This dissertation addresses the structure of the group of interval exchange transformations. The two primary topics considered are:
a) the classification of interval exchange actions for certain groups; and b) properties of the interval exchange group which are reflected in the dynamics of interval exchange maps.
In Chapter 3 a...
This dissertation examines performance and textual techniques used by American and British artists to provoke discussion about the politics of viewing. I theorize a model of spectatorship which exposes the race and gender symbolism of actors' and spectators' bodies and its effects on meaning-making in the performer-spectator encounter. In contrast...
Although anxiety and depression are clearly distinct from a phenomenological perspective, discriminating these constructs empirically has often been difficult (Clark & Watson, 1991). Both the tripartite model of psychopathology (Clark & Watson, 1991) and the cognitive content-specificity hypothesis (Beck, 1976; Beck & Clark, 1988) were forwarded in an effort to...
This dissertation constitutes a re-evaluation of the popular and critical understanding of eighteenth-century libertinage. In particular, I contest the distinction between sentimentalism and libertinage, which are typically seen as two, irreconcilable approaches to emotional expression. As sentimentalism became prominent in the second half of the eighteenth century, I argue, it...
Researchers have long recognized that schools are powerful environments for shaping students' worldview and identity. The structured content, activities, and resultant culture of schools profoundly impact the way in which students learn to make sense of the world around them. In the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community this function of schooling is...
This project argues that displays of humanist learning in diplomacy served to demonstrate the extraordinary good will of the Florentine regime towards a host ruler. I call this act of surpassing previous oratorical gestures a "cultural gift". Although the singular goal of humanism in diplomacy remained offering cultural gifts in...
The use of cluster randomized experiments to study the effects of treatments on groups of subjects has increased in recent years. Many of these experiments lack the necessary statistical power to detect practically meaningful effects of treatment. One method for improving power in cluster randomized experiments that has been advanced...
We present several multiscale quantum mechanical (QM), molecular mechanical (MM), and continuum mechanical (CM) schemes to study the strength properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene sheets. A bridging domain method based on overlapping domain-decomposition schemes using the Lagrange multipliers field is developed to couple an atomistic domain with a...
The current trend of ceramic nanotechnology has motivated an ever-increasing need to achieve exquisite control over size, shape, and spatial confinement for functional oxide architectures, in an equivalent manner demonstrated for semiconductors. However, the unique nature of ceramics has posed major challenges for most traditional nanofabrication technologies, putting the development...
The proper distribution of cellular organelles and protein complexes is important for maintaining cellular organization and function. Transport in eukaryotic cells requires three motor proteins, kinesin, dynein, and myosin, attached to specific cargoes mostly by adaptor proteins. This work focuses on the mechanism of microtubule-dependent organelle transport in vivo.
This...