Essays about Retraining and Human Capital

This dissertation consists of three essays about retraining and human capital. In the first essay, I study the equilibrium effects of retraining in an economy with directed job search. Not only does retraining improve participants' skills, it also changes non-participants' optimal job search strategies and, in turn, their re-employment outcomes. I find that retraining reduces between-skill inequality, whereas it increases within-skill inequality. Eliminating retraining causes welfare losses equivalent to a $1.5$ percent drop in consumption. Evaluating various labor market policies aimed to encourage retraining participation, I show that combining retraining with a more generous unemployment insurance benefit is the most cost-effective and welfare-maximizing policy. The second essay explores the gender gap in retraining participation. I address four possible explanations on what causes women to participate in retraining more actively than men. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), I discuss the role of social skills, occupations, marital status, and non-college job opportunities. I find that the return to retraining increases with participants' social skills, which supports the hypothesis that retraining rates are higher for women because they benefit more from retraining thanks to their high social skills. I also raise the possibility that female-dominant professions are more supportive in terms of workers' education. Neither marital status nor non-college opportunities appear to explain the gender gap in retraining. In the third essay, I investigate the effects of academic collaboration on research productivity. The human capital of a group of researchers is combined by the CES production technology and produces a research outcome measured by the quality of the paper. The estimated elasticity of substitution suggests that researchers are imperfect complements. I use the estimates to simulate the growth of human capital of a researcher under different collaboration scenarios. I find that collaborating with an equally productive coauthor generates a considerable increase in human capital. The effects of collaboration persist over time. I show that the link between human capital and collaboration opportunities play an important role in explaining this persistence

A to Z of Superhero Movies

This project explores the question of originality and appropriation in the creative world by using mashup video as a medium. How can old repetitive stories be deconstructed and transformed into something new? I have created alphabetically ordered montages of shots/scenes containing words/letters from superhero films. By doing so, I do not provide a concrete answer to what is really original in today’s world, but rather encourage the audience to actively participate in the viewing experience of the carefully structured ontology and see the infinite possibility of the modern-day mashup culture

Patent Infringement in Personalized Medicine: Limitations of the Existing Exemption Mechanisms

