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Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Laxman Timilsina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters.

Chapter 1: Immigration Policy Shocks and Infant Health

This paper evaluates the effect of positive and negative immigration policy shocks on infant health outcomes in the U.S. I examine changes in mean birth weight and the incidence of low birth weight (LBW) at the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) level around two major institutional shocks: The 1986 Immigration Reform Act (IRCA), which favored immigrants, and the increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency arrests at the start of 2017 which might have put immigrants at greater risk of apprehension. It uses a triple …

Some Notes On Birds: Language And Attention In The Age Of Social Media, Aimee Lamoureux

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Technology, social media, and its affiliated distractions are now an ever-present part of our daily lives. Attention is a commodity, one which tech companies value because it delivers them bigger and bigger profits. Their products are intentionally designed to be additive, to demand more and more of our time and attention throughout our day. However, attention is not simply a commodity, but the way in which we connect with the external world and attend to our everyday experience. The world that we create in the mind is the world that ends up forming the reality of our everyday lives. Complex …

An Assessment Of Undergraduate Students’ Research Literacy, Milushka M. Elbulok-Charcape

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research literacy refers to the knowledge and application of statistics and research methods knowledge. Research literacy is important because it enables individuals to become autonomous lifelong learners and informed research consumers. Compared to other types of literacies (e.g., informational, statistical, scientific, etc.), research literacy in the social sciences has received limited attention in psychological theory and research. As a result, assessments of research literacy have notable limitations. Some assessments place undue emphasis on content knowledge of statistics and research methods neglecting the application of knowledge, others present items in a de-contextualized manner, exploring conceptions or attitudes toward research itself rather …

Motivation Of Networking Behavior: A Study Of Novel Interventions, Jeremy D. Rothstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Networking is a critical yet potentially underutilized career self-management strategy. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore the extent to which novel reading and writing exercises could foster networking motivation and network use. The first set, based on Social-Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), was designed to increase participants’ confidence about their ability to engage in effective networking, and help them believe that networking is a valuable activity. The second set, based on Goal-Setting Theory (GST), was designed to help participants practice setting effective career development objectives and networking goals linked to those objectives. The Networking Information Control (NIC) condition was …

Essays On Universal Basic Income, Nana Mukbaniani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a program in which individuals receive a regular sum of money, usually from the government. The transfer amount is thought to be unconditional of income and enough to cover all subsistence needs. Such a system is easy and cheap to administer because the government does not need to check the eligibility of each applicant. UBI programs are growing as more cities, states and countries (Stockton, California, Newark, New Jersey, Ontario, Canada, Kenya, Finland, Germany, Spain, China, etc) implement experiments of such programs. The idea of a UBI is gaining ground in the U.S.. One of …

Critical Climates: Stimmung, Voice And Mythopoesis In German Literature From 1950–1989, Marc Cesar Rickenbach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Critical Climates examines the interest in myth among a number of literary figures from 1950 to 1989 in relation to the concurrent re-emergence of the German aesthetic concept of Stimmung. At once referring to atmosphere, milieu, mood, disposition and harmony, while carrying along its root Stimme, or voice, this dissertation shows how Stimmung informed a literary practice among German-language authors that engaged the relationship between narrative, ideology and collective moods in a way that can be spoken of in terms of a mythopoesis. This project builds upon contemporary scholarship that focuses on Stimmung as a way to refigure …

Sartorial Semiotics: Constructs Of Gender And Female Sexuality In Post Wwii American And European Cinema, Patricia Cabral

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cinematic costume design functions as a system of visually-perceived, material and indexical signifiers, an effective and compelling language further informed by styling and embodiment. Sartorial semiotics support and inflect role characterization, while equally underpinning or subverting tropes generated by ideological paradigms. The following methodological approaches were adopted in scrutinizing this topic: Roland Barthes’ application of semiotic theories to the domain of fashion in The Language of Fashion, and Laura Marks’ discussion of the dialectics of optical and haptic visualities in apprehending film images in The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses.

By examining the costume …

Essays On Investor Sentiment, Media, And Trading, Changyun Zhou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters that span investor sentiment, media and trading.

