VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Utilising OPGEE to Estimate the Carbon Intensity of Upstream Global Crude Oil Production for 2021
Keywords: carbon intensity
lifecycle assessment
upstream oil production
Text
Thesis

This thesis estimates the carbon intensity of global upstream crude oil production with a specific focus on 2021. The study analyzes changes in the model from 2015 to 2021 and the impact of changes in global crude oil production practices and data progress. Alternative strategies for data processing and analysis are explored. The study also takes a closer look at specific countries to analyze the impact of factors like policy changes, technological advancements, and the COVID-19 pandemic on carbon intensity. The overall global carbon intensity decreases, largely due to the changes in the model. The findings reveal significant variability in carbon intensity across different regions and countries, with some regions seeing a decrease in carbon intensity while others experiencing an increase. The study provides insights into the most effective strategies for estimating carbon intensity and contributes to a better understanding of the carbon footprint of global upstream crude oil production, with implications for policymakers, industry stakeholders, and researchers working on reducing carbon emissions.
Utilizing Half-Cell Measurements to Quantify Electrode Specific Degradation in Lithium-ion Batteries
Keywords: Lam, Vivek
Energy Science and Engineering
Industrial electric trucks > Batteries
Battery industry
Battery charging stations (Electric vehicles)
Battery Degradation
Lithium ion batteries
Energy storage
Text
Thesis

As the world pushes towards a renewable energy economy, lithium-ion batteries continue to play a critical role in this transition as
an energy storage technology. To accelerate this transition, a deep understanding of battery degradation is necessary to engineer their safety, lifetimes, and performance. In a full cell measurement, degradation at the cathode and anode is convoluted. Methods such as differential voltage fitting (DVF) have been proposed to separate contributions of the total degradation to degradation at individual electrodes. However, these methods need experimental justification to be trusted in informing battery design. This work tackles this issue by dismantling full cells at various states of health (SOH), and reconstructing them in half cells to separately quantify anode and cathode degradation. The procedure developed in this thesis is able to produce reliable and consistent half-cell voltage curves for the anode and cathode that demonstrate the loss of electrode capacity at different SOH. This procedure is demonstrated on 3 full cells at different SOHs, and lays the groundwork for a larger experimental campaign to rigorously test the effects of full cell degradation on individual electrodes.
Vaccine-induced reprogramming of innate immunity to stimulate broad protection against diverse pathogens
Keywords: Medicine.
Microbiology and Immunology.

Immunological memory is a fundamental property of the adaptive immune system. Vaccination stimulates the generation of antigen-specific memory B and T cells which can last a lifetime and respond in a heightened manner to a subsequent encounter with the specific pathogen. Emerging evidence suggests that the innate immune response, which has long been thought to be short-lived, can also display a memory-like behavior by remembering an encounter with a microbe and responding more vigorously upon a secondary encounter with a diverse array of microbes. Unlike memory in the adaptive immune system, which is highly antigen-specific, "innate memory" appears to be antigen agnostic. However, the immunological basis of such "innate memory" is poorly defined, and is the subject of this thesis. Here, we used a systems biological approach to analyze the immune responses to adjuvanted and live attenuated vaccines. We mapped out the single cell transcriptomic and epigenomic landscape of lymph nodes following vaccination of mice with an adjuvant that targets TLRs (3M-052, a TLR7/8 agonist emulsified in alum [3M-052/alum]), and the live attenuated yellow fever vaccine (YF-17D). We found 3M-052/alum was capable of inducing a persistent innate antiviral signature in myeloid cells, suggesting the promising use of this adjuvant in enhancing long-lasting innate immunity. In addition, we profiled the immune mechanisms to BCG vaccination, a live attenuated vaccine that has been regarded to have broadly protective effects against diverse pathogens. Our findings revealed the feedback of the BCG-specific CD4 T cells in imprinting an antiviral state in myeloid, and epithelial cells in the lung through IFN-g signaling, leading to protection against SARS-CoV-2 and influenza. These findings provide a framework for the immunological parameters in the design of a broadly protective vaccine against diverse pathogens. We then applied this knowledge to design an adjuvanted vaccine strategy for achieving broad protection. We found repeated intranasal immunization with liposomes containing the TLR ligands GLA/3M-052 and ovalbumin to be potentially effective in antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 and influenza. These results pave the way for harnessing the innate immune system in developing a universal vaccine that protects against multiple pathogens.
A versatile CRISPR/Cas13d platform for multiplexed transcriptomic regulation and metabolic engineering in primary human T cells
Keywords: Engineering.
Bioengineering.

