VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Petroleum's Promise: The Neo-colonial Imaginary of Oil Cities in the Modern Arabian Gulf

Oil from the Arabian Gulf has made the modern world as we know it possible. This dissertation documents representations of urban modernity in oil-producing Gulf countries that emerged in the context of British controlled oil extraction during the twentieth century. With the success of national independence movements following World War I, British imperial authorities were compelled to invent new forms of colonial rule. This study examines the bold yet stumbling beginnings of British oil company public relations practices in the modern Arabian Gulf and the emergence of cooperative corporate and state efforts to use documentary film to project new national imaginaries to citizens of oil-producing countries. It shows how oil company sponsored films constructed an imaginary of cities that linked the promise of nation building and modernization in oil-producing states to the neo-colonial practice of oil extraction. By weaving together related histories of oil, urbanization, and cinema, this dissertation provides an account of the rise of British oil company public relations as linked to the modern urban development of oil company towns and capital cities in the Arabian Gulf. Focusing on documentaries made by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and Iraq Petroleum Company before 1958, this dissertation examines the oil city in cinema as the primary object of inquiry. Based on archival evidence and filmic analysis, this dissertation sheds light on how imperial power and oil extraction have shaped and been shaped by public relations practices in the modern Arabian Gulf.

Advisor: AlSayyad, Nezar
Size-Dependent Optoelectronic Properties and Controlled Doping of Semiconductor Quantum Dots

Given a rapidly developing world, the need exists for inexpensive renewable energy alternatives to help avoid drastic climate change. Photovoltaics have the potential to fill the energy needs of the future, but significant cost decreases are necessary for widespread adoption. Semiconductor nanocrystals, also known as quantum dots, are a nascent technology with long term potential to enable inexpensive and high efficiency photovoltaics. When de- posited as a film, quantum dots form unique nanocomposites whose electronic and optical properties can be broadly tuned through manipulation of their individual constituents./nThe contents of this thesis explore methods to understand and optimize the optoelectronic properties of PbSe quantum dot films for use in photovoltaic applications. Systematic optimization of photovoltaic performance is demonstrated as a function of nanocrystal size, establishing the potential for utilizing extreme quantum confinement to improve device energetics and alignment. Detailed investigations of the mechanisms of electrical transport are performed, revealing that electronic coupling in quantum dot films is significantly less than often assumed based on optical shifts. A method is proposed to employ extended regions of built-in electrical field, through controlled doping, to sidestep issues of poor transport. To this end, treatments with chemical redox agents are found to effect profound and reversible doping within nanocrystal films, sufficient to enable their use as chemical sensors, but lack- ing the precision required for optoelectronic applications. Finally, a novel doping method employing "redox buffers" is presented to enact precise, stable, and reversible charge-transfer doping in porous semiconductor films. An example of oxidatively doping PbSe quantum dot thin films is presented, and the future potential for redox buffers in photovoltaic applications is examined.

Advisor: Alivisatos, A. Paul
All Inkjet-Printed SnO2/ZrO2 Transistors

Transparent electronics has been considered as a critical key to solve problems exhibited by virtually all flat panel displays and solar cells. Transparent electronics is expected to allow for the realization of displays with high aperture ratio for high brightness. This will enable the embedding of system-level electronics directly onto the display glass. The minimization of light lost when going through multi-layer stack structures is a major opportunity for solar cells and particularly for transparent solar cells consisting of transparent photovoltaic units. Over the last decade, amorphous phase and poly crystalline metal oxides, including ZnO, In2O3, and SnO2 and their ternary and quaternary alloys, have been considered as candidates for transparent electronics. Using conventional vacuum-based deposition techniques and lithography technology, metal oxide based transistors with field effect mobility values high enough for the simultaneous operation of integrated circuits, pixel drivers and peripheral drivers have been demonstrated. In addition, by combining transparent source, drain, and gate electrodes with a transparent insulator, fully transparent circuits can be fabricated. Normally, hetero- junction solar cells consist of an absorber layer, its metal contacts, window layers, and their metal contacts. Transparent metal oxide n-type conducting window layers can be fabricated with the aforementioned semiconductors (ZnO, In2O3 or SnO2). These layers provide a large band gap, excellent electronic transport properties, and easy metal contact formation. Among the aforementioned metal oxides SnO2 has its own promising characteristics. It has a larger band-gap, lower melting point and higher bulk mobility Thus, a high-quality SnO2 layer can potentially be created at a relatively low sintering temperature resulting in high performance transistor characteristics./nThe main goals of this field are to improve process throughput for large area panels, to lower fabrication cost and to improve device performance. Combining the aforementioned attractive properties of SnO2 with the process benefits of inkjet printing, fully ink-jet printed SnO2 TFTs were demonstrated as a good candidate to achieve these main goals. To realize this, SnO2, ZrO2, and Sb-doped SnO2 were selected for the transparent semiconductor, the insulator and the electrodes respectively. Solution phase/nsol-gel precursors were used as inks for inkjet printing to form these materials. To fabricate uniform and coffee ring less layers, the spreading speed and evaporation rate were controlled by addition of a high-viscosity solvent mixture and with increased substrate temperatures. Using these innovations, transparent metal-oxide-based transistors were fabricated on glass substrates. These devices consisted of a SnO2 semiconductor layer, a ZrO2 insulator layer and Sb-doped SnO2 electrodes formed through ink-jet printing. They exhibited excellent transistor characteristics, and thus represent a promising step towards making printed transparent electronic systems a reality.

