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PURPOSE This study had two purposes: (a) to examine the possible predicting abilities of socioeconomic status, per pupil expenditures, percentage of highly qualified teachers and attendance rates for on-time educational attainment in the state of Virginia and (b) to compare the Appalachian School Divisions of Virginia with the non-Appalachian school divisions for each of these variables. METHOD Data pertaining to socioeconomic status, per pupil expenditures, attendance rates, teacher qualifications, and on-time educational attainment were collected for the graduating cohorts of 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. A stepwise multiple regression analysis was conducted on these variables to address the first purpose. A general linear model repeated measures ANOVA was conducted for each variable to compare differences between the Appalachian, non-Appalachian divisions of similar size, non-Appalachian large school divisions, and the total non-Appalachian divisions to address the second purpose of the study. RESULTS Socioeconomic status and attendance rates were found to be the independent variables that were significantly able to predict on-time educational attainment rates. Socioeconomic status rates were found to be significantly higher in the Appalachian divisions than in the non-Appalachian large school divisions. Teacher qualification rates were found to be significantly higher in the Appalachian divisions than the non-Appalachian divisions of similar size. On-time educational attainment rates were found to be significantly higher in the Appalachian school divisions than in all three classifications of the non-Appalachian divisions. / Ed. D.

During development of the mammalian nervous system, neural stem cells generate neurons first and glia second, thereby allowing the initial establishment of neuronal circuitry, and subsequent matching of glial numbers and position to that circuitry. Multiple molecular mechanisms act in concert to control neural precursor expansion prior to neurogenesis, and to allow for an exponential generation of neurons while ensuring the maintenance of sufficient precursors to produce later-born neurons, glial cells and adult neural stem cells. Throughout cortical development, these processes are regulated in part by the precursors’ environment as well as intrinsic changes in precursors and their modes of division, which regulate the fate of daughter cells and the balance between self-renewal and differentiation. In the first part of this thesis, the protein tyrosine phosphatase SHP-2 was identified as a novel signaling protein that regulates the neurogenic to gliogenic switch by potentiating neurogenic signals and suppressing gliogenic signals until the appropriate developmental time point for astrogenesis, providing one mechanism whereby precursors integrate conflicting environmental cues. A Noonan Syndrome (NS)-associated activated SHP-2 mutation causes perturbations in neural cell genesis, which may contribute to the mild mental retardation and learning disabilities observed in NS patients. In the second part of this thesis, a novel Rho-regulatory pathway which includes the Rho-GEF Lfc and its negative regulator Tctex-1 were also found to regulate neurogenesis, potentially by directing mitotic spindle orientation during precursor divisions, thereby regulating the symmetric and asymmetric nature of radial precursor divisions.

During development of the mammalian nervous system, neural stem cells generate neurons first and glia second, thereby allowing the initial establishment of neuronal circuitry, and subsequent matching of glial numbers and position to that circuitry. Multiple molecular mechanisms act in concert to control neural precursor expansion prior to neurogenesis, and to allow for an exponential generation of neurons while ensuring the maintenance of sufficient precursors to produce later-born neurons, glial cells and adult neural stem cells. Throughout cortical development, these processes are regulated in part by the precursors’ environment as well as intrinsic changes in precursors and their modes of division, which regulate the fate of daughter cells and the balance between self-renewal and differentiation. In the first part of this thesis, the protein tyrosine phosphatase SHP-2 was identified as a novel signaling protein that regulates the neurogenic to gliogenic switch by potentiating neurogenic signals and suppressing gliogenic signals until the appropriate developmental time point for astrogenesis, providing one mechanism whereby precursors integrate conflicting environmental cues. A Noonan Syndrome (NS)-associated activated SHP-2 mutation causes perturbations in neural cell genesis, which may contribute to the mild mental retardation and learning disabilities observed in NS patients. In the second part of this thesis, a novel Rho-regulatory pathway which includes the Rho-GEF Lfc and its negative regulator Tctex-1 were also found to regulate neurogenesis, potentially by directing mitotic spindle orientation during precursor divisions, thereby regulating the symmetric and asymmetric nature of radial precursor divisions.

