This dissertation examines the role of market makers in making markets for options and futures on Chicago's derivatives exchanges. Recent institutional and technological changes in the ways that financial products are traded have given rise to the possibility of markets without market makers, raising the question of how these developments...
The primary purpose of this study was to describe what comprises an undergraduate compositional identity. Building upon recent research investigating musical identities with a social psychological framework (Macdonald, Hargreaves, & Miell, 2002), I examined the confluence of socially based experiences that shaped four undergraduate composers' lives. Specifically, this study investigated...
Lead poisoning is the most common environmentally-caused disease in the United States and is threat to human health worldwide. Although efforts to prevent lead exposure have increased throughout the years, lead poisoning still remains a common problem. Lead toxicity is more prevalent in children, who suffer from permanent neurodevelopment and...
Herpesviruses require axonal transport for the successful establishment of infection in peripheral ganglia (retrograde transport), and the subsequent spread to exposed body surfaces following reactivation from latency (anterograde transport). Viral progeny are assembled and spread to other tissues or hosts during egress. I focused on viral proteins which modulate directed...
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a technique widely used in both clinical and experimental settings to produce high-resolution images of opaque living organisms without utilizing ionizing radiation. Currently, MR imaging is augmented by contrast agents; however, these small molecule Gd(III) chelates are confined to extracellular and vascular regions of the...
Let X be a quasi-projective complex variety. It follows from the work of Voevodsky that the motivic cohomology of X, denoted as $H^{p,q}(X)$ where q and p are integers with q nonnegative, can be represented in the triangulated category of motives over the field of complex numbers, denoted as $DM^{eff,-}_{Nis}$....
Separation of DNA molecules by electrophoresis through entangled polymer solutions continues to be an important tool for genetic analysis, especially Sanger-based DNA sequencing. Separations of DNA on microfluidic devices are much more efficient than in capillary electrophoresis (CE) systems, such that the implementation of DNA sequencing onto microchips promises to...
This dissertation comprises three chapters, each focusing on a different question in economic theory. The first two chapters focus on repeated games and reputations, while the third is about large games. In "Cooperation and Community Responsibility", I study whether cooperation can be sustained between communities where members interact repeatedly but...
The small heat shock protein αB-crystallin is expressed primarily in lens and muscle tissue, but it is also found in lung, kidney and many cancers. Regulators of αB-crystallin have been identified almost exclusively using mouse muscle and lens specific models. It has been well documented that αB-crystallin is expressed in...
The first chapter of this dissertation studies a continuous-time agency model where the agent controls the drift of the geometric Brownian motion firm size. The changing firm size generates partial incentives, analogous to awarding the agent equity shares according to her continuation payoff. When the agent is as patient as...