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Department: Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice., Advisors: Hanson, Robin. Committee members: Lourdes Font; Denyse Montegut., This paper focuses on the research, conservation, mount-making and long-term storage for a set of late nineteenth or early twentieth century Chinese ceremonial armor held by the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). Different from what one typically thinks of as armor, Chinese Qing dynasty (1644-1911) ceremonial armor was designed to have a strong visual impact and was worn for official events like troop inspections and parades. This type of armor, comprised of multiple component parts, is constructed largely of textiles. And although not intended for use on the battlefield, it combines elements of battle armor with those of official court costume to create a new form of dress. The paper begins by placing Qing dynasty ceremonial armor in context. The historical context for this object type revolves around the establishment of the Qing dynasty when the Manchus breached the Great Wall and invaded China in 1644. This brought about major changes in many areas of life including the implementation of new dress regulations. In addition to the historical context, the paper discusses the functional context for ceremonial armor, from its relation to battle armor to its existence in public and private collections today. The next chapter focuses on the physical condition and treatment of the CMA's ceremonial armor set. The construction of each component and their primary condition issues are discussed, followed by a detailed description of the scientific analysis and treatment undertaken to ready the armor for display. The final chapter of the paper describes the design and creation of a custom display mount as well as the long-term preservation considerations for this complex and heavy object. While this armor was slated for display at the CMA in early 2021, that timeline has been pushed back due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Department: Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice., Advisors: Hanson, Robin. Committee members: Lourdes Font; Denyse Montegut., This paper focuses on the research, conservation, mount-making and long-term storage for a set of late nineteenth or early twentieth century Chinese ceremonial armor held by the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). Different from what one typically thinks of as armor, Chinese Qing dynasty (1644-1911) ceremonial armor was designed to have a strong visual impact and was worn for official events like troop inspections and parades. This type of armor, comprised of multiple component parts, is constructed largely of textiles. And although not intended for use on the battlefield, it combines elements of battle armor with those of official court costume to create a new form of dress. The paper begins by placing Qing dynasty ceremonial armor in context. The historical context for this object type revolves around the establishment of the Qing dynasty when the Manchus breached the Great Wall and invaded China in 1644. This brought about major changes in many areas of life including the implementation of new dress regulations. In addition to the historical context, the paper discusses the functional context for ceremonial armor, from its relation to battle armor to its existence in public and private collections today. The next chapter focuses on the physical condition and treatment of the CMA's ceremonial armor set. The construction of each component and their primary condition issues are discussed, followed by a detailed description of the scientific analysis and treatment undertaken to ready the armor for display. The final chapter of the paper describes the design and creation of a custom display mount as well as the long-term preservation considerations for this complex and heavy object. While this armor was slated for display at the CMA in early 2021, that timeline has been pushed back due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose: This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. Design/methodology/approach: This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. Findings: Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible. Originality/value: Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue.

Purpose: This paper formalizes long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. Approach: We focus on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. Findings: Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation, and astronomical trajectories appear possible. Value: Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue.

Purpose: This paper formalizes long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. Approach: We focus on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. Findings: Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation, and astronomical trajectories appear possible. Value: Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue.

In four puzzling areas of information in politics, simple intuition and simple theory seem to conflict, muddling policy choices. This thesis elaborates theory to help resolve these conflicts. The puzzle of product bans is why regulators don't instead offer the equivalent information, for example through a "would have banned" label. Regulators can want to lie with labels, however, either due to regulatory capture or to correct for market imperfections. Knowing this, consumers discount regulator warnings, and so regulators can prefer bans over the choices of skeptical consumers. But all sides can prefer regulators who are unable to ban products, since then regulator warnings will be taken more seriously. The puzzle of voter information is why voters are not even more poorly informed; press coverage of politics seems out of proportion to its entertainment value. Voters can, however, want to commit to becoming informed, either by learning about issues or by subscribing to sources, to convince candidates to take favorable positions. Voters can also prefer to be in large groups, and to be ignorant in certain ways. This complicates the evaluation of institutions, like voting pools, which reduce ignorance. The puzzle of group insurance as a cure for adverse selection is why this should be less a problem for groups than individuals. The usual argument about reduced variance of types for groups doesn't work in separating equilibria; what matters is the range, not variance, of types. Democratic group choice can, however, narrow the group type range by failing to represent part of the electorate. Furthermore, random juries can completely eliminate adverse selection losses. The puzzle of persistent political disagreement is that for ideal Bayesians with common priors, the mere fact of a factual disagreement is enough of a clue to induce agreement. But what about agents like humans with severe computational limitations? If such agents agree that the

In four puzzling areas of information in politics, simple intuition and simple theory seem to conflict, muddling policy choices. This thesis elaborates theory to help resolve these conflicts. The puzzle of product bans is why regulators don't instead offer the equivalent information, for example through a "would have banned" label. Regulators can want to lie with labels, however, either due to regulatory capture or to correct for market imperfections. Knowing this, consumers discount regulator warnings, and so regulators can prefer bans over the choices of skeptical consumers. But all sides can prefer regulators who are unable to ban products, since then regulator warnings will be taken more seriously. The puzzle of voter information is why voters are not even more poorly informed; press coverage of politics seems out of proportion to its entertainment value. Voters can, however, want to commit to becoming informed, either by learning about issues or by subscribing to sources, to convince candidates to take favorable positions. Voters can also prefer to be in large groups, and to be ignorant in certain ways. This complicates the evaluation of institutions, like voting pools, which reduce ignorance. The puzzle of group insurance as a cure for adverse selection is why this should be less a problem for groups than individuals. The usual argument about reduced variance of types for groups doesn't work in separating equilibria; what matters is the range, not variance, of types. Democratic group choice can, however, narrow the group type range by failing to represent part of the electorate. Furthermore, random juries can completely eliminate adverse selection losses. The puzzle of persistent political disagreement is that for ideal Bayesians with common priors, the mere fact of a factual disagreement is enough of a clue to induce agreement. But what about agents like humans with severe computational limitations? If such agents agree that the

