Dissertation com dez 1997 (9 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Ever since Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859, genetic evolutionary theory has increasingly served as the foundation for fields that deal with organisms that arose by natural selection. This thesis argues that economic theory should integrate with Darwinian theory through the creation of a 'genetic evolutionary economics'. The promise of genetic evolutionary economics is a better understanding of human nature and, consequently, a more accurate and comprehensive economic science.Economic theory rests on a set of assumptions about human nature. These economic axioms concern human genes, but there is no explicit connection between genetic evolution and economic theory. As a result, human behavior and economic predictions of that behavior diverge in a variety of important settings. Why, for example, do most people save too little for the future when economics assumes that they will save enough Chapter 2 discusses the difficulties inherent in the standard economic approach. Natural selection theory, the chapter argues, is the best tool for refining the axioms of economics.Genetic evolutionary economics allows the derivation of parameters that are intractable with standard economic techniques. There is, for instance, an ancient debate within economics about the role of self-interest in human affairs. Chapter 3 builds a genetic evolutionary model relevant to this issue, and concludes that a Darwinian lens removes many of the apparent paradoxes.Genetic evolutionary economics is a scientific endeavor. As such, it produces specific, testable hypotheses concerning behavior in economically relevant situations. Chapter 4 reports on a theoretical and experimental investigation of gift giving. A genetic evolutionary model organizes the existing data on gift giving and makes novel, testable predictions. Laboratory experiments, performed to test the theory, confirm the evolutionary model's predictions.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - A synopsis of eminent computer chess programs reveal that they are designed around a 'brute force' approach. An argument is made that by continuing the 'brute force' search approach, computer chess development is moving away from human evaluation methods. Research is done into studies of evaluation methods, and a discovery is made that humans use a form of intuition, called their 'sense of beauty', to choose the best chess move. A paper by Margulies is cited which formulates principles of beauty which apply to chess. Three versions of a chess program are developed, using no heuristics, standard chess heuristics, and beauty heuristics formulated from Margulies principles. The performance of the three versions of the program are compared using chess puzzles, and rated for how quickly they find the solution, and how few nodes they evaluate. Graphs are produced from the results of these tests, showing that beauty heuristics are, on average, 15% faster at finding the solution, and evaluate 10% fewer nodes.An improvement is implemented in all versions of the program which biases the search towards better moves, resulting in the beauty heuristics success rising to an average of 25% faster to the solution, and evaluating 33% fewer nodes, than the other heuristics. It is concluded that the beauty heuristics are closer to the way that humans evaluate chess positions. …

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This study presents interviews with American Indian/ Alaska Native alumni who received some or all of their elementary and high school education at the Chemawa Indian Boarding School in Salem, Oregon between 1917 and 1985. A brief summary of Indian history, in particular Indian education, is presented as the context for many of the changes that occurred at Chemawa during its first one hundred years. The purpose of this study is to examine Chemawa alumni recollections of Chemawa within an imposed educational system.My research process included library and archival research, academic classes and personal interviews. I interviewed alumni who had attended Chemawa between 1917 and 1985. Themes such as academics, vocational training, social life and general impressions of Chemawa are categorized in the different eras and serve as the body of the thesis.Despite negative stereotypes of federal Indian boarding schools, the majority of Chemawa alumni interviewed for this thesis hold Chemawa in high regard. For many students Chemawa was an alternative to an orphanage, a respite from a dysfunctional family situation, an opportunity to gain an education and or vocational skills, or an opportunity to be with other Indians. Across generations, at least half of the students considered Chemawa's academic program inadequate; over half of the students interviewed found the vocational training, when it was available, to be very useful. Though most students acknowledge the downfalls of Chemawa, most alumni interviewed tended to overlook the negative and promote the positive.Alumni were able to view Chemawa in a positive light because students molded their boarding school experiences to fit their needs. Students created their own families (friends), community (school) and resisted the institutional suppression of Indian boarding schools. As young people, many adapted their situation to suit their needs, regardless of any negative experiences they might have encountered at Chemawa.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This thesis proposes a reconceptualization of the 'attitude' as a multidimensional latent process, which may be unstable across situations, individuals, and time. A review of the literature in light of this reconceptualization reveals aspects of the survey situation that may systematically influence measures of attitudes, behaviors, and social norms. This suggests that contradictory findings regarding attitude-behavior consistency may be partly due to specific inadequacies of conventional measures. A reflexive research strategy is proposed, which supplements survey methods with both quantitative and qualitative assessments of measurement validity. This strategy is applied in a case study of attitudes, norms, and diet in five vegetarian student cooperative houses. Analyses test the sufficiency of a revised Model of Reasoned Action for predicting members' intentions to abstain from eating beef, chicken, or fish. Throughout the analyses, several methodological issues are explored in an effort to optimize validity: elicitation and fixed response items, generality of referents and expected consequences, subjective and objective measures of social norms, allowance for composite behavioral intentions, and specification of regression models. Implications for future theoretical research and the design of reflexive behavioral interventions are discussed.