VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
From immigrant to settler : food and dining in a nineteenth-century institution of immigration
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Anthropology.

The Female Immigration Depot opened in Sydney in 1848 to supervise the importation of unmarried female immigrants into New South Wales. Travelling on subsidised passages, these women were supposed to work as domestic servants and to marry into colonial society. The depot represented a new, institutional way of managing the perceived physical and moral dangers for female immigrants but it also played an important role in the transformation of immigrants from a variety of backgrounds—ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural—into settlers with a shared British identity. Drawing on the rich archival and archaeological materials related to the Female Immigration Depot (1848-1887) at Hyde Park Barracks, I provide a case study for a culinary archaeology of the institution. Tacking between multiple lines of evidence provides detailed glimpses into life at the depot and, in particular, into moments of disjuncture between official policy and actual behaviour. The results reveal a diet that was much more varied than the official dietary would suggest, pointing to the range of strategies that women within the institution had for acquiring food products. The range of food remains found at the barracks connects the immigrant women into globalised meshworks of circulation and broader shifts in dining practices. More broadly, tracing the flows of people, goods, and ideas through the depot highlights the importance of emergent institutions of immigration for understanding the formation of the settler colonies
From people to protected areas : how disaggregated, high resolution data expose valuable climate and environmental insights
Keywords: Sustainability.
Earth System Science.

As climate change presents an increasing threat to living systems globally, research that seeks to understand regional vulnerabilities at spatial scales that impact people and ecosystems has been increasingly valuable for understanding climate risks. This can range from understanding spatial variability in public health risks to representing and estimating the exposure of biodiverse regions to future changes in climate extremes. Robust assessment of climate impacts relies on analysis of historical, present, and future climate across diverse spatial scales. In this dissertation I develop novel methods for integrating high-resolution datasets to characterize and analyze human-climate systems. These analyses were made possible by several diverse datasets that include earth observations, socio-economic data, geo-spatial data, and global climate model simulations. In Chapter 2, I uncover patterns in local, daily mobility in the San Francisco Bay Area during the COVID-19 pandemic and develop a model to establish a causal relationship between temperature and human mobility. In Chapter 3, I present a novel method for calculating global progress towards protecting biodiversity based on local-scale criteria. I do so by creating a robust, reproducible approach, and I show that calculation and aggregation decisions can drastically change reported values. In Chapter 4, I build on this new methodology by combining measures of future extreme climate events with biodiversity protection progress data. Through this project I quantify the spatial variation in extreme climate exposures across important biodiversity areas in South Africa. I also present a strategy for identifying biodiverse areas at high risk of near-term climate shocks. Through this analysis, we discover a substantial gap between areas with a climate threatened designation and areas with higher relative exposures to extreme climate. Collectively, this set of research can provide insight into the advantages of integrating diverse datasets to answer questions critical to understanding climate impacts and risk, and the impact of spatial scale on data interpretation. .
From SAC to Space Force: Analyzing the Evolution of U.S. Military Space Organizations
Keywords: Outer space
Military history
United States. Strategic Command (2002- )
United States. Space Command
Satellites
United States Space Force
Text
Thesis

Space underpins American national security and affects everyday Americans’ lives on an enormous scale. However, as its importance grew over the past 20 years, U.S. space assets remained vulnerable to threats. This thesis aims to determine distinct causes of U.S. space vulnerability by analyzing the history of U.S. military space organizations. Specifically, it examines the 2002 merger between two U.S. Department of Defense combatant commands: U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) and U.S. Space Command (SPACECOM). The thesis aims
to answer two sets of questions concerning the organizational evolution of the U.S. military in space. First, what factors led to the decision to merge SPACECOM with STRATCOM? Would SPACECOM be better equipped to tackle new threats facing space if it had the opportunity, from its inception, to solely focus on space-related issues? And second, what sparked the creation of the U.S. Space Force? What problem, or set of problems, does the U.S. government hope the U.S. Space Force will solve? Through a combination of historical analysis and expert interviews, this thesis suggests that two events in 2001—the September 11 terror attacks (9/11) and the publishing of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR)—directly influenced the decision to merge SPACECOM with STRATCOM, as the U.S. government’s national security priority shifted toward fighting terrorism. It then analyzes the implementation of the merger, as well as emerging threats in the early 2000s, to explain the rationale for re-establishing SPACECOM and creating the U.S. Space Force in 2019. The thesis concludes that while the decision to merge SPACECOM with STRATCOM did leave the U.S. vulnerable to threats in years following the merger, it was a natural reaction to the national security landscape facing the U.S. government in 2002.
From VR as genre to VR as learner agency : leveraging virtual reality learning for understanding climate change
Keywords: Education.

