VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Do implicit theories of happiness and well-being predict adaptive responses to stress? [electronic resource]
Keywords: Psychology.

An accumulating body of research shows that stress negatively impacts individuals' mental and physical health, heightening depression and anxiety (e.g., Sapolosky, 1994; Willner, 1997); vulnerability to viral infections (e.g., Slavich & Cole, 2013); and inflammation, unfavorable gene expression, and impaired immune functioning (e.g., Spools, 1994; Slavich & Cole, 2013). Research suggests that coping strategies are an important predictor of the effect of stressors on an individual (e.g., Dumont & Provost, 1998; Folkman & Lazarus, 1985; Seiffge-Krenke, 2000). This dissertation investigates whether differences in implicit theories of well-being (or beliefs that well-being is malleable or fixed) are related to the coping strategies that individuals endorse. Specifically, it was hypothesized that holding a malleable theory of psychological well-being would lead people to endorse and engage in more adaptive coping behaviors in the face of stress. It was also hypothesized that believing that well-being is malleable would make people more interested in learning about and improving their well-being and happiness. The present research investigated these hypotheses in a series of three studies. Study 1 investigated whether those with a more malleable conception of well-being would be more likely to endorse adaptive responses to stressful scenarios. Building on Study 1, Study 2 investigated whether those taught to have a more malleable vs. fixed conception of well-being would be more likely to 1) endorse adaptive responding to stressful situations and 2) show interest in learning about well-being, stress and happiness. Study 3 investigated whether those given a more malleable vs. fixed conception of well-being would be more likely to embrace goals and priorities allowing them to improve their levels of happiness and well-being and take advantage of an opportunity to relieve situationally-induced stress with a mindfulness exercise. Implications for fostering greater overall well-being and more adaptive responses to stress are discussed.
Drawing from life [electronic resource] : mass sketching and the formation of socialist realist Guohua in the early People's Republic of China (1949-1965)
Keywords: Art and Art History.

This dissertation examines how traditional Chinese landscape painting, often the site of an inward-turning private subjectivity, was revolutionized through mass sketching campaigns during the early years of the People's Republic of China (1949-1965). One of the most comprehensive programs to reform artistic practice in the history of Chinese art, state-sponsored sketching campaigns developed amid institutional, ideological, and aesthetic changes. Based on sketchbooks and paintings by the ink painters Fu Baoshi (1904-1965), Li Keran (1907-1989), and Guan Shanyue (1912-2000), this study tracks sketching tours that were designed to reform elite artists into cultural workers, to provide experiential knowledge of the essence of socialist reality, and to transform their observations into landscapes that would give shape to and embody the national culture of new China. The sketching tour routes mapped the industrial, revolutionary history, and cosmopolitan geographies constitutive of socialist landscape that, in turn, served as affective journeys for artists to conceive of themselves personally bound to the conceptualization, articulation, and practice of cultural work as a collective endeavor. Tracing the signal importance placed upon drawing and sketching under Maoist ideas of knowledge, consciousness, and practice, I argue that the practice of sketching in art education allowed for the discursive incorporation of previous historical approaches to painting, while inaugurating a critical emphasis on experiential authenticity and artistic participation that is central to socialist cultural production.
Duality and linear approximations in Hochschild homology, K-theory, and string topology [electronic resource]
Keywords: Mathematics.

This thesis encompasses at least three separate but related projects. The first project is a treatment of twisted Poincare duality for manifolds with coefficients in spectra, and is included as an appendix. The second project investigates the map from the stabilization of the gauge group of a certain principal bundle over a manifold M to the Cohen-Jones string topology spectrum of M. This map is a linear approximation in the sense of Goodwillie and Weiss's embedding calculus. The third project is an ongoing and open-ended exploration of contravariant forms of algebraic K-theory of spaces, with a focus on topological Hochschild homology.
Dynamic network energy management [electronic resource]
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

