This thesis is an empirical investigation examining the impact of state development and institutional flexibility on economic growth, across fifteen developed countries from 1880 to 2008. The development of the state, particularly since the late nineteenth century, has resulted in the exponential growth of institutional complexity and living standards. While there is evidence to suggest institutional flexibility may have increased for a time during this period, evidence also indicates a subsequently decline over the course of the twentieth century, resulting in ‘rise and decline’ explanations for economic growth. This ‘rise and decline’ hypothesis is tested in this thesis in an attempt to rehabilitate the works of Mancur Olson. This thesis presents a new framework for establishing years of peak institutional flexibility and creates new data for measuring state development and institutional flexibility. It finds both improvements in state development and institutional flexibility explain changes in cross-country growth over the long run. This should come as encouragement to those interested in institutional justifications for economic growth and all interested in revitalising Olsonion explanations for the economic performance of countries over the long run.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographic references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 29-244).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 1998. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-254).

In this thesis, I contend that some form of aura can be recovered from the ravages of technological reproduction described in Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (Third Version).” Recovering this aura, however, may require adopting an aesthetic of immediacy through destruction and even wanton disposability (what Georges Bataille in his general economic theory calls “nonproductive expenditure”) to ensure that, though routinely diluted and discarded, the split-second authenticity of a work remains, its radical ephemerality and formal irreproducibility opposing the enslaving, commodifying powers of the copy. The poetry and poetic theory of American poet Charles Olson, especially in his long poem “The Kingfishers” and his essays “Projective Verse” and “Human Universe,” serves as an example of how an author might inscribe auratic energy along nonproductive, general economic lines.

Doctor of Philosophy / Chemistry / Ryszard J. Jankowiak / The structure-function relationships of natural pigment–protein complexes are of great interest, as the electronic properties of the pigments are tuned by the protein environment to achieve high quantum yields and photon utilization. Determination of electronic structure and exciton dynamics in protein complexes is complicated by static disorder and uncertainties in the properties of system-bath coupling. The latter is described by the phonon profile (or spectral density), whose shape can only be reliably measured experimentally for the lowest energy state. Low-temperature, laser-based spectroscopies are applied towards model pigment–protein complexes, i.e., the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) and water-soluble chlorophyll-binding (WSCP) complexes, in order to study system-bath coupling and energy transfer pathways. Site-selective techniques, e.g., hole burning (HB) and fluorescence line narrowing, are utilized to overcome static disorder and reveal details on homogeneous broadening. In addition, excitonic calculations with non-Markovian lineshapes provide information on electronic structure and exciton dynamics. A new lognormal functional form of the spectral density is recommended which appropriately defines electron-phonon parameters, i.e., Huang-Rhys factor and reorganization energy. Absorbance and fluorescence spectral shifts and HB spectra reveal that samples of FMO may contain a subpopulation of destabilized proteins with modified HB efficiencies. Simulations of spectra corresponding to intact proteins indicate that the entire trimer has to be taken into account in order to properly describe fluorescence and HB spectra. The redshifted fluorescence spectrum of WSCP is described by uncorrelated energy transfer as opposed to previous models of excited state protein relaxation. Also, based on nonconservative HB spectra measured for WSCP, a mechanism of electron transfer between chlorophylls and aromatic amino acids is proposed.

A nonlinear, 4½-layer model with active thermodynamics and mixed-layer physics is used to examine salinity effects due to various forcings in the Indian Ocean. Theses forcings include: evaporation (ε) and precipitation (Ρ), river runoff in the Bay of Bengal, the Indonesian Throughflow, and the influx of salty waters from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Solutions with P - ε forcing produce salinity patterns that agree qualitatively with the observations in the upper three layers. Quantitatively, however, salinity values tend to be higher than the observations in most of the basin. In regions where precipitation is strong (P - ε » 0), a thin surface mixed layer (layer 1), and thus a thicker seasonal thermocline (layer 2, a barrier layer), are formed due to decreased entrainment. In these regions, surface currents generally strengthen, T2 warms considerably and SST increases somewhat, resulting in temperature inversions at some locations of the southern Bay and the eastern equatorial ocean. Somewhat surprisingly, P - ε also causes large temperature changes in layer 3 (thermocline) and thickness changes in layers 3 and 4 (intermediate water). The Bay-of-Bengal river runoff improves salinity values significantly in the upper three layers, especially within the Bay and alongC the west coast of India. During the Southwest onsoon (SWM), coastal Kelvin waves driven by the Ganges-Brahmaputra river inflow suppress upwelling along the northeast coast of India, increasing SST by 1°C. During the Northeast Monsoon (NEM), fresh water from the rivers is carried southward by the East India Coastal Current (EICC), raising sea level and thus strengthening the EICGby 10 cm/s. This fresh water can flow directly through the India-Sri Lanka separation in the surface mixed layer, generating a strong salinity gradient along the west Indian coast during winter. The river water decreases entrainment around the perimeter of the Bay during winter, thereby producing a thin surface mixed layer, increasing T2 , and resulting in temperature inversions in the northwestern Bay. Like P - ε, the rivers cause significant thickness and temperature anomalies in layer 3. The Indonesian Throughflow improves salinities in all four layers of the model, especially in the southern tropical ocean. Consistent with previous studies, most of the Throughflow water flows out of the Indian Ocean along the western boundary and near Madagascar. A significant amount of water, however, is advected northward into the Somali basin and subsequently carried eastward into the ocean interior and northward into the Arabian Sea. The Throughflow increases SST primarily along the west Australian coast but warms the thermocline (layer 3) throughout the Indian Ocean, especially in the southern tropical ocean. As a consequence, sea level is raised in the entire basin. Warmer and saltier Persian-Gulf water (PGW) enters the Indian Ocean in layer 3, warming the northern Arabian Sea by 0.2-2°C and increasing the salinity by 0.1-0.6 psu through horizontal mixing. It increases sea-surface salinity (SSS) in a broad region of the Arabian Sea by 0.1- 0.2 psu because entrainment and, to a less extent, coastal upwelling bring PGW into the surface mixed layer, where it spreads over a large region due to advection. High-salinity and high-temperature Red-Sea water (RSW) warms layer-4 (upper intermediate layer) and increases its salinity by a significant amount in most region of the Indian Ocean, especially in the Somali Basin, the interior Arabian Sea, and the central and western equatorial ocean.