Advisor: Subramanian, Vivek
The Neural and Behavioral Processes Underlying Limb Selection

In the process of planning a reaching movement, people have two principle decisions: where to reach and which limb to reach with. Recent investigations have shed light on how the brain integrates value information about different stimulus-outcome pairs in order to make this first decision. However, recent work in neuroeconomics, while abundant, has almost exclusively focused on how we decided between stimuli external to the body and ignored how we decide between our two limbs./nIn this dissertation, I explore the psychological processes and neural correlates of hand choice in three experiments, all of which involve an unconstrained reaching task. The first study demonstrates that hand choice is influenced by recent reinforcement history: People increase the use of the non-dominant hand when the likelihood of hitting the target with the non-dominant hand is increased and/or the likelihood of missing the target with the dominant hand is decreased. In the second study, I use functional neuroimaging to explore the neural correlates of hand choice, comparing conditions in which people are either directed to use the left or right hand or free to choose between the two hands. The free choice condition led to increased hemodynamic activity in a network of cortical and subcortical areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal area, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. In the third experiment, I lay the groundwork for a full characterization of the neural regions involved in value-based decision making between two targets and two limbs.

Advisor: Ivry, Richard B
After the American Dream: The Immigrant Experience in an Asset Building Program for the Working Poor

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) were instituted to provide low-income workers with similar institutional support for saving funds and acquiring assets as already exists for those with higher earnings (e.g. IRAs, 401(k)s, mortgage tax interest deductions). The federally-funded program was intended to usher in a new approach towards amelioration of poverty: one that transcends subsistence and fosters asset-building. This dissertation contributes to IDA research a comparative examination of immigrant and U.S. born participants in a San Francisco based IDA program. Immigrants have been part of the program from its inception, but this will be the first study that will explicitly consider this program's utility for this group. In doing so, it contributes to studies of immigrant integration programs./nIn order to better understand the impact of IDAs regardless of nativity, the first article in this dissertation examines perceived changes in intensity of saving by participants who exited the program for whom a pre-IDA saving intensity could be determined (n=23). Unlike IDAs originally theorized, implemented IDAs are a time-limited program. The question of whether mere exposure to an institutional structure that facilitates saving (through matching, training, and rules encouraging deposits and discouraging withdrawals) is sufficient to create ongoing intensification of saving beyond program exit has not yet been studied. I find that exposure does intensify saving for many, but those who reported not saving before the program tended to revert to not saving after the program. This suggests that ongoing institutional structure could better promote saving./nThe second article explores the question of how participants use the IDA program towards the asset goal of housing, particularly in a context of high housing prices (n=12). This study is the first to explore IDAs as part of a larger context of asset-building programs and personal strategies. I find that an additional benefit of IDAs is in the linking with other agents, e.g. through its mandate that participants finish HUD-certified training meant to diminish risk for those making their first time home purchase. IDA funding is insufficient to fund home purchase in any significant way. Funding from other down-payment assistance programs appears largely missing. Successful home buyers tended to make use of unusual opportunities to intensely save money towards their purchase./nThe final chapter addresses differences between immigrant and U.S. born IDA participants. The final sample participating in this study (N=54) was evenly divided between the two groups. Immigrants were interviewed in Spanish, Cantonese, or English. Screening procedures and in-depth interviews were used to determine if nativity matters for likelihood of asset acquisition, changes in saving intensity, and perceptions of the program. No differences between the groups were found, with the exception of language barriers mentioned by immigrants.

Advisor: Bloemraad, Irene
Gilbert, Neil
Journeys Beyond the Standard Model

The much anticipated era of the Large Hadron Collider is nally upon us, making today an extremely interesting time to be doing theoretical particle physics. The recent Higgs-like signal is certainly the most exciting particle physics discovery in decades. However with this discovery comes the reminder that we are now, more than ever, in need of theoretical work to understand new physics. The Standard Model is incomplete; it does not accommodate the experimental observation of dark matter, or the baryon asymmetry of the Universe. In addition, the SM has aesthetic or ne-tuning problems, like the gauge hierarchy problem and the strong CP problem. The task of model builders centers around addressing these and other issues by constructing new physics models that may be tested experimentally.