As VR becomes increasingly mainstream due to lowering hardware costs and increased access to VR content, it becomes critical to fill the gap in learning sciences literature that explains how this content may be developed in alignment with targeted learning outcomes. It also becomes imperative to study the integration of VR outside the laboratory—such as in real-world K-12 learning environments—in ways that might promote sustained long-term use. The first set of contributions of this dissertation is to demystify the ambiguity in findings on learning with VR and identify the holes in the literature on the learning affordances of immersive VR in education research. This includes identifying key areas for future research that align with the core objectives of the learning sciences and technology design (LSTD) field and motivating deeper collaboration across fields of expertise. At the same time, this dissertation builds upon prior work in climate change education to develop new designs, theories, and findings for creating VR learning curricula and advancing conversational learning with virtual reality climate change field trips. The work also contributes to an agenda of prioritizing the creation of VR learning content for similar meritorious social purposes. Ultimately, the gold standard for an immersive VR experience is to cause behavior change and not stay limited to belief change. To this end, the dissertation unpacks the relationship between learner agency with VR and climate change knowledge, skills, and attitudes, including the specific features of the learning experience that differentiate between having an effect on belief versus having an effect on behavior. This work aims to serve as a stepping stone for conducting a more thorough needs assessment into other domains where such a VR experience may engage a global audience of users on an issue of global significance (such as climate change), possibly aligning our objectives with the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The vision is to leverage the potentialities and affordances of this new media technology to move various stakeholders toward solutions that incorporate collective action-oriented perspectives
The fruits of their labor : inter-religious community building in California's Central Valley 1880-1970
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Religious Studies.

This project explores religion in California's Central Valley between 1880-1970, focusing on four case studies. Each case study highlights an example of "Inter-religious Community Building," or individuals and groups using their own religious identity and practice to build relationships with those who claim different religious identity. The Central Valley is home to a majority of agricultural output in the United States and has seen waves of immigration and migration since California became a state. The project explores the relationship between labor, immigration, race, and religion as each of these evolve and change over time.
Functional genomic screening reveals regulators of galectin-1 intracellular trafficking with applications to cellular delivery of new therapeutic modalities
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Chemistry.

Many novel modalities like small-interfering RNA (siRNA), CRISPR, and recombinant proteins have revolutionized biological research, but their applicability in the clinic remains limited. These massive and often highly charged molecules cannot cross the lipophilic cell membrane, and methods for delivering these molecules to the cell interior in a clinical setting are a key bottleneck to their translation. As introduced in Chapter 1, nearly all methods for delivering biomolecules to cells rely in some way on a cell's own trafficking machinery and the glycan-binding protein galectin-1 is able to traffic from the cell surface to the cell interior via an unknown mechanism. Thus, to address this challenge, we shed new light on the trafficking of galectin-1 and explore the possibility of hijacking this trafficking system to deliver therapeutic molecules. Functional genomics represents a powerful new set of tools for mechanistic investigation of biological phenomena in an unbiased manner. In Chapter 2, we explore and prototype selection methodologies that would enable us to leverage genome-wide CRISPR screening to study galectin-1 trafficking. Chapter 3 describes the use of a galectin-1-toxin conjugate, modelled on antibody-drug conjugates, as a selection tool in a genome-wide CRISPR screen and discusses the resulting data. Next, in Chapter 4, we validate the results of the screen and perform a deeper investigation into the pathways followed by exogenous galectin-1 when it enters cells. We discover that galectin-1 interacts with the endosome-lysosome trafficking receptor sortilin in a glycan-dependent manner and that this interaction regulates galectin-1 trafficking to the lysosome. Finally, in Chapter 5, we show that the galectin-1 trafficking pathway can be exploited for delivery of a functional siRNA. Taken together, our work illuminates the mechanisms by which galectin-1 is internalized by cells and suggests a new strategy for intracellular drug delivery via galectin-1 conjugation.
Functional modulation of the cytosolic chaperonin TRiC/CCT through small molecule inhibition
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Biology.

