VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Timescales of magma genesis and the dynamics of processes that produce differentiated alkalic volcanism
Keywords: Geological and Environmental Sciences.

Volcanic provinces that erupt compositionally diverse lavas are indicative of dynamic and evolving magmatic systems at depth. Determining the processes and the timescales required to produce such a variety of magmas is a fundamental question in understanding the eruptive potential of volcanoes and the hazards associated with volcanic evolution. This dissertation explores two intraplate volcanic regions where basaltic magmas are the dominant erupted compositions, yet small volume differentiated alkalic magmas are also present. Textural, geochemical, and geochronologic methods are integrated to decipher how and when the differentiated magmas are produced. The first part of this study focuses on trachytic lavas from the intraplate volcanic field of Harrat Rahat in western Saudi Arabia. Chapter 1 relies on analysis of mineral phases present in the trachyte lavas to determine the generation processes and storage conditions of the evolved magmas. In addition, U-series disequilibrium dating of bulk mineral separates was employed to determine crystallization timescales of the trachyte magmas prior to eruption. These data are compared to previously determined 40Ar/39Ar eruption ages of the young (< 180 kya) trachyte lavas and provide necessary information for assessing the potential of future differentiated eruptions. The second part of this study investigates the differentiated alkalic lavas that were erupted during the waning volcanic period of hotspot magmatism, referred to as the postshield stage, at Kohala volcano in Hawaii. Chapter 2 presents whole rock chemistry of the postshield lavas at Kohala as well as new 40Ar/39Ar eruption ages. The new geochronologic data are in good agreement with the limited previous age constraints but show a clustering of eruptions occurring over a brief period during the stage. This high frequency of eruptions along with changes in lava chemistry over time likely requires incorporation of a different melt source during the postshield stage. Here, it is hypothesized that this period of frequent eruptions could correspond to a mass wasting event at Kohala that enhanced melting. Chapter 3 further investigates the postshield processes at Kohala through textural and chemical analysis of the lavas and reveal pervasive mixing textures throughout the volcanic suite. Major and trace element chemistry of rare apatite phenocrysts in the Kohala lavas show near-rim zoning in the crystals which is utilized to assess chemical changes that occurred in the magmatic system. Modeling of strontium diffusion in apatite is used to interpret mixing timescales that occur before eruption of the postshield lavas. These two chapters combined illustrate the necessity of new inputs of magma to the system prior to eruption of postshield lavas for Hawaiian volcanoes
Tingets
Keywords: Social-Emotional Learning
Tangible Play
Emotional Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence
Interaction Design
Learning Design and Technology
Graduate School of Education
Thesis

Young children (ages 3 - 6) are struggling with labeling, expressing, and managing their emotions, especially when it comes to managing negative emotions. Children who have a higher emotional intelligence experience long term benefits to their mental health and wellbeing. They will develop resilience and coping skills, display fewer behavioral problems, and feel more confident and capable. Tingets is an interactive storytelling app that leverages the power of tangible play to take children through activities that strengthen their emotional communication and expression skills. With Tingets, children explore the world crafts by designing different characters with unique facial expressions and utilize artificial intelligence to make their creations come to life. Children will take their characters through different activities as they build their own voice and develop more emotional communication skills. With Tingets it is our goal to help children better understand their own and others’ emotions, develop a more granular emotional vocabulary, express emotions in a more constructive way, manage negative emotions and celebrate & cultivate positive emotions as well.
With over 100 different participants we have conducted a number of different research studies. We have run concept tests, play tests, parent surveys, in-person and digital interviews. We have seen kids share personal stories about how they feel with their parents and utilize the new words they are learning with Tingets to express themselves. It is our vision to make social and emotional learning accessible and fun for all kids.
Today’s Challenge of Caring for Elders in China and Its Implications for Social Work Practice
Keywords:  Center for East Asian Studies
Center of East Asian Studies
Filial Piety
Aging
Social Work
China
Thesis