Advisor: Hall, Lawrence J.
Essays on the Economics of Education

This dissertation addresses three questions in the economics of education. Chapter 1 analyzes whether segregating students by gender is beneficial for students' academic achievement. Students or parents often choose peer groups by selecting school types, assuming that peers are important determinants of one's academic achievement. Among the various types of peer effects, this study addresses whether segregating students from the opposite sex is beneficial for one's academic performance by making use of the variation created by randomly assigning students to either same- or mixed-sex high schools. By using seven years of administrative data on scores in college entrance exams, I find that both male and female students benefit by being in same-sex schools. Moreover, the quantile regression analysis reveals that the effect is greater for students located at the middle quantile of the distribution of test scores. I conducted a sensitivity analysis by using a different type of test that students take, and the results are robust./nIn Chapter 2, unlike estimating the effect of conventional incentive mechanisms in which good schools are rewarded and bad schools are punished, I estimate the impact of "rewarding" poor-performing schools on students' academic achievement. Because of the simple discontinuous eligibility that determines the provision of categorical school funding to underachieving schools, I use regression discontinuity designs to causally estimate the treatment effect. The results of the analysis reveal that students' academic performance in poor-performing schools improved significantly (7 to 10 percentile points) after the treatment. Moreover, the ratio of underachieving students decreased in schools that received funding (5 to 10 percentage points), relative to those that did not receive funding./nFinally, in Chapter 3, I explore whether grouping students by ability benefits students. Local education agencies often engage in educational reforms with limited resources aimed at improving the academic achievement of students. One of the low cost methods that the agency frequently employs is the use of ability tracking. In this chapter, by making use of the randomized social experiment conducted in Seoul, I provide causal estimates of the effect of ability tracking on students' achievement, using administrative data on students' test scores. Based on the results, I find that, on average, tracking promotes achievement of not only high-achieving students, but also of low-achieving students. Moreover, the magnitude of the treatment effect is similar across various quantiles of the distribution of students' performance. Therefore, contrary to the view that tracking may be detrimental to the learning of low-achieving students, tracking may not worsen inequality in students' achievement.

Advisor: Raphael, Steven
Generic Reduction, and Work with Partial Computations and Partial Oracles

A generic computation of a subset A of the natural numbers consists of a computation which correctly computes most of the bits of A and never incorrectly computes any bits of A, but which does not necessarily give an answer for every input. This concept derives its motivation from a recent trend in complexity theory to study the complexity of a problem in terms of how difficult it is to compute the majority of size n instances of the problem, and not in terms of how difficult it is to compute the most difficult size n instances of the problem./nWhen considered from a purely recursion-theoretic point of view, generic computability proves to be somewhat counterintuitive. It can be shown to be, in some sense, as nontransitive as possible, and not only do minimal pairs not exist in this context, but even finite minimal sets of reals can be shown to not exist./nIf we modify the definition of generic computation to make it transitive, we are naturally confronted with a deduction procedure in which the oracles, like the computations, are not required to be total. For this reason, “generic reduction” is defined in an inherently Pi11 manner. While studying generic reduction, we show that it is Pi11-complete, and we also present a characterization of the hyperarithmetic reals in terms of generic reduction./nFinally, we increase the level of abstraction, studying transitive and nontransitive deduction procedures with partial oracles. We provide a framework for discussing such reductions, we mention how various known results in recursion theory can be fit into this framework, and we discuss a number of seemingly trivial reductions, showing how subtle variations in the definitions can impact the produced reduction.

Advisor: Slaman, Theodore
Reverse Engineering of RNA Regulatory Networks

Understanding gene regulation is of central importance to biology because controlling when, where, and how genes are expressed accounts for a large proportion of the complexity and organization of living systems. While for many years RNA was largely thought of as the middleman for converting genetic information into biochemically active proteins, it has become increasingly clear that RNAs are also major players gene regulation. This thesis examines the functional properties of regulatory RNAs in the context of bacterial RNA networks. More specifically, the three studies presented here examine signaling dynamics and crosstalk within the CsrA and Hfq-dependent small RNA regulatory systems; each of these systems (i) contain non-coding RNAs which regulate the translation of multiple target messenger RNAs, (ii) have central roles in coordinating their cells' adaptation to environmental change, and (iii) are evolutionarily conserved across a wide range of bacterial species. In this work, a combination of synthetic biology and mathematical modeling are brought to bear to uncover the operational behavior and potential of the these two model RNA networks.