Cellular homeostasis heavily relies on the proper protein folding and maintenance of the proteome by molecular folding machines known as chaperones. In cells undergoing higher proliferation rates, the folding demands are higher, for which reason cancer cells are considered to be addicted to chaperones to meet the higher protein folding supply. TRiC/CCT is a molecular chaperonin that is increasingly linked to oncogenesis not only due to its client substrates, but also because its subunits are amplified in many tumor tissues. While other chaperones such as Hsp70 and Hsp90 have been targeted for drug development, studies to identify TRiC inhibitors have been limited by the 1MDa complex purification difficulties. In this work, we have identified a novel small molecule that inhibits the TRiC ATPase cycle from a high-throughput screen of an > 100,000 compound library. The topmost inhibitor was found to impact the obligate actin folding activity by the chaperonin. Furthermore, we found that TRiC inhibitor treatment in prostate cancer cells expressing the androgen receptor disrupted cytoskeletal integrity, cell morphology and viability in comparison to cells lacking the hormone receptor. These findings shed light on a mechanism by which inhibitors perturb TRiC cycling, leading to poor actin folding, and a consequent decrease in cell viability from a weakened actin filament network. The results represent the development of novel tools to understand the proteostasis network as well as a foundation to target TRiC therapeutically
Gender segregation and college majors
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Sociology.

This project has two dimensions: One aspect of the dissertation is to examine the role of education — specifically, the field of study — in generating gender segregation in occupations. The second goal is to see how college majors account for the gender gap in the distribution of wages within an occupation. The key questions that come up in the study are: To what extent can occupational sex-segregation be explained by field-of-study segregation (among occupations that require college degrees)? To what extent does field of study play out the same way for women and men? Are women with female-typed college majors more likely than men in those same majors to end up in female-typed occupations? The first paper of this three-paper dissertation examines whether the college major has a significant role in determining sex-segregation in occupations, more than the combined roles of gender, race and other demographic variables. The second paper shows that the choice of college major has a significant effect in predicting women's wage disadvantage in comparison to men. Particularly, married women are more disadvantaged than single or divorced women. For highly educated single or divorced women, we show that the wage gap vanishes completely. In the third paper, it is established using a conjoint survey experiment that the actual gender of the candidate matters much less than the gender-type of the candidate's college major in hiring decisions
Geographical Differences in Lifestyle Risk Factors for Endometrial Cancer Diagnosis, Treatment and Survival: The Women’s Health Initiative Longitudinal Cohort
Keywords: Stefanick, Marcia
Uterus > Cancer
Regional disparities
Text
Thesis

Endometrial cancer is a prevalent gynecologic cancer in the United States, with high incidence and mortality rates, particularly among postmenopausal women. Obesity is a significant risk factor for endometrial cancer, and studies have shown significant racial disparities in endometrial cancer outcomes. We utilized the Women’s Health Initiative study to compare baseline demographic and lifestyle factors, e.g., physical activity, body mass index, diet, alcohol consumption, smoking, education, etc.) across the four United States census geographic regions among women who were diagnosed with endometrial cancer (N=1803) compared to those without endometrial cancer (N=92,054). Our analysis revealed moderate differences in self-reported race and BMI between women with and without endometrial cancer. When comparing endometrial cancer patients across geographic regions, similar BMI trends were observed, but significant differences in self-reported race were only apparent in the West and South. We also found that the incidence and survival of endometrial cancer did not exhibit substantial variations based on geographic location, suggesting that region may not strongly influence these outcomes. While the Northeast and West had slightly higher incidence rates compared to the South and Midwest, these differences did not reach statistical significance. Additionally, the analysis of histology and stage revealed geographic disparities in the prevalence of serous/papillary serous carcinoma and disease stage, with the highest proportion being in the Northeast. However, overall survival rates did not significantly vary across geographic regions. Overall, these findings enhance our understanding of endometrial cancer epidemiology and underscore the significance of considering racial disparities and histologic subtypes in the study of this disease.
Giving robots a light touch : unobtrusive tactile perception in unstructured spaces
Keywords: Engineering.
Mechanical Engineering.