This dissertation considers the application of convex optimization to solve a range of problems associated with the management and operation of dynamic, networked energy devices. Due to dynamic device and network constraints, the generation, transmission and consumption of energy must be closely and globally coordinated across both time and space to achieve efficient operation of the network. The near instantaneous speed of power transmission requires coordinated, real-time reactions to unexpected disturbances and deviations from planned behavior in order to avoid damage to both the network and attached devices. Lastly, the number of devices connected to next generation energy networks is expected to dramatically increase over present levels. Current methods for managing energy networks are increasingly ill-equipped to deal with these growing challenges [23]. We present new techniques that allow for scalable, efficient, real-time operation of energy networks. In the first part of this thesis, we ignore the effect of network constraints and focus on the dynamically coupled nature of energy management for the operation and configuration of a portfolio of storage devices. We show how recent advances in convex optimization [57] can be used to operate the portfolio in real-time and also select the configuration of the portfolio via efficient Monte Carlo simulation. In the second part of this thesis, we consider more general networks of devices, such as generators, fixed loads, deferrable loads, and storage devices, each with its own dynamic constraints and objective, that are connected by AC and DC lines. The problem is to minimize the total network objective subject to the device and line constraints over a time horizon. This is a large optimization problem with variables for consumption or generation for each device, power flow for each line, and voltage phase angles at AC buses in each period. We develop a decentralized method for solving this problem called proximal message passing. The method is iterative: At each step, every device exchanges simple messages with its neighbors in the network and then solves its own optimization problem, minimizing its own objective augmented by a term determined by the messages it has received. We show that this message passing method converges to a solution when the device objective and constraints are convex. The method is completely decentralized and needs no global coordination other than iteration synchronization; the problems to be solved by each device can typically be solved extremely efficiently and in parallel. The proximal message passing method is fast enough that even a serial implementation can solve substantial problems in reasonable time frames. We report results for several numerical experiments, demonstrating the method's speed and scaling, including the solution of a problem instance with over 30 million variables in 5 minutes for a serial implementation; with decentralized computing, the solve time would be less than one second.
Early-arrival waveform inversion for near-surface velocity estimation [electronic resource]
Keywords: Geophysics.

Early-arrival Waveform Inversion is a powerful tool for high-resolution near-surface velocity estimation. By matching observed diving waves and refractions with forward modeled diving waves and refractions, high-resolution near-surface models can be obtained. However, conventional waveform inversion requires accurate starting models and exact matching of data amplitude. Both of these requirements are difficult to meet in field data, especially land data applications. In addition, current industry implementations of waveform inversion encounter serious I/O bottlenecks in large 3D applications.This dissertation addresses these three problems associated with practical applications of waveform inversion. The constraint of accurate starting models is relaxed by applying wave-equation traveltime inversion before applying the waveform inversion. The requirement of exact data amplitude matching is relaxed by applying a new objective function that relies heavily on phase and waveform matching, while ignoring absolute amplitude. The I/O bottleneck associated with the current industry implementations is eliminated by using a low-frequency random boundary scheme. I demonstrate the effectiveness of the methodologies using synthetic and field data examples.
Economic and distributional impacts from carbon fee and dividend policies [electronic resource]
Keywords: Management Science and Engineering.

The U.S. energy and climate policies currently in discussion have the potential to deliver a sizable reduction in carbon emissions. While many studies have modeled how similar polices might affect the economy, relatively few have assessed household implications. Furthermore, none of those have been under the current post-recession, post-shale gas boom economy. This dissertation examines the effects of a range of carbon fee and dividend policies in the current economic climate. The research evaluates individual economic sectors, as well as households at different income levels, and in different regions and states. The carbon fees range from
5/tCO2, each escalating at 2-8% annually. The U.S. Government's energy-economic model (the National Energy Modeling System—NEMS) was used to identify impacts to each part of the economy. To determine the outcome for households, two external consumer expenditure surveys were incorporated. The results show that this range of policies could reduce carbon emissions between 5-24% over ten years, while reducing GDP by 0.4-1.6%. Most of the avoided emissions (85%) would result from decarbonizing the electricity sector. The carbon fees would raise
Education and the open mind [electronic resource] : an inquiry into the intellectual virtue of open-mindedness and its role in educational justice
Keywords: Education.

