Three Essays on the Economics of Higher Education: How Students and Colleges Respond to Financial Aid Programs

This dissertation consists of three chapters that examine the impact of financial aid programs on students\u27 enrollment decisions, student outcomes, and colleges\u27 financial decisions. In the first chapter, I use discontinuities in eligibility criteria for a large merit scholarship program to examine the impact of aid on community college students\u27 outcomes both during and after college. Community colleges enroll a large share of first-time freshmen but represent a much smaller share of financial aid research. Furthermore, researchers have focused on the impact of aid on enrollment and outcomes during college, but none have yet considered the impact of aid on earnings after college. The findings suggest that reducing the cost of community college does not impact persistence, academic performance, degree completion, expected earnings, or short-term earnings after college for marginally eligible students. In the second chapter, I examine whether colleges are sensitive to state-sponsored merit aid programs. Previous research has emphasized demand-side effects such as how merit aid impacts enrollment and post-matriculation outcomes. Yet much less is known about how merit aid programs affect the supply side of higher education. Using differences-in-differences identification, I collectively analyze multiple programs and explore numerous college-level outcomes. Results suggest that colleges do not capture state-funded merit scholarships through significant increases in published tuition, and colleges increase expenditures on students in response to merit aid programs. Lastly, in the third essay, we use discontinuities in Pell grant eligibility to examine the effect of the Pell grant on college enrollment and college choice. Consistent with prior work, we find no evidence that marginal Pell eligibility increases college-going. We go on to show that just meeting the Pell cut-off has little bearing on where students choose to enroll, in terms of sector or quality dimensions. Below the threshold, where applicants are needier and the grant is more generous, students sort into colleges with modestly higher published tuition, but no other measure of college quality or college selectivity significantly diverges from the counterfactual. We conclude that students do not use the Pell grant as a tool to shop among college options in ways that systemically improve enrollment outcomes

Thermodynamics and Aggregation Kinetics of Lysozyme-Derived Peptides

When multiple similar protein or peptide chains form non-covalent aggregates, this is termed 'amyloid'. Many serious progressive diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are related to undesirable amyloid aggregation. From a positive perspective, functional amyloids have applications as robust and versatile biomaterials in nature, nanotechnology, and biomedicine. To probe the properties of the amyloid aggregation process in terms of the structure of molecules and the microscopic interactions between them, molecular simulation methods such as molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) can be used. These tools are especially valuable to illustrate short length and time scales not easily accessible for systems in solution via current experimental techniques. In this work the thermodynamics and aggregation kinetics of the ILQINS hexapeptide are studied. ILQINS is a biological material derived from hen's egg-white lysozyme. Two ILQINS homologues, IFQINS and TFQINS are compared to ILQINS and some of the complex physics which leads to the increased amyloidogenicity of these species, which is not expected from first-order consideration of amino acid properties, is discussed. The IFQINS hexapeptide is of particular interest as the human homologue of ILQINS. Solution X-ray and X-ray crystallography are compared to simulation, verifying that at least two metastable polymorphic structures exist for this system which are substantially different at the atomistic scale, and illustrating the physics driving kinetic competition between polymorphs

Trust in Robots

Robots are increasingly becoming prevalent in our daily lives within our living or working spaces. We hope that robots will take up tedious, mundane or dirty chores and make our lives more comfortable, easy and enjoyable by providing companionship and care. However, robots may pose a threat to human privacy, safety and autonomy; therefore, it is necessary to have constant control over the developing technology to ensure the benevolent intentions and safety of autonomous systems. Building trust in (autonomous) robotic systems is thus necessary. The title of this book highlights this challenge: “Trust in robots—Trusting robots”. Herein, various notions and research areas associated with robots are unified. The theme “Trust in robots” addresses the development of technology that is trustworthy for users; “Trusting robots” focuses on building a trusting relationship with robots, furthering previous research. These themes and topics are at the core of the PhD program “Trust Robots” at TU Wien, Austria

Assessing residual neck mobility when wearing a cervical orthosis: an application in patients with Motor Neurone Disease

Severe weakness of the neck extensor muscles has been observed in neuromuscular pathologies, such as motor neurone disease (MND). This condition reduces the ability to perform daily activities and communicate, leading to the adoption of a cervical orthosis. However, commercially available devices are designed to immobilize the neck, which makes them uncomfortable and strenuous to wear for a long time. The lack of a device specifically designed for those patients led to the development of the Sheffield Support Snood (SSS) which enables to adjust the support given to the head, according to the task performed and to the disease progression. The following step toward the SSS commercialisation and adoption was an objective evaluation of its performance and the assessment with the end users, which was the aim of this thesis. To this purpose, an experimental protocol designed to quantitatively assess neck mobility when wearing cervical orthoses, has been developed. This protocol and the associated signal processing techniques proved to be suitable for the assessment of neck mobility through the measurement of head movements, both in laboratory and clinical settings. After having quantitatively assessed head movement limitation in MND patients, filling an existing gap in the current literature, the effects of the SSS were tested. Compared to controls, patients presented an overall impaired ability to perform head movements in terms of reduced velocity (mean values between 27% and 41% lower in movements performed reaching the maximum range of motion and between 34% and 48% lower in movements performed reaching the maximum angular velocity), reduced smoothness (mean values between 21% and 44% lower in movements performed reaching the maximum range of motion) and increased presence of coupled movements (mean values between 37% and 58% higher in movements performed reaching the maximum range of motion and between 44% and 53% in movements performed reaching the maximum angular velocity). The SSS was effective in facilitating the head movements in MND patients. Among those 9 individuals that were fitted with anterior or anterior plus lateral supports 5 of them had a reduced presence on coupled movements in at least one of the movements performed. However, a proper fitting of the orthosis appeared crucial and in the future it should be based on a quantitative approach similar to the one developed in this thesis. This study paved the way for improvements in the SSS design and for future quantitative assessment of the characteristics of motor control and movement strategies in MND patients and of how these change when using a device aiming at compensating for functional impairments

Earth Resources: A continuing bibliography with indexes

This bibliography lists 475 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system between January 1 and March 31, 1984. Emphasis is placed on the use of remote sensing and geophysical instrumentation in spacecraft and aircraft to survey and inventory natural resources and urban areas. Subject matter is grouped according to agriculture and forestry, environmental changes and cultural resources, geodesy and cartography, geology and mineral resources, hydrology and water management, data processing and distribution systems, instrumentation and sensors, and economical analysis

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse