This dissertation explores the development of public access cable television programming made by and for LGBTQ people in New York City. Through archival research, interviews with the producers of these shows, and analysis of their content and textual features, I argue that LGBTQ public access programming reflected and amplified particular...
I examine economic design issues in the realm of dynamic organ allocation for transplantation and behavioral market design/contract theory. The second and third chapters focus on two issues in the design of the U.S. deceased-donor organ allocation system, which represents the majority of transplants performed in the U.S. In contrast...
Designing intelligent systems that can answer questions has been an ongoing and active challenge for the artificial intelligence community. In the past, researchers were focused on producing specialized language systems for particular domains and datasets. Such approaches would require deeper-than-ideal amounts of expertise to design, and often necessitated the expensive...
Over the last few years, there has been a transition away from traditional engineering materials to new advanced materials that exhibit complex architectures with improved mechanical properties. Most of the inspiration for these new materials comes from nature, where organisms have evolved an immense variety of macro and nanoscale shapes...
Proteins and many other systems are often conceptualized as networks to access analysis methods from the field of network science. Several approaches use molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of proteins to construct networks using correlational statistics. However, in the field of network science, a well-established approach for network construction is solving...
Human language processing is incremental. In this dissertation, I explore how an incremental perspective can help us clarify our understanding of transformational syntax, which typically proceeds bottom-up. As part of our exploration, I develop an incremental head-driven parsing algorithm for Minimalist Grammars. The two main innovations of this parsing algorithm...
In this Thesis, I describe some recent developments in the field of artificial molecular machines to which I have made contributions. In Chapter 1, I survey the rise and promise of molecular nanotopology, a relatively new discipline focusing on molecular knots and links that offers unprecedented opportunities to access high-energy...
When a collection of individual units behave synchronously, it is often useful to describe the actions of the group. Broadly speaking in Physics, individuals are described as particles and collective actions are described using waves. However, the dynamic symphony of life ordains that orchestral sections play in harmony for a...
Popular and scholarly arguments state that uncivil discourse is bad for democracy because it hampers political trust and sharpens polarization. These same scholars see uncivil discourse as contrary to a good democratic society. However, their arguments could be overstated because incivility may be so contextual that elites can frame certain...
Knowledge combination is a fundamental component of technological invention, which is a driver of new economic opportunities and firm growth. Yet, evidence suggests that myriad organizational factors, including managers, weigh heavily on the ability of firms to productively use R&D capabilities. This dissertation argues that managerial attention plays an important...