VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Processing short message communications in low-resource languages [electronic resource]
Keywords: Linguistics

This dissertation explores the nature of the variation inherent to short message communications in the majority of the world's languages, and the extent to which modeling this variation can improve natural language processing systems. Text messaging may be the most linguistically diverse form of digital communication that has ever existed, but it is almost completely unstudied. Three sets of short messages are studied, in the Haitian Kreyol, Chichewa, and Urdu languages. It is found that all three contain the substantial spelling variations that result from a productive use of affixes/compounds, from phonological/orthographic variation, and from the typographic errors that arise from speakers with varying literacy. For example, the 600 Chichewa messages have more than 40 spellings for the word odwala ('patient'), with most appearing just once. This is problematic for many current approaches to natural language processing, which assume the level of standardization that is found in formal written English. However, as the variation is linguistically predictable it follows patterns that can be modeled. The dissertation first looks at automated methods for modeling this variation, finding that language independent methods can perform as accurately as language specific methods, indicating a broad deployment potential. Turning to categorization, it is shown that by generalizing across the spelling variations, we can, for example, implement classification systems that can more accurately distinguish emergency messages from those that are less time critical, even when incoming messages contain a large number of previously unknown spellings of words. Looking across languages, the words that vary the least in translation are named entities, meaning that it is possible to leverage loosely aligned translations to automatically extract the names of people, places and organizations. Taken together, it is hoped that the results will lead to more accurate natural language processing systems for low-resource languages and, in turn, lead to greater services for their speakers.
The promotion of criminal justice in times of transition, the inter-American system of human rights and the cases of Argentina, El Salvador and Peru [electronic resource]
Keywords: Law.

Abstract Late twentieth-century Latin America was characterized by a succession of authoritarian regimes, state-sponsored death squads, paramilitary activities and a resulting dismaying number of victims. These victims suffered old and new modalities of state terror. Together with the human rights attorneys who assisted them, the victims have been the primary artifices of innovative methods to hold perpetrators accountable. To their credit is the successive outlawing of amnesty provisions in the sub-region, either by the domestic judiciaries or by the political branches of power. Indeed, Latin American states have recently prosecuted an impressive number of perpetrators of human rights abuses, chief among them former military and democratically elected heads of state. In the wake of the policy debate between peace and justice, the states of the sub-region have preponderantly veered toward justice. Due to its widespread nature, this trend has been characterized as a "justice cascade." Scholars from within and outside the region have started to acknowledge the influence of a regional force in the cascade's formation and, more notably, expansion. This influence is first and foremost a regional force, namely the normative, procedural and structural directives coming from both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. My dissertation describes the contribution made by the victims of state terror to the creation, expansion and eventual reformulation of the Inter-American directives on this front. At the same time, it explores the role played by the victims of state terror, their legal representatives and criminal law judges in advancing states' compliance with the Commission and the Court's directives in a context of public hostility to the idea that those accused of criminal offenses deserve human rights. On this note, my dissertation highlights the obstacles faced by the victims of state terror and their legal representatives in promoting fair and effective prosecutions of the crimes of the past and of the present, as well as the key alliances they forged in their pursuit. Finally, my dissertation identifies crucial variables to be taken into consideration when designing an explanatory study of the differentiated impact of the Inter-American case law upon the several Latin American transitions.
Protein engineered biomaterials for muscle tissue engineering applications [electronic resource]
Keywords: Chemistry

Abstract There is a tremendous need for muscle regeneration therapies to replace tissue that is lost due to disease or injury. This work is focused on developing engineered replacement therapies for lost or damaged skeletal and cardiovascular muscle tissue. In order to create viable, clinically relevant regenerative therapies, I have used recombinant protein technology to synthesize a family of protein-engineered biomaterials that incorporate critical cues for the recapitulation of in vivo muscle tissue conditions. Crucially, these biomaterials allow the independent tuning of multiple biomaterial properties including cell adhesivity, biomaterial stiffness, and topographical cues. Each of these biomaterial properties impacts muscle cell behavior independently as well as in concert. I have exploited the range of biomaterial tunability available to us to identify biomaterial conditions that enable production of striated muscle tissue using primary human skeletal muscle myoblasts (hMBs) that may be electrically paced. I have further demonstrated that mouse model skeletal muscle cell lines do not accurately recapitulate primary human myoblast behavior in response to biomaterial properties, particularly with respect to integrin-matrix interactions. Importantly, the expression of mature muscle markers that indicate muscle cell differentiation could be accelerated simply by changing biomaterial stiffness and introducing biomaterial microtopography. Finally, as demonstration that this protein-engineered biomaterial strategy may have application in the regeneration of myocardial as well as skeletal muscle tissue, cardiomyocytes derived from human embryonic stem cells exhibited good cell viability and improved contractility on these biomaterials. This thesis represents important advancements in the development of regenerative muscle tissue engineered constructs.
Providential empire [electronic resource] : Russia's religious intelligentsia and the First World War
Keywords: History