In four puzzling areas of information in politics, simple intuition and simple theory seem to conflict, muddling policy choices. This thesis elaborates theory to help resolve these conflicts. The puzzle of product bans is why regulators don't instead offer the equivalent information, for example through a "would have banned" label. Regulators can want to lie with labels, however, either due to regulatory capture or to correct for market imperfections. Knowing this, consumers discount regulator warnings, and so regulators can prefer bans over the choices of skeptical consumers. But all sides can prefer regulators who are unable to ban products, since then regulator warnings will be taken more seriously. The puzzle of voter information is why voters are not even more poorly informed; press coverage of politics seems out of proportion to its entertainment value. Voters can, however, want to commit to becoming informed, either by learning about issues or by subscribing to sources, to convince candidates to take favorable positions. Voters can also prefer to be in large groups, and to be ignorant in certain ways. This complicates the evaluation of institutions, like voting pools, which reduce ignorance. The puzzle of group insurance as a cure for adverse selection is why this should be less a problem for groups than individuals. The usual argument about reduced variance of types for groups doesn't work in separating equilibria; what matters is the range, not variance, of types. Democratic group choice can, however, narrow the group type range by failing to represent part of the electorate. Furthermore, random juries can completely eliminate adverse selection losses. The puzzle of persistent political disagreement is that for ideal Bayesians with common priors, the mere fact of a factual disagreement is enough of a clue to induce agreement. But what about agents like humans with severe computational limitations? If such agents agree that the

Prediction markets have demonstrated their value for aggregating collective expertise. Combinatorial prediction markets allow forecasts not only on base events, but also on conditional and/or Boolean combinations of events. We describe a trade-based combinatorial prediction market asset management system, called Dynamic Asset Cluster (DAC), that improves both time and space efficiency over the method of, which maintains parallel junction trees for assets and probabilities. The basic data structure is the asset block, which compactly represents a set of trades made by a user. A user's asset model consists of a set of asset blocks representing the user's entire trade history. A junction tree is created dynamically from the asset blocks to compute a user's minimum and expected assets.

In the context of in-plant materials supply, the materials feeding principle of kitting is often discussed as an alternative to the more common continuous supply (also known as line stocking). However, there are few detailed studies describing the relative effects of kitting and continuous supply. The current paper identifies the relative effects of kitting and continuous supply, and provides insight into how these effects arise. The paper draws on empirical data from two case studies in the Swedish automotive assembly industry. In each of the cases, continuous supply has been replaced by kitting, enabling comparison of kitting and continuous supply in the same production environment. The performance areas studied include man-hour consumption, product quality, flexibility, inventory levels, and space requirements. Interviews with production engineers, assemblers, and operators responsible for kit preparation at each company contribute to a broad yet detailed view of the relative effects of the two materials feeding principles.

A market-maker-based prediction market lets forecasters aggregate information by editing a consensus probability distribution either directly or by trading securities that pay off contingent on an event of interest. Combinatorial prediction markets allow trading on any event that can be specified as a combination of a base set of events. However, explicitly representing the full joint distribution is infeasible for markets with more than a few base events. A factored representation such as a Bayesian network (BN) can achieve tractable computation for problems with many related variables. Standard BN inference algorithms, such as the junction tree algorithm, can be used to update a representation of the entire joint distribution given a change to any local conditional probability. However, in order to let traders reuse assets from prior trades while never allowing assets to become negative, a BN based prediction market also needs to update a representation of each user's assets and find the conditional state in which a user has minimum assets. Users also find it useful to see their expected assets given an edit outcome. We show how to generalize the junction tree algorithm to perform all these computations., Comment: Appears in Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI2012)

In this case study, I examine how the residents of two displaced rural Kansas towns, and their descendants, exhibit a sense of identity common to small farm communities throughout the Great Plains, and how tenacious these ties are even after the physical reminder of their communal bonds no longer exists. By examining the struggles to survive faced by these two towns, Irving and Broughton, the resiliency of the people who called them home, and the continuing expression of community solidarity by the individuals associated with them, I propose that the individuals living within these communities created a transcendental identity similar to that of Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities. This communal identity remains a unifying bond without the need for an enduring physical signifier.

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Before an election, two candidates choose policies which are lotteries over election-day distributive positions. I find conditions under which there exist mixed-strategy probabilistic-voting equilibria which are independent, treating voter groups independently. When voter efforts determine the quality of their signals regarding candidate positions, voters can have strong incentives regarding their visible efforts made before candidates choose policies. Also, scale economies in group information production can make voters prefer large groups. Even with zero information costs, however, voters can ex ante prefer ignorance to full information. Optimal ignorance emphasizes negative over positive news, and induces candidates to take stable positions.