VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Automotive safety validation in simulation [electronic resource]
Keywords: Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Fully automated driving will require intelligent systems capable of understanding, reacting to, and interacting with the intricate complexities of the real world. With the onset of autonomous driving it becomes increasingly necessary to develop advanced tools for establishing trust in intelligent safety systems that act without or despite human input. This thesis presents novel contributions to simulation-based validation, including human driver behavior and sensor models, distributions over driving scenes, and a new technique for the accelerated validation of advanced automotive active safety systems such as autonomous vehicles. Advances to human driver behavior models include the introduction of behavioral cloning models based on Bayesian networks that better capture driver behavior over short horizons. A general input architecture for deep sensor models is introduced and used to develop a stochastic model over an automotive radar's power field. Original contributions are made to the representation of distributions over driving scenes and situations, which must capture a variable number of traffic participants on arbitrary roadways. Finally, this thesis introduces a new method for accelerated validation using importance sampling over clusters of critical situations, prioritizing simulation of critical scenes and avoiding countless simulations of benign driving scenarios while backing out the correct performance statistics.
Autonomous vehicle motion planning with ethical considerations
Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.

Human drivers navigate the roadways by balancing values such as safety, legality, and mobility. An autonomous vehicle driving on the same roadways as humans likely needs to navigate based on similar values. For engineers of autonomous vehicle technology, the challenge is then to connect these human values to the algorithm design. To address this challenge, a mapping of philosophical frameworks to mathematical frameworks is used in order to motivate various design choices in a motion planning algorithm. Deontological ethics parallels rule-based mathematical concepts while consequentialism parallels cost-based mathematical concepts. The philosophical theory of virtue ethics is also used to help motivate the relative weightings between the design objectives of path tracking, obstacle avoidance, and adherence to traffic laws. Experimental results of an autonomous vehicle navigating an obstructed two-lane roadway with a double yellow line demonstrate the implications of the various design choices in a model predictive steering controller. In order to determine the success of the human values captured in an algorithm, the iterative methodology of value sensitive design (VSD) is used to formalize the connection of human values to engineering specifications. A modified VSD methodology is used to develop an autonomous vehicle speed control algorithm to safely navigate a pedestrian crosswalk. Two VSD iterations are presented that model the problem as a partially observable Markov decision process and use dynamic programming to compute an optimal policy to control the longitudinal acceleration of the vehicle based on the belief of a pedestrian crossing. The speed control algorithms are also tested in real-time on an experimental vehicle on a closed-road course.
Back-projection imaging of volcanic and hydrothermal seismicity using the ambient seismic field
Keywords: Geophysics.

Seismic signals generated by volcano-tectonic and hydrothermal processes typically have low signal-to-noise ratios (snrs) that make it difficult to locate their subsurface sources using established seismic imaging methods (e.g., phase-picking, waveform or spectral template-matching). High-amplitude bursts easily identifiable on otherwise "noisy" seismograms from these systems (i.e., eruptions) can be suitable for traditional seismic imaging, but these events tend to occur infrequently relative to the duration of a systems total eruption cycle. Studies that utilize only these types of observations are therefore inherently limited to analyses of individual eruptions or high-magnitude seismic events and offer less insight into subsurface processes that occur as a system builds up to and recovers from an eruption. Improving our understanding of significantly more common inter-eruption periods is critical to (1) answer fundamental geologic questions about volcano-tectonic and geyser system processes, (2) make accurate assessments of volcanic and geothermal hazards, and (3) improve our understanding of how magmatic and geothermal reservoirs evolve. Fortunately, the apparent "noise" recorded by seismic stations in volcanic and hydrothermal systems in reality represents a compilation of many overlapping, low-magnitude pressure perturbations at depth. These "micro-events" have also been shown to be directly linked to fluid (magma or brine) and volatile movement in the subsurface. The low snr signals these events generate therefore likely contain valuable information about subsurface processes that occur between volcanic and geyser eruptions. In this thesis I present a new computationally efficient back-projection imaging technique to comprehensively study temporal and spatial variations in extended, diffuse, low-magnitude volcanic and hydrothermal seismicity using low snr seismic array data. I use observations of coherent seismic energy arriving at pairs of receivers in the array to back-project low snr seismic signals to their most likely subsurface source locations. Applying this technique to active volcanic and geothermal systems can help to provide new insights into the fundamental physical processes that occur before, during and after potentially hazardous eruptions.
Basheer: Computational thinking for novice technology users
Keywords: computational htinking
gse
ldt
graduate school of education
leanring design and technology
new technology users
computational thinking
pakistan
metaphors
Thesis