Open-mindedness has been touted by philosophers as a vital characteristic of the educated mind and by educational scholars as an important component of critical thinking. This dissertation investigates open-mindedness and its educational significance. It aims to establish that open-mindedness is fundamental to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, that it contributes to the preparation of individuals for citizenship and for pursuit of the good life, and that teachers and systems of education that undermine open-mindedness in their students are guilty of indoctrination. My consideration of open-mindedness and its educational significance comprises three papers. The first paper answers the question: what is open-mindedness? With this definition of open-mindedness in hand, the second paper considers the value of open-mindedness in greater depth through an analysis of its relationship to the liberal democratic value of autonomy. The third paper considers the demands on educators to support the development of open-mindedness through an investigation of indoctrination -- a type of bad teaching that produces or reinforces closed-mindedness. Together these three papers develop a conception of open-mindedness, explore the role of open-mindedness in autonomy and citizenship education, and consider the responsibility of educators to promote this virtue.
Effect of ActA expression On Intracellular Replication of Listeria monocytogenes
Keywords:  Department of Biology
ActA
Listeria monocytogenes
Biology
Biochemistry
Thesis

Expression of the bacterial protein ActA is essential for Listeria monocytogenes actin-based polymerization, motility, and subsequent cell-to-cell spread. Despite in depth characterization of the role of ActA in L. monocytogenes motility, little is currently known regarding the effect of ActA expression on bacterial growth rate. Characterization of bacterial growth rates of L. monocytogenes strains expressing or lacking ActA sheds light on the impact of the proteins expression on bacterial growth. Induced ActA expression in extracellular growth curves suggests a minimal difference in replication rates. However, cell lysis of infected endothelial cells suggests that intracellular production of ActA is correlated with a decrease in the intracellular growth rate of L. monocytogenes. This impact was found to be independent of bacterial motility associated with ActA expression. Because ActA expression is a pivotal part in L. monocytogenes pathogenisis, understanding the effect of ActA on bacterial replication during intracellular invasion sheds light on the infectious life cycle of the bacterium.
The effect of context on teaching approaches and preschool students' learning and motivation [electronic resource]
Keywords: Education.

This study examined the effects of pressure to maximize student performance on teacher intrinsic motivation for teaching and behavior (autonomy support versus control) and on child intrinsic motivation for the learning tasks and performance on the tasks. It also assessed the association between child distractibility and teacher behavior and tested whether child distractibility moderated the effect of pressure on teacher behavior. Forty-six undergraduates who volunteered or worked in preschool classrooms served as teachers for a one-on-one teaching session with a preschooler, with teachers randomly assigned to either a pressure condition (in which they were told that the child would be tested on the tasks at the end of the teaching session) or control condition (with no mention of testing). In contrast to the study's hypotheses, teachers in the pressure condition were rated as more autonomy supportive than teachers in the control condition for the tangram task. Results for distractibility were also opposite of what was hypothesized; teachers of children who were high on distractibility were rated as more autonomy supportive than teachers instructing children with relatively low levels of distractibility for both tasks. Possible explanations for the findings are discussed.
Effect of Schistosomiasis Infection on the Predator-Prey Dynamics of Host Snails and Freshwater Prawns
Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
Stanford University
Hopkins Marine Station
schistosomiasis
predator-prey interaction
Biulinus truncatus
Biomphalaria glabrata
prawn
Thesis

Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease that affects over 200 million humans across the globe, largely in sub-Saharan Africa. It is transmitted between humans and various species of freshwater host snails. One possible technique for reducing disease transmission is biological control: introducing competitors or predators of host snails to suppress their population and reduce transmission. However, little is known about the effect of parasitic infection on predator-prey interaction, especially in the case of schistosomiasis. This study details laboratory tests performed on B. truncatus and B. glabrata snails to investigate both behavioral differences between uninfected snails and those infected with schistosomiasis, and differences in consumption based on infection status by the snail predator M. vollenhovenii. Predation trials with these prawns showed a statistically significant preference for consuming snails infected with schistosomiasis. Behavioral trials aimed at explaining this preference showed infected snails to be more sluggish and less likely to avoid predation by exiting the water and hiding under vinyl substrate, providing a rationale for why infected snails were more readily available for consumption. These results both suggest increased efficacy of predation as a means of control for schistosomiasis infection in humans and provide greater insight into the effects of parasitic infection on predator-prey dynamics.
Effects of Distracter Location on Visual Target Discrimination in Chickens
Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
Neurobiology
Behavior
Attention
Competitive Selection
Birds
Chickens
Thesis