Chapter 1: I introduce a direct cross-border sentiment measure of foreign investors and find such foreign sentiment generates significant economic effects on market-level prices. It predicts significant return reversals in the destination markets both in-sample and out-of-sample. This foreign sentiment is unique and distinct from local sentiments in either origin or destination markets. Instrumental-variable and event-based analyses support a large causal effect of cross-border sentiment with, e.g., a multiplier of 4-5. Capital flows contain an important foreign sentiment component, and a residual component positively predicting returns. …

Optimizing Communication In Palliative And Hospice Care: A Toolkit For Audiologists, Sherry E. Queen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The prevalence of hearing loss increases with age, with age-related hearing loss (ARHL) being one of the most prevalent forms of sensory decline in older adults. Hearing loss is often overlooked in medical settings including palliative and hospice care. Screening for hearing loss in these settings is rare as is formal staff training on assessing and managing hearing loss in palliative and hospice care. An evidence-based toolkit for integrating audiologists into end-of-life care protocols is presented. This toolkit was developed to optimize communication in palliative and hospice care for patients, caregivers, audiologists, physicians, and other palliative care staff. Effective communication …

The Second Kashmir (Informational) War Of 1965, Navdip Hans

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Second Kashmir (Informational) War of 1965 considers that Pakistan over-optimistically assessed information prior to the onset of hostilities with India. This thesis posits that information released from significant battlefield events quickly dispelled Pakistan's optimism which led to an accurate updating of beliefs and expectations. This resulted in a downward revision of demands by Pakistan to convergence with India resulting in settlement ending the war.

Teachers' Implicit Racial Attitudes And Classroom Discipline Referral, Nicole L. Lorenzetti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Teachers often hold lower academic and behavioral expectations for Black students, and they are more likely to make a disciplinary referral for Black students than their white peers for similar infractions. The mechanism underlying this may be teachers’ implicit attitudes about their Black students based on causal attributions. This study examined the connection between teacher implicit racial attitudes and how teachers label potentially disruptive classroom behaviors, addressing two research questions: How are teacher education students’ (TES) implicit racial attitude scores on an implicit bias test related to perceptions about student behavioral challenges in the classroom, and how does this relation …

The Emotional Illusion Of Music: Contemporary Western Musical Aesthetics In Dialogue With Ancient Eastern Philosophy, Yin Zhang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project aims to examine whether music has an emotional nature. I use the ancient Chinese text Music Has No Grief or Joy to construct three arguments for the illusion view, according to which music has no emotional nature and the emotional appearances of music are illusory. These arguments highlight representational inconstancy, expressive incapability, and evocative underdetermination as three ways to problematize the idea that music has an emotional nature. I draw on the Confucian tradition to formulate three responses to the illusion view from representational reliability, expressive sincerity, and evocative appropriateness. These responses are shown to be inadequate. To …

The Compressed Modernity Of Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage In Taiwan: Digital Activism, Human Rights Discourse, And Intertwined Sexual, Political And National Identities, Jyun-Jie Yang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2019, Taiwan became the first Asian country to officially legalize same-sex marriage. Remarkably, the Taiwanese queer movement achieved the goal of marriage equality in only 30 years, with the first tongzhi (同志) activist group organized in 1990. Compared to Euro-American social movements, Taiwanese tongzhi activism has experienced a “compressed modernity” (Chang, 1999, 2010a, 2010b), which accelerates cultural and social transformations. Although Taiwanese academia has been significantly influenced by queer studies as a form of western knowledge production, local scholars and activists created a new interpretation from “queer” to “tongzhi.” Entangled with complex political identifications in post-martial-law Taiwan, …

"Rivals And Partners”: The Competition For Control Of Judenpolitik In Reichskommissariat Ostland (1941–1944), Barbara Lynne Bailin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation recounts and investigates the impact of the bureaucratic conflicts inherent in the Nazi state apparatus in the implementation of Judenpolitik in an underdeveloped research area--the mass murder of Baltic Jews during World War II. It focuses specifically on Hinrich Lohse, the newly appointed Reichskommissar of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, the German-occupied Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and parts of western Belorussia in the Soviet Union (known as the RKO), as he sought to navigate the bureaucratic clashes in what was, arguably, one of the most contentious conflicts within the senior Nazi leadership, that is, the Wehrmacht’s …

Alcohol And Its Long-Term Effects On Hearing Loss: A Systematic Review, Talia Sowalsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Objective: To review the literature on potential permanent effects of long-term alcohol consumption on hearing status in adults 40 years of age and older.

Study Design: Systematic review of prospective and retrospective studies; meta-analysis of case-controlled studies.