As the cost of technology decreases, smartphones and data plans are on the rise,
especially in developing countries. This means that there’s an increasing number of
people who are just starting to get access to these technologies. A large proportion of
these users are from low-income households and don’t have the resources to be
educated about the potential constructive use of computers. This results in passive
users, using these devices for watching videos, listening to music and playing games
etc. It is important for these users to realize and apply the potential of technology to
create and solve problems and one of the most powerful skills to do this through is
programming. While there is no shortage of digital platforms to teach people how to
program, most of them are designed for experienced technology users with access to
laptops and computers. Prior research shows that these platforms cannot be imported
as-is into this context as learners have trouble understanding the abstract presentations
and analogies presented in the content (Unnikrishnan 2). I have also found that learners
have trouble navigating complex interfaces on web applications and games on desktop
computers, face language barriers and are also unaware of the existence of these
platforms. The solution is a smartphone game that runs through Facebook Messenger
(a platform that these learners are already familiar with) and is purposefully designed
for these users to teach them computational thinking by providing an accessible and
culturally relevant experience. The learners solve various puzzles in a programming
language in the users native language: Urdu. I found that this was an effective way to
teach computational concepts and resulted in a game that is easily understood and
usable for these learners.
Bayesian approaches to building models for biological systems
Keywords: Chemistry.

Understanding the structure and dynamics of biological macromolecules is a central focus of biological research. To be able to study and gain insights into these systems, it is first necessary to have an accurate and informative model for the system of interest. However, such a model is often difficult to build. For example, during protein folding, many proteins collapse into transient kinetic intermediates on timescales too fast for high-resolution experimental techniques to detect, preventing structural characterization of these species. Alternatively, current algorithms for RNA design (i.e. predicting a sequence that folds into a desired target structure) cannot accurately model structure-sequence relationships and rely primarily on brute force stochastic search, leading to poor performance on complex targets. Here, we show that it is possible to improve the quality of models for biological systems by applying a common Bayesian approach to building them, i.e. incorporating prior information to impose informative constraints on the model parameters. Through this approach, it is possible to build high-resolution models of protein dynamics given limited experimental data, as well as a state-of-the-art computational RNA design agent that outperforms all currently existing algorithms.
Becoming expert problem solvers : a case study in what develops and how
Keywords: Education.

We want students to become good scientific problem solvers, yet little research has focused squarely on the development of scientific problem solving expertise. Psychologists have studied problem solving—and scientific problem solving—extensively. Frameworks have been developed to describe what people do when they solve scientific problems. But this research, and the expertise research more broadly, has stopped short of examining the full trajectory of expertise development in a scientific problem solving domain. The lack of research in this area is due, in part, to methodological challenges. Chess, violin-playing: these are isolated domains, with established measures of expertise and, consequently, are common targets of longitudinal expertise research. Data about students becoming experts in solving a class of physics or biochemistry problems is harder to come by; measures of expertise have not been established and the domains are not as isolated. The psychological laboratory offers a controlled setting, but at the cost of limited time scales and artificially created problems that can be analyzed efficiently. This dissertation uses an unusual source of data that resolves some of these methodological challenges. Citizen science is a form of scientific research that involves members of the public. In a handful of projects, citizen scientists—volunteers who contribute to this research—become experts in solving a specific kind of problem. I examine one of these projects, Eterna, in depth, drawing on qualitative evidence—records of conversations among volunteers—and quantitative evidence—records captured as volunteers solve problems. This permits access to a long period of expertise development. This approach also lets me examine development in an authentic scientific problem. I use a grounded theory approach to address three important questions: 1) the path of the developmental change—what changed into what? 2) the variation in developmental change—how do people differ in their cognitive change?, and 3) the sources of the developmental change—which variables caused the change to take place and how did they do so? The dissertation as a whole offers a new way of talking about expertise development in scientific problem solving: not as primarily the development of a domain-general construct ("scientific reasoning"), but as the product of exploration of the fundamental features in the domain. It also offers insight into the kinds of technological affordances, individual behaviors, and cognitive resources that drive expertise forward. Finally, it offers a conceptual distinction between citizen science projects, suggesting that expertise-centric projects represent an alternative research paradigm.
Before and After 'The Great Work': The Evolution of National Themes in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America
Keywords:  Department of Theater and Performance Studies
theater and performance studies
national themes
contemporary theater
political theater
Tony Kushner
Angels in America
American drama
contemporary relevance
Broadway revivals
Thesis

