This dissertation consists of three chapters on topics in economic theory. In Chapter 1, "Subjective Complexity Under Uncertainty", I propose and axiomatize a model of choice under uncertainty in which the size of the partition with respect to which an act is measurable arises endogenously as a measure of subjective...
Due to the unprecedented sensitivity of the Advanced LIGO--Virgo network, in less than ~5 years the field of gravitational-wave astrophysics has evolved from speculating about the properties of compact binary mergers to having an observed population that facilitates astrophysical inference. These observations encode information about their progenitor stellar systems ---...
This project explores how the variation in language experiences and attitudes that Mexican American Spanish heritage speaker bilinguals in the United States have affects their speech perception in both their languages. Heritage language bilinguals speak as a first language a minority language that they have cultural ties to (e.g., Spanish...
This dissertation investigates how scope relations are constructed and evaluated during real-time human sentence processing. Theoretical approaches to processing scope relations exist in a multi-dimensional space where trade-offs are made around how quickly scope relations can be computed, how many mistakes are made in computing scope relations, and how many...
“Los Grans Mals: Disasters and Civic Life in the Late Medieval Midi” examines the many catastrophes that struck the cities of Marseille and Montpellier during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. During this era, southern Europe witnessed increasingly frequent episodes of natural disasters due in part to the Little Ice...
Genetic variation in genes regulating metabolism may be advantageous in some settings but not others. The non-failing adult heart relies heavily on fatty acids as a fuel substrate and source of ATP. In contrast, the failing heart favors glucose as a fuel source. A bootstrap analysis for genes with deviant...
Geographies of Indigeneity: Space, Race, and Power in the Andes (1880-1930), reframes the intellectual construction of indigeneity as the structural principle informing the postcolonial nation in the Andes. My main claim is that Andean scientific elites defined indigeneity as an ethnicity attached to a territory, privileging only Inca-centric lineages and...
This dissertation adopts a jointly ethnographic and historical approach to study shifting racial formations and configurations of inequality in the metropolitan U.S. South. Specifically, it analyzes how immigrants and working poor populations are reshaping the social life, privatized spaces, and conservative politics of Atlanta’s white suburbs. It focuses on Sandy...
Visualization is a powerful tool to help people better communicate and understand data. But the perception and interpretation of data is riddled with bias. Data visualizations are ambiguous objects such that different people viewing the same visualization can come to different conclusions. The ambiguity is likely associated with people's perceptual...
Successful restoration depends on the establishment and survival of selected species, and sowing seed is the most cost-effective method to ensuring a successful restoration. Generally, a locally sourced seed is thought to be better adapted to local environmental conditions and, therefore, more likely to thrive. In addition, a local seed...