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Well Enough Alone: an Exploration of Feminine Solitude in Four American Novels
No full textThis dissertation studies representations of feminine solitude in four American novels: The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James, Tender is
the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. My approach is
informed by the American literary tradition’s tendency, via Emerson and Thoreau, to
present solitude as something particularly masculine. The case for analyzing feminine
solitude is supported by many feminist critics, including Nina Baym and Carol Gilligan.
These critics show an underrepresentation of women as contributing figures in the
American literary canon and criticize the traditional casting of women as the weaker sex.
My reading of each character under analysis in her mode of solitude takes shape through
the ontological thought of Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Friedrich Hölderlin.
In this dissertation, I consider female characters who are written by men in order to see
how those authors most rooted in the American canon constructed the type of person
unconsidered by society and underrepresented in literature: a willful, solitary woman
Morals for Human Development in the Art of Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller: How Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller, Became Seminal to the Spread of Western Autonomy
No full textGotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Johann Christoph Friedrich von
Schiller, introduced a naturally occurring, non-heteronomous, independence and morality to the
common man through their literary efforts in the last half of the eighteenth century. In a time of
church and state censorship, when written and spoken Enlightenment efforts were directed
toward universal freedom, when freedom for the masses, in aggregate, was an unacceptable idea,
Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller proselytized individual freedom through self-development. They
demonstrated, via didactive parables and other message carrying written vehicles, an awareness
of self, i.e., the presence of an inherent, functional, personal spirit, whose engagement could lead
to singular independence for every individual . They created literary role models that
demonstrated independent behavior, and gave men and women the vision of new possibilities,
and the potential for a fulfilled future.
They hid these subversive parables as subplots, within acceptable plots, which would pass the
censors. As well-known and popular German writers and critics, their literature, dramas, poetry,
reviews, and essays, presented as entertainment, became conscious-raising tools for a literate
public. A nexus of societal evolution, a literate public, and the art of Lessing, Goethe, and
Schiller, formed a connection that enabled submissive men and women to develop agency.
This dissertation contains in-text quotations and premises from parables, fables, etc., from the
works of the canons of each, which demonstrate and teach the value and application of self-
awareness, self-direction, and self-applied moral standards. The literature from which these
quotations and premises are taken, the works which define their didactive intent, are Lessing’s,
The Jews, Miss Sara Sampson, Laocoon, Emilia Galotti, and Nathan the Wise; Goethe’s,
Maying, Prometheus, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Egmont; Schiller’s, The Robbers, The
Lessing’s, The Jews, Miss Sara Sampson, Laocoon, Emilia Galotti, and Nathan the Wise;
Goethe’s, Maying, Prometheus, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Egmont; Schiller’s, The
Robbers, The Stage as a Moral Institution, Don Carlos, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of
Man, and The Wallenstein Trilogy. plus On Epic and Dramatic Poetry, an essay Goethe and
Schiller wrote jointly, and Correspondence Between Schiller and Goethe From 1794 to 1805,
both of which Goethe published after Schiller’s death.
This unique exposition extrapolated from correspondence, from autobiographies, and from
biographical historiography, illustrates the heretofore unrecognized morals for human
development in the art of Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller. As previously noted, this is a vital
documentation that has been overlooked in the scholastic history of 18th century Enlightenment,
the German Enlightenment, and the record of the contributions of Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller.