<p>The Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex is a photosynthetic pigment-protein complex that has been the subject of study of decades of research, both experimental and theoretical. The FMO complex is small enough that computational modeling is feasible, while the rich excitonic interactions between the pigments give rise to absorption and circulardichroism (CD) spectra with many interesting details. This makes FMO an excellent testing ground for new predictive modeling techniques.</p> <p><br></p> <p>In this work we model the FMO complex from first-principles, wherein the only input is the X-ray crystal structure of the protein. We compute steady-state absorption and CD spectra of wild-type (WT) FMO as well as two mutants, Y16F and Q198V, in which amino acid residues near pigment 3 and pigment 7 are replaced respectively. CD spectra contain extra structural information and thus provide another avenue of investigation into the electronic properties of the FMO complex. We find that while there are large structural changes in the mutants, not all of the structural changes produce significant spectral changes. We conclude that the primary contributor to the spectral changes in Y16F is the breaking of a hydrogen bond between the nearby tyrosine and pigment 3. On the other hand, the spectral changes in Q198V are due to a collection of effects cancelling one another out to varying degrees, all induced by widespread structural changes as a result of the mutation.</p> <p><br></p> <p>We then perform time-resolved absorption and CD spectroscopy measurements on WT, Y16F, and Q198V FMO to provide a high quality set of experimental data against which the first-principles spectra can be validated. We find that in order to accurately model the triplet energy transfer dynamics in FMO two effects must be accounted for in the modeling: (1) the Stark shift caused by the rotation of the bacteriochlorophyll’s permanent dipole moment upon entering a triplet state, and (2) decays must be modeled as Boltzmann populations rather than individual pigments.</p>

Les États-Unis n’ont eu de cesse d’attendre depuis Emerson le grand chef d’œuvre national qui célèbrerait le destin d’exception de la jeune démocratie et affranchirait la littérature et la langue américaines de la tutelle du vieux continent. Cette tâche ne pouvait incomber à l’épopée dont on a pu juger qu’elle était inapte à décrire le monde contemporain et qu’elle contredisait une modernité poétique de l’intensité lyrique. La renaissance spectaculaire du « long poème » américain au cours des XIXe et XXe siècle ne peut donc s’inscrire dans la filiation de « formes » jugées obsolètes. Elle paraît d’ailleurs d’autant plus problématique qu’après avoir été rapportée au lyrisme démocratique de Walt Whitman, le « long poème » fut approprié par T.S. Eliot et Ezra Pound et assimilée aux excès d’un « high modernism » autoritaire, élitiste et systématique. C’est ainsi que la critique n’est parvenue à rendre compte paradoxalement de cette « forme » qu’en la niant, confirmant ainsi son illisibilité : le long poème ne pouvait être qu’un recueil de poèmes courts, un chef d’œuvre ruiné ou une parodie de la pensée systématique et de l’exceptionnalisme américain. En étudiant « A » de Louis Zukofsky, Paterson de William Carlos William et les Maximus Poems de Charles Olson, je vise à démontrer qu’il est au contraire possible de lire cette forme en tant que telle sans avoir recours à des typologies génériques ou à la dichotomie modernisme/postmodernisme. Je tenterai aussi de suggérer que, dans ces trois œuvres, la poésie se conçoit comme une activité en devenir qui tente modestement d’articuler le poème au monde, au temps et à la lecture. / Ever since Emerson the United-States have been expecting the great national masterpiece that would not only celebrate the unique destiny of this young democracy but would also free American language and literature from the European model. However, it did not seem that it was for the epic poem to accomplish this task given that it appeared not only ill-suited to describe the modern world but also incompatible with the demands of a poetic modernity predicated on lyrical intensity. Hence, the planned obsolescence of this “form” has made it all the more difficult to explain the spectacular rebirth of the “American long poem” in the 19th and 20th centuries. It has appeared all the more problematic since, after having been associated to Walt Whitman’s democratic lyricism, the “long poem” was appropriated by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound making it the symbol of the authoritarian, elitist and systematic tendencies of “high modernism”. It will thus come as no surprise that the critical community has tended to view the “long poem” negatively confirming in a way its illegibility: the “long poem” could only be viewed as a short lyric sequence, an impossible masterpiece or a parody of systematic thought and American exceptionalism. In undertaking this study of Louis Zukofsky’s “A”, William Carlos William’s Paterson and Charles Olson’s Maximus Poems I wish to demonstrate that it is possible to read the “long poem” as such without having to resort to generic categories and to the modern/postmodern dichotomy. I also hope to show that, in these three works, poetry is understood as a kind of ongoing activity which modestly attempts to articulate the poem to the world, time and reading.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Chicago. / Includes bibliographical references: leaves [274]-284. Also available on the Internet.