In my research, I will first review the definition of Chinese filial piety and the requirements of filial obligations in imperial China. Then, I will discuss how political, economic and social changes influence families to modify their filial obligations to old parents. Because the shift of filial responsibilities from families to health and social service providers put social work to an increasingly important role, I will discuss the challenges faced by the social work industry. I will trace the development of social work in China and summarize why current social work industry in China is not satisfying in delivering qualified service to the senior people who live in nursing homes or private communities. In the penultimate section, I will give recommendations about the state-level public policies and suggestions of social workers qualification enhancement. In the conclusion part, with the new encouragement and requirements by the State of Council at the end of 2019, it is hoped that filial piety will be maintained, aging service in social work practice will be strengthened, and senior citizens will have a decent life in their retirement.
TOMBED IN BY TomB: THE ROLE OF TomB IN TYPE 6 SECRETION SYSTEM ACTIVATION IN SALMONELLA ENTERICA SER. TYPHIMURIUM
Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
Microbiology and Immunology
Salmonella
Type 6 Secretion Systems
Interbacterial Competition
TomB
Thesis

The pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium encodes a tightly regulated Type 6 Secretion System (T6SS) which plays a large role in interbacterial competition. In an effort to further understand how this secretion system is regulated, our lab recently conducted a transposon screen to identify regulators of expression of T6SS genes. Transposon insertions immediately upstream of TomB, the Hha antitoxin, led to increased T6SS expression. Hha is a conditional toxin that interacts with Histone-like Nucleoid Structuring (HNS) proteins which have been previously identified as repressors of Salmonella’s T6SS. Previous studies have shown that a strain deficient in Hha and its paralog, Ydg-T, increases expression of several Salmonella Pathogenicity Island 6 (SPI-6) genes. I hypothesized TomB plays a role in regulating Salmonella’s T6SS. In this thesis, I report that the overexpression of TomB using an arabinose inducible plasmid increases expression of T6SS proteins such as ClpV, Hcp1, and Tae4. Furthermore, through in vitro competition assays, I show evidence of increased T6SS-dependent killing of prey in strains of S. Typhimurium that overexpress TomB.
Topics in machine learning for causal inference with applications in social science
Keywords: Statistics.

Random forests are a powerful method for non-parametric regression, but are limited in their ability to fit smooth signals. Taking the perspective of random forests as an adaptive kernel method, we pair the forest kernel with a local linear regression adjustment to better capture smoothness. The resulting procedure, local linear forests, enables us to improve on asymptotic rates of convergence for random forests with smooth signals, and provides substantial gains in accuracy on both real and simulated data. We prove a central limit theorem valid under regularity conditions on the forest and smoothness constraints, propose a computationally efficient construction for confidence intervals, and discuss an extension to local linear causal forests for learning heterogeneous treatment effects. Following this deep dive into local linear forests, we discuss two applications of machine learning for causal inference. The first is a retirement reform in Denmark, in which shifting eligibility ages for an early retirement program provide an opportunity to analyze heterogeneous treatment effects of the age of retirement eligibility. The second is a randomized controlled trial in Nairobi, Kenya, aiming to lower rates of gender-based violence against adolescent students living in informal settlements. In the latter example, we explore how local linear causal forests help to uncover and emphasize trends in marginalized student responses to the intervention. In both cases, we address how machine learning and causal inference are powerful tools to discover patterns in individual treatment effects, and to advocate for marginalized groups when estimates reveal troubling patterns in the data
Topics in Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, with applications in statistics
Keywords: Mathematics.

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, such as the Metropolis-Hastings algorithms, the Gibbs sampler, are ubiquitous in almost every quantitative subject of study such as physics, chemistry, statistics, biology, and computer science. In this thesis, we focus on the following two kinds of sampling problems: 1. How to efficiently sample binary matrices with fixed row and column totals uniformly at random? 2. How to draw samples from 'doubly intractable' distributions? For both of the two problems, we explore the theoretical properties of the existing MCMC algorithms and develop new methods to improve the existing algorithms
Toward the emergence of time in quantum gravity
Keywords: Physics.

Space and time are fundamental to our description and understanding of physical laws. But are space and time themselves only approximations to an even more fundamental description of reality? Recent developments in quantum gravity have shown how space can be emergent from more fundamental principles. This dissertation provides a review of tools and results developed over the last five years which shed light on a more fundamental description of time. We first discuss a way of understanding time using quantum information theoretic techniques. These techniques are put to use to study how causality and the arrow of time can emerge from the pattern of entanglement in tensor networks. Next we discuss concrete models of emergent time in quantum gravity, culminating in a non-perturbative model in which both space and time are emergent from random matrices. This model describes low-dimensional de Sitter quantum gravity, which has a positive cosmological constant
Towards an extensible local magnitude scale
Keywords: Geophysics.