"Providential Empire: Russia's Religious Intelligentsia and the First World War" analyzes and contextualizes controversial commentary on the First World War by Russian religious philosophers, primarily Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdiaev, Vladimir Frantsevich Ern, Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov, Prince Evgenii Nikolaevich Trubetskoi, and the Symbolist Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov. Examining the prominence of the concept of Providence in their thought, the dissertation shows how Christian Providentialism can become the basis of an ideological worldview. Belief in the ability of the human mind to perceive the hand of God in history and unfolding events, along with belief in the need to interpret this ostensible evidence of the hand of God as callings to which individual believers or collective actors, such as nations, are meant to respond, leads to the emergence of a "politics of Providentialism." While expressed in a specifically Russian idiom and shaped by a specifically Russian context, the religious intelligentsia's politics of Providentialism was not unique to Russia, and was derived naturally from a traditionalist Christianity that arose in late modern Europe to stand against the perceived cultural threat of nihilism. This politics of Providentialism was one of the defining characteristics of the late imperial Russian religious intelligentsia, and, a socially significant phenomenon, it had a substantial presence in late imperial Russian civil society.
Quality control at the ribosome [electronic resource] : insights into the principles of cotranslational ubiquitination
Keywords: Biology.

One of the most critical times in the life of a protein is during its biogenesis at the ribosome. A nascent polypeptide cannot achieve its final fold while still bound to the ribosome, and is at risk of being accessed by the cellular quality control machinery. However, the extent to which cotranslational ubiquitination and degradation occur remains under debate. Conflicting reports exist, ranging from 40% of nascent chains being subject to cotranslational degradation to claims that nascent polypeptides are, on the contrary, protected from degradation. Here, we developed a direct and quantitative method to determine the extent of cotranslational ubiquitination using ribosome isolation coupled to ubiquitin-affinity purification. We find that cotranslational ubiquitination occurs at low levels, and that at least a fraction of ubiquitinated nascent chains is targeted to the proteasome for degradation. We determined which proteins are susceptible to cotranslational ubiquitination and find that intrinsic sequence features determine the cotranslational ubiquitination of a specific subset of proteins. These proteins are more aggregation-prone, highly expressed and longer than 400 amino acids. Short proteins seem to be protected from cotranslational ubiquitination. One such mechanism could be the cotranslational formation of folded structures, which lead us to disrupt cotranslational folding by deleting chaperones or through drugs such as azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (AZC). Both lead to an increase of cotranslational ubiquitination as observed by pulse-labeling as well as microarray analysis. Ribosome-associated chaperones and cotranslational folding seem to have evolved to prevent a high degree of nascent chain degradation/ubiquitination. Similarly to ribosome-associated chaperones, the ubiquitin-proteasome-system may also be able to access nascent protein chains, but rather target them for degradation. We therefore determined which parts of the UPS mediate cotranslational ubiquitination. A clear E2-E3 relationship could however not be established, possibly due to redundancy in the cellular ubiquitin ligase network. Finally, we find that disruption of mRNA quality control components also leads to enhanced ubiquitination of nascent chains, suggesting that cotranslational quality control serves to avoid the production of erroneous proteins and protect the cell from resulting toxicity.
Quantum imaging of dirac materials [electronic resource]
Keywords: Applied Physics

