This dissertation contains two studies. In Chapter 1, I implement a randomized intervention to measure the effect of reminders for timely payment of credit cards. While I find an 13% reduction in the cost of late payment fees paid, 31% of the users that avoid credit card late payments, incur...
Freeze casting is a technique for processing porous materials that has drawn significant attention for its effectiveness in producing a variety of tailorable pore structures for ceramics, metals, and polymers. With freeze casting, pores are generated based on a solidification process where ice crystals act as a sacrificial template which...
This work is concerned with the Laudau-Ginzburg $A$-model, or the Fukaya-Seidel category, associated with a Laurent polynomial $f: (\C^*)^n \ o \C$. We use constructible sheaves on a real $n$-dimensional torus to describe the Lagrangian thimbles associated to $f$. Then we discuss the application to Homological Mirror Symmetry for smooth...
We often criticize others for beliefs that are dogmatic, biased, or wishful. What, exactly, are we criticizing? Many epistemologists accept that such believing is problematic because it is not appropriately responsive to epistemic reasons. But why care about that? Or, to put it another way, why are epistemic norms authoritative...
This dissertation explores the relationship between institutions of political participation and environmental protection. What is the relationship and how is it constituted? How are participatory institutions put into motion, and how do they operate? What are the effects of these institutions? Are participatory institutions desirable from an environmental perspective and...
The scope of this thesis extends to the study of surface structures and electronic properties in a number of complex oxides. The c(6x2) surface reconstruction on SrTiO3 (001) was solved using a combination of plan view transmission electron microscopy imaging, atomic resolution secondary electron imaging, and density functional theory calculations....
We define multi-indexed Deligne extensions and multi-indexed log-variations of Hodge structures in the category of (filtered) logarithmic D-modules, via the idea of Bernstein– Sato polynomials and Kashiwara–Malgrange filtrations, generalizing the Deligne canonical extensions of flat vector bundles. We also obtain many comparison results with perverse sheaves via the logarithmic de...
FOXA1 is a FKHD family protein that plays pioneering roles in lineage-specific enhancer activation and gene transcription. Through genome-wide location analyses, here we show that FOXA1 expression and occupancy are, in turn, required for the maintenance of these epigenetic signatures, namely DNA hypomethylation and histone 3 lysine 4 methylation. Mechanistically,...
Analytic jurisprudence is the field organized around the “What is law?” question. When most scholars approach the “What is law?” question, they suppose that the goal of such inquiry is to discover, or to accurately represent, the true nature of law. Consequently, these scholars reject the notion that the goal...
This dissertation explores the renewed historical significance of the (geo)political demand to redraft national constitutions in the Americas. Building on previous work, my dissertation constructs a transnational lens to underline the intersectionality of the social struggles that catalyzed the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly process begun in 1999 and the Ecuadorian experience...