This thesis examines the contemporary relevance of Tony Kushner’s ‘Angels in America’ twenty-five years after its original premiere on Broadway in 1993, when critics referred to it as “the most thrilling play in years” and “an enormously impressive work of the imagination and intellect, a towering example of what theater stretched to its full potential can achieve.” With the play’s return to the Royal National Theatre in London in 2017 and its transfer to Broadway the following year, ‘Angels in America’ has taken flight once again in an era and society that is different, yet hauntingly similar to its post-Reagan predecessor. Despite its age, ‘Angels in America’ acquired two new titles within the 2017-18 season: the fastest selling show in National Theatre history, and the most Tony Award-nominated production of a play in Broadway history. This thesis studies the staging of both the original 1993 Broadway production and the 2017/18 National Theatre-Broadway revival as case studies to approach the question “Why ‘Angels in America’ today?”, and focuses primarily on the subtitle of the play: ‘A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.’ Of the many themes contained within the play’s two-part eight-hour structure that help contribute to its contemporary relevance, I highlight themes that portray intimacy and connection, the family and the home, and the body and mind as microcosms of the larger nation. Many themes described here may not be the first to come to mind when one thinks of the nation or of ‘Angels in America’, and these themes do not come easy in the play—they are portrayed in betrayal, life-threatening situations, political corruption, drug addiction, and urban decay. By placing the themes against the backdrop of New York City in the 1980s, Kushner puts the nation to the test by means of the audience who live in it, and through the evolution of these themes over time, he pushes the nation to question and redefine itself.
Behind Closed Doors: How Domestic Violence Among Pacific Islanders Remains in the Shadows
Keywords:  Department of Communication
Pacific Islanders
domestic violence
data
census
Polynesia
gender violence
police
island culture
Stanford University Department of Communication Program in Journalism
San Francisco Bay Area Pacific Islander Populations
American Community Survey
Police responses to domestic violence
Thesis

Domestic violence among U.S. Pacific Islanders is not well-studied. In the wake of noteworthy sexual assault allegations in the government and in Hollywood, the nation is being forced to reckon with the pervasiveness of gender-based violence. But for Pacific Islanders, a population that is small in the U.S. even for a minority group, the prevalence of assault and abuse is easily overlooked by agencies that serve entire cities or counties.
Behind the Drop in Initial Public Offerings in the United States
Keywords: Department of Economics
initial public offering (IPO)
listing
delisting
alternative capital
exit opportunity
venture capital (VC)
mergers and acquisitions (M&amp;A)
regulation
SOX
JOBS
investor sentiment
business dynamism
macroeconomic conditions
US markets
Thesis

Initial public offering (IPO) activity has drastically declined in the United States since the beginning of the 21st century. This paper proposes four explanations: the rise of alternative capital and exit opportunities, high regulatory burdens for disclosure, bearish investor sentiment, and poor macroeconomic conditions. Although the dot-com bubble and the 2008 financial crisis have both temporarily depressed market conditions, regressions will examine all aforementioned factors and their impact on IPO volume. Controlling for the impact of market valuations and business dynamism, this paper investigates IPO activity in a quarterly time-series setting and unveils the potential factors behind the significant downward trend of U.S. IPOs over time since the 2000’s. This paper finds that alternative capital, specifically venture capital deal volume and index returns, is the strongest determinant of IPO volume.
Between present and future : on the temporality of educational goals
Keywords: Education.

