correlation coefficients, cross tabulation, Pearson Chi-Square, analysis of variance (ANOVA), multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and factor analysis. Data results showed significant relationships for each of the five hypotheses between variables of readers' socio-demographics and level of trust, socio-demographics and acuity, readers' level of trust and level of desire, readers' news brand loyalty and engagement, and readers' engagement and types of online news article content. A post evaluation of observed multivariate associations was conducted through a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and factor analysis.</p>