VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Sequence-Dependent Self-Assembly of Supramolecular Nanofibers in Periodic Dynamic Block Copolymers
Keywords: Materials Science and Engineering
Block copolymers
Supramolecular chemistry
Self-assembly (Chemistry)
Polymer electrolytes
Text
Thesis

The ability for block copolymers (BCPs) to spontaneously self-assemble into a wide range of nanostructured morphologies has received considerable attention for their technological applications. To expand the range of nanostructures accessible to block copolymers, we design dynamic block copolymers (DBCPs) that combine the phase separation of traditional block copolymers with the supramolecular self-assembly of periodic dynamic polymers to achieve the spontaneous formation of supramolecular nanofibers with well-ordered phase domains. These DBCPs are multiblock copolymers, meaning they consist of multiple oligomers of each block type covalently connected by dynamic hydrogen bonding units. We prepared DBCPs in which the oligomer blocks are either connected in a statistically random sequence or in a periodically alternating sequence. In this work, we investigate how the block sequence affects the supramolecular nanofiber self-assembly, bulk mechanical properties, thermal phase behavior, and ionic conductivity of the DBCPs. We demonstrate that the DBCPs with a periodic block sequence self-assemble into supramolecular nanofibers with well-ordered PEG and PDMS domains, in contrast to those with a random sequence which do not form nanofibers but have disordered morphologies. The periodicity of the block sequence ensures the regularly spaced placement of the dynamic bonds along the polymer chain, which enables the facile stacking of the hydrogen bonding units into ordered 1D supramolecular nanofibers, which delays the onset of terminal flow by up to ~60 °C compared to the random block sequence. The hierarchically assembled supramolecular nanofibers display complex phase behaviors as a result of both block copolymer phase segregation and supramolecular interactions. Despite identical chemical composition, the periodic DBCPs demonstrate bulk ionic conductivity values almost an order of magnitude higher than their random counterparts due to the formation of nanofibers with well-ordered, interconnected, ion-transporting PEG domains.
SET APART: AN EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY, SEXUALITY, AND LOVE FOR BLACK CHRISTIAN WOMEN
Keywords: Black Women
Christian life
Afro-Protestantism
Identity
Sex customs
Validation
Text
Thesis

Scholars in Black Studies and Religious Studies have developed a wealth of knowledge regarding how Black women have historically and contemporarily navigated Afro-Protestant church environments. They discuss how Black women use these environments to cultivate meanings of womanhood through church work, as well as how the sexual politics of these environments impacted notions of purity, modesty, and sanctification. This study builds on this by drawing on three social media-based content creators who are Black Christian women and target their content at a Black female audience. JC, NR, and KG are all aged 18-24, are currently students, and keep Christianity at the center of their content. Their Black female identities are salient in their content, as is derived from their use of phrases and descriptors specifically related to the Black experiences. Between the three of them, I watched 123 total videos from their publicly available profiles on YouTube and Tik Tok. I extracted themes of sexual conservatism, purity, modesty, abstinence, self-love, and validation to make an argument that they rely on these things to cultivate meanings of Black womanhood in a contemporary landscape. These women overwhelmingly agree that sexual purity and modesty are what sets them apart from general society, also holding that valuing such things is the outcome of first pursuing close communion with God. They also make stern declarations that self-love is a biblically backed command, arguing that in order to love others properly it is required to love themselves. The unique experience of Black womanhood informs their attitudes toward validation. As Black women, they describe pressure to always look put together or present to the world in a certain way, which led them to seek validation from others rather than God and themselves. All these experiences are what they describe as characterizing Black Christian womanhood, and they use their social media platforms to communicate this to their audiences.
Settling and dispersion of inertial non-spherical particles in wavy flow
Keywords: Engineering.

Motivated by the problem of microplastics in the ocean, we investigated the transport of inertial non-spherical particles by waves and currents. We first experimentally studied the settling of rods, disks, and spheres settling in a flow characterized by linear surface gravity waves. We found that both particle shape and the flow inertia at the length scale of the particle influenced how particles sampled the flow and thereby their settling velocity. We then performed experiments on the dispersion of disks, rods, and cylinders in a wave-current flow and found that the presence waves significantly increased particle dispersion. The magnitude of the increase was a function of particle shape and size. Motivated by these results, we used numerical simulations to examine the impacts of a full set of nondimensional parameters on dispersion in a wave-current flow. We found that no parameters could be discounted, but a time scale ratio between the particle settling velocity and wave transport by Stokes drift had the greatest impact on dispersion. Overall, our results show that both particle and flow properties are important to account for when predicting particle transport in wavy flows
Severe Perineal Laceration and Episiotomy Among Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Ethnicities in California, 2007-2018
Keywords: Bane, Shalmali
AANHPI
Episiotomy
Severe Perineal Laceration
Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander
Text
Thesis