Advisor: Lim, Han N
House Work: Domesticity, Belonging, and Salvage in the Art of Jess, 1955-1991

This dissertation examines the work of the San Francisco-based artist Jess (1923-2004). Jess's multimedia and cross-disciplinary practice, which takes the form of collage, assemblage, drawing, painting, film, illustration, and poetry, offers a perspective from which to consider a matrix of issues integral to the American postwar period. These include domestic space and labor; alternative family structures; myth, rationalism, and excess; and the salvage and use of images in the atomic age. The dissertation has a second protagonist, Robert Duncan (1919-1988), preeminent American poet and Jess's partner and primary interlocutor for nearly forty years. Duncan and Jess built a household and a world together that transgressed boundaries between poetry and painting, past and present, and acknowledged the limits and possibilities of living and making daily.

Advisor: Wagner, Anne M.
Statistical Learning Theory of Protein Dynamics

This thesis establishes a comprehensive statistical learning framework to extract from single-molecule Forster resonance energy transfer (smFRET) experiments the potential of mean force and diffusion coefficient that characterize the measured protein dynamics. To enable a fundamental understanding of how deterministic mean force and stochastic diffusion combine to affect conformational transitions, we first developed a general trajectory entropy functional for over-damped Langevin dynamics. This functional allows for evaluation of the information content in the dynamic trajectory ensemble. Next, we present a path integral statistical learning approach to infer the hidden trajectory from the data of smFRET measurements of protein dynamics. This methodology also yields a likelihood for the parameters of the equation of motion that can then be optimized to deduce the most probable profiles of mean force and diffusion coefficient for describing the observed dynamical data./nTo provide a solid foundation for regularizing the parameters derived from experimental trajectories through statistical learning, the Fisher information metric of Langevin dynamics trajectories is derived via an eigenbasis representation of the time propagator. Using this Fisher information, the maximum entropy distributions for various kinetic constraints can derived for the first time. Finally the knowledge of trajectory entropy and likelihood of smFRET measurements is combined to present a new calculus of representing the Information Thermodynamics in statistical learning. Bayesian analysis using this methodology shows that in the balance between entropy, likelihood, and fluctuations given at the critical point in the phase diagram of information, the ideal force profile and diffusion can be determined from smFRET experiments in a systematic and robust manner.

Advisor: Chu, Jhih-Wei
Material Science and Device Physics of Semiconductors on Arbitrary Substrates

Since the beginnings of the semiconductor revolution, device engineering and material development have been deeply interconnected. Innovations in one invariably spurred development in the other. One of the most important current challenges are developing techniques which enable deposition of materials on arbitrary substrates and the design constraints of devices fabricated via these techniques. This thesis focuses on furthering the materials development-device design cycle for three techniques: (i) epitaxial lift-off, (ii) nanowire growth via the vapor-liquid-solid growth mode, and (iii) the thin-film vapor-liquid-solid growth technique. The physics of devices made via (i) and (ii) are discussed in chapters two and three, the material science of (iii) is discussed in chapter four, and a method to engineer the physical and electronic properties of individual nanowires made via (ii) is discussed in chapter/nChapter two deals with the device physics and performance of ultra-thin compound semiconductor on insulator field effect transistors. Due to its excellent electron transport properties, InAs is used as the material of choice for the transistors, termed XOI FETs. These devices are fabricated utilizing an epitaxial layer transfer technique, enabling highly lattice mismatched single-crystalline layers of InAs to be deposited on Si wafers. Allowing devices which combine the excellent transport properties of compound-semiconductors and the established processing infrastructure for silicon. Chapter three discusses the design constraints and guidelines for nanopillar photovoltaics, specifically those fabricated utilizing the CdS/CdTe material system. Critically, the materials parameters that are favorable to non-planar cells are discussed, and the performance expectations for CdS/CdTe nanopillar photovoltaics are discussed./nChapter four focuses on a growth technique developed to enable growth of ultra-large grain III-V semiconductors on non-epitaxial substrates, termed thin-film vapor-liquid-solid growth. This growth technique takes advantage of the vapor liquid solid growth mode to enable films with thickness down to 500 nm and grain sizes greater than 50 m. This represents a significant advance over all conventional growth techniques, which produce films with grain sizes 10-100x smaller. Furthermore, the optoelectronic quality of these materials is within a few percent of single crystal, as determined by quantitative luminescence efficiency measurements. Finally, Chapter five discusses the use of nanowires as physical templates, allowing engineering of Van der Waals forces to fabricate self-selective electrical connectors. By utilizing nanowire forests as starting templates, successive layers of material are deposited, each playing a specific role in the final structure, enabling composite material properties otherwise not possible.

Advisor: Javey, Ali