The realization of massless Dirac fermions in condensed matter systems has led to new opportunities for exploring exotic physics stemming from relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. "Dirac materials" which embed Dirac fermions, such as graphene and topological insulators, are now distinguished as a new class of materials and have focused large research efforts. Here we use Scanning Tunneling Microscopy/Spectroscopy (STM/STS) to probe the electronic properties of these materials with sub-atomic resolution in real space, along with spectral and momentum-space measurements. We studied two variants of these categories: molecular graphene and antimony. Antimony is a fundamental parent matrix of various topological insulator compounds, which realizes topological surface states that are comprised of Dirac fermions. Molecular graphene is a new Dirac material we built, which is an artificial graphene-like structure assembled by arranging molecules to create a honeycomb lattice of electrons drawn from normal two-dimensional surface states. These experiments provide an unprecedented level of control over Dirac fermions and allow experimental access to a set of phenomena that has previously been considered only theoretically.
A race forged by hatred [electronic resource] : black identity, racial science, and culture, 1896-1916
Keywords: History.

This dissertation explores the creation of Afro-American social identity during the Progressive Era by examining black intellectuals use of racial science to define a new racial identity for black Americans. Because historians have been locked into an analytical structure favoring the voices of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois over those of other black leaders in the Progressive Era, we have missed the bulk of black intellectuals' analysis of race during that time. By resurrecting the contributions of black leaders other than Washington and Du Bois, we can get a richer understanding of a time of dramatic change in American race relations. During the Progressive Era, black intellectuals Pauline E. Hopkins, Kelly Miller, Jr., Charles V. Roman, William Hannibal Thomas, Monroe Nathan Work, and R. R. Wright, Jr., used racial science to reassess the nature of race and Afro-Americans' future in America. By engaging in scientific debates, and challenging the validity of doctrines used to justify excluding black Americans from social and civil life, they came to the strikingly modern conclusion that race was nothing more than a social construct. American races could not be distinguished based on biology or physical appearance. Black intellectuals understanding of their racial destiny changed during the first decades of the twentieth century. At first, many Progressive-Era black thinkers expected that the freedmen and their descendants would assimilate into the white race just as Frederick Douglass and other Reconstruction black leaders had desired. They believed that by educating Americans as to the scientifically correct, social nature of race they could cause white race prejudice to abate, thereby permitting black citizens to join with white Americans in a unitary national culture. But, by 1916 they had concluded that white race prejudice would not diminish in the short run. They abandoned hopes for assimilation into a single national culture and began to imbue their race with a distinct set of cultural ideals that would empower Afro-Americans in their long-term struggle to obtain its human rights in America.
Rapid vascular magnetic resonance imaging [electronic resource]
Keywords: Electrical Engineering

Visualization of the blood vessel anatomy and the measurement of information related to blood flow play a crucial role in the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an especially attractive modality for this purpose because of its ability to provide morphological as well as flow-related information in one exam. Despite technological advances, vascular imaging with MRI is still limited by long scan times, which lead to image artifacts, patient discomfort, and high costs. Novel vascular MRI techniques are proposed in this dissertation that greatly reduce scan times compared to conventional methods (scan times on the order of seconds vs. minutes), while achieving similar image information content. First, an ungated Fourier velocity encoding (FVE) method is introduced for quantitating blood velocities in a few seconds. Accurate quantitation of the peak blood flow velocity can play an important role in assessing the severity of cardiovascular diseases. Next, a non-contrast-enhanced (NCE) magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) technique that provides high-contrast renal angiograms in as short as one heartbeat is developed for imaging renal artery stenosis. NCE MRA generates vessel contrast without the aid of external agents, making it the more comfortable, safer and lower cost alternative to traditional contrast-enhanced MRA. Lastly, an abdominal NCE MRA method for imaging the abdominopelvic arteries within a breath-hold is presented. Extending arterial vessel visualization from the renal region to the entire abdominal region enables the diagnosis of peripheral arterial disease in addition to renal artery stenosis.
Reachability-based control for human and autonomous agents in adversarial games [electronic resource]
Keywords: Aeronautics and Astronautics

