We study whether the recent rise in trading of zero-days-to-expiry (0DTE) options on the S&P 500 Index is related to the intraday volatility of the underlying. We focus on the canonical Market Maker Delta-hedging channel induced by Gamma exposure, which the literature has commonly invoked to explain how options trading can affect the underlying index. In this framework, Market Makers with positive (negative) inventory Gamma tend to sell (buy) after positive returns and buy (sell) after negative returns, thereby potentially stabilizing or destabilizing intraday price dynamics. Although several studies find that Market Makers’ net inventory Gamma tends to be positive and that the high Gamma intensity of 0DTE options has, on average, attenuated intraday volatility, others document a positive association between greater 0DTE activity and higher volatility.

We test directly whether the hedging feedback mechanism is itself quantitatively strong enough to explain variation in intraday volatility. We derive a structural variance mapping from a price-impact framework in which order flow is decomposed into exogenous trading flows and endogenous dealer hedging flows. Our empirical results show that the canonical hedging feedback channel does not add meaningful predictive power for intraday variance forecasts on either a Quasi-Likelihood (QLIKE) loss or Pearson and Spearman correlation basis, whereas other option risk exposures exhibit substantially stronger predictive power beyond standard volatility benchmarks. We conclude that although 0DTE trading is related to intraday volatility, the evidence does not support the canonical Gamma-induced hedging feedback channel as the primary mechanism behind that relationship.

As modern-day economists continue to raise concerns about an increasingly likely economic recession, policymakers should examine recent economic crises to determine potential takeaways or implications for future events. The 2008 financial crisis was a defining global political and economic event. Two significant markets impacted were the United States and the European Union, who pursued divergent financial and monetary policy responses to the crisis despite their close relationship. Most existing scholarship focuses on the institutional differences in policy implementation, analyzing their impact on the overall economic trajectory. However, this thesis found that despite differences in economic indicators, anger leading to instability remained in both the U.S. and the EU, regardless of the current overall economic state. In both regions, anger and upheaval were centered around the unequal economic distribution and inequality levels, which the everyday citizens viewed as only exacerbated by the economic crisis and the resultant policy decisions.

Contrary to current economic analysis, which focuses primarily on overarching macroeconomic factors and statistics to draw conclusions, researchers and policymakers should treat income inequality as a significant outcome and indicator of a crisis response rather than an afterthought. The 2008 financial crisis in both markets showed that despite varying levels of recovery in specific economic indicators, the lack of importance placed on equitable economic distribution led to worldwide political upheaval and created a backlash that still reverberates today.

Economic crisis moments, both in the past years and in the future, should be treated as an opportunity to make progress in reducing income and wealth inequality rather than policymakers simply striving to maintain the status quo. The economic downturn caused by the COVID pandemic in 2020 and its resultant response showed that policymakers still are not adequately emphasizing the importance of equitable policies and are underestimating the importance of long-term political stability in favor of economic metrics.

Though often seen as a burden by Californians, wildfires are a historic occurrence in the state, central to the role of vital ecological processes. Recently, the combination of human habitation in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and climate change—causing droughts, heightened winds, and higher temperatures—have engendered larger and more novel stand-replacing fires and threatened California residents. Thus, the state government has focused on provision of insurance, an economic lifeline in times of natural disaster. Though popular attitudes towards fire risk and its ecological role are mixed, citizens respond saliently to economic threats like property loss. However, recent years have documented a rising underinsurance crisis, both in presence and extent, attributed in part to rising fire risk. We seek to understand the trends between property insurance, wildfire, and socioeconomic demographic data to inform future policymaking by state insurance regulators and legislators. Using a time series formulation with ZIP and year fixed effects, we verified the trend between historic wildfire incidence and decreased insurance provision. Results identified both lagged and forward relationships between fire incidence and insurance coverage, suggesting protracted cancellations in response to past disaster and usage of future risk score to inform non-renewal decisions; land management risk mitigation strategies were underappreciated or counterproductive. Trends also indicated equity challenges stemming from differences in provider behaviour along the lines of race, age, income, population density, mortgage-holding, home energy source, and migration. A subsequent case study examining attitudes towards insurance among Oakland Hills residents allowed us to directly examine consumer responses by residents 30 years after the 1991 Tunnel Fire. Respondents indicated growing non-renewal justified by fire risk, rising premiums, decreasing availability, and increasing difficulty in navigating the market. We recommend state regulators create incentives for growing denser population clusters in affected WUI, while bolstering safe, clean infrastructure to minimize fire risk. Other recommendations include the need for comprehensive evaluation and pricing of wildfire mitigation strategies like prescribed burns, greater investments in fire education, and a resolution to socioeconomic disparities in FAIR Plan participation.