Decades of research in synthetic biology and immunology have endowed us with the blueprints for a new therapeutic modality: the engineered immune cell. Specifically, Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has proven to be a breakthrough in the treatment of relapsed or refractory hematologic cancers. Furthermore, recent advances in synthetic biology, such as the discovery and development of CRISPR/Cas9 technologies that facilitate precision genome engineering and control of molecular-cellular processes, offer innovative solutions to major challenges that limit the use of CAR T cells in solid tumors and other cancers. However, current CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tools are limited in their safety, efficacy, and scope. To address these challenges, we present MEGA (Multiplexed Effector Guide Arrays), a versatile and multi-functional platform for programmable and scalable regulation of the T cell transcriptome using the RNA-guided, RNA-targeting activity of CRISPR/Cas13d. MEGA enables quantitative, reversible, and massively-multiplexed gene knockdown in primary human T cells without targeting or cutting genomic DNA. Applying MEGA to a model of CAR T cell dysfunction, we demonstrate robust multiplexed suppression of canonical exhaustion-associated genes, perform a first-in-class combinatorial CRISPR/Cas13d screen to uncover paired regulators of T cell proliferation, and utilize these findings to enhance the anti-tumor activity of dysfunctional CAR T cells. We also establish a novel method to link the expression of multiple endogenous genes to the dosage of an FDA-approved drug, which we use to regulate CAR activation strength in a receptor-independent manner. Lastly, we generate MEGA CAR T cells with a diverse range of gene-set perturbations -- with up to 10 genes targeted at once -- and functionally disrupt an entire metabolic pathway to counteract adenosine-driven T cell immunosuppression. Compared to conventional genome editing, MEGA provides a unique synthetic immunology toolkit with applications in cancer immunotherapy, next-generation CAR T cell therapies, and beyond
Vibration and acoustic measurements of guitars with applications to luthiery, synthesis, and audio effects
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Music.

Integral to the music-making process is the instrument being played by the musician. Musicians are particular about their instruments, often searching long and hard for the sound they desire. Instrument makers regularly aim to build an instrument with a specific sound to support a given style of music or a player's preferences. However, the acoustic effects of these design changes are not well understood, and systematically testing the auditory effect of geometry or material changes with physical instruments is highly costly and time-consuming. This thesis explores methods designed to allow researchers and luthiers to more easily study design and material changes to instruments, providing a framework for auralizing the sound of an instrument that does not physically exist. Particular emphasis is placed on the acoustic guitar and its construction. Vibration and acoustic measurement methods for analyzing stringed instruments and their components are discussed. In particular, low-cost tools, such as impact hammers, accelerometers, and microphones, are presented, along with an augmentation of a laser Doppler vibrometer to perform scanning measurements. A purpose-built wood measurement device is presented with analysis to measure the internal material parameters of the wood. Simulated vibrational responses from finite element models are compared to the measurements with an optimization routine to predict the material parameters more accurately. A signal processing method is presented to process an electric guitar pickup to sound like an arbitrary virtual acoustic guitar. This method relies on the measured or simulated bridge admittance of the electric and acoustic instrument and provides an opportunity to study the sound of an instrument before it is constructed. Lastly, four studies into the guitar and its acoustics are presented. The first two focus on the construction process of acoustic guitars, the third looks at the influence of neck resonances, and the fourth explores the vibratory behavior of a resonator guitar. This thesis provides a framework for future studies into the construction and sound of stringed instruments, focusing on guitars.
Virtual reality tracking data : insights, risks, opportunities
Keywords: Engineering.

Much has been studied concerning the use of virtual reality (VR) as a display. However, relatively less has been performed with VR as a sensing tool, or as I lay out in this dissertation, an observatory. Using three studies, I demonstrate that the collection of head and hands pose data in current consumer VR, an instantiation of the paradigm of VR as an observatory, enables collection of body motion data in high temporal and spatial fidelity in large groups which is valuable for quantitative analysis regarding the study of nonverbal communication and poses risks to immersant privacy through biometrics. The three studies are (1) a study of person-to-person interactions through gaze and proxemics, (2) a study of synchrony measurement by exploring content validity, consistency, and predictive validity among 9300 measures of synchrony, (3) a demonstration of the identifiability of this data, and the effects of time upon identifiability
Vision restoration in a newly characterized porcine model of traumatic optic neuropathy
Keywords: Medicine.