A review of currently available publications about Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller, follows
Targeting T Cells and a Novel Neurotrophic Factor to Treat Paclitaxel-induced Peripheral Neuropathy in Mice
No full textChemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a challenging condition to treat
and arises due to the severe, dose-limiting toxicity of chemotherapeutic drugs such as
paclitaxel. Thirty-70% of patients are affected by CIPN. Neurotoxicity associated with
CIPN often results in damage to the peripheral nerves and dorsal root ganglia (DRG) and
causes debilitating sensory deficits. Presently, there are no effective treatments to
prevent or reduce CIPN. Here we sought to investigate two new approaches to treat
CIPN. In the first approach we took advantage of immune cell interactions that occur in
CIPN. Immune cells have been associated in the development and progression of the
disease and disease resolution. We investigated the potential role of Inducible co-
stimulatory molecule (ICOS) in the resolution of paclitaxel-induced peripheral neuropathy
in mice. ICOS is an immune checkpoint molecule that is expressed on the surface of
activated T cells and promotes proliferation and differentiation of T cells. In the second
approach we investigated the potential antinociceptive effects of recombinant mouse
Meteorin (rmMeteorin) using the paclitaxel-induced peripheral neuropathy model in male
and female mice. Meteorin, a novel neurotrophic factor with an uncharacterized receptor,
has been shown to mediate the reversal of neuropathic pain injured model. Our findings
indicate that both approaches produce a robust antinociceptive effect in paclitaxel-
induced peripheral neuropathy in mice. Modulating T cells into an anti-inflammatory
phenotype, using ICOS, and using neurotrophic factors such as Meteorin could provide
novel and effective therapeutics that are urgently needed for CIPN
Transfer Learning for Large Scale Data-driven Modeling and Its Applications in Social Science
No full textProliferation of Internet technology in daily life has created numerous data. These data may come from a variety of sources, such as social networks, online businesses, sensors,military surveillance and so on. Generally speaking, these data could be either dynamic or static. Such huge amount of data, along with modern powerful computing capabilities, had pushed forward tremendous amount of applications in AI substantially, including computer vision, natural language processing, cyber-security, and etc. However, most applications still depends heavily on labeled data. The need of massive labeled data hinders the progress of AI research since the labeling process is very laborious and costly, and also goes against how human beings learn - human beings do not require many labeled data by drawing inferences.Transfer learning, as a popular machine learning paradigm recently, leverages knowledge from a source domain to effectively learn predictive models in a target domain which does not have sufficient labeled data. In this dissertation, we propose to investigate transfer learning techniques on an extensive of data-driven applications. First, we unveil a heterogeneous domain adaptation framework on multiple data stream settings, and we apply it to detect cyber attacks within the data stream. Then, we show that multitask learning on multiple domains may actually help with the classification and retrieval tasks on Computer Vision(CV) applications. After the two applications, we shift the research scope to the scenario of offline learning, and test our transfer learning algorithm on sentiment classification task in Natural Language Processing (NLP) domain. We extend the application scenarios even further to the political science domain. We discuss the potential of the modern Graph Neural Networks (GNN) and apply it to the applications of time series forecasting with additional spatial information. Such application includes a number of critical tasks in social science, including but not limited to peace research, transportation analysis, and epidemic spread modeling. We further address modeling challenges observed during the aforementioned applications, such as scalability, model complexity and etc
Worldly Goods Made Intimate: Interpreting Andrea Mantegna’s Adoration of the Magi
No full textIn 1985, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California purchased at auction a painting
on canvas attributed to Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna. It sparked attention in the
press as the most expensive painting purchase in the world to date, as well as for some scholarly
criticism concerning the attribution of the work. Through vigorous conservation efforts by
Andrea Rothe and the Getty Research Institute, The Adoration of the Magi was definitively
attributed to Andrea Mantegna and the medium was established as distemper paint on linen
canvas. From this point on, the painting has been the subject of much scholarly attention and
questions have been raised about the patronage of the painting, the objects featured in the work,
and the ethnicities of several key figures. Most scholars tend to suggest that the most likely
patron is Isabella d’Este, due to her well-documented collections of objects similar to those
painted into this work, and her marrying into the Gonzaga family of Mantua, who employed
Andrea Mantegna for much of his career. This thesis uses these lines of questioning as a
starting point to interpret how the artist meant for the painting to be viewed, and by whom.