The primary vector for transmission of Yellow Fever, Chikungunya, Dengue Fever, and Zika viruses is the Aedes aegypti mosquito. This species exists in two forms—Aedes aegypti formosus (Aaf), an ecologically variable form found primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, and Aedes aegypti aegypti (Aaa), a human specialist found globally in tropical and subtropical regions. The two subspecies show mean differences in morphology, but there is substantial overlap, and they can only reliably be distinguished using genetics. To date, research conducted in Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, and Cameroon has shed light on Aedes aegypti populations based on geography, body coloration, and genetic makeup. However, little is known about the morphology and host preference of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes across most of West Africa. The goal of this project was to characterize morphological and behavioral variation among Aedes aegypti populations in Ghana that may affect their ability to transmit human disease. Live Ae. aegypti eggs were collected in the field and carried back to the McBride lab at Princeton University in the U.S. Morphology and behavior were then examined using a standard dissecting microscope and an olfactometer, respectively. The olfactometer allowed for measurements of preference for human vs. non-human odor. Results of this study suggest that there is significant morphological variation within the subspecies Aaf found in Ghana (p<0.008). On the topic of host preference, each colony preferred the non-human host as oppose to the human host in each trial, suggesting that with increased urbanization and vector density in West Africa, non-human reservoirs can pose a severe threat to humans if effective vector control measures are not prioritized.

Despite theories of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) dating back to the 1970s and decades of experimental work verifying that QCD is the correct high-energy description of the strong nuclear force, the dynamics of how quarks and gluons give rise to hadrons in the low-energy limit has only partially been solved. This is due to the non-perturbative nature of QCD, which prevents a complete analytic solution, giving rise to confinement: the phenomenon that all bound hadrons come in color-neutral states. One method researchers have used to understand this is to consider the theory in 1+1 dimensions, rather than the usual 3+1. Here, the gluon becomes non-dynamical. To restore some of the dynamics the gluon had, a new particle, the Majorana adjoint fermion, is added. A recent paper by Dempsey et al., showed that this theory may be solved numerically in the case of a finite number of colors and only adjoint fermions. Another paper by Kent Hornbostel showed that this theory may be solved in the case of purely quarks. This paper aims to solve the wider theory with both adjoint fermions and quarks at a finite number of colors. In doing so, we are able to compare our results with both Hornbostel and Dempsey. Finally, we build off of their work by solving the theory for mesons and baryons with both quarks and adjoint fermions, and discuss the implications of our results in the conclusion.

A 100 pixel detector array is created in a 65 nm CMOS process for video-rate (30 fps) active 2.8 THz imaging. Each pixel in the 10x10 array contains a rectangular patch antenna and a single common-gate transistor to rectify the incident THz signal and a low noise amplifier to amplify and buffer the signal before multiplexing. The chip’s digital circuitry and output amplifier are capable of over-clocking to 300,000 fps, allowing for post-sampling averaging to increase SNR by a factor of roughly 10x (20 dB). The chip achieves a simulated NEP of 33 pW/√Hz and a responsivity of 68 kV/W, which is comparable to or better than existing detectors, and does so at a higher frequency (3x higher on average) than almost all of them. This paper focuses on the design and layout of the LNA, output amplifier, and associated analog circuitry in the chip.

This thesis presents the digital control and pixel readout circuitry for a 100 pixel 2.8THz wave camera. Together with companion theses by Anna Broome and TJ Smith the full layout of a 65nm TSMC CMOS chip is presented. An array of patch antennas picks up THz waves which are then converted to DC signals by a detector and amplified by an in-pixel LNA before being multiplexed to a final amplifier and read off-chip. An on-chip 8-bit counter is controlled by an FPGA on an external board and allows the array to work as a camera or as a video-rate device at a software-defined frame rate. Each feature of the design is carefully simulated, analyzed, and evaluated to minimize the possibility of failure in the fabricated chip.