Background: Asian individuals have an increased risk for episiotomy and severe perineal lacerations during vaginal delivery. The Asian population in the US is diverse yet very few studies disaggregate Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) ethnic groups. Objective: This study investigated the variability of risk for episiotomy and severe perineal laceration among 16 disaggregated AANHPI groups, compared to Non-Hispanic White (NH White) individuals, and assessed whether maternal social, maternal health-related, and delivery-related factors explained the variability in risk. Study Design: Birth and fetal death certificate files linked to hospital discharge records were used to identify nulliparous, term, singleton, vertex vaginal deliveries among individuals who self-identified as AANHPI or Non-Hispanic White. Modified Poisson regression models were used to examine risks of episiotomy and severe perineal laceration among AANHPI subgroups compared with Non-Hispanic Whites. A sequential adjustment approach was utilized to assess if maternal social, maternal health-related, and delivery-related factors explain the variability of risk for the outcomes. Results: Among the 568,229 individuals in this study cohort, prevalence of episiotomy was 15.7% (N=89,105) and prevalence of severe perineal laceration was 6.8% (N=38,619). Prevalence of episiotomy ranged from 11% in Other Pacific Islander individuals to 26% in Vietnamese individuals. Prevalence of severe perineal laceration ranged from 3% in Guamanian individuals to 16% in Indian individuals. In a fully adjusted model, 7 of the AANHPI subgroups had a RR > 1.0 for episiotomy and 14 of the AANHPI subgroups had a RR > 1.0 for severe perineal laceration, compared to NH White individuals. After adjustment, Vietnamese individuals were at highest risk of episiotomy (adjusted relative risk 1.75 [95% CI 1.70, 1.80]), and Indian individuals were at highest risk of severe perineal laceration (adjusted relative risk 2.11 [95% CI 2.03, 2.18]). The greatest changes in relative risks for both episiotomy and severe perineal lacerations occurred when adding maternal social factors into the models. Conclusion: Social factors, in contrast to maternal health and clinical factors including episiotomy, had higher impact in the variability of risk of the outcomes among the AANHPI population. This study adds to the growing evidence of the diversity and disparity in health outcomes among AANHPI subgroups. the impact of social factors, including those not assessed in this study, on the risk of the outcomes among AANHPI ethnic groups merits further investigation. Study findings can also help inform health interventions, such as provider discussions with patients, tailored to AANHPI subgroups for preventive measures against severe perineal lacerations and routine episiotomy.
Sex and the interaction with the proteomic signature of depression
Keywords: Depression, Mental
Sex differences
Proteomics
Machine learning
Text
Thesis

Differences in the prevalence and burden of depression among women have been extensively documented, proving stable across culture, age, and time. Towards characterizing sexual dimorphism in the proteomics of depression, this investigation evaluated the serum levels of over 7,500 analytes on the SomaLogic SomaScan proteomic assay in 75 moderately to severely depressed patients enriched for endogenomorphic symptoms and 78 healthy controls. Combining differential expression and pathway enrichment analyses, the distribution of sex-dependent protein expression in depressed males and females was compared, and significantly sex-dependent proteins are explored. Differential protein expression results are used to inform the development of classifiers distinguishing between depressed patients and healthy controls.
An equal number of differentially expressed proteins were found between males and females, with males displaying more proteins with increased expression in cases versus controls and the opposite observed among females. The immune system was the only overrepresented pathway among the proteins with significant sex-dependent expression in depression. Individual examination of immune-identified proteins highlighted multiple proteins not previously associated with depression. Together, these proteins exhibited bidirectional support for alterations of immune and inflammatory protein expression between males and females. Results from classifier development showed that leveraging differentially expressed proteins resulted in improved classifier performance.
These findings have implications for research on therapeutic targets in depression and classifier development. Future investigations should elaborate on these findings through studies with larger sample sizes of phenotypically diverse cohorts.
Shielded Grandeur: A Conversation between Daoism and Frankfurt School in Chen Chuncheng’s Short Stories
Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Stanford Global Studies
East Asian Studies
Daoism
Ecocriticism
Chinese literature
Text
Thesis

Can Daoism serve as a tool in the criticism of modernity and offer an alternative way of living? This thesis intends to put the ideas in Daoism into dialogue with Frankfurt School scholars to analyze four short stories of a contemporary writer Chen Chuncheng 陳春成. In his first collection of short stories published in 2020, Chen juxtaposes a realistic world with a mystic cosmos through natural objects and the practice of crafts. This juxtaposition invokes both Frankfurt School’s criticism of the modern society and a Daoist worldview, both of which yearn for corporeal and experiential connections to a cosmos where every being, whether animated or not, is harmonically integrated into a grand course of the world. Relentlessly writing about the practice of a craft in various socio-historical settings and literary styles, Chen re-writes this motif that links Zhuang Zi’s allegorical tales with Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of the storytelling tradition. He situates this premodern practice in a modern setting to interrogate the efficacy of human language and communicability of experience, comparing the temporality of human society and that of nature.
Shifting Gears: Exploring the Dynamics of China's Energy Market Transition towards Renewable Energy Integration
Keywords: East Asian Studies
China
Renewable Energy
Policy
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Thesis