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This thesis will investigate, by means of the historical-critical method, Augustine of Hippo's understanding of the Manichaean idea of the Good, and how this understanding affects his own related notions of summum bonum and personal evil, and, as a corollary, his doctrine of predestination. The question of a possible Manichaean influence is.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Based on data on publicly traded insurance firms, the first essay examines questions about the effect of large catastrophic events on insurance firms. Rather than looking at a single event, thirty catastrophic events were aggregated into quintiles and the cumulative abnormal returns around these events were found to be significantly positive over a 25 day trading window. There is no significant evidence that post-catastrophic stock returns are correlated to the magnitude of the catastrophe. The second essay analyzes the effect of a large land grant university, the University of Illinois, on the State Treasury of Illinois. If the State Treasury were acting as its own agent trying to maximize revenues, would it choose higher education as an investment versus other alternative investments. While it is true the State makes large expenditures for the operations of the University, it is also true that individuals receiving degrees on average receive higher incomes. Taxes or higher incomes offset.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The electrostatic interaction between two charged spheres in the presence of a screening electrolyte is calculated at the level of the linearized Debye-Hückel theory. The calculation is performed analytically as a multipole expansion by applying two-center spherical harmonic expansions and symbolic manipulation methods. I focus on charge-charge and charge-induced dipole interactions, calculated for two spheres of possibly unequal size. The former interaction is given to good approximation by the familiar Debye-Hückel form q1q2exp[-k(R-2a)]/[(epsilon\*r(1]ka)^2]. The new results are the charge-induced dipole interactions. Physically, these terms arise from two sources: (i) surface polarization charge at the surface of each sphere, and (ii) exclusion of the counterion cloud of each sphere from the volume occupied by the other sphere. With parameters appropriate for micelles, the charge-induced dipole interactions dominate the charge-charge interaction at small separations.Quasi-elastic light scattering measurements of the diffusion of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) micelles in aqueous solutions, and the diffusion of mesoscopic optical probes through the same solutions, were carried out at 35°C and multiple solvent ionic strengths. Assuming a spherical micelle, I deduced the micelle radius, aggregation number, charge, and hydration from nonlinear least-squares fits to both probe and mutual diffusion data. For SDS micelles the charge that I find is lower than reported in the literature [Hayter, J. B.; Penfold, J. Colloid & Polymer Science 1983, 261, 1022; Triolo, R.; Caponetti, E.; Graziano, V. J. Phys. Chem. 1985, 89, 5743.] because I used an improved functional form of the micellar electrostatic interaction. I find a smaller aggregation number and a larger micellar hydration than literature values. My analysis of CTAB data implies extensive micellar growth, and failure of the spherical micelle assumption.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - The difference between 'mass' and 'mess,' for example, says a lot about the distinctive capacity of phonemes and the alphabet, but very little about the many similarities in these two words. It follows that there is something not exactly alphabetical in language that is prompted by similarities like these. Even quotidian reading exhibits non-alphabetic ingredients, for instance when we skip spelling mistakes or typographical errors; i.e.: when we impose analogies over differences, hermeneutics over semiology, semasiography over the alphabet. Joyce, who once commented that 'a few letters will do if you can't read a whole word,' just incorporates another system of writing to his 'cyclical history,' very much in keeping with Vico's idea that each cycle has its own writing system.The incorporation of this non-alphabetic, semasiographic way of reading also explains the presence of allusions and opens up the apparent conflict between allusion and intentionality. How far can analogies go or rather, can allusions and intentionality be reconciled They both reveal the existence of coincidences (facilitated by the narrow range of the alphabet); some of them Joyce surely saw, many others produced by mere chance. Chance, then, is the realm that, far from making them opposite, reunite intentionality and allusion, for both depend on the previous existence of coincidences.In Finnegans Wake the search for coincidences marks the beginning of awakening. Using Joyce's additions to his drafts as orientation, particularly those that refer to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it is possible to trace the resurrection process that Shaun undergoes. Shaun finds the keys to conventional language and to his awakening, like in the fairy tale, in an intentional act of love, in a kiss.…

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - This thesis is dedicated to assess the accuracy of logistic regression (LR) and artificial neural networks (ANN) in the diagnosis of calvarial lesions using computed tomography (CT). The importance of the different features needed for the diagnosis in both models is also analyzed. The models were developed using patients with calvarial lesions as the only known disease were enrolled. All patients were studied with plain films and CT. Other imaging thecniques were used when available. The clinical and CT data were used for developing LR and ANN models. Both models were tested with the jacknife (leave-one-out) method. The best ANNs were obtained varying iterations and hidden neurons by selecting the one with higher area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC). The final results of each model were compared by means of area under ROC curves. There was no statistically significant difference between LR and ANN in differentiating benign and malingnant lesions. In characterizing every histologic diagnoses, ANN was statistically superior to LR (p.…