Methods: One researcher independently reviewed MEDLINE (January 1, 2000-May 1, 2019), CINAHL (January 1, 2000-May 1, 2019), PubMed (January 1, 2000-May 1, 2019), and Web of Science (January 1, 2000-May 1, 2019). A manual reference search was additionally conducted. Randomized controlled trials, prospective cohort studies, consecutive/non-consecutive case series, and retrospective reviews in which a clear definition of hearing loss was stated were included …

Information Justice: The Histories And Futures Of Technology And Social Categories, Patrick Sweeney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation examines two controversies related to emergent uses of information from social media in psychological research and application. It focuses on controversies surrounding studies of face-based gaydar and the use of psychographic targeting by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 US presidential election. Each controversy is analyzed in a case study that explores the issues specific to that study in relation to broader patterns across contexts to identify emergent trends in the use of information from social media in psychological research. Qualitative Content Analysis is used to analyze extant texts relevant to each case. In each study, findings related to …

Contemporary Human Displacement: A Comparative Analysis Of Syria, Yemen, Honduras, And Venezuela, Rav Carlotti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What is causing the surge in human displacement around the world? Large-scale displacement in Syria, Yemen, Honduras, and Venezuela has generated unprecedented humanitarian crises in Latin America and the Middle East as millions of displaced people end up as refugees or immigrants. Humanitarian organizations like the UNHCR and host countries have had their resources overextended by these ongoing crises, and there is no end in sight. This thesis shows that contemporary human displacement is rooted in the increasing inability of governments to manage their societies amid great political demands and socio-economics strains. These causes are difficult to tackle because they …

Reading The World: American Haredi Children's Literature, 1980–2000, Dainy Bernstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children’s literature is an important force in building not only linguistic literacy but a literacy of the world, showing the child reader how to make sense of themselves in relation to the many people, objects, experiences, and concepts around them. Haredi children’s texts foster a mode of understanding the world around them as comprehensible through the texts, people, and events of the past. In Reading the World, I demonstrate that Haredi children’s textual culture between 1980 and 2000 fostered a literacy of language, text, time, space, morals, and general knowledge as inextricably intertwined, and that this literacy propelled further …

The Impact Of User Control And Transparency In App Design On Privacy Concerns And Behavior Of Mobile App Users, Arwa Alawajy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mobile apps have unprecedented access to sensitive personal information. The increasing commodification of mobile-user data motivates us to explore the vital role of app developers in protecting users’ privacy. This dissertation examines the privacy of mobile app users from the perspective of HCI. According to Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory, people believe they own their personal information and have the right to control how or with whom they share this information. In practice, individuals manage their privacy system and the boundaries between the public and private domain. Users make privacy disclosure decisions according to their individual characteristics and the perceptions …

Systematic Review: The Effect Of Hearing Aids On Balance And Falls, Natalia Beatriz Pagan-Guadalupe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: The population of individuals 65 years old is increasing and falls are one of the most prevalent causes of disabilities among this population. Recent studies have found association between neural hearing losses and increased risk of falls, suggesting that hearing is an important input that assist visual, proprioceptive and vestibular inputs in maintaining balance. Hearing aids are known to be beneficial to improve access to sound; however, it is very limited the research regarding the effects of amplification on balance and risk of falls.

Objectives: This systematic review intends to gather and analyze all the research available regarding the …

Mother’S Understanding Of The Newborn Infant Hearing Screening (Nihs) And The Audiologist’S Role In Healthy Hearing, Chaya T. Ungar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Newborn Infant Hearing Screening (NIHS) is a process mandated by the state, which requires that all children born in New York must receive a hearing screening at birth and prior to discharge. The NIHS enables the early identification and subsequent treatment of hearing loss in infants. To properly facilitate identification, the infants who fail the screening are referred for further testing either to confirm normal hearing at the time of the screen or to identify the extent of the hearing loss, if one is found to exist. An additional way, dictated by New York State, in which early identification …

No Hair! Don't Care! Resistance And Empowerment Of Bald And Low Shaved Black Women, Monica Rivers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No Hair! Don’t Care! Resistance and Empowerment of Bald and Low Shaved Black Women is an invitation to discuss the experiences of Black women who choose to wear bald and low shaved haircuts. The project examines standards of beauty, femininity, sexuality, sexual harassment, self- acceptance, and self-expression through the voices of Black women: Because sometimes the biggest statement you can make with your hair is by having none.

