Science education reform emphasizes learning science through inquiry as a way to engage students in the processes of science at the same time that they learn scientific concepts. However, inquiry involves practices that are challenging for students because they have underlying norms with which students may be unfamiliar. We therefore...
This dissertation develops and estimates a dynamic model of consumer choice behavior in markets for seasonal (short lifecycle) goods where products have a finite selling season, consumer valuations change over time and availability is limited. In these markets, retailers often use dynamic markdown policies in which an initial retail price...
Operations Management (OM) is concerned with the processes involved in delivering goods and services to customers (Hopp and Spearman 2000, Shim and Siegel 1999). While recent surge in service and professional white collar work has greatly changed the arena of OM practice, OM research has not yet well address the...
Classical conditioning has been well studied over the last century as a method for investigating learning and memory. The rabbit eyeblink response is commonly used as a basis for such studies, and combined with lesions or electrophysiological recordings has provided a well-controlled paradigm for investigating the neurobiological mechanisms underlying learning...
This dissertation reconstructs a critical dialogue between British modernists and their Spanish contemporaries on their shared sense of the urgent tasks, in the wake of World War I, of reimagining the cultural heritage of Europe and cultivating cosmopolitan sensibilities. It assembles and analyzes a network of novels, essays, translations, reviews,...
his dissertation traces the presence of early Soviet satire in several major prose works. My project examines Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Yuri Olesha's Envy, Andrei Platonov's The Foundation Pit, and Mikhail Zoshchenko's prose trilogy (Youth Restored, The Sky-Blue Book and Before Sunrise) as literary works that incorporated and...
Senescence, permanent, irreversible replication arrest that occurs in all primary cells studied to date, is considered a cellular model of aging. Recently, senescence has gained attention as a potential tumor-suppressing mechanism. However, despite the obvious importance of senescence, its exact mechanisms remain unclear. One current hypothesis to explain senescence postulates...
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common supraventricular tachyarrhythmia and its prevalence is expected to increase with the aging population. However, the mechanisms AF initiation, maintenance and termination are not completely understood. The surface electrocardiogram (ECG) characteristics are a direct reflection of pathophysiologic events in the atria and can be...
As we move into deeper sub-micron technologies, the complexity of pushing the circuit performance further is becoming an important obstacle. To achieve better performance, there is an increasing need for collaboration of higher level (e.g. microarchitecture-level) and circuit level optimizations. Traditionally for a computer system, applications lie at the top...
Synapses in the central nervous system vary widely in how they transmit and store information. The properties of short-term and long-term plasticity, in particular, seem to be specific for each class of synapse studied. The types of plasticity expressed at a particular synapse determine how it processes, transmits and possibly...