Solutions to multi-agent adversarial games are useful in many applications where control actions must be taken in the presence of opposing agents, moving obstacles, or other external disturbances. These applications range from collision avoidance for autonomous cars and air traffic control to team coordination in the military and police. In addition to controlling robotic or autonomous agents, solutions to these games can play an essential role in providing guidance to humans, who may be participating either in supervisory roles or as agents themselves. The critical challenges to obtaining such solutions are the need to robustly account for adversarial actions in scenarios with many agents, and to do so in a computationally tractable fashion. In addition, to be helpful to humans the solutions must be presented so that they fit within the decision-making framework of the humans. This thesis develops solution methods for two types of related multi-agent adversarial games: reach-avoid games, where an attacking agent attempts to reach a target while avoiding other, defending agents, and pursuit-evasion games, where an evading agent attempts to avoid capture by pursuing agents. First, a Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs reachability formulation is used to compute guaranteed, optimal solutions to a reach-avoid game involving a single attacker and defender. Then an open-loop reachability formulation is introduced to allow solutions to be found in real time for games involving multiple agents on a side. An efficient method for computing open-loop safe-reachable sets is introduced and used to compute solutions for an attacking agent in reach-avoid games with multiple defenders, and for pursuing agents in pursuit-evasion games involving a single evader and multiple pursuers. These reachability-based game solutions are used to develop intuitive, automated tools to guide human agents in adversarial games as well as to control robotic assets like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The tools are validated using a novel testbed incorporating smartphones and UAVs in a system with human agents. These experiments demonstrate the use of the tools in realistic scenarios involving varied terrain and noisy communications. In these experiments, the human agents not only directly utilize the computed solutions, but are also able to modify the plans using the associated reachability information when communications failure and other factors render the assumptions made by the automation invalid.
Real-time studies of the mechanisms of nanocrystal structural phase changes [electronic resource]
Keywords: Materials Science and Engineering

Nanocrystals provide ideal systems with which to study structural phase changes. By making use of the ultra-short pulsed nature of synchrotrons and free-electron lasers, one may visualize with atomic-resolution and in real time how nanosized systems rearrange and potentially resolve the transition state itself. Such information could lead to new material design opportunities in which the phase-change behavior is optimal for a given application. Here are presented ultrafast studies of both temperature and pressure-driven phase changes in nanocrystalline materials, utilizing x-ray diffraction and x-ray spectroscopy to monitor the atomic rearrangement on femtosecond time-scales. For a thermally-driven phase change, the onset of superionicity is considered, a unique superposition of liquid-like cationic conductivity within a solid-phase anionic lattice. Using near-edge spectroscopy, the superionic structural transformation is observed to occur faster than twenty picoseconds in laser-excited copper (I) sulfide nanocrystals, and it is shown that it is the ionic hopping time which determines this time-scale. For pressure-induced studies, the dynamics of the well-known change of cadmium selenide nanocrystals from a wurtzite to rock-salt unit cell under increasing pressure are investigated. Laser-induced shock compression is used to initiate the phase transformation and hard x-ray scattering acts as as the probe. Finally, the efforts to introduce time-resolved capabilities at SSRL are presented. In particular, measurements of the x-ray pulse duration under different synchrotron operating conditions show the ability to perform experiments with single-picosecond resolution at SSRL. These single-photon sensitive measurements allowed the optimization of the pulse compression for future x-ray experiments at SSRL.
Reconsidering the Roots of Crude Coercion: a Policymaking Analysis of 'the Oil Weapon'
Keywords: CISAC
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Stanford University
OPEC
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
oil embargo
international relations
foreign policy
Thesis

In 1973-1974, several Arab oil-producing countries embargoed oil shipments to the United States while cutting oil production, in order to pressure the US to diminish its support of Israel. Despite expectations at the time, such large-scale use of the "oil weapon"; has not become a commonplace policy. This thesis explores potential explanations for these changing patterns of use of "the oil weapon", drawing on policymaking, neo-realist, and offensive realist frameworks, then employing various case studies to evaluate the explanatory power of such frameworks. This thesis finds that whereas a punctuated equilibrium model best explains the buildup to "the oil weapon" in 1973-1974, Kingdon's multiple policy streams model best explains the deployment patterns for this policy from 1973‐2003. In case studies of Venezuela, Iran, and Russia’s “oil weapon” use and rhetoric during the 2003‐2008 period of heightened oil prices, Kingdon’s model best explains Venezuela case, an offensive realist framework best explains Russia’s, and a hybrid of the two models, Iran’s. The conclusion addresses the current EU‐Iran oil embargo to gauge how “the oil weapon” might develop in the future. This thesis’ findings will help inform oil‐importing countries’ calibrations of their policies for addressing oil‐producing countries’ potentially hostile export policies.