This thesis contains four essays on the organization (both internal and external) of health care in the US. The first essay examines a mechanism through which individual workers acquire (or maintain) competence, namely that of experience. Specifically, I analyze whether cardiac surgeons who perform more procedures experience an improvement in...
This dissertation examines the construction and regulation of over-the-counter derivatives markets before and after the 2007-2009 global financial crisis. It addresses two questions: How did the market for derivatives traded outside traditional exchanges grow so large and crisis-prone with so little public regulation? And, why, given derivatives’ contribution to the...
This paper describes the technology and methods deployed in the continuous autonomous remote monitoring of cracks in interior and exterior walls of a residence near a limestone quarry. The object is to quantitatively compare crack response to blast-induced ground motion to that induced by diurnal temperature changes, weather fronts, and...
Teasing is commonplace in our social interactions (Kowalski, 2007). Due to its paradoxical nature it can be employed to produce both positive and negative outcomes (Keltner et al., 1998) however, the ambiguity and subjectivity in teasing can make it susceptible to misinterpretation (Kowalski, 2000; 2007; Kruger et al., 2006). The...
Musical theater is a discipline that, by its very nature, engages several disciplines, specifically music, visual art, theater, and dance. The elementary classroom is a viable setting for the study of the arts in an interdisciplinary manner, yet the number of studies examining interdisciplinary instruction with regard to elementary music...
On 6 February 2007, President Bush announced that the United States would
create a new military command for Africa, to be known as Africa Command or Africom.
Throughout the Cold War and for more than a decade afterwards, the U.S. did not have a
military command for Africa; instead, U.S....
In this dissertation, we explore modeling and solution methods for intermodal drayage operations. This research is motivated by the need to provide operational choices in drayage operations to increase efficiency; however, as shown in our work, the introduction of this flexibility in modeling and solution methods is challenging.
Intermodal freight...
After 9/11 there was a shift in the rhetoric surrounding counter-terrorism. Suddenly, the language of risk, security and prevention was being utilized to justify a new set of global financial regulations headed up by international organizations such as the United Nations, The Financial Action Task Force, and the IMF/World Bank....
Background: Evidence supporting a bidirectional relationship between depression and recurrent cardiovascular disease (CVD) appears strong, but there remains a need to better characterize the role of depression in CVD risk and cardiovascular health (CVH) promotion, especially in the context of comorbid risk factors such as cigarette smoking. In the present...
Every music theorist has their own personal reasons for engaging in the craft of theorizing about music. Many discover that there is something special about a theoretic disposition which differs from other sorts of interactions with music. It is often this special something that draws musicians into the discipline: specifically,...