Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Physics and Mathematical Physics, 2003. / "July 2003" Bibliography: leaves 101-107.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-102).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-226).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2009. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-169).

The computational processes in the intermediate stages of the ventral pathway responsible for visual object recognition are not well understood. A recent physiological study by A. Pasupathy and C. Connor in intermediate area V4 using contour stimuli, proposes that a population of V4 neurons display bjectcentered,position-specific curvature tuning [18]. The “standard model” of object recognition, a recently developed model [23] to account for recognition properties of IT cells (extending classical suggestions by Hubel, Wiesel and others [9, 10, 19]), is used here to model the response of the V4 cells described in [18]. Our results show that a feedforward, network level mechanism can exhibit selectivity and invariance properties that correspond to the responses of the V4 cells described in [18]. These results suggest howobject-centered, position-specific curvature tuning of V4 cells may arise from combinations of complex V1 cell responses. Furthermore, the model makes predictions about the responses of the same V4 cells studied by Pasupathy and Connor to novel gray level patterns, such as gratings and natural images. Thesepredictions suggest specific experiments to further explore shape representation in V4.

Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-55). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Next-generation cosmological surveys will demand an unprecedented understanding of the interplay between theoretical and observational aspects of weak gravitational lensing. This thesis presents a study of the parameter degeneracies and theoretical uncertainties which will affect weak lensing tests of cosmology beyond the standard paradigm. In particular, tests of alternative theories of gravity and of spatial curvature are considered. First, by considering linear-order departures from the standard gravitational theory of general relativity, a novel expression is derived for the weak lensing convergence power spectrum under alternative theories of gravity. Using this expression, degeneracies between gravitational parameters in weak lensing observations are explored, first with a focus on scale-independent parameterisations of gravity, then considering new physical scales introduced by alternative theories. The degeneracy-breaking offered by the combination of weak lensing and redshift-space distortions is shown to be robust to the time-dependence of the functions parameterising modified gravity. Next, the gravity-testing statistic EG is investigated, and a new theoretical expression for its observationally-motivated definition is presented. The theoretical uncertainty of EG is compared to forecast statistical errors, and found to be significant in the case of a more futuristic measurement. Predictions are then computed for EG under deviations from general relativity, and the ongoing utility of EG as a probe of gravity is discussed. Finally, an investigation is made of the potential for measuring or constraining the spatial curvature using weak lensing and complementary observables. The predicted constraint on the spatial curvature is forecast for a suite of upcoming surveys, and the effect of including parameters which may be degenerate with the spatial curvature is explored. It is found that upcoming observations are likely to constrain spatial curvature at a 10⁻³ level, but not to reach the best-case constraint of ~10⁻⁴.

No description available.

The Standard Model of particle physics describes all known elementary particles and their interactions. Despite its great experimental success, we know that the Standard Model is not a complete description of Nature and therefore new phenomena should be observed at higher energies. In the coming years the Large Hadron Collider will test the Standard Model by colliding protons with center of mass energies of up to 14 TeV providing some of the most stringent tests on the Standard Model. Experimental searches for Dark Matter provide a complementary program to test physics at the weak scale. In the near future new experimental data coming from direct detection experiments, and from satellites and telescopes will drastically improve our sensitivity to weak scale dark matter. This could lead to the first direct observation of dark matter, and thus of physics beyond the Standard Model. In this thesis I propose different extensions of the Standard Model and discuss their experimental consequences. I first discuss models for Axigluons, which are spin one particles in the adjoint representation of the SU(3) color gauge group. These models were motivated by the measurement of higher than predicted forward-backward asymmetry in top quark pair production at the Tevatron. I study different scenarios for Axigluon models that can explain the Tevatron result and explore their signatures at the Large Hadron Collider. Second I discuss the implications of ultraviolet scale invariance for the Standard Model, which has been advocated as a solution to the hierarchy problem. I show that in order to solve the hierarchy problem with scale invariance, new physics is required not far from the weak scale. In the last part of this thesis I propose a new model for dark matter, in which dark matter is charged under a hidden non-Abelian gauge group. This leads to modifications in the sensitivity of the usual experimental searches for dark matter in addition to distinct signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background and in Large Scale Structure data.