This dissertation studies a variety of consumer behaviors and their strategic implications for firm profit maximization. The first chapter discusses how bundle pricing (via shipping policies) allows firms to achieve higher profits than component pricing when consumers's tastes for products are correlated. The second chapter illustrates how durable good producers...
Recent advances in optical switching have yielded an all-fiber, all-optical, device capable of routing single-photon quantum signals at high rates (≈25 GHz), with almost immeasurably small degradation of the quantum state[1, 2, 3]. These switches can facilitate complex quantum networking and quantum information processing schemes. However, the complexity of these...
An accurate knowledge of the engineering properties of rocks is crucial for a variety of geomechanical problems, ranging from wellbore stability to failure in rock slopes, underground excavations, and crustal faults. While strength and deformation properties are usually obtained from a limited number of in situ and/or laboratory tests, their...
Growing energy and climate concerns in the United States and across the world demand improvements in energy efficiency, conservation, and renewability. Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are highly efficient devices that electrochemically convert the chemical energy of a fuel to electricity. These devices can operate on natural gas as a...
The progressive women’s movement in the United States during the mid-twentieth century enjoyed increased support and success until national politics were dominated by conservatives during the 1980s. This dissertation analyzes the discourse around women’s issues created by two of the largest conservative women’s organizations, Eagle Forum and Concerned Women for...
Fungi have an immense untapped store of natural products, small molecules that can often be repurposed as pharmaceuticals. The genes that encode secondary metabolic machinery are often genomically co-localized into biosynthetic gene clusters. Because of the immense energetic costs that goes into producing the biosynthetic pathway and its products, strict...
This dissertation draws on a field-level, qualitative study of business analytics to explore the legitimation and design of knowledge practices. In the last few decades, both the power and the acceptance of business analytics have advanced dramatically; nonetheless, end-users and clients can still be deeply sceptical of particular analytics practices...
The circadian clock is a biological oscillator present in all terrestrial life forms that aligns organismal functions with the daily rising and setting of the sun. In mammals clocks are expressed both in pacemaker cells in the brain that are directly entrained by light as well as in all peripheral...
The ability to track labeled cancer cells in vivo would allow researchers to study their distribution, growth and metastatic potential within the intact organism. Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging is invaluable for tracking cancer cells in vivo as it benefits from high spatial resolution and absence of ionizing radiation. However, many...
Short-wave infrared (SWIR) photon detection has become an essential technology in the modern world. Sensitive SWIR detectors with low noise levels, and high signal-to-noise-ratios are highly desirable for a variety of applications including light detection and ranging, optical tomography, and astronomical imaging. As such many efforts in infrared detector research...