Climate change is an existential threat to humanity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is the primary driver of such a threat. Reducing GHG emissions has proved to be an intractable problem thus far given that most human productive activities result in GHG emissions. In particular, energy production accounts for ~70% of all GHG emissions globally.
In recent years, China has made several commitments to reducing its GHG emission and increase the share of its renewable energy. Such a position is quite different from its prior commitment and willingness to pursue economic growth regardless of the environmental costs. However, the magnitude of state-led investments and urgency of policy initiatives signal that China is quite serious in its endeavor to reach its climate goals.
Still, China's energy market has long been dominated by fossil fuels. The transition to a renewable driven energy market will inevitably encounter growing pains and obstacles, as evidenced by similar developments in the EU and China.
Short-term solar forecasting from all-sky images using deep learning
Keywords: Sustainability.
Energy Resources Engineering.

Integration of renewable resources, such as solar photovoltaics (PV), has been recognized as a crucial component in transition to a decarbonized energy system. However, the intermittent nature of solar power has challenged the large-scale deployment of PV. This variability is partly caused by short-term and local cloud events. Ground-based all-sky images captured with high temporal and spatial resolution have shown great promise as a source of input to forecast such fluctuations. In recent years, the development of deep learning has provided powerful tools to extract information from sky images and enhanced short-term solar forecasting capabilities. Despite these advancements, several major challenges have been identified: (1) sky image data are often imbalanced due to the tendency of installing PV systems in sunny locations; (2) cloud dynamics are not well captured by end-to-end deep solar forecasting models and uncertainty of predictions are rarely quantified; and (3) high-quality standardized sky image datasets for solar forecasting method development and benchmark are limited. In this dissertation, we explore ways to address these challenges by focusing on predicting the power output of a 30 kW roof-top PV system up to 15-minute ahead using a locally collected sky image dataset.
Silicon nanowires devices in energy and environmental applications
Keywords: Engineering.
Materials Science and Engineering.

This thesis focuses on the development of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) and their applications in the fields of thermoelectric (TE) devices, on-demand hydrogen (H2) generation, and wastewater treatment. SiNWs have been synthesized with different morphologies and compositions, leading to tunable electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and TE power factor. In the first part of the thesis, SiNW-based TE devices were fabricated and characterized for their TE performance. The SiNWs were synthesized with a high aspect ratio and high porosity, leading to a high surface area-to-volume ratio and lower thermal conductivity. The TE devices based on SiNWs demonstrated high TE performance, with a high Seebeck coefficient and a low thermal conductivity. The enhancement in TE performance was achieved through the optimization of SiNW dimensions and porosity, as well as the doping of the SiNWs with impurities. The results of this study suggest that SiNWs can be promising candidates for high-performance TE devices. In the second part of the thesis, the potential of SiNWs as a material for on-demand H2 generation was explored. The high surface area of the SiNWs makes them highly effective reactants for water and silicon reactions, which are crucial steps in H2 production. The unique porous structure of the SiNWs also allows for the efficient transport of reactants and products, further enhancing their H2 generation performance. The results of this study suggest that SiNWs can be a cost-effective and efficient way to produce H2, which has significant economic and environmental benefits. In the final part of the thesis, SiNWs were used as a catalyst in the field of environmental engineering for the generation of hydroxyl radicals (*OH) from hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The combination of SiNWs with graphene oxide (GO) and Ni-doped FeOOH (Ni:FeOOH) was shown to enhance the generation of *OH from H2O2. The highly reactive *OH is well-known for its ability to efficiently and effectively degrade organic pollutants in wastewater. The unique porous structure of the SiNWs provides a large surface area for the interaction between the catalyst and H2O2, resulting in high reaction efficiency. The results of this study suggest that SiNWs can be used as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly material for wastewater treatment. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the potential of SiNWs as versatile materials for various applications in the fields of energy and environmental engineering. SiNWs have shown great promise as high-performance TE materials due to their unique physical and chemical properties. In addition, SiNWs have been shown to be effective in on-demand H2 generation and wastewater treatment, making them a promising candidate for clean energy generation and environmental remediation. Further research can be conducted to optimize the TE performance of SiNWs, explore the potential of SiNWs as a material for other energy-related applications, and investigate the use of SiNWs in other environmental remediation processes
Single cell examination of the human placenta
Keywords: Medicine.
Genetics.