Mr. X suffers from recurrent glioblastoma, a type of deadly brain cancer. One of his physicians reads a study reporting a novel immunotherapy, which uses the chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) technology, leading to regression of glioblastoma in a small number of patients. Although the therapy has recently been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is now offered by two major pharmaceutical companies, it is only approved for certain hematological cancers. In addition, Mr. X’s cancer does not express the biomarker that is necessary for the CAR-T therapy used in the published glioblastoma trial. Fortunately, the physicians are aware of a research laboratory at the university associated with the medical center that has expertise on the technologies associated with the CAR-T immunotherapy as well as certain biomarkers associated with Mr. X’s cancer. In collaboration with the laboratory’s researchers, Mr. X’s physicians conduct a small clinical trial administering an experimental CAR-T therapy to Mr. X and other glioblastoma patients, for whom this clinical trial was their only remaining hope. Later, one of the pharmaceutical companies holding multiple CAR-T patents sues the physicians, researchers, and academic institution for patent infringement. This hypothetical scenario involving the first FDA-approved gene therapy, CAR-T therapy, illustrates a potential patent infringement lawsuit that might occur more frequently as we enter the new era of personalized and precision medicine. The beauty and power of personalized medicine is that it is inherently experimental and innovative. Naturally, therapies in personalized medicine are built upon many patented technologies. Thus, underlying these novel therapies is the potential for alleged patent infringement by the physicians and researchers who experiment with and personalize the therapy in order to cure patients and save their lives. This Note uses the CAR-T therapy as a case study to examine the unique challenges that patent law faces in the dawn of the personalized medicine era, particularly regarding patent infringement. Specifically, this Note inquires whether a use of patented medical therapy related to a clinical experiment or trial by physicians, researchers, and academic institutions for the purpose of patient treatment renders them liable for patent infringement. Patent law confers exclusive rights to inventors and allows them to enforce those rights associated with a specific patent by bringing a patent infringement claim against the alleged infringer. At the same time, however, patent law also permits certain unauthorized uses of patented inventions to be exempted from infringement challenges or infringement liability. There are two key defenses under which an alleged infringer can be exempted: one provides exemption largely based on the status of the alleged infringer (“medical procedure exemption”) and the other based on the nature or purpose of the alleged infringing use (“experimental use exemption”). This Note analyzes whether the two exemptions indeed provide effective immunity from patent infringement or infringement liability for physicians, researchers, and academic institutions involved in the use of experimental therapies in the personalized medicine era. Analysis of the statutory text, legislative history, and case law of the medical procedure exemption reveals that the “biotechnology patents” exception renders the provision ineffective for infringement lawsuits involving CAR-T therapy. Therefore, this Note argues that the medical procedure exemption is incompatible with the personalized medicine era. Meanwhile, the experimental use exemption bifurcates into a narrow common law doctrine and a statutory provision that is interpreted relatively broadly when related to FDA submission. However, it is ambiguous whether a clinical trial would be considered as an “experimental use” under the narrow common law experimental use doctrine and whether the statutory experimental use exemption would permit uses that might not have any realistic potential for FDA submission. While many scholars have argued for a broad experimental use doctrine, the discussions have remained largely in the context of basic science. This Note presents a novel argument for a broad experimental use doctrine in the context of personalized medicine and suggests that the new era of personalized medicine calls for an additional factor in the experimental use analysis—clinical trials and experiments that cure and save patients’ lives. Part I provides an overview of the CAR-T immunotherapy as a model therapy representing personalized medicine and presents the issue of patent infringement. Part II examines the medical procedure exemption and analyzes its effectiveness as a defense to patent infringement liability involving CAR-T patents. Then, Part III turns to the experimental use exemption, examines its effectiveness for providing immunity from CAR-T patent infringement, and concludes by arguing for a broader experimental use doctrine for the personalized medicine era

Development and Applications of Nanoscale Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy

DEVELOPEMENT AND APPLICATIONS OF NANOSCALE SCANNING ELECTROCHEMICAL MICROSCOPY Jiyeon Kim, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2012 After more than 20 years of basic nanoscience research, advances in nanotechnology have opened up unprecedented possibilities and opportunities in electrochemistry. Especially, fabrication, characterization, modification and the understanding of various electrochemical interfaces or electrochemical processes at the nanoscale have led to applications of electrochemical methods to novel technologies. Nanoscale characterization and theoretical analysis of electrochemical interfaces and reactions can lead to the understanding of these complicated chemical systems at the molecular level. This is not only scientifically interesting, but also crucial for the controlled applications of electrochemistry in nanotechnology. A theme of my PhD work is to seek the better understanding of important nanosystems such as single walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) and nanopores in biological as well as artificial nanoporous membrane. The understanding of the electrochemistry of carbon nanotubes as an attractive electrode material for electroanalysis and electrocatalysis is fundamentally and practically important. Also, the greater understanding of nucleocytoplasmic transport through the nuclear pores in nuclear envelope is highly significant because of its critical roles as a regulator of gene expression, a gateway for gene delivery, and a model of biomimetic transport systems. In addition, the quantitative understanding of membrane permeability at a single nanopore level is a prerequisite for the development and the application of nanoporous membrane for nanofiltration, biomedical devices, nano fluidics, and biomimetic membrane transport. To achieve these goals, I developed scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) as a powerful nanoscale tool and applied this technology to the kinetic study and high-resolution imaging of heterogeneous reactions at various interfaces. Therefore, this thesis is based on two sections. In the first section, I summarize the application of nanoscale SECM to the study of a few different nanostructures and the substantial findings. The second section is concerned about the development of nanoscale SECM. Based on these achievements, the capacity of nanoscale SECM will be greatly increased to characterize and understand various nanomaterials and interfaces at the nanoscale