Through studying the mediums, size, compositional choices, and worldly people and things that
make up this image – along with analysis of the collecting interests of his patron, Francesco II
Gonzaga – this thesis suggests that Mantegna painted this work with Francesco in mind and
intended to create an intimate and personalized portrayal of the moment of the Epiphany
The Metacognitive Underpinnings of Confirmation Bias and Its Political Consequences
No full textNumerous psychological studies on human reasoning attest to the mind’s pervasive tendency
toward confirmation bias, consisting of a reluctance to change one’s mind by selectively
integrating confirmatory evidence while underweighting contrary evidence. Among its
pernicious effects is the political polarization it fosters, a result of the aggregation of like-minded
individuals united by allegiance to a particular set of beliefs. The aim of this study is to shed
light on how one’s ability to calibrate confidence to appropriately reflect available evidence,
known as metacognitive sensitivity, reduces vulnerability to confirmation bias, along with facets
of polarization it tends to foster in the political domain. The findings indicate that metacognitive
sensitivity attenuates confirmation bias, operationalized as integration of disconfirmatory
evidence, in the context of low-level perceptual decisions, but not when it comes to higher-order
analytical decisions. When applied to political thought and behavior, individual differences in
this capacity were incorporated into cognitive models demonstrating that metacognitive
sensitivity attenuates dogmatic intolerance. However, it does not predict political ideological
stance on the liberal-to-conservative spectrum, conspiratorial ideation, or vulnerability to
misinformation representative of content found in online media. Measures that demonstrate
lower susceptibility to confirmation bias (i.e., increased integration of disconfirmatory evidence)
were associated with reduced levels of both right-wing and left-wing conspiratorial ideation as
well as higher pro-democratic attitudes. Therefore, metacognitive sensitivity and resistance to
confirmation bias together play a significant role in promoting more tolerant attitudes toward
those who do not share one’s political beliefs while remaining open-minded and sensitive to
information contrary to one’s strongly held beliefs
Effects of Performance Shortfalls on Organizational Decisions and Outcomes
No full textThe performance context of an organization is an important factor in determining its strategy and
outcomes following the strategic choices made. Specifically, negative performance contexts
affect organizations more intensely, reducing the resources it has access to, changing how
stakeholders are impacted, increasing scrutiny from the media, analysts and shareholders among
others, and inviting evaluation and judgment of the decision-making of the CEO and other
managers. In this dissertation, the multifaceted nature of performance shortfalls is explored
across three essays covering different types of negative performance contexts, to provide a more
complete understanding of how performance affect organizations.
In the first essay, the focus is on the firm’s lifecycle stage of organizational decline, that presents
a critical shortage of resources. We explore how organizations modify their CSR practices in
such a context, as there could be both benefits and costs to engaging in CSR during decline. By
distinguishing between different types of CSR, we show that firms navigate decline in a manner
that incorporates both perspectives on CSR. In the second essay, we highlight the effect of a
firm’s proximity to bankruptcy on CEOs’ decision-making based on different temporal
perspectives. We suggest that a CEO’s career horizon (or time to retirement) is positively related
to firm strategic change, and this effect decreases when a CEO past focus is higher. We further
suggest that the dominating effect of objective time (CEO career horizon) versus subjective time
(CEO past focus) depends on the firm’s closeness to bankruptcy, a situation that increases the
salience of the CEO’s legacy in their decision-making. Finally, the third essay adds a social
dimension to performance, looking at performance below social aspirations as a contextual
condition. In this study, we show that CEOs’ social class backgrounds affect the characteristics
of competitive repertoires they use in terms of complexity and non-conformity. As social
comparison is an important aspect of competing in the market, we further study how
performance below those of peers in the industry modifies these effects.
Overall, this dissertation provides a bird’s eye view of performance shortfalls by exploring
different types of negative performance contexts and how these affect different aspects of firm
strategy including market, non-market and competitive strategy
Essays on Empirical Corporate Finance
No full textThis dissertation consists of three essays on empirical corporate finance. The first essay,
titled “Climate Change Salience and Firm Investment,” is included in Chapter 1. I hypothesize that firms are more likely to make investments that reduce their CO2 emissions
intensity if the threat of climate change is more salient. To test this, I examine mergers and
acquisitions (M&A) in the US from 2012-2021 and exploit exogenous variation in exposure
to abnormally warm temperatures. Conditional on an M&A occurring, if the acquiror experienced abnormally warm temperatures at its headquarters within 6 months prior to the
deal’s announcement, then the target has 15% lower estimated CO2 emissions intensity in
the full sample of deals. The effect increases to 29% among deals where the acquiror has
above median CO2 emissions intensity, as these are the types of firms most exposed to climate change transition costs. This paper shows that firms exhibit a behavioral bias known
as attribute substitution in their adjustment to climate change, since they make an estimate
of the impact based on local temperatures, an easily accessible proxy, rather than the true
determining factors.
The second essay, titled “Tax Avoidance through Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions”
and coauthored with Jean-Marie Meier, is included in Chapter 2. We investigate 13,307
cross-border, tax-haven mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from 1990 to 2017, totaling 2.4 of the 4.1
trillion is beyond what is predicted based on a gravity model with economic fundamentals.
Tax-haven M&A result in 30.7 billion in recurring annual tax avoidance. To illustrate the
magnitude, for a US firm with no prior cross-border, tax-haven M&A history, buying an
Irish firm worth 5% of its total assets would result in an expected decline in its effective tax
rate of 3.32 percentage points. For identification, we use a change in US tax law in 2004.