Abstracts Due to an excessive number of companies in the beverage industry, there exist tremendous product differentiation and brand proliferation. Product substitutability and low unit price further lead to severe market competition. Therefore, beverage manufacturers need to constantly obtain detailed and current consumer preference and distribution information in order to enhance promotion and sales of their own products. However, through studying the charts and graphs from marketing and distribution data, there can still be areas of uncertainty and unpredictability.This study uses a case study methodology and conducts in depth interviews with experienced individuals within the beverage industry. Assessment will include their market information processsing abilities. and their participation in developing a computer map support system to increase the effectiveness of marketing and operational units within their corporations. From the interviews with marketing and operation executives, a database application and infrastructure can be used to first organize, analyzd, summarizd, and classify informational data. Then,the resultes can be stored in a database for the use by the computerized map support system. Therefore, this improves upon the system response time and avoids encountering large amoutn of data needing analysis and complex calculations. This database system also needs to be capable of comprehensive data organization and analysis in order to detect market trends and direction, assisting executives in digesting historical data. In summary, the application and utilization of the computerized map support system can be a very useful tool in helping marketing and operation executives in their strategic and decision making processes and needs. This research hopes to utilize the development of computerized mapping support system to assist domestic beverage companies in thoroughly analyzing current market operational insufficiencies. Furthermore, this system can detect strategies of other competitive brands. Through these two analyses, the company will be able to respond rapidly, appropriately and effectively. Computerized mapping support system has the further advantage of detailed statistical computations, data analysis, and early detection of minute market changes. The continued applicaton of the comptuerized mapping system will definitely assist the marketing and operation divisions to better understand market behavior, leading to the goals of achieving better productivity, higher success rate to new strategies, and overall superior competitiveness. KEY WORDS¡GThe Beverage Industry¡BThe Comptuerized Mapping System¡B The Marketing and Operation Divisions

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Les opérations de division/multiplication de nominal ont fait l'objet de nombreuses recherches depuis quelques décennies, principalement anglo-saxonnes. Deux hypothèses principales en ressortent. L'hypothèse de signalement suppose que l'annonce de l'opération permet au dirigeant d'une entreprise cotée de transmettre au marché son information privée concernant ses performances futures. L'hypothèse d'ajustement des prix vise quant-à-elle un objectif plus opérationnel : l'opération permettrait d'ajuster le niveau de prix en sorte d'impacter la liquidité et le risque des titres ou de satisfaire les différentes classes d'investisseurs. Les travaux plus récents observent en plus de l'impact sur les rentabilités, la liquidité ou le risque, un changement dans la structure de l'actionnariat consécutif à ces opérations. Les études empiriques réalisées et les méthodologies d'étude d'évènement mobilisées dans nos travaux montrent que ces deux hypothèses classiques sont difficilement applicables au marché français. Les observations sur ce marché conduisent à élargir la problématique au lien possible entre prix unitaire des titres et composition de l'actionnariat. Une hypothèse originale est alors proposée, modélisée et testée. Cette hypothèse d' « ajustement de l'actionnariat par les prix » explique notamment que les réactions soient différentes sur ce marché, comme la motivation du recours à de telles opérations. Le choix du niveau de prix « optimal » des actions correspond dans cette optique à un arbitrage entre la performance accrue due au contrôle d'investisseurs institutionnels et le bénéfice en termes de rentabilité exigée de disposer d'une base large d'actionnariat individuel. / Many studies, essentially Western, have tested hypotheses for split/reverse splits announcements over the past few decades. Two major hypotheses emerge from these studies. The "signaling hypothesis" assumes that the split announcement (ad) allows listed firms managers to convey to the market private information concerning future cash flows. The "price adjustment" hypothesis aims a more operational objective. According to this hypothesis, the operation is a means for adjusting the stock price in a way to impact liquidity and risk or to satisfy the various investor classes. More recent works observe, in addition to the price impact and volatility or liquidity effects, a modification in the ownership structure of the firms, resulting from these operations. Realized empirical studies and mobilized event study techniques in our works show that these two classical hypotheses are difficult to apply to the French market. Observations on this market lead to expand the research problem to the possible link between securities price level and shareholding composition. An original hypothesis is then proposed, modeled and tested. This hypothesis of "shareholding adjustment by the stock price" explains why reactions are such different on this market, as well as the managers' incentives. The choice of the "optimal" share price can be seen in this context as a trade-off between the increased performance from institutional investor monitoring and the benefits in terms of required rate of return to have a broad individual shareholder base.

