The United States is struggling to provide health care in the face of ever increasing demand. As medical students continue their decades long march toward specialization, questions of how to provide generalist care become quickly intertwined with that of who…

In this thesis we develop and test methods for numerically evolving hydrodynamics coupled to the Einstein field equations, and then apply them to several problems in gravitational physics and astrophysics. The hydrodynamics scheme utilizes high-resolution shock-capturing techniques with flux corrections…

Single-particle reconstruction of vitrified samples (cryogenic electron microscopy, or









cryo-EM) provides structural information for a large variety of biological molecules,









ranging from…

Machine learning is the science of discovering knowledge from data and making decisions based on this learnt structure. It has grown into a broad discipline that has established many statistical and computational learning principles. We are surrounded by the applications…

The aim of this thesis is to develop methods for variable selection and statistical prediction for high dimensional statistical problems. Along with proposing new and innovative procedures, this thesis also focuses on the theoretical properties of the proposed methods and…

There are three different uses of the term 'inoformation' in ordinary language: in the restricted sense, it means diverse types of material objects, such as data or documents ('information-as-thing'); alternatively, the term is used as in reference to the act…

The regime of floods and droughts in the Pantanal wetlands determines the distribution and abundance of the wildlife, vegetation and ecological processes. Cattle ranching and fisheries, the main economic activities in this floodplain, are extremely influenced by and depend on…

The bivalve Limnoperna fortunei (Dunker, 1857), also called golden mussel, is native to Asia but becoming dispersed around the world. The golden mussel resembles the invasive dreissenid bivalves in many respects, and although much less studied it evidently has broader…

In this dissertation I examine the conceptions of opinion (<italic>doxa</italic>}), knowledge (<italic>gnosis</italic>), and understanding (<italic>episteme</italic>) that are presented by the character Socrates in Plato's <italic>Meno</italic> and <italic>Republic</italic>. A central claim I make, and one that sets my interpretation apart from…

La evaluación como proceso no es un conocimiento estático, lo cual invita a
todos los entes involucrados en el proceso educativo a reflexionar con respecto
a como se concibe en la actualidad, y acerca de cómo se pueden realizar
innovaciones…