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), is the infectious disease that causes the most deaths worldwide today. The only clinically-approved vaccine available for TB is the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, which was developed in 1921 and is widely thought to be ineffective against the main cause of the global TB burden: adult pulmonary TB. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to investigate causes for the failure of BCG, and to evaluate current efforts to develop a new TB vaccine. As a foundation for this investigation, I first review the current understanding of the Mtb organism’s structure, genome, and phylogeny. While research has elucidated certain aspects of Mtb that are important for pathogenesis, like the PE/PPE family of proteins which may be a source of antigenic variation, there are several areas that need further research, such as how Mtb strains differ in clinical phenotype. Next, I investigate current knowledge of the BCG vaccine. The BCG vaccine is immunogenic and induces Mtb-specific Interferon-gamma, T-cell, and antibody responses. However, it is largely ineffective in protecting against pulmonary TB and may be unsafe for immunocompromised individuals. In addition, there are still significant gaps in our understanding about different BCG strains. Third, I evaluate current TB vaccine candidates, which can largely be categorized as BCG replacement and BCG booster vaccines. New vaccines have been specifically designed to mitigate the limitations of the original BCG vaccine that have been revealed by molecular biological research. Several vaccines are in clinical trials, and have been demonstrated to be immunogenic and safe in humans. In conclusion, I propose that the story of TB vaccine development is a prime case study for the importance of molecular biology in fighting a global infectious disease epidemic, and offer future directions for research towards this aim.

Foreign assistance to Afghanistan during the ongoing conflict has cost the nations of the world hundreds of billions of dollars and has led to the losses of many human lives. This assistance took two primary forms: counterinsurgency aid, which works to provide small projects in contested areas in order to win hearts and minds and undermine insurgents; and development aid, which works to improve quality of life on a national level by building the government’s capacity to provide essential services. The debate over which of the two forms is more effective and leads to lower levels of violence occurred before the 2001 invasion and remains unsettled. This thesis aims to contribute to the debate by comparing counterinsurgency aid to development aid using Afghanistan as a case study. Given counterinsurgency theory, the thesis posited three hypotheses: that more violent regions of Afghanistan would receive more aid; that development success would be more limited in more violent areas, but also that counterinsurgency aid would reduce violence over time; and that the aid programs that generate the least violence would be the smallest and least visible. Using a combination of simple quantitative analysis and assessments of the effects of two programs (Stability in Key Areas (SIKA), a counterinsurgency program, and the National Solidarity Program (NSP), a development initiative), the thesis finds that counterinsurgency aid concentrated in the most violent regions, while development aid had a more uniform distribution throughout the country. It also found that neither type of aid was effective in violent regions, with counterinsurgency aid often increasing to violence and increases in levels of support for the Taliban. Moreover, the size of projects was not relevant to the violence they generated; the projects that led to the most stability were the large long-term development initiatives. The thesis then discusses the implications of these findings for the literature and for future aid programs to Afghanistan and to other conflict zones.

Nitrogen is one of the most important atoms in all of chemistry and biology and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is one of the most powerful tools available to chemists and biologists today. However, the major isotope of nitrogen ((^{14})N,99.7% abundance) has not been studied in much detail. The major reason for this lack of research is due to the fact that (^{14})N, as a spin-1 nucleus, has a very large quadrupole moment. As a result, molecular motion can very efficiently and quickly relax an excited spin. This leads to extremely wide peaks, often wider than 100 Hz at half height, which are invisible under most typical concentrations and experiment times. However, through an extensive assay of nitrogen-containing molecules, a handful of groups were shown to exhibit sharp peaks such as (nearly) symmetrically substituted ammonium ions, azides, isocyanides, and some nitriles and nitro-containing compounds. As a result, it was found that (^{14})N NMR could be a highly selective spectroscopy method. To test this selectivity, several biological materials such as scallops and veal liver were assayed for choline, an important biomarker, using 1D direct-detection and newly developed 2D (^{1})H-(^{14})N HSQC inverse-detection experiments. These spectra have exhibited five peaks or fewer in both experiments, as compared to the dozens that would appear in the proton or (^{13})C spectra. This simplifies identification and quantification of molecules like choline in very complex mixtures. It is envisioned that these experiments could be used in a wide variety of niche applications such as the quantification of choline in cells for the detection of cancer. Future work will be focused on the development of new experiments and the fulfillment of the promising applications (^{14})N NMR can bring into the realms of academia, medicine, and industry.