VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The global diffusion of conservation policy [electronic resource] : an institutional analysis

What explains the significant institutional change in environmental policy across the globe? And why do environmental policies across nations look so similar? Is there a convergence to optimal policies or are there other forces at play? And what are the outcomes of such a process? The motivation of my research is to understand the role of social processes determining environmental policy reform and its implementation across nations. By using biodiversity conservation policy as a case study I hope to contribute to the understanding of the institutional change in the environmental field and effectiveness of public policies since diffusion, implementation and outcomes are measureable and of global interest. The research agenda is framed in institutional and social field theory, but is interdisciplinary since it draws from a range of theories on organizations and policy diffusion. This proposal uses a mixed method approach, using discourse analysis, qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as exploring four case studies to understand environmental policy change.

Advisor: Naylor Rosamond primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Scott W. Richard primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Dirzo Rodolfo advisor. Thesis advisor
Soule Sarah Anne
Global identification and functional analysis of calcineurin substrates in yeast [electronic resource]

The regulation of the phosphoproteome by kinases and phosphatases is a critical component of complex signaling networks. Many tools for identification of kinase substrates cannot be applied to phosphatases, creating a disparity in kinase versus phosphatase substrate identification. In this work, we describe two complementary approaches for identifying phosphatase substrates, both using the calcium-dependent phosphatase calcineurin in S. cerevisiae as a model. First, mass spectrometry-based analysis of calcineurin-deficient and calcineurin-activated yeast, in silico screening to identify calcineurin-docking motifs, and biochemical verification led to the identification of 15 novel calcineurin substrates from a set of 29 novel interactors for calcineurin in yeast. This represents the first successful comprehensive identification of phosphatase substrates in any organism and significantly advances our understanding of calcium/calcineurin signaling. Substrate identification has suggested new roles for calcium/calcineurin signaling in polarized growth, autophagy, and zinc homeostasis. Specific analysis suggests that calcineurin negatively regulates the kinase Elm1 in the alkaline pH stress response and early G1 of the cell cycle. Second, a protein microarray phosphatase assay was used to identify calcineurin substrates in vitro. This assay uses a mixture of purified yeast kinases to radiolabel phosphorylation sites that have been dephosphorylated by calcineurin. Our pilot screen identified approximately 90 potential calcineurin substrates with Hel2, Sgt1, and Skg1 being verified by secondary assays. The methodologies presented in this work may be generalizable to identify substrates for phosphatases in yeast and other organisms and help lead to a better understanding of complex signaling networks.

Keywords: Biology.
Advisor: Cyert Martha S.
Kopito Ron Rieger
Snyder Michael
Wang Zhi-Yong
Graph colorings and graph limits [electronic resource]

This thesis in two parts. The first part studies the monotonicity properties of chromatic polynomials. The second part studies the limiting behavior of certain exponential random graph models. \\ In the first part (chapter 2 and 3), a generalization of the birthday problem is studied and connections are shown to two conjectures about chromatic polynomials: the shameful conjecture due to D. Welsh and Brenti's conjecture about the log-concavity of chromatic polynomials. The probability of getting a proper coloring of a graph under a random coloring scheme is studied. The goal is to understand conditions under which a random coloring with q+1 colors has a higher probability of resulting into a proper coloring of the graph than a random coloring with q colors has? It is shown that one criteria guaranteeing that the above property is true is that q should be large enough in terms of the highest degree of the graph. Ideas from the work of A. Sokal and C. Borgs giving bounds on the roots of chromatic polynomials are used to prove this property. In fact, a much stronger property is proved. Further generalizations of this question are also studied and some useful examples and analyses are provided. \\ The second part (chapter 4) studies the limiting behavior of certain exponential random graph models (ERGMs) with some negative coefficients. This study is motivated by recent results of Diaconis and Chatterjee in which they show that ERGMs with positive coefficients have the same limiting behavior as Erdos Renyi random graph models. Using the theory developed in their work the limiting behavior of the Strauss model is studied. Methods from extremal graph theory such as Turan's theorem are used and proofs of their analogous statements in graph limit theory are also proved. Some more complicated models are studied through simulations and these results are also presented here.