Following haven acquisitions, firms are more likely to relocate their headquarters to havens.
Our results document that tax avoidance through havens is a significant determinant of
cross-border M&A.
The third essay, titled “Improving the Measurement of Tax Residence: Implications for
Research on Corporate Taxation” and coauthored with Jean-Marie Meier, is included in
Chapter 3. We highlight an opportunity for improved measurement of a key data item in
corporate tax research, a firm’s tax residence. Some countries define tax residence based
on a firm’s location of incorporation, some on a firm’s location of headquarters, and some
consider both locations. Because no firm-level tax residence database exists, studies typically
apply a uniform assignment of either the location of incorporation, headquarters, or center of
business activity. We use a novel algorithm that embeds the residency laws of 150 countries
to accurately assign tax residence. We reassign the tax residence of a considerable fraction
of firms relative to standard proxies, and provide evidence that reassignment significantly
affects inferences. For instance, for cross-border mergers and acquisitions with a US acquiror,
16% of the deal value involves an acquiror that is reassigned. Moreover, reassigned firms
are systematically different from other firms along several dimensions, including effective tax
rates
Paleomagnetism, Rock Magnetism, and Magnetic Fabric of Upper Permian Sedimentary Rocks and Early Jurassic Intrusions, Karoo Basin, South Africa, and of a Highly Distorted Oligocene Ignimbrite, East-central New Mexico
No full textThis dissertation includes three different projects that utilize paleomagnetic and rock magnetic
techniques and principles to understand the thermal effect of magmatism on an older, host
sedimentary rock sequence, its mineralogy and domain state, magnetization and remagnetization
processes, to determine the magnetic polarity stratigraphy of Permian sedimentary rocks, and to
evaluate the magnetic petrofabric of an Oligocene ignimbrite to understand its source and related
transport history. Project #1 addresses the thermal effect of Early Jurassic Karoo large igneous
province (LIPs) magmatism on a Permian sedimentary sequence cored in the Eastern Karoo
Basin, South Africa. The study of the paleotemperature history of the host Permian sedimentary
strata involved sampling the ~2320 m deep borecore intersected in the KARIN KWV-1 drilling
project. The KWV-1 drilling experiment spudded about 10 km east of Willowvale town, Eastern
Cape Province, and provides a unique natural laboratory for studying the effects of Karoo
magmatism on the basin’s sedimentary sequence. Paleomagnetic and rock magnetic results from
dolerite sills and host sedimentary strata reveal that single domain (SD) to multi-domain (MD)
magnetite is the main magnetization carrier of the Karoo dolerite sills and host sedimentary strata
sampled at distances greater than ½ the width of an adjacent sills. However, for host sedimentary
strata sampled at distances < ½ the width of an adjacent sill, remanence is carried by both
magnetite and SD pyrrhotite. Paleotemperature estimates based on the alteration index (A40)
technique reveal that parts of the Ecca sedimentary sequence have remained at ambient, basinal
burial temperatures, likely well below 250 ̊C. Thermal and alternating field (AF)
demagnetization yield a well-defined interpretable response, with some data suggesting the
preservation of early acquired Permian remanence in sections of the cored interval. Much of the
sedimentary sequence has been subjected to a combination of thermoviscous/chemical
remagnetization processes. Project #2 involves paleomagnetic and rock magnetic study of a ~50
m thick sequence (11 independent sites) of continental sedimentary rocks of the upper
Permian/Lower Triassic Beaufort Group, lying above an Early Jurassic Karoo mafic sill (2 sites),
exposed on Piersnaarbaken farm, Eastern Cape Province, to aid our understanding of the age of
deposition of this section, which contains important palynologic information. Magnetic polarity
results have been placed in a magnetostratigraphic context to infer that the age of deposition of
these strata is part of the Illarawa mixed polarity zone (late Permian age), and in particular, part
of the Elandsberg Member. Rock magnetic data show that magnetite is the main remanence
carrier in these sedimentary rocks. Demagnetization experiments reveal that the natural remanent
magnetization (NRM) of the host rocks has been partially overprinted by the Early Jurassic
Karoo magmatism. Demagnetization data show that the NRM consists of two distinguishable
components, referred to as component-1 and component-2. The component 1 is of NNW
declination and moderate to steep negative inclination, unblocked in thermal demagnetization by
~ 460 ̊C and AF fields of << 90 mT. Component-2, on the other hand, is of dual polarity and is
unblocked over a temperature range of ~ 460 ̊C to ~ 580 ̊C. The component-2 is of SSE
declination at sites PBB4 and PBB5, and moderate to steep positive inclination, and is NNW