The Ambiguity Of Diversity: How Parents Understand And React To School Desegregation Efforts, Adam Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New York City has one of the most segregated public school systems in the United States. The Department of Education is attempting to address segregation through district level diversity planning processes that potentially change school admissions policies. Using mixed methods, this thesis explores how advantaged parents in a Queens school district understand efforts to diversify and desegregate their district. I conducted semi-structured interviews with parents in the district, analyzed transcripts from public meetings about the planning process, and analyzed quantitative data about the schools, students, and residents of the district of study. Although parents were universally supportive of “diversity”, most …

Tears, Trauma And Transformation: Central American Mothers' Experiences Of Violence, Migration And Family Reunification, Sandra B. Castro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the experiences of migration, separation, and reunification of transnational mothers from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala and their children. Drawing on data collected from 25 mothers living and working on Long Island, New York who migrated to the US during four periods from 1976-2019 and whose children returned to them, sometimes years later. My findings suggest that transnational mothering is an experience marked by multiple forms of structural, institutional, and interpersonal violence, along with the commitment to sacrifice for their children. Taken together, transnational mothers operated within a form of “compounded disadvantage” (Abrego, 2014) due to their …

Vulnerability: Sensation And Subjectivity In The Late Victorian Novel, Michael Shelichach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Vulnerability: Sensation and Subjectivity in the Late Victorian Novel” explores how developments in the science of psychology in the second half of the nineteenth century destabilized the genre of literary realism in Britain. Prominent mid-Victorian psychologists theorized a subject with a highly impressionable brain and nervous system. This new understanding of the mind’s potential vulnerability to external influence impelled contemporary novelists to contemplate the extent to which subjective interiority could be altered by the environment. Through close readings of canonical realist novels like Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone …

From Psychology To Phylogeny: Bridging Levels Of Analysis In Cultural Evolution, Mason Youngblood

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cultural evolution, or change in the socially learned behavior of a population over time, is a fascinating phenomenon that is widespread in humans and present in some non-human animals. In this dissertation, I present an array of cultural evolutionary studies that bridge pattern and process in a wide range of research models including music, extremism, and birdsong. The first chapter is an introduction to the field of cultural evolution, including a bibliometric analysis of its structure. The second and third chapters are studies on the cultural dynamics of music sampling traditions in hip-hop and electronic music communities and far-right extremism …

Early Emotion Regulation In The Children Of Superstorm Sandy, Jessica L. Buthmann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Rising prevalence of childhood psychopathology mandate investigation into the antecedents of symptom onset. Growing evidence shows prenatal maternal stress experienced in utero is a strong contributor to offspring neurodevelopmental deficits, including emotion dysregulation, a core feature of many types of psychopathology. This dissertation summarizes a body of work studying children prenatally exposed to maternal stress related to a natural disaster, Superstorm Sandy (i.e., storm stress). This work includes six experiments conducted in the framework of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis. The DOHaD hypothesis posits that developmental disruptions, like storm stress exposure, during a critical period of …

Targeting Ampa Receptor Modulation During Early Life Adversity: A Mediator For Threat Associated Memories, Roseanna M. Zanca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Early life adversity (ELA) is the exposure to a single or to multiple traumatic events before the age of 18 that go beyond the child’s coping. These adverse events are often exacerbated during adolescence particularly when cognitive performance is compromised. Adolescents who experienced ELA may show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while not vividly recalling the early life trauma. These individuals show atypical connectivity between prefrontal-amygdala and hippocampus, all of which is associated with an increased risk of experiencing a traumatic event again later in life. While clinical research has increasingly stressed the importance in addressing the long-lasting consequences …

Young Women And The Initiation Trajectory Of Prescription Opioid Misuse, Rachel Chernick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The most recent opioid epidemic in United States history emerged in the late 1980s and continues its destructive impact to this day. It has evolved into a devastating public health crisis with a broad range of medical, social, and economic consequences. This dissertation focuses on the “first wave” of this opioid epidemic characterized largely by the misuse of prescription opioids. The research questions here were focused on developing a greater understanding of the social processes involved in young women’s initiation of prescription opioid misuse (POM) during this first wave. The research methodology consisted of a cross-sectional, exploratory study using qualitative …

Daily Benefits Of Leader Dogs In Addition To Medical Treatment For Individuals With Usher Syndrome: A Case Study, Samantha H. Zwolan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Adults with Usher syndrome seeking audiologic rehabilitation and treatment often experience everyday difficulties that are not fully resolved using typical medical treatments. This case study examines the difficulties faced by individuals diagnosed with Usher syndrome in their everyday life, including quality of life, safety, and social issues. Additionally, the non-medical benefits that leader dogs can provide such individuals is also presented.

Method: A thorough literature review was performed to provide background information regarding Usher syndrome and the impact it has on the hearing and vision of affected individuals. A related literature review was performed to examine the role …