Traumatic optic neuropathy (TON) is a devastating condition that can occur after blunt or penetrating trauma to the head, leading to visual impairment or blindness. Despite these debilitating effects, no clinically available therapeutic targets neuroprotection or promotes axon regeneration in this or any optic neuropathy. Limited data in large animal models is a major obstacle to advancing treatments toward clinical therapeutics. In Chapter 1, I review pathophysiology, epidemiology, and animal models of TON. In Chapter 2, I refine a newly developed surgical model of TON in Yucatan minipigs. First, we validate the model by demonstrating visual impairment by flash visual-evoked potential and retinal ganglion cell degeneration and death. Next, we develop and optimize a delivery method and non-toxic dosing of intravitreal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). Finally, we show that intravitreal injection of BDNF and cAMP rescues visual function and protects against retinal ganglion cell death and optic nerve axon degeneration. In Chapter 3, we determine the time course of porcine neutralizing antibody development against a virally-mediated gene therapy. We demonstrate that, despite antibody production in response to a primary recombinant AAV2 exposure, a secondary exposure to AAV2 may result in transduced cells. In Chapter 4, we perform two-photon imaging with single-cell resolution of fluorescently labeled RGCs in a whole explanted porcine eye. In Chapter 5, I provide concluding concepts and discuss future directions. Together these data in a pre-clinical large animal model advance our understanding of and ability to model TON and further identify and develop candidate clinical therapeutics
Vision, thoughts, desire : photographic objects in Russian metafiction
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Slavic Languages and Literatures.

My dissertation, "Vision, Thoughts, Desire: Photographic Objects in Russian Metafiction, " explores the metaphors of photographic devices, photographic objects, and the pre-photographic desire to see the world truthfully, all as essential elements of metafiction in Russia. After photography was invented in 1839, physiological sketches were often compared to it by critics and writers, who considered its mechanical reproduction devoid of artistic quality. I argue that some writers realized that photography, in fact, gave people new methods to think and write about an invisible area of human activities: the artist's subjective perception of reality. The mechanical structure of photographic cameras, consisting of the camera obscura, a light-collecting box, and light-revealing walls, plates, or films, presented a way to conceptualize how light is collected and visualized as images, not only in cameras but also in human perception. I show that the photographic technology of their era prompted Nikolai Gogol, Andrei Bely, and Vladimir Nabokov to rethink how their own vision, thoughts, and desires were materialized in their literary works, thus allowing us to see their works as metafiction. My dissertation aims to reinterpret the affinity between photography and literature. Every photograph, besides its main object, truthfully records the history of how its representation was created: the approximate exposure time, the focal length, and the photographer's framing, staging, and editing. These meta-data become more apparent when a photograph distorts its object, because that lets a viewer recognize its artificiality. Through this allegory, my dissertation searches for the meta-data of "vision, thoughts, and desire." I explore how Gogol, Bely, and Nabokov, writing in the age of photography, develop self-reflexive narrative techniques based on the deceptions permitted by contemporary photographic mechanisms. I analyze the development of self-reflexivity in both fiction and photography in the context of the expectations of truthful representation and the technological deficiencies that prevent the fulfillment of this desire
Vision-based tracking and shape recovery of non-cooperative targets using distributed space systems
Keywords: Engineering.
Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Rendezvous with unknown, non-cooperative targets in space is a growing field of research with applications ranging from asteroid characterization to spacecraft servicing. This requires generating a shape model of the target and estimates of observer-target relative positioning to enable safe navigation and close proximity operations. The majority of proposed or executed space missions to unknown targets involve a single servicer spacecraft equipped with high-computation algorithms, expensive hardware, and human involvement. In contrast, this work investigates the use of Distributed Space Systems (DSS) for vision-based tracking and shape recovery of non-cooperative targets. DSS are two or more spacecraft which interact to accomplish objectives otherwise very difficult or impossible to achieve by a single asset. Although they have had significant breakthroughs in guidance, navigation, and control in recent years, research on their joint use for 3D model reconstruction of spaceborne targets is lacking. This work aims to bring methods often used for robotics and autonomous vehicles to the space domain, especially through the use of a DSS. This is accomplished through a series of in-depth simulations and analyses of asteroid and spacecraft rendezvous operations. First, the use of keypoint descriptors for asteroids is investigated and compared with conventional spaceborne techniques based on crater identification. Second, single- and multi-agent stereovision and structure from motion for asteroids and spacecraft are comparatively assessed. Third, novel techniques are developed to improve structure from motion for non-cooperative spacecraft. Finally, vision-based tracking and 3D reconstruction techniques are showcased for autonomous, simultaneous navigation and characterization of an asteroid using a swarm of three spacecraft. Overall, this body of work demonstrates the potential of combining robotics and computer vision methods with multiple agents in space for on-orbit inspection and servicing.
Visual content creation and editing via structural and functional hierarchies
Keywords: Engineering.

