University of Massachusetts Amherst

The Racial Reckoning of Elite Education: The Ghostly Entanglement of Race, Class and Privilege Haunting in Private Elite Independent Schools (PEIS)

This dissertation explores the racial reckoning that occurred within New England’s Private Elite Independent Schools (PEIS) following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. These schools serve as exclusive training grounds for the elites and affluents of the nation. Using a qualitative...

Magic state cultivation on a superconducting quantum processor

Fault-tolerant quantum computing requires a universal gate set, but the necessary non-Clifford gates represent a significant resource cost for most quantum error correction architectures. Magic state cultivation offers an efficient alternative to resource-intensive distillation p...

Permission meets pressure: institutional risk, CEO self-monitoring and extreme strategic change

Purpose Explain why some multinationals pursue extreme strategic shifts whereas others opt for incremental change by testing how national institutions and CEO behavior interact. Design/methodology/approach We merge institutional-discretion theory with upper-echelons logic in a mo...

Recent advances in coarse-grained simulations of nucleic acid condensation

Abstract Biomolecular condensates, formed through phase separation of multivalent biomolecules, play essential roles in cellular processes such as stress response, RNA processing, transcriptional control, and genome organization. Nucleic acids are increasingly recognized as impor...

Context-aware optimization of follow-up intervals for type 2 diabetes care using Markov decision processes

Chronic disease management relies on regular patient-provider interactions to monitor progression and control. For type 2 diabetes (T2D), current guidelines prescribe fixed intervals between primary care visits, overlooking heterogeneity in clinical trajectories and patient chara...

External Debt Stress and Domestic Debt Restructuring: Resolving a Paradox

Abstract The ongoing sovereign debt crisis in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) was signalled by instances of default or failure to meet external debt obligations denominated in hard currencies. But the response to the crisis has included attempts to restructure domestic so...

A Study of Variability in Brief Assessment of Transactional Success in Aphasia Story Retelling Performance Using Generalizability Theory

Purpose: This study used generalizability theory (G-theory) to assess the reliability of the Brief Assessment of Transactional Success in aphasia (BATS) and whether reliability can be maintained with more efficient study designs. Method: G-theory was applied to a data set from BA...

Dishing Out Public Goods: School Food Workers and the Struggle to (Re)value Reproductive Labor

Government-funded school food programs in the USA have recently expanded access to free meals and incorporated more scratch cooking with local ingredients, but school food workers (SFWs) have seen little-to-no improvement in their working conditions. Using focus group data from t...

Microstructure‑Dependent Phase Transformations Under High‑Pressure Laser Heating in Additively Manufactured AlCrFe 2 Ni 2

Additive manufacturing (AM) produces microstructures the behavior of which under extreme conditions remains largely unexplored in chemically complex alloys. Here, we investigate the high‐pressure and high‐temperature response of an AM AlCrFe 2 Ni 2 alloy fabricated at two scan sp...

Shifting Dominant Air Pollution Sources in Sub-Saharan Africa’s Changing Urban Environment: Analysis of Elemental Composition and Source Contributions of Ambient Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5) Pollution in Accra, Ghana

Abstract Urban and economic expansion across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) may be shifting the relative contributions of dominant ambient air pollution sources, influencing both pollutant concentrations and composition, along with their associated health risks. However, city-scale dat...

The structural context of mutations in proteins predicts their effect on antibiotic resistance

Abstract In Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a prevalent and deadly pathogen, resistance to antibiotics evolves primarily through non-synonymous mutations in proteins. Sequence-based analyses are currently used to understand the genetic basis of antibiotic resistance, either via genot...

Nonlinear dispersive waves in the discrete modified KdV equation

Abstract In this paper, we study the nonlinear dispersive waves including the numerically observed rarefaction and dispersive shock waves in the discrete modified KdV equation which has widespread applications in plasma physics. In particular, we propose three distinct quasi-cont...

Antimicrobial Composite Nanofiber Membranes Containing Cross-Linked β-Cyclodextrin Encapsulated Essential Oils

Abstract Membrane biofouling leads to low permeate quality and increased operational costs due to the need for frequent physical and chemical cleaning. Incorporation of antimicrobial agents such as essential oils (EOs) into polymeric membranes presents a promising solution to mit...

A Comment on Timothy Bowers Vasko, Making All the World America: Native Information and the Doctrine of Discovery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

Peter d'Errico comments on Timothy Bowers Vasko's Making All the World America: Native Information and the Doctrine of Discovery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026), as a companion to Steven T. Newcomb's review of the same book. Working from the publisher's description, d'Er...

Too Much Financial Integration: The Perils of Open Capital Accounts in Low and Middle Income Countries

ABSTRACT Over the past 3 decades, financial integration of lower income countries with global capital markets has in most cases been detrimental to development. Currency hierarchies determine investor perceptions and render capital flows to such countries more volatile and more d...

The Finance Dilemma in Developing Countries: Balancing Debt Servicing and Climate Stabilization

Abstract This paper examines the dilemma faced by low- and lower-middle-income countries in balancing debt servicing with climate stabilization investments. The need to service external debt compels governments in developing countries to engage in extractive practices to generate...

When NPM Meets Local Politics: Political Economy of Urban Water Supply Reforms in India

ABSTRACT This study examines whether political alignment—defined as elected representatives at different tiers of government belonging to the same political party or coalition—and political competition shape the implementation and performance of a New Public Management (NPM)‐base...

A retrospective mixed methods analysis of maternal psychosocial health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana: lessons for future public health crises

Observed impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in countries in the global north include increasing rates of maternal anxiety and depression. However, little research has been done in sub-Saharan Africa assessing the impact of the pandemic on maternal psychosocial stress. This study ai...

The Arabic Afterlives of S. Yizhar’s Khirbet Khiz’ah: Translating Global Modernist Affect between Empathy and Distress

Like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), S. Yizhar’s Khirbet Khiz’ah (1949) has been read locally as embodying liberal ideals of empathy. Some Hebrew writers further believed that Yizhar’s text positively inclined Arabic-language readers toward Israel by broadcasting the im...

Food Commodity Markets in an Age of Overlapping Emergencies: The Case for Price Stabilization

The world has entered an age of overlapping emergencies, with disruptions to food production and transport systems and episodes of extreme price volatility becoming more frequent. In this context, proposals to stabilize food commodity prices have received renewed attention. We ar...