Current theories of physics cognition require specification of complex mechanisms for explaining knowledge acquisition. I demonstrate that a quantitative model of physics perception can be constructed by assuming that physics problem perception provides an optimal summary of a set of…

Yes or no is perhaps the most common answer we provide each day. Indeed, binary answers to well structured questions are the building blocks of our knowledge. I started my research career in drafting such answers in various circumstances within…

The use of concepts underlies the most basic cognitive processes. Consequently, psychologists have long been interested in understanding the behavioral and neural correlates of conceptual knowledge and its manipulation. This has led to a rich set of research results that…

Malaria is the most important parasite species of humans, affecting more than 2.2 billion people, and causing hundreds of millions of clinical cases and around one million deaths every year. Since the 1940s, mass-produced, inexpensive drugs have been available that…

In polyandrous species, sexual selection acts both before (precopulatory) and after
(postcopulatory) mating on traits that are important for reproductive success. Precopulatory traits
are important for mate acquisition and include weapons and ornaments. Postcopulatory traits
include components of sperm quantity…

The
welfare
system
in
the
United
States
has
seen
great
changes
over
the
course
of
the
last
century,
moving
us
away
from
“charity”
and
towards
a
system
that
considers
cash
assistance
to
be
a
temporary,
support
system
as
people
get

Although we represent other people in terms of both what they look like and how they behave, these two aspects of person knowledge have rarely been studied together. While vision scientists have focused on the processing of faces and bodies,…

With the advancement of technology, we are able to collect, store, and transmit an ever-increasing volume of data. However, our ability to extract useful patterns from this massive amount of data is still lagging behind. Machine learning and signal processing…

My dissertation centers on the meaning of dreams as interpreted by literati in the late Ming (1368-1644), viewed through the lens of the 1636 encyclopedia Forest of Dreams. This thirty-four-juan tome is the largest extant Chinese dream encyclopedia and includes…

This dissertation, based on roughly eighteen months of fieldwork in two laboratories at Princeton University, examines how practitioners of synthetic biology orient themselves vis-à-vis organic systems, by both engaging with and displacing biological knowledge. It also explores experimental methods in…