A consistent earthquake catalog containing homogeneous event size estimates is very crucial for many applications, including determination of long-term seismic activity rates, estimation of average site conditions, and most importantly, for seismic hazard assessment. The local magnitude, ML, is one of the most widely-used magnitudes for local and small earthquakes. However, ML as it was originally de ned by Richter can be very biased due its arbitrary anchor at 100 km, and the fact that Richter derived it specifically for southern California. This thesis aims to redefine the local magnitude scale in a more intentional and physical way, as Richter had intended it to be. The primary purpose for chapter 2 is to introduce a physically-meaningful, data-driven approach to calibrate the local magnitude scale. We apply this approach to southern Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and southern California. In chapter 3, we develop a model-driven approach to calibrate ML where earthquake data is scarce or unavailable. This approach utilizes information about the crustal structure and gives results that are consistent with the empirical approach. In chapter 4, we investigate the relationship between ML and seismic moment, M0, and use time-domain measurements of the maximum displacement amplitude, filtered using seven one-octave band-pass filters, to analyze the frequency content of S-wave and gain knowledge about the regional wave propagation characteristics as well as source parameters. The last chapter discusses the secondary project, in which we perform ultrasonic velocity experiments on Utica shale samples in order to characterize their anisotropy, and to estimate their dynamic elastic parameters. It is an attempt to better understand the in-situ behavior of the rock
Towards low-cost spatial haptics : brake-based shape displays and automatic content authoring
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

Haptic technology can significantly enhance the richness and realism of user interaction by providing the experience of physical touch. It is broadly used in various application scenarios including game controllers, surgical robots, design and modeling tools, and accessibility for Blind people. Tactile displays are a class of haptic devices that can render tactile effects to the users, for example reproducing the skin deformation of a user when in contact with a real object, allowing the user to feel vibration, pressure, touch, and texture. However, key challenges currently limit the widespread use of tactile displays including cost, spatial resolution, fabrication complexity, shape rendering flexibility, and refresh rate. Beyond these hardware limitations, authoring of rich tactile content is another challenge. Although manual authoring methods have been developed, methods that can automatically translate vast amounts of information into meaningful tactile stimuli are highly desirable. In this thesis, I present my work on addressing the hardware and content authoring challenges of the tactile displays. The first part of my thesis work focuses on the use of electrostatic brakes and clutches to enable low-cost tactile displays. I investigated the use of low-cost electrostatic adhesion in the context of high-resolution, refreshable 2.5D tactile shape display. I modeled, fabricated, and characterized the contact force, refresh rate and robustness of the brakes. A user study conducted using an integrated 4×2 tactile shape display based on the brakes showed similar user shape recognition performance using our device and the 3D printed shapes. In addition to the bed-of-nails tactile displays mentioned above, I also explored the formable-crust 2.5D tactile shape displays using auxetic materials. A simulation model and algorithms were developed to investigate the characteristics of the shape display and render a target shape. An experimental prototype was constructed to verify the simulation results. The auxetic 2.5D tactile shape display has the advantages of low cost, large displacement range, and roll-to-roll fabrication compatibility. In the second part of my thesis, I investigated methods to address the content authoring challenges of tactile displays. A pipeline was built to automatically generate spatial tactile effects by analyzing cross-modality features in a video. We believe the above results help to improve the accessibility of the haptic technology to a broader audience
Training computers to read human faces : what artificial intelligence can teach us about first impressions
Keywords: Business.

First impressions, such as a job interview or a meeting with a new client, involve making two kinds of inferences about the mind of a stranger. On the one hand, you may want to know what this new person is like, and on the other hand, you might be wondering how this individual sees you. In this dissertation, I demonstrate that artificial intelligence can make both of these social inferences more accurately than people can and explore how such developments may advance our scientific understanding
Transatlantic Turmoil: Populist Parties and NATO Membership in the European Union
Keywords:  Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy
CDDRL
International Relations
Center on Democracy Development and the Rule of Law
NATO
Populism
Europe
European Union
EU
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Security
Thesis

