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 explores the ways that Chinese popular media, including film, television, and magazines, reconstruct the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76), a traumatic historical event which tremendously affected Chinese people and society. Employing a combination of methods, including visual and narrative analysis of media and cultural forms, institutional analysis of...
Biological fouling of surfaces is problematic for many medical applications because proteins, cells and bacteria can impair the function of devices and lead to catastrophic complications. Numerous strategies exist for reducing fouling in physiological environments; the strategy described in this thesis focuses on the modification of substrates with poly-N-substituted glycine...
My primary interest is in markets as aggregators of information. To study this I create a benchmark market-microstructure model of sequential trading on posted prices. I have a competitive market maker and rational profit-maximizing traders with different tastes over a single asset and heterogeneous information over its value. The differences...
This dissertation analyzes how individuals choose college majors. The choice of college major is treated as one made under uncertainty. Understanding any decision under uncertainty requires one to study how expectations and preferences are used to make the choice. However, since observed choices may be consistent with many combinations of...
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...
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...
This dissertation aims to: 1) characterize the range of beliefs museum practitioners have about racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity; 2) their understanding of the role of race, culture, and ethnicity in minoritized learners’ sensemaking; and 3) the areas of tension and symmetry between practitioners’ values and their perception of their...
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most prevalent primary central nervous system tumor, characterized by resistance to therapeutic intervention, inevitable recurrence, and ultimately patient death. The dismal prognosis is due in part to underlying molecular factors that promote an intratumoral cellular state heterogeneity and protect tumor cells from cell death pathways....
Recent developments have enabled L12-strengthened Co-based superalloys, which have thepotential to surpass Ni-based superalloys as the material of choice for the hottest sections of turbine
blades due to cobalt’s 40 ºC higher melting point. The most-studied branch of Co-based
superalloys are based on the L12 phase Co3(Al,W); however, there is...