Starting from low-level perceptual input, humans can automatically infer higher-level semantically meaningful structures in the visual world. In this thesis, I present my work on systems that extract and leverage such hierarchies for visual content creation and editing. First, I present Motion Programs, a hierarchical motion representation for human actions that captures both low-level motion and its high-level description as motion concepts. This representation enables human motion description, interactive editing, and controlled synthesis of novel video sequences within a single framework. Next, I present ProGRIP, a novel shape program representation that uses implicit functions to represent parts. ProGRIP outperforms existing structured representations in shape reconstruction fidelity and semantic segmentation and enables interactive editing. Finally, I present a model for realistically inserting people into scenes. Our model can infer the set of realistic poses given the scene context, re-pose the reference person, and harmonize the composition. We train a large-scale diffusion model to perform this task. At inference time, our model can also be prompted differently to perform several different auxiliary tasks, such as person hallucination, scene hallucination, and cloth swapping. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations show that our method synthesizes more realistic human appearance and more natural human-scene interactions than prior work
Visual play in Russian gothic literature : epistemological quests in 1793-1840
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Slavic Languages and Literatures.

Visual Play in Russia Gothic Literature: Epistemological Quests in 1793--1840 Jiyoung Hong This dissertation explores the intersections between Russian Gothic aesthetics and visual technology, tracing how late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Russian poets and writers posed epistemological questions and demonstrated the establishment of a subjective vision. These authors created visual play inspired by Gothic aesthetics during a period when they rapidly imported enhanced lighting technologies and new visual devices. I analyze Gothic works by Nikolai Karamzin (1766--1826), Vasily Zhukovsky (1783--1852), Nikolai Gogol (1809--1852), and Vladimir Odoevsky (1804--1869), all of whom associated the transformation of characters' visual perception with the ongoing development of visual technologies: "Chinese shadow" shows, magic lanterns, cosmoramas, and new forms of street lighting. I discuss this problem of vision in the Russian Gothic literature in which characters search in unknown, dark spaces for the hidden truths; they have blurred or confused vision. In this regard, I explore how the Russian Gothic poses an epistemological question that is rarely dealt with in scholarship, focusing on how the authors understand Plato's allegory of the cave, which describes prisoners who see only the shadows on the wall projected by a bonfire; their visual perception is inaccurate. By interpreting visual technologies as a Gothic tool used to invite characters into darkness and to make a projection of a Gothic world, I examine how the authors reproduce Plato's cave in their Gothic works. I argue that these writers contributed to showing the epistemological development of Russian characters by situating them in various types of "caves," where the boundary between reality and fantasy is blurred. My project sheds new light on late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Russia by defining the period as simultaneously a time of the development of visual technologies and a time of subjective vision. In literature, the Russian Gothic took on the role of articulating not only the questioning of vision but the formation of a new subjectivity.
Voting across divisions : how ethnicity and conflict shape political preferences in Myanmar and beyond
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Political Science.

In societies torn by ethnic division and armed conflict, can people's preferences converge on a national political actor? If so, what explains the variation in people's support for national governments in these settings? Using novel data and a survey in a politically fragile country, this dissertation seeks to explain the support for national governments in conflict-torn societies. In the first paper, I develop a novel method to estimate the extent to which voters vote across their ethnic identities to support a national party. I apply it to analyze Myanmar's historic 2020 elections and show that the National League for Democracy (NLD) party candidates won on average twice as much vote shares as they would have received if everyone only voted for co-ethnic candidates. In the second paper, I show that the variation in ethnic minorities' trust for Myanmar's new pro-democracy national government in exile, the National Unity Government (NUG), can be explained by the variation in their exposure to ethnic rebel governance. Results from an original online survey show that, all else equal, those with more reported exposure to positive rebel governance such as healthcare and education have lower trust for the NUG, given that the rebel is not viewed as explicitly supporting the NUG. In the last paper, I examine whether conflict outcomes can predict the changes in wartime government party vote shares before and after conflict termination, in both areas minimally and heavily affected by violence. From case by case analyses of 22 conflicts and their constituency-level election outcomes, I find some support for the claim that more victorious outcomes boost government party vote shares, although some major exceptions call for more nuanced qualification of the claim. In all, the dissertation demonstrates that people's preferences in conflict-torn and ethnically divided societies can converge on national political actors, and that this preference is moderated by people's exposure to rebel governance and their assessment of conflict outcomes.