Electoral authoritarian regimes represent the modal type of political regimes in the developing world. To control electoral outcomes, such regimes may deploy a broad variety of repressive and manipulative measures. Despite their empirical as well as normative relevance, we possess…

"We shortly recall the mathematical and physical aspects of Talbot’s self-imaging effect occurring in near-field diffraction. In the rational paraxial approximation, the Talbot images are formed at distances z = p/q, where p and q are coprimes, and are superpositions…

The objective of this thesis is to present the fabrication of a multiphoton microscope and the underlying theory responsible for its proper functioning. A basic introduction to nonlinear optics will give the necessary knowledge to the reader to understand the…

Mutations in the parkin gene are responsible for an early-onset autosomal-recessive form of Parkinson's disease. Parkin is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that acts in the covalent attachment of the small protein ubiquitin to substrate proteins. Although many parkin substrates have…

Safety and health is a basic human need and when not met, exacts costs that prevent societies from realizing development goals. Injury is increasing as a leading cause of death and disability. As the result of advances in public health…

The incorporation of temporally extended actions, or options , into the reinforcement learning framework has proven to be useful in planning and knowledge representation. Options provide a form of temporal abstraction, as they represent courses of action of variable duration.…

"Model Driven Software Development" is a recent trend in development of software-intensive systems. In the Model Driven Software Development process, all knowledge pertaining to the software system to be built is represented in the form of models, in the right…

People are efficient when they make decisions under uncertainty, even when their decisions have long-term ramifications, or when their knowledge and their perception of the environment are uncertain. We are able to experiment with the environment and learn, improving our…

This paper examines and compares the different ways in which Charles Taylor and Richard Rorty critique the representationalism and foundationalism characteristic of modern epistemology (Chapter One), then considers how their critiques affect their respective understandings of morality (Chapter Two) and…

This thesis examines the construction of identity in the pseudepigraphic novel Joseph and Aseneth by means of discussions of conversion, food ritual, and genre. Each of these is invaluable for interpreting the meaning and significance of the honeycomb scene in…