The placenta, a vital organ for fetal development and species propagation, plays a crucial role in sustaining the fetus by providing nutrients, oxygen, and hormonal support. Despite extensive morphological descriptions, the molecular organization and characterization of cell types within the placenta remain limited. Recent advancements in single-cell RNA sequencing technologies have revealed various trophoblast and fetal cell subtypes, but the open-chromatin regulatory landscape has yet to be described. This dissertation aims to address this knowledge gap by employing a multi-dimensional approach, encompassing single-cell transcriptomics, epigenomics, and copy number variation (CNV) analysis. The study explores placental dynamics across the first trimester and compares them to the third trimester placenta, providing valuable insights into the cellular composition, differentiation trajectories, and regulatory landscape of early placental development. Utilizing single-cell transcriptomics, we identified three distinct syncytiotrophoblast subtypes in the first trimester placenta, each characterized by unique gene expression profiles and marker genes. We further created bulk open chromatin maps to identify active transcription factor motifs within different placental cell types and subtypes. By analyzing genetic variation and CNVs within the placental genome, we also gained insights into the potential influence of structural genomic alterations on the placental regulatory landscape and gene expression patterns. Our findings provide a comprehensive understanding of the modality within the placenta during the late first trimester, as placental cells adeptly respond to the establishment of maternal blood supply, facilitating nutrient and oxygen transfer to the developing fetus. The integration of single-cell transcriptomics, epigenomics, and CNV analysis in this study enhances our understanding of the intricate processes underlying placental development. These findings contribute to the broader knowledge of the placenta's critical role in pregnancy and its implications for maternal and fetal health. Moreover, the identification of specific CNVs and their integration with transcriptional and epigenetic regulation opens avenues for future investigations into the functional consequences of genetic variation, pregnancy complications, and potential therapeutic interventions
Situating neural function within a biologically plausible optimization framework
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Psychology.

There is a promise at the heart of neuroscientific research: understanding the brain will provide insights that improve health and well being. To fulfill this promise, our theories of neural function must be able to operate 'at scale'---i.e., generalize to naturalistic environments. However, even in well-controlled experimental settings, neuroscientific theories often fail to replicate, much less generalize. Recent advances in computer science have created computational frameworks which can operate at scale and necessarily generalize across experiments. But leveraging these methods to understand neural function beyond canonical visual cortex has had limited success. In this dissertation I demonstrate how these methods can be used to formalize and evaluate theories of neural function downstream of canonical sensory cortex. First, I review the historical challenges in understanding perirhinal cortex (PRC), including a longstanding debate over PRC involvement in perception (chapter 1). To formalize and evaluate PRC involvement in visual object perception, I situate lesion, electrophysiological, and behavioural data within a deep learning computational framework. This work resolves decades of apparent inconsistencies in the experimental literature by integrating results from human (chapter 2) and monkey (chapter 3) experimental data within a 'stimulus-computable' modeling framework. I extend this work to better isolate and characterize PRC contributions to visual object perception (chapter 4). Finally, I synthesize neuroscientific findings from multiple species to provide an account of PRC involvement in visual perception (chapter 5). Taken together, these data suggest that PRC supports visual object perception by integrating over the sequential outputs of canonical visual cortices. I conclude by describing how, to further understand how PRC supports these behaviors, this neuroscientific data can be situated within a biologically plausible optimization framework: we are well-positioned to understand perirhinal function using optimization approaches from computer science, constrained to reflect what we know about the underlying biology. This approach promises not only to formalize the relationship between experimental variables and PRC function, but to instantiate our theories of neural function in a way that is designed to operate at scale
Slow and fast atoms : modeling strong field effects on Yb for slowing and quantum imaging of magnetic fields
Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Physics.

Known for the ultra-stable clock transition, ytterbium atoms are one of the leading candidates for atomic clocks and qubits for quantum computing. This thesis tells two untold stories of ytterbium atoms, slow and fast. The first half of the thesis covers an alternative laser slowing method using only the narrow 1S0-3P1 cooling transition that utilizes amplitude-modulated light to induce a series of stimulated emissions. This slowing method shows promise as a starting point for many cold-atom experiments. I present a numerical model of this process and how it can help engineer optical forces on ytterbium and other alkaline earth-like atoms. In the second half, I show how a combination of fast ytterbium atoms and a similar laser setup enables visual imaging of magnetic field gradients and contours. Based on Autler-Townes splitting and the Hanle effect, this unique magnetometer can measure both magnitude and direction of the magnetic fields based on understanding of dark striped patterns in the atomic fluorescence. Both aspects of this thesis bring to light the unique features of the narrow 1S0-3P1 transition in ytterbium with potential to advance quantum sensing.