This dissertation presents work on gerrymandering in American legislative districts and on school competition and school choice. The work on gerrymandering analyzes how to measure gerrymandering and investigates some of its causal effects. The analysis of how to measure gerrymandering is presented in Chapter 1 and in the first half of Chapter 2. The context is the following. Legislative maps are often evaluated along dimensions of proportionality (the alignment between parties' seat shares and their state- or nation-wide vote shares) and competitiveness (the fraction of contests with uncertain winners). Since a map is intended to be used for multiple elections, policy-makers want to accurately predict how it will perform on these dimensions in the future. Doing this is difficult because future elections will differ from past ones due to changes in the demographic composition of the electorate and as a result of electoral shocks to preferences and turnout costs. Citing this uncertainty, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the judicial system is incapable of adjudicating claims of partisan gerrymandering. The first contribution of the dissertation is to develop a method for predicting the uncertainty in a map's performance due to electoral shocks and changes in demographics. The method relies on a structural voting model, which describes the preference and turnout decisions of a potential voter. The model decomposes an election into (i) a set of candidate qualities and (ii) individual-level utility parameters. I assess map performance in two steps. First, I examine the effect of electoral shocks by simulating alternative values of the candidate qualities and utility parameters. Second, I investigate the influence of demographic changes by re-running the simulations using different electorates. I apply the method to rich data from the 2008 to 2018 general elections in North Carolina and show that it allows credible and precise evaluations of maps. I also show that the method is better than existing approaches at predicting gerrymandering outcomes in excluded elections. The remainder of Chapter 2 concerns the causal effects of gerrymandering. Specifically, I examine whether the probability that someone turns out to vote is influenced by the competitiveness of his or her legislative districts. I do this by comparing outcomes over time for individuals in North Carolina who were placed into more or less competitive districts in 2011 as part of the decadal ``redistricting" process. I compare individuals who shared the same districts in each legislative chamber (U.S. House, NC Senate, NC House) before redistricting and who differed in districts for only one chamber after redistricting. Within these comparison groups, I match individuals on demographics and history of turnout and party registration. I find that being placed into a less competitive district reduces turnout. Effects grow over time and exist in both midterm and presidential elections. By 2018, having been placed in a district in which one party is always predicted to win versus one in which the parties have an even chance of winning reduces turnout by 1.9 percentage points for U.S. House districts and 1.4 percentage points for NC House and NC Senate districts. These results highlight the importance of considering district competitiveness when drawing legislative maps. Chapter 3 is work that is joint with Rajeev Dehejia, Cristian Pop-Eleches, and Miguel Urquiola. It examines how schools' incentives are influenced by the way in which households make school choice decisions. A summary is as follows. Recent work examines whether households choose schools based on school value added (Abdulkadiroglu et al. 2020; Beuermann et al. 2019). Given that value added is difficult to observe, households' choices are likely to depend on both (i) how much they care about value added and (ii) how well informed they are about which schools have high or low value added. We examine this concern using administrative data, a survey, and an experiment in Romanian high school markets. Using the survey, we can explain households' preferences based on their beliefs about school traits, rather than on the values of these traits that are measured by researchers. In the administrative data, we find that households' choices are better explained by measured values of peer quality than by measured values of value added. By contrast, in the survey data, we find that households' beliefs about value added and peer quality have equal explanatory power for their choices. This motivates an experiment in which we provide households with information on school value added. We find that the information has a positive but heterogenous effect on the extent to which households prioritize value added in their school choices. Effects are largest for households who were initially less certain of their choices and for households with low-scoring students.

La ligne directrice de notre recherche est de questionner l'évidence d'une distinction disciplinaire entre la sociologie et l'histoire. Vue l'étendue du sujet, nous avons adopté une posture exploratoire en suivant deux pistes. La première consiste à interroger un critère de distinction courant et selon lequel la sociologie serait davantage explicative alors que l'histoire serait essentiellement descriptive. À la lumière d'une mise en débat des positions de Durkheim et Weber pour la sociologie et de celles de l'histoire traditionnelle et des Annales pour l'histoire, nous avons noté une tendance à la diversité des conceptions disciplinaires qui semblent confirmée par certains travaux de recherche des auteurs discutés. Constatant un décalage entre les discours de définition disciplinaire et les recherches à proprement parler, la seconde piste d'exploration s'attarde à l'analyse des disciplines à l'oeuvre. À travers une sélection de trois études d'histoire et trois études de sociologie, nous avons cherché à identifier ce qui pourrait être considéré comme des fondements d'une distinction disciplinaire. Loin de fournir une ligne de démarcation claire, les oeuvres analysées semblent plutôt indiquer que l'histoire et la sociologie participent à une pratique analytique commune guidée par un processus d'interrogation complexe. Nous avançons que l'analyse des distinctions disciplinaires devrait se poursuivre par la recherche de postures interrogatives propres à chacune de l'histoire et de la sociologie. / The guideline of our research is to question the obviousness of a disciplinary dictinction between sociology and history. The subject being too broad, we have adopted an explorative approach wich follows two main tracks. The first one questions a common way of distinguishing sociology from history according to the idea that the first would be mainly explanatory while the latter would be essentially descriptive. We have confronted Durkheim's and Weber's main ideas about sociology, and brought together the debate around history which took place in France between the "histoire traditionnelle" and the "Annales" school. In doing so, we have noted a variety of ways of conceiving each discipline and that seems to be corroborated by some of these author's research work. We have also noticed a gap between disciplinary definitions and the academic research as such. Therefore, the second track of our exploration was the analysis of the "disciplines at work". By selecting three studies in history and three others in sociology, we have tried to identify some elements on wich a disciplinary distinction can be based. Far from revealing a clear boundary, the studies seemed rather to show that history and sociology take part in a common analytical practice guided by a complex process of inquiry. In that sense, we argue that the analysis of the disciplinary distinctions should carry on by a search for inquiry stances that may be specific to each of history and sociology.