Electrochemical water splitting is an effective method for generating hydrogen gas (H2) and an attractive means for energy storage. During this process, hydrogen and oxygen bubbles form on the electrode surfaces often lower the efficiency of gas production. The overarching goal of this study is to probe and better understand the nucleation process of small H2 and O2 nanobubbles on the electrode. To do this, we use ultrasensitive fluorescence microscopy to monitor the transient adsorption and desorption of single fluorophore molecules, such as Rhodamine 6G (R6G), on the nanobubble surface. My project aims to study how different fluorophores interact differently with the bubble surface and how they may interact with each other when multiple fluorophores are co-adsorbed on the bubble surface. This research may help us better understand bubble-molecule and molecule-molecule interactions at confined spaces for enhanced chemical labeling of the nanobubble surface. Moreover, it may also help us better understand the chemical nature of the gas/water interface, which has direct implications for more efficient gas productions and energy conversion and storage.

The ability to recognize that others have mental states, separate from us, and that these states are not always accurate portrayals of reality, is central for theory of mind (TOM). This capacity becomes particularly crucial when children explain causal relationships, as they must integrate their understanding of causality with their awareness of other's knowledge states. Skills like this are essential for effective communication and reflect a key developmental milestone in both cognitive and social reasoning. This study examines how children process causal scenarios while considering and tracking the knowledge states of multiple people. We will examine how children (ages 4-7) perform with conjunctive causal relationships, where two separate effects must combine to produce an outcome (e.g., watering a plant and giving it fertilizer causes it to bloom). Children are asked to explain how the outcome happened, and what knowledge each character has. The children will be given four causal events, varying in content, and follow the same causal structure, where each character is only aware of one cause (A or B). After the scenario, children will answer open-ended questions to assess their recall of what each character knows and test their understanding of how the outcome (C) occurred. We predict that younger children will recognize the causal outcome but struggle to differentiate knowledge states, while older children will demonstrate an improved ability to tailor their explanations based on other's perspectives. This study extends beyond previous studies that primarily focused on children's passive evaluation of explanation as our study will investigate children's active role in generating explanations tailored to different character's knowledge states. Our findings will contribute to the understanding of how the development of TOM shapes children's ability to understand and reason about causal relationships.

In the Earth system, land-atmosphere interactions play a crucial role in the development of weather and climate. Rising buoyant air parcels in convective environments create thunderstorms and clouds and can be influenced by energy fluxes at the land surface. However, the role of soil moisture in convective development is still a topic of ongoing debate.  A recent study by Zhang et al. (2023) investigated how soil moisture drydown periods affect the convective available potential energy (CAPE) and precipitation patterns in different regions using satellite data and statistical modeling. Other studies have predicted that CAPE will increase in humid regions and decrease in arid regions due to anthropogenic warming (Diffenbaugh et al., 2013; Taszarek et al., 2021). In our study, we use time series from global climate model (GCM) simulations to compare interstorm CAPE in different regions across current and future warming scenarios. Our research will result in the enhanced understanding of land-atmosphere coupling and how severe weather will respond to a CO2-driven warming climate.

Children are not merely passive observers; they actively seek to understand the why behind events. A fundamental distinction in causal reasoning is between agentic causes, which attribute outcomes to the actions of an agent like a person, and non-agentic causes, which focus on environmental factors. Do children show preferences for agentic versus non-agentic explanations? Moreover, are they influenced by the outcome’s valence (positive or negative)? This study examines how outcome valence influences children's (4-9 years old) preferences for agentic versus non-agentic causes in situations where the cause is ambiguous. By analyzing their explanatory preferences, we investigate how the valence of outcomes shapes causal reasoning across development. Participants will be presented with scenarios describing everyday events. Each scenario will have a clear positive or negative outcome, and the cause of the event will be ambiguous, with both agentic and non-agentic explanations being plausible. For example, some participants might see an apple falling perfectly into someone's hand (positive), while others see it hitting their head (negative) - events that could be attributed to either a squirrel jumping up and down, or the wind blowing. Participants will then be asked to answer what caused the outcome via a forced-choice task. We predict that children will more often select agentic over non-agentic causes for negative outcomes compared to positive ones. We also expect that as age increases, their choice differences based on outcome valence will be more pronounced. This investigation helps us understand whether agency itself plays a role in early causal reasoning. If children demonstrate a stronger preference for agentic causes in negative outcomes, this may suggest that emotional valence influences how children construct causal explanations. Furthermore, examining children’s explanatory preferences - whether biased toward agentic causes or not - can tell us how they incorporate agency into their developing understanding of causality.