Massive dissipated kinetic energy of roadway traffic is a sustainable energy source that can be harvested via piezoelectric effect. This approach provides a robust and reliable solution of roadway power generation. However, to achieve high energy density remains challenging. This thesis focuses on the development of a high density piezoelectric energy harvesting system from roadway traffic, which reaches an energy density as high as 15.37 J/(m.pass.lane) in drive tests. The high energy density is achieved by incorporating a compression-to-compression force amplification mechanism which amplifies the harvested energy by a factor of 100, as well as an optimized system configuration to take full advantage of dynamic load from vehicles. To the best of our knowledge, the scalable prototype system has achieved the highest energy density, which holds the great potential to enable self- powered smart road on a large scale. Based on the drive test results, implementation of this technology in one lane of 1609.34 m can generate at least electric energy of 7.22 × 10^4 kWh in one year.In this dissertation, the details of proposed piezoelectric energy harvesting technology are presented, including mathematical modeling and analysis, optimization of design parameters, mechanical design at all levels, lab test method and results, road implementation and drive test results. The chapters are organized as follows. Chapter 1 reviews recent developments of piezoelectric energy harvesting, including materials, configurations, and performances, followed by the discussion on the challenges and trends. Chapter 2 introduces the mathematical modeling of proposed design idea, derives the equations of motion for theoretical exploration. Chapter 3 demonstrates the procedure of dynamic analysis for this modeling, and presents simulation results of a selected design. Chapter 4 explains how we con- ducted parameters optimization for high energy density based on the mathematical modeling, afterwards, illustrates the mechanical design for the realization of an aggressive selected design and its laboratory validation. Chapter 5 introduces the vertical packaging of PEHUs, piezoelectric energy harvesting tower, including mechanical design, quasi-static compression test results, battery charging test results. Chapter 6 shows the system design for the implementation on road from both the electrical and mechanical perspectives. The drive test results based on a prototype system on the campus of UC Merced are presented. Chapter 7 discusses the optimal designs for the traffic of heavy truck for future exploration. Chapter 8 summarizes the thesis and discusses future directions.

Despite significant improvements in cardiac care over the past 50 years, ischemic heart disease continues to be the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. While therapies such as percutaneous coronary intervention have greatly improved reperfusion rates in acute myocardial infarction, effective therapies for the prevention and treatment of ischemia-reperfusion injury remain lacking. Some of the causes for this may include certain technical limitations of drug therapy, such as poor bioavailability, which can potentially be addressed through use of nanoparticle-based targeted drug delivery. This thesis evaluates the use of a nanoparticle-based induced Cre system in the development of nanoparticles for ischemia targeting and drug delivery. PLGA/4-Hydroxytamoxifen nanoparticles were fabricated using an emulsion-solvent evaporation method. These nanoparticles were then demonstrated to successfully induce gene recombination in Rosa26-CreER x tdTomato and Rosa26-CreER x Rainbow transgenic mouse models both in vitro and in vivo, through direct intracellular delivery of 4-Hydroxytamoxifen to specific tissues. In addition, tissue specificity of gene recombination was enhanced through attachment of targeting antibodies such as CD31 and CD11b to the nanoparticles. Using this system, the uptake and drug delivery of nanoparticles to cardiac tissue subjected to ischemia-reperfusion injury was studied. Nanoparticle uptake and resultant drug delivery was found to be increased in areas of injury, and this uptake could be further increased by nanoparticle targeting of macrophages in the injury region. Control of vascular permeability through the administration of histamine was also found to influence nanoparticle uptake in certain organs. This research provides a framework for further studies to develop a nanoparticle-based system for delivery of targeted therapeutics for ischemia-reperfusion injury.

To improve surgical outcomes and reduce surgical complications in intraocular surgery, an optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging system is integrated into the intraocular robotic interventional surgical system (IRISS). The OCT images are used for preoperative planning and intraoperative intervention in a series of automated procedures. High-precision motion control of the robot manipulator is enabled by leveraging learning-type control algorithms to the data-based feedforward filter design. Real-time intervention allows a surgeon to evaluate the surgical progress and manually override the autonomous tracking of the predefined trajectory. The developed system was experimentally validated by performing lens extraction, which is a critical surgical step in cataract surgery, on 30 post-mortem pig eyes. Complete lens extraction was achieved on 25 eyes, and ``almost complete'' extraction was achieved on the rest due to the inability of the OCT to image minute-sized particles of lens behind the iris. No posterior capsule rupture occurred for any of the 30 pig eyes. This work successfully demonstrated automated OCT-guided intraocular surgery using a robotic surgical system.

The present dissertation deals with how a specific kind of modern political discourse and practice, which was associated with an American style approach to public administration, was introduced, experienced, and then adapted during the 1930s and 1940s in China. The research focuses on local officials who graduated from the Central Politics School, an institution established by the Nationalist Party to train professional public administrators. These individuals were supposed to modernize the entire system of Chinese local governance, making it more rational by bringing it inline with the precepts of scientific knowledge and the scientific method. The actions of the school’s graduates in various counties expose the failure of orthodox public administration methods to deal effectively with Chinese political reality, due to a tendency to underestimate the importance of variable human factors. It was, ironically, only when some of the school’s best former students broke with the precepts of their training and use innovative strategies, which took local realities into account and made use of ideas derived from China’s own statecraft traditions, that they achieved success. This dissertation thus suggests that researchers need to pay more attention in future to Chinese statecraft and its assumptions regarding the importance of sensitivity to human nature and variability, as well as imported ideas concerning rationality and scientific methods, when trying to understand trends in Chinese politics and governance. Moreover, the historical meaning of the rise and deviation of public administration is by no means a story only of frustrated modernization or periodic revivals of “tradition.” Rather, it represents an important case study of how non-scientific indigenous resources are deployed in the face of drives in settings outside the West to impose a form of political modernity, which has the potential to overcome the problems insurmountable in the current political conceptual framework.