This project examines the role of political learning in predicting the recent rise of left-of-center governments in Latin America, ranging from moderate center-left coalition governments to one-party populist regimes. Studies of populism consistently point to the role of natural resources and economic crises in predicting the rise of populist regimes. This study adds the concept of political learning by using measures of moderation in the current regime as a dependent variable and measures of oppression in earlier regimes as independent variables. Utilizing case studies of Venezuela and Chile as ideal types and plotting ten further cases on indicators of repression, military spending, corporate tax rates, government spending, the percent of votes going to moderates, and economic freedom scores from Freedom House, I argue that the likelihood of the rise of populist regimes is greater in countries that have not experienced the sort of intense political repression that generates political learning.

The effect of foreign aid on economic growth is still ambiguous in the economic literature. In this paper, we analyze the effect of foreign aid on economic growth in 79 developing countries from the Latin America Caribbean Region, Africa, and Asia. Using data for the year 2000, we find that foreign aid has an insignificant negative effect on economic growth when we control for other factors.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 makes schools accountable for the performance of their students, and measures that goal through standardized testing. Florida's standardized test is the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). This paper investigates how the incentive structure of the FCAT accountability system has resulted in costly unintended consequences, such as the disruption of local home prices, teaching towards the test, manipulation of the test pools, and an increase in the number of school dropouts. The State of Florida officially estimates that the cost to administer the FCAT is $19.44 per student. My claim is that the Florida Department of Education's estimate is profoundly understated because it does not take into account an array of internal and external costs associated with the test. By including these costs of the FCAT, I show that the FCAT does indeed cost more than $19.44 per student.

Dichloroacetate (DCA) is a chemical with potential to be a cancer therapy due to its ability to treat mitochondrial metabolic disorders. Previous studies have affirmed DCA's ability to target cancer cells, leaving healthy cells unharmed (Bonnet et al., 2007). Javonia Washington continued research that Bonnet et al. began by testing DCA's effectson a greater number of cell types (Washington, 2008). This project collects and analyzes the data generated by Washington's research using the computer programs Excel and SPSS. The analysis shows that DCA concentration is vital when considering the chemical as an anti-cancer drug ; it had a significant effect on the cancerous cells from 0.5mM and higher, but both cancerous and non-cancerous cells died at similar rates when the concentration reached 10mM. Further, DCA affects some cancer cells more quickly than others, which could increase the risk of harming surrounding healthy cells if used improperly as a cancer treatment.

Researchers who study Brazilian immigrants in the United States have noted a lack of camaraderie and social networks among Brazilians. Based on recent research conducted in Broward County, Florida, Manuel Vâasquez argues that while there are clear structural impediments to community formation among Brazilian immigrants, Brazilians do form social networks. This thesis examines the survey and ethnographic data from Vâasquez's sample to test a series of hypotheses about which factors impact levels of social capital and the potential for network creation and mobilization among Brazilian immigrants. Analysis of the data suggests that religious participation and levels of perceived discrimination are correlated with higher levels of social capital in this sample. For a group of immigrants characterized by a lack of collective solidarity and facing an increasingly hostile economic and social climate, religious organizations may be essential locales for achieving sufficient social capital for social, economic, and political integration.

Willard Van Orman Quine and Charles Sanders Peirce each create systems in which counterfactual conditionals can be meaningful. A counterfactual conditional is a statement whose antecedent is known to be contrary to fact. Counterfactual conditionals are important in making predictions. It would be irresponsible to implement any major change in the current state of affairs without first assessing the consequences. Quine's work seems to undermine the use of counterfactual conditionals, but I show that his system does allow for certain types of counterfactual conditionals to be meaningful. I conclude that counterfactual conditionals are more meaningful in Peirce's system because the ability to make predictions is a primary concern for him. Although Peirce's system gets more meaning out of counterfactual conditionals than Quine's system, Quine's system aids in the understanding of science.

Identifying and classifying the complemented subspaces of L p , p > 2, has provided much insight into the geometric structure of Lp . In 1981, Bourgain, Rosenthal, and Schechtman proved the existence of uncountably many isomorphically distinct complemented subspaces of L p , p > 2. In 1999, Dale Alspach introduced a systematic method of studying the complemented subspaces of Lp , p > 2. In this thesis, the theory of Lp spaces is developed with a concentration on techniques used to study the complemented subspaces. We define the Alspach norm and show that the possible complemented subspaces of Lp , p > 2, generated by two compatible partitions and weights are £2, £p, £2 EB £p, and(2.:EfJ £2)ep ' We have not discovered any previously unknown complemented subspaces of Lp , but this method has reduced the study and classification of these subspaces to a study of partitions of N.

Kinesin motors bind to microtubules and function in mitosis and intracellular transport depending on the position of the motor domain within the primary sequence (Hirokawa and Noda 2008). KIF9 has recently been shown to be involved in MTOC positioning and mitotic entry in Dictyostelium (Tikhonenko et al. 2009). To determine if a similar role for KIF9 exists in mammalian cells, we are using siRNA-mediated knockdown of KIF9 in COS-7 cells. Analysis of unsynchronized and cell-cycle synchronized cells treated with siRNA to KIF9 reveal that the transition from G2 to M phase is delayed and that mitotic progression is also affected. Additionally, our data indicates that spindle pole function during anaphase may be abnormal in cells treated with siRNA, suggesting a role for KIF9 during that stage.

Past research has found that among traumatized undergraduate women, proactive coping style was independently negatively associated with posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity. It also shows that nurses experience many work-related traumas. The present study tests the PTSD symptom level in nursing students and measured whether proactive coping and other personality variables could successfully buffer the effects of trauma. This study found a surprisingly low PTSD symptom level among the nursing students though they reported several distressing traumas. Also surprising, participants reported more distress from traumas relating to verbal abuse than to traumas relating to death and/or severe injury. Proactive coping, optimism, and self-esteem were negatively related to PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Further research will be needed to support these findings.

In his book Rendering Unto Caesar, Anthony Gill suggests that in countries with repressive authoritarian governments, religious competition plays a crucial role in determining whether the dominant religious institution will support or oppose the regime. Gill's theory, however, assumes that religious institutions are unitary rational actors. While this assumption may be reasonable in Catholic countries of Latin America where Gill based his theory on the hierarchical National Bishops' Councils, it is not applicable to Sunni Islamic countries of North Africa because of the decentralized Sunni Islamic religious structure. This finding suggests that although religious actors behave rationally in the religious market to maximize the souls for their religion, not all religious actors necessarily view the same religion and its role in the politics of the society in the same manner: in some cases, intra-religious competition is a larger factor in church-state relations than inter-religious competition.