Selective visual attention has previously been studied only in humans and non-human primates. I have measured its effects in chickens. The effect of attention on perception can be measured by shape discrimination of various stimuli. When multiple stimuli are present, animals differentially process selected stimuli known as targets and suppress stimuli known as distracters. In my thesis research, I studied how the ability of chickens to attend to and identify a specific target was affected by the presence of a distracter at various locations. Behavioral tests, measured by gaze direction and reaction times, quantified shape discrimination. Three birds were trained to discriminate between squares and X’s: two birds were trained to report X stimuli as targets and to ignore square stimuli as distracters, while one bird was trained to report square stimuli as targets and to ignore X stimuli as distracters. When the target and distracter were in the same left or right hemifield, the birds were generally less accurate in choosing the target as opposed to when the target and distracter were in opposite hemifields. There was a large difference in the performance between different elevations. Data varied depending on visual field quadrant and the behavior of the bird itself. These data can provide implications about attention to stimuli, potentially leading to neural recordings that show the importance of the midbrain selection network for comparing the relative strengths of competing stimuli and selecting the one with the greatest importance for attention. An understanding of mechanisms underlying the brain’s ability to attend is needed to develop targeted therapies for psychiatric disorders, including ADHD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism, for which there are no known cures.
Effects of pH on the Growth, Herbivory, and Chemical Defenses of Macrocystis pyrifera Apical Meristems
Keywords:  Department of Biology
apical meristem
biology
growth
herbivory
Macrocystis pyrifera
marine ecology
ocean acidification
phase shift
polyphenols
Thesis

Ocean acidification has the potential to reshape the structure of kelp forest communities dominated by giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera). Whereas decreasing pH has been shown to enhance the growth of kelp, acidification may also influence the grazing activity of common herbivorous species that feed on kelp. The shift in balance between changes in the rate of growth and herbivory can determine whether a phase shift from a kelp-dominated to a turf algae-dominated ecosystem will occur. This study investigated the effect of pH on the growth rate of M. pyrifera apical meristems as well as how alterations in their chemical defenses due to acidification influence the rate of herbivory. Although prior studies have documented increased algal growth under low pH conditions, few have examined whether changes in blade palatability govern the amount of grazing. Moreover, little is known about how the apical meristems, which are responsible for the vertical growth essential to the survival of kelp in their light-limited environment, are affected by changes in seawater pH. We exposed apical meristems to two different pH treatments – naturally acidified upwelled seawater from Monterey Bay, for which pH oscillated between pH 7.6 and 7.9, and a control treatment around pH 8.01 – in outdoor flow-through aquaria and measured the rate of blade growth and the polyphenol concentration to quantify chemical defense at one week intervals. Reciprocal transplant herbivory experiments were run with juvenile purple sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) and brown turban snails (Chlorostoma brunnea) to determine how the rate of herbivory of these two ecologically important invertebrates was influenced by pH. Kelp growth was found to be elevated under low pH conditions, while herbivory and polyphenol levels were not significantly altered. The varied response of kelp to pH highlights the dynamic balance between algal growth and herbivory and has long-term implications for the health, recruitment, and ecological underpinnings of kelp forest ecosystems as the ocean continues to acidify.
Effects of shock strength, confinement, and geometric perturbations on shock boundary layer interactions [electronic resource]
Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.

Shock boundary layer interactions (SBLIs) occur in many supersonic flows, including supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) engines. The successful operation of a scramjet depends on a series of oblique shock waves in the inlet and isolator sections that set up the correct supersonic conditions at the inlet to the combustor. The blockage associated with shock induced boundary layer separation can initiate unstart, a common failure mode for these engines. This Ph.D. thesis describes the effects of confinement and shock strength on three-dimensional SBLI flows in low aspect ratio ducts. SBLIs are generated in two test geometries using sub-boundary layer height compression ramps and investigated using particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements. The two cases show significant qualitative and quantitative differences, including regular vs. Mach reflection of the incident shock and the size and strength of boundary layer separation. The sensitivity of the SBLI features to many different small perturbations in the inlet boundary conditions is also documented. Small perturbations placed in a sensitive region cause large changes in the downstream flow, whereas the flow is insensitive even to larger perturbations outside this region. Quantitative metrics for comparison of the different flow fields are developed. The datasets are well suited to CFD validation. A new framework for approximately quantifying biases in PIV measurements of high speed compressible flows is established, and its utility for performing validation of CFD results using PIV data is demonstrated.