Contemporary educational practice and policy are dominated by certain assumptions about how time, children's learning and their good are connected. These assumptions are rarely questioned, and it seems that we often lose any sense of how practice and policy could be grounded in different and better ones. Specifically, learning time is unreflectively assumed to be a limited resource, usually a scarce one, to be used as effectively and efficiently as possible by teachers in order to promote particular educational goals, and the realization of these goals - e.g., skills, knowledge, mental dispositions, moral attitudes - is assumed to take place only in the more or less remote future. Following these assumptions, children's present experience, their here-and-now, is treated as meaningful only in so far as it serves a future achievement. In other words, educational time tends to become almost exclusively a "time on-task" and the child is commonly viewed as a deficient version of the educated adult he is supposed to become. Ultimately, teaching and learning on these assumptions is liable to turn into a form of training, losing what is uniquely "educational" about them. Further, children and youth cease to be respected as persons in their own right: they become mere means to the pursuit of rigidly predetermined future-ends. My dissertation asks how can education be conducted so that the present of the child, his here-and-now, is given attention, thought meaningfully about, and ultimately respected while his future is not neglected or predetermined but viewed with genuine and open-ended hope. The dissertation is composed of four papers. The main concern of the first two papers is the possibility and challenge of educationally appreciating the present and in a way it is a critique or at least a call for a reexamination of goal setting in schools and elsewhere. I show that a focus on children's interests and on the ephemeral characteristic of education have the potential to free learning and teaching from reductive instrumentalism. The next two papers add to this critique, but from another perspective, that of hope for a favorable future. The main questions asked in these papers are -- how can we teach without letting our hope harm or disrespect the child? And how can we educate in a way that inspires hope without determining in advance the hoped-for future? Here, I draw on Gabriel Marcel's and Jonathan Lear's analysis of the phenomenon of hope. Ultimately, I hope to show that appreciation for the present is compatible with a hopeful future-orientation as long as the educator views this future as truly open. Then, education can become a genuine alternative to an exclusive instrumental training and socializing.
Beyond minority : ethnicity, modernity, and the invention of the Qiang identity in China
Keywords: East Asian Languages and Cultures.

This dissertation examines how ethnic minority groups and minority cultures figure into the Chinese experience of modernity. It expands the scholarly understanding of the ethnic diversity of Chinese literature and culture. The dissertation systematically studies the "invention" of the identity of one of China's longest-standing ethnic entities, the Qiang. Ethnic minorities like the Qiang are not only integral to modern China's national imagination, but they also embody the dilemmas of reform-era China's (1980s-present) cultural anxieties. Using a dialogical approach, the dissertation probes how ethnic minorities are imagined into modern China's national narratives and how minorities in turn experience and critique modernity. The dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary methodology and traces the evolution of the Qiang identity in various historiographical, literary, and visual forms. It investigates how the concept of the "Qiang" as a pre-modern signifier of ethnic and racial otherness has been turned into symbols of cultural endurance and inter-ethnic solidarity in modern China. The dissertation also analyzes how minority intellectuals mobilize national cultural memories to narrate themselves into the core of Chinese cultural history, upsetting the entrenched hierarchy between a cultural "center" and its "peripheries." Furthermore, I examine how national and popular cinema portrays the Qiang native village and unveil how ethnic Qiang and Yi writers from southwest China engage in a unique "ethnographic poetics" to document their cultures, express minority spiritual world-views, and combat the secularizing tendencies of a fast developing China. This dissertation contributes to the growing scholarship on indigenous cultures on an international level by joining the debate on how the global neoliberal economy has both undermined minority groups' traditional lifestyles and provided them with a fertile ground to re-make their past.
Beyond the frictionless machine : economic analysis of energy policy in an imperfect world
Keywords: Management Science and Engineering.

Better understanding energy, how to harness and utilise it effectively, and what the implications of its use in these ways means from an individual to a more aggregate level are important topics for business, policy making, and research. Growing evidence pointing to the serious global consequences of society's energy usage further increases the importance of these goals. Furthermore it is increasingly clear that the costs and benefits of energy use are experienced disproportionately across the population. The changing nature of individual decision-making and how the actions of individuals affect an entire economic system also play important roles in our effort to implement effective energy and environmental policy. Both on the demand-side and the supply-side, trends of decentralisation and the increased adoption of more granular technologies are making it increasingly important to understand the role of the individual and their behaviour within the broader energy-economic-environmental system. This dissertation contributes to the intersection of the energy, environmental, and behavioural economics literatures with an emphasis on policy efficacy. It considers questions of efficient retail electricity pricing, externality-correcting policies, the role of behavioural bias in consumer decision making, and the implications of such bias for policy efficacy. Its approach is grounded in neoclassical economics, but it brings the newer field of behavioural economics into the fold where its inclusion strengthens the ability to answer the question at hand. There are two main projects in this dissertation. The first is an in-depth evaluation of the rooftop solar pricing policy of Net Energy Metering (NEM) from both an economic efficiency and distributional equity approach. Treatment of this topic is approached first theoretically and then complemented with a suite of numerical simulations. The second project represents an attempt to codify and unify considerations of behavioural bias in individual decision making and what implications they have for optimal policy efficacy. In this way it showcases behavioural economics as an extension of, rather than a challenge to, neoclassical theory.