Advancements in robotics are leading toward their integration into domestic settings for the automation of household chores. However, the inherent complexity of unstructured environments, such as homes, poses a formidable challenge for robots. Unlike controlled industrial settings, homes exhibit diverse layouts, variable lighting conditions, and occlusions that render conventional vision-only perception systems inadequate. Mundane yet crucial tasks, like retrieving an item from the rear of a refrigerator, underscore the limitations of solely relying on visual cues. This thesis introduces tactile sensing strategies to enhance robots' performance in unstructured environments. Specifically I demonstrate three approaches that aim to provide robots with new tactile capabilities: (i) a soft distributed tactile skin for safe navigation in spaces with obstacles, (ii) whisker-inspired sensors for non-intrusive object perception, and (iii) low-inertia grippers for low-impact interactions. First, I investigate how to ensure gentle interaction with objects by introducing a soft tactile skin with distributed sensors. This tactile skin helps robots to safely navigate tight spaces by reducing contact forces. By giving robots the ability to detect light contacts and move so as to keep those contact forces small, the skin can mitigate the effects of frequent unplanned contacts (e.g. tipping objects) in cluttered environments. Second, I investigate how robots can leverage contacts to sense their environment. I introduce whisker-inspired sensors that allow robots to sense objects through continuous gentle contact. Non-intrusive contact with objects enables robots to perceive distant objects and partially determine their shapes. With repeated exploration of the environment, the tracked contacts allow the robot to build an understanding of the environment that is robust to visual occlusions. Last, I investigate how low-impact contacts can be leveraged to enable robots to explore and manipulate objects in the environment. I introduce a low-inertia gripper design that enables robots to confidently locate objects by contacting them, determine some of their properties (e.g., weight), and grasp them. In summary, this thesis explores ways to use soft and light tactile sensors and end-effectors to increase the ability of robots to perceive and operate in the cluttered and contact-rich environments.
Global trends in the content of national education reform, 1960-2018
Keywords: Education.

This dissertation analyzes global trends in national education reform discourse worldwide between 1960 and 2018. It focuses specifically on explaining trends over time in the relative prioritization of expanding access to education and improving the quality of education over this period in the global model of education. The analyses draw on a new panel dataset of national education reforms in 148 countries and uses negative-binomial regression modeling to explain cross-national variation in the amount of access and quality reform. The dissertation includes three analyses. The first analysis describes global level trends in access and quality reform discourse and discourse in seven education policy areas commonly targeted for reform to achieve access and quality objectives.The second analysis examines the dramatic rise in quality reform discourse, and the third analysis explains the persistence of relatively high levels of access reform discourse between 1960 and 2018. Overall, the descriptive findings show alongside the dramatic rise globally in quality reform discourse, significant increases in reform discourse in policy areas related to accountability, teachers, and the measurement of educational outcomes via assessments during the neoliberal era, reflecting the rise of a narrow definition of educational quality focused on educational outcomes limited by what can be measured on assessments. The regression results show that both country need and capacity factors and the rise of rationalized and scientific approaches to improving education explain cross-national variation in level of access and quality reforms. I argue that the dramatic rise in the proportion of quality reform discourse is driven primarily by a country's linkages to world society and its legacy of participation in assessments. The proportion of access reform discourse continues at a relatively high-level globally because of the centrality of universal educational access to the priorities of equity and justice in the global cultural model of the nation-state (Meyer et al. 1997).
Glycogen phase separation drives macromolecular rearrangement and asymmetric division upon nutrient depletion in escherichia coli
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Biology.

Bacteria often experience nutrient limitation in nature and the laboratory. While the exponential and stationary phases of growth have been well characterized in the model bacterium Escherichia coli, little is known about what transpires inside individual cells during the transition between these two phases. In Chapter 2, using quantitative cell imaging along the growth curve, we found that the positions of the nucleoid and cell division become increasingly asymmetric during the transition phase. These asymmetries were coupled with a spatial reorganization of proteins, ribosomes and RNAs, which adopted a more nucleoid-centric localization. In Chapter 3 we show results from live-cell imaging experiments, complemented with genetic and 13C whole-cell nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies, that accumulation of the storage polymer glycogen at the old pole leads to the observed macromolecular rearrangement and asymmetric division. Finally in Chapter 4, using an in vitro system we present data suggesting that these phenotypes are likely due to the propensity of glycogen to phase separate into liquid condensates in crowding environments. Cell size differences between strains and daughter cells suggest that glycogen phase separation results in cytoplasmic space compensation that allows cells to store a glucose polymer in large amount without affecting macromolecular homeostasis during nutrient-limiting growth. Finally, these glycogen-dependent effects also occur during exponential phase in a cell age-dependent manner.