declination and moderate to steep negative inclination at the remaining sites higher in the
section. The dual polarity nature of Component-2 is interpreted to indicate that the sedimentary
section was deposited after the Kiaman reverse polarity Superchron, and, possibly, during the
latest Permian. Project #3 involves study of the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) and
rock magnetism of the Palisades Tuff, Sierra Blanca, New Mexico. The Palisades tuff is of early
Oligocene age and has been proposed to be the result of explosive eruption of quartz syenite
magma that formed the nearby Three River Stock, based on geochemical similarity in terms of
major and trace elements. Oriented block samples were collected from Palisades Tuff (PT)
exposures at seven sites in the eastern Tularosa Basin. The magnetic fabric data derived from
AMS measurements show that the PT exhibits both well-defined prolate and oblate fabrics. Rock
magnetic experiments reveal that the magnetic mineralogy of the Palisades Tuff is dominated by
pseudo-single to multi-domain magnetite, and hematite. The AMS data show that samples from
some sites yield exclusively oblate fabrics, while samples from some yield exclusively prolate
fabrics, and some are very mixed in behavior. For the sites with oblate fabrics, the inferred
transport direction is east to northeast with few sample sites showing northwest and southwest
directions. On the other hand, the inferred transport direction for sites with prolate grains and
mixed prolate and oblate fabrics is west / northwest. The direction of transport inferred from the
AMS data suggests that the Palisades tuff formed as a pyroclastic density current sourced from a
caldera above Three River Stock, with varying degree of topographic modifications
Prelinguistic/emerging Linguistic Gesture Use in Young Autistic Children
No full textAutism is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by disruptions in early social
communication skills. Early gesture plays a key role in prelinguistic/emerging linguistic
communication and may provide insight into a child’s social communication skills before they
acquire speech. As such, gesture is of particular interest for autism researchers. However, little is
known about the gesture production of young autistic children from diverse racial/ethnic
backgrounds in the early stages of gesture. In this dissertation, we explored the gesture
production of young autistic children in the pre-linguistic/emerging linguistic stage of
development within dyadic interactions across three studies. Data were gathered from culturally
and socioeconomically diverse autistic children (ages 18-59 months) and a parent who
participated in one of two more extensive randomized control trials of an early autism
intervention. Study 1 explored the associations among race/ethnicity, parent gesture rate, and
child gesture rate. Results indicated parents—like parents of non-autistic children—exhibited
cross-racial/ethnic differences in gesture rate. However, child gesture rates were not related to
the gesture rates of their parents. Consequently, children did not exhibit the same cross-
racial/ethnic pattern of differences in gesture as their parents. Study 2 explored the relationship
between elicitation task and child gesture. The rate and type of child gestures were compared
across a naturalistic interaction with a parent and a standardized assessment of child
communication administered by a research clinician. Results indicated (1) the most gestures and
(2) the most developmentally advanced gestures were produced within structured interactions
with clinicians that tempted child communication, while the fewest gestures were produced
within play. Further, developmental differences emerged, such that greater differences between
tasks were exhibited by children with receptive language ages greater than or equal to 9 months
than by children below this developmental level. Study 3 analyzed the relationships among
motor skill, social skill, and gesture in two ways: (1) the roles of gross motor, fine motor, and
social skills (as measured by standardized assessments) on the rate of child gesture and (2) the
relationship between the social sophistication of communication (level of communicative
intention and coordination of communicative behaviors) and motor complexity of points. We
found (1) standardized measures of social and gross motor (but not fine motor) skills explained
unique variance in child gesture rate; (2a) coordination of communicative behaviors was
positively related to motor complexity of gesture, with a small effect size; and (2b) motor
complexity was related to the intentionality of communication (i.e., the degree to which the point
had to first get/direct the adult’s attention) rather than to the social sophistication of the intention.
Taken together, the work presented here underscores the importance of using diverse samples in
autism research and interpreting results through a lens of cultural awareness. Our findings
suggest an important role of motor skill in gesture production for young autistic children which
has implications for future early intervention research