This dissertation investigates how a child can acquire the grammar of genericity and what it is that a child actually needs to learn in order to accomplish this task. The first step is to reframe the question asked by the previous literature on the acquisition of generics through the lens...
Nanoscale materials are demonstrating new properties and promising applications with each passing day. The fabrication of ever more complex and precise nanomaterials represents a continuing drive in the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology. Template-based approaches provide an attractive method of producing new inaccessible materials by modifying and confining older...
This thesis is a description of the measurement of the W boson mass using the D0 Run II detector with 770 pb^-1 of proton-antiproton collision data. These collisions were produced by the Tevatron at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV between 2002 and 2006. We use a sample of W -> e...
This paper covers three main topics. The first is addressing the question of interpolating between disparate index theorems on noncommutative two-tori. The second is to compute Hochschild cohomology for quantum special linear and special unitary groups. The third is producing an orthonormal basis for the vector space of matrix corepresentations...
Consumers often base their decisions on impressions of the overall price level of a store. For example, decisions of where to shop, whether to buy an item or keep looking for a better price, and whether to buy a more or less expensive option can all be influenced by whether...
An amazing characteristic of the speech signal is that it contains a variety of temporal features that occur simultaneously in the signal, and each of these features provides unique and essential information for speech perception. An equally astonishing fact is that, in most cases, the human auditory system is able...
There is a growing interest in both marketing and economics in the dynamics of decision-making. Researchers have proposed richer behavioral models of consumers and firms with the purpose of learning behavioral primitives that static models cannot capture. In these studies, models move away from stylized views of decision-making by explicitly...
This thesis encompasses the work on bid-price controls for network revenue management and a dynamic model of revenue management with strategic consumers. The first line of research studies the circumstances under which bid-price controls are optimal or near optimal with minimal assumptions on the network topology and the stochastic structure...
The finite element method is used to investigate failure mechanisms in pin-hanger connections in aging highway bridges. Bridge pins and hangers are typically considered as critical elements whose failure may result in partial or entire collapse of the structure. The primary function of a pin-hanger connection is to allow for...
Mixed emotions, defined as the experience of having positive and negative emotions concurrently, can occur in a variety of consumer contexts, ranging from common consumption episodes to important life events. However, while there have been many studies demonstrating the occurrence of mixed emotions, little is known about the downstream consequences...