Social Media Marketing: The Effect of Information Sharing, Entertainment, Emotional Connection and Peer Pressure on the Attitude and Purchase Intentions

Instant communications trough social media platforms have enabled consumers to create, publish and share content, data and information regarding brands and products. It is crucial to examine its marketing power by investigating the user’s attitude towards the brand and purchase intentions influenced by the functions of social media. Thus, the purpose of this study to examine the effects of information sharing, peer pressure, entertainment and emotional connection in a social media setting on the user’s attitude toward a brand present in social media thereby influencing their purchase intentions from the brand

The Privacy Risks of Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing: A Case Study of 23andMe and Ancestry

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC-GT) companies have proliferated and expanded in recent years. Using biospecimens directly submitted by consumers, these companies sequence and analyze the individual’s genetic information to provide a wide range of services including information on health and ancestry without the guidance of a healthcare provider. Given the sensitive nature of genetic information, however, there are growing privacy concerns regarding DTC-GT company data practices. We conduct a rigorous analysis, both descriptive and normative, of the privacy policies and associated privacy risks and harms of the DTC-GT services of two major companies, 23andMe and Ancestry, and evaluate to what extent consumers’ genetic privacy is protected by the policies and practices of these two companies. Despite the exceptional nature of genetic information, the laws and agency regulation surrounding genetic privacy and DTC-GT services are fragmented and insufficient. In this analysis, we propose three categories of privacy harms specific to DTCGT—knowledge harms, autonomy and trust-based harms, and data misuse harms. Then, through the normative lens of exploitation, we argue that 23andMe and Ancestry’s data practices and privacy policies provide consumers with insufficient protection against these harms. Greater efforts from both the industry and legal system are necessary to protect DTC-GT consumers’ genetic privacy as we advance through the era of genomics and precision medicine

Deep reinforcement learning for large-eddy simulation modeling in wall-bounded turbulence

The development of a reliable subgrid-scale (SGS) model for large-eddy simulation (LES) is of great importance for many scientific and engineering applications. Recently, deep learning approaches have been tested for this purpose using high-fidelity data such as direct numerical simulation (DNS) in a supervised learning process. However, such data are generally not available in practice. Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) using only limited target statistics can be an alternative algorithm in which the training and testing of the model are conducted in the same LES environment. The DRL of turbulence modeling remains challenging owing to its chaotic nature, high dimensionality of the action space, and large computational cost. In the present study, we propose a physics-constrained DRL framework that can develop a deep neural network (DNN)-based SGS model for the LES of turbulent channel flow. The DRL models that produce the SGS stress were trained based on the local gradient of the filtered velocities. The developed SGS model automatically satisfies the reflectional invariance and wall boundary conditions without an extra training process so that DRL can quickly find the optimal policy. Furthermore, direct accumulation of reward, spatially and temporally correlated exploration, and the pre-training process are applied for the efficient and effective learning. In various environments, our DRL could discover SGS models that produce the viscous and Reynolds stress statistics perfectly consistent with the filtered DNS. By comparing various statistics obtained by the trained models and conventional SGS models, we present a possible interpretation of better performance of the DRL model

Turning Customer Feedback into Commitment

A growing number of firms are investing in being on the cutting edge of customer connections. However, when retailers continually promote customer feedback, it can be a huge weakness if there’s not a unique and involved communication channel with desirable customer benefits. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of customer product involvement on satisfaction, emotional connectivity, brand loyalty and word-of-mouth behavior. The major findings of this study are that customer product involvement has a strong positive relationship to a customer’s satisfaction and emotional connectivity, and brand loyalty, through customer product involvement, significantly influences a customer’s word-of-mouth behavior. The participant’s responses supported all hypotheses within data analysis. Secondary findings suggest that shoppers who purchase and browse many times per year are more likely to becoming involved in the CPI process