For the past few years, scholars, politicians, and journalists on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have been ringing alarm bells about the rise of anti-institutional populism in Europe bringing about the fall of the bulwark institutions of the liberal international order. Although there is a lot of literature on the antagonistic relationship between populist parties and the European Union (EU), there is little on how these parties view the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), another bastion of the internationalist post-war order. Seeking to close this gap, thesis asks the following question: what are the attitudes of populist parties in the EU towards NATO membership and why?
Interestingly, a majority of EU populist parties support NATO membership. This work uses party platforms and secondary sources to examine this counterintuitive variation in populist party stances on NATO membership. It assesses domestic and international explanations of this variation and concludes that the latter have more explanatory power than the former. Specifically, this thesis posits that domestic party competition does not parallel party stances on NATO membership, while numerous international positions do. Foreign policy positions related to support for NATO membership include not being Euroskeptic and holding a positive view of the United States, while those that are correlated with opposition to NATO membership are a negative view of the United States and opposition to EU membership. A party’s view of Russia, its support of EU membership, and Euroskepticism are inconsequential. Furthermore, this thesis argues that there is no such thing as a “populist foreign policy,” at least in the realm of NATO- related affairs, since populist parties have a diverse range of stances on these matters. As such, it stresses that EU populist parties should not be treated as a homogenous group and notes that while we can take some comfort in knowing that NATO is not threatened by populism to the same extent that the EU is, we should not rest easy: the unpredictability and influence of these parties means that if they make severing ties with NATO their core issue, they may get their way.
Transcriptional and position effect contributions to recombinant adeno-associated virus-mediated homologous recombination
Keywords: Genetics.

Recombinant AAV vectors have the unique ability to promote targeted integration of transgenes via homologous integration at specified genomic sites reaching frequencies of 0.1-1%. We studied genomic parameters that influence targeting efficiencies on a large scale. To do this, we generated more than 1000 engineered, doxycycline-inducible target sites in the human HAP1 cell line and infected this polyclonal population with a library of AAV-DJ targeting vectors each carrying a unique barcode. The heterogeneity of barcode integration at each target site provided an assessment of targeting efficiency at that locus. We compared targeting efficiency with and without target site transcription for identical chromosomal positions, finding that targeting efficiency was enhanced by target site transcription. Chromatin states associated with transcription and epigenetic measures reflecting accessible chromatin and a depletion of heterochromatin were also predictive of higher targeting efficiency. Furthermore, there was a positive effect on the amenability of a site to targeting due to other factors such as the level of endogenous transcription from intersecting genes and, in the absence of target site transcription, intersecting LINE-1 elements and accessible chromatin. These results define important parameters that may not only assist in designing optimal targeting vectors for genome editing, but also provide new insights into the mechanism of AAV-mediated homologous recombination
Transcriptional dynamics of a large family of surface protein genes in toxoplasma gondii
Keywords: Microbiology and Immunology.

Toxoplasma gondii is a eukaryotic intracellular parasite that has evolved numerous large, paralogous gene families. These families are critical for supporting Toxoplasma's unparalleled host range which consists of nearly any nucleated cell in almost any warm-blooded animal. The SRS (SAG1-related sequence) gene family encodes over 100 surface proteins, some of which are involved in parasite attachment and evading the immune response of a host. For most SRS genes, however, little is understood about their function and expression profile. Additionally, Toxoplasma undergoes a complex and poorly understood developmental process that is critical for establishing a chronic infection in its intermediate hosts. In chapter 1, I review the current literature on the SRS family and present novel analyses on how SRS gene expression changes across the life stages of Toxoplasma. In chapter 2, I describe efforts to apply single-cell RNA-sequencing to Toxoplasma parasites to create a comprehensive atlas of cell cycle and asexual development based on data from over 5,400 parasites. This data reveals unexpected heterogeneity in SRS gene expression among individual parasites: in a population of the rapidly growing tachyzoite stage nearly all > 100+ SRS genes are detected despite only an average of 7 SRS genes being "on" in any individual tachyzoite at a given time. From this dataset, AP2IX-1 is identified as a parasite transcription factor that triggers downregulation of SAG1, a ubiquitous surface antigen and SRS, and upregulation of transcripts typically only expressed in the sexual stages of Toxoplasma's lifecycle. In chapter 3, I describe efforts to determine whether heterogeneous SRS expression signatures are inherited over generations of parasite replication by comparing transcriptomics from clonally derived parasites. Preliminary data from these studies suggests that SRS expression patterns are not strongly inherited by progeny and that heterogeneity of SRS expression arises within 10 generations between subcloned parasites. In chapter 4, I present work that identified new parasite factors involved in the secretion of Toxoplasma effector proteins into the host cell during infection. In chapter 5, I conclude with remarks on future directions for the study of the SRS gene family and understanding heterogeneity in expression patterns in Toxoplasma