Keywords: Mathematics
Advisor: Diaconis Persi primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Bump Daniel
Church Thomas (Thomas Franklin) advisor. Thesis advisor
Green building technology [electronic resource] : relating technology implementation to design goals and energy performance

The building construction industry is in the midst of a technology revolution, but changes are slow to propagate across individuals, companies and geographies. Researchers have pointed to several market characteristics as possible causes for the adoption lag; among these are poor project liability assignment, severe demand fluctuations, and the broken agency between building owners and occupants. These factors and others limit project investment and knowledge diffusion. Building project teams have five primary objectives when designing and constructing space for future occupants. A building must heat, cool, ventilate and light its internal space, and supply hot water. To fulfill these project goals, designers specify building systems, envelopes, and strategies that will meet the occupants' needs while adapting to the surrounding environment. However, designers do not necessarily make design choices with the most efficient finished building in mind. Even when energy efficiency is a primary objective the decision process may not be entirely unbiased. This study identifies the need for building design decision support regarding new energy efficient technology with a concentration on building technology implementation challenges and the energy efficient and innovative technologies used by project teams to solve the challenges. LEED certified buildings were examined for the study to determine which technologies were implemented most often and their initial energy saving purpose.

Advisor: Levitt Raymond E. advisor. Thesis advisor
Growth opportunities [electronic resource] : developing a culturally responsive pedagogy in a school context

Abstract Research offers data of the backgrounds and practices of individual teachers who enact a culturally responsive pedagogy and there is limited research investigating how teachers learn the dispositions and practices it involves. Because the major tenets of a culturally responsive pedagogy involve ways of being in the world, the development the pedagogy, like many aspects of teaching, happens over time. This dissertation asks if teachers can develop a culturally responsive pedagogy in a school context. If so what resources would a school need for learning and what conditions would make those resources useful and utilized? I conducted a case study of one high performing high school serving low-income students of color to address this question. Data were collected over one and half years among seven focal teachers, the faculty, and administrators at "Serramonte Prep", a new small high school in a medium sized urban area. Data includes observations of teachers practice, collaborative work, school events, documents and interview data. Data are analyzed through a conceptual framework grounded in a sociocultural theory of learning and a theory of culturally responsive pedagogy largely based on Geneva Gay's (2000) conceptualization. Personalization structures, common assessments, targeted professional development and shared curriculum are identified as substantive resources for the development of culturally responsive pedagogy. Conditions that facilitate opportunities to learn from these resources include a close focus on the student, involved expertise, joint work with colleagues and an expanded role of the classroom teacher. Moreover, findings also suggest teachers' professional preparation and background influence their capacity to benefit from participation in school resources, and the development of an ethic of deep care is particularly difficult to develop in the context alone. They also indicate that school resources are not available to all teachers and therefore limit their use.

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: Darling-Hammond Linda
Brown Bryan Anthony advisor. Thesis advisor
Grossman Pamela L. (Pamela Lynn)
Lotan Rachel A. advisor. Thesis advisor
Hardware and software systems for personal robots [electronic resource]

Robots play a major role in precision manufacturing, continually performing economically justifiable tasks with superhuman speed and reliability. In contrast, deployments of advanced personal robots in home or office environments have been stymied by difficult hardware and software challenges. Among many others, these challenges have included cost, reliability, perceptual capability, and software interoperability. This thesis will describe a series of hardware and software systems designed in response to these challenges and towards the long-range goal of creating general-purpose robots that will be useful and practical in everyday environments. First, several low-cost robot subsystems will be described, including systems for indoor localization, short-range object recognition, and inertial joint encoding, as demonstrated on prototype low-cost manipulators. Next, the design of a low-cost, highly capable robotic hand will be described in detail, which incorporates all of the aforementioned hardware and software subsystems. Finally, the thesis will describe a robot software system developed for the STanford AI Robot (STAIR) project, and its evolution into the Robot Operating System (ROS), a widely used robot software framework designed to ease collaboration between disparate research communities to create integrative, embodied AI systems.

Advisor: Ng Andrew Y.
Abbeel Pieter
Salisbury J. Kenneth advisor. Thesis advisor
Heating and acceleration of intracluster medium protons by turbulence

We investigate the possibility of nonthermal inverse bremsstrahlung radiation as a source of hard X-ray emissions from the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters. In particular, using a numerical algorithm that simultaneously solves the coupled Fokker-Planck equations of protons and electrons subject to Coulomb collisions and stochastic acceleration, we determine whether it is possible to accelerate background protons without excessive heating. Under a simplified but generic acceleration model adopted in Petrosian & East (2008), the time evolution of both proton and electron spectra are computed. We find that nonthermal protons necessary for the inverse bremsstrahlung process to produce hard X-ray photons can emerge only with excessive heating of the entire plasma, unless the acceleration parameters, the duration of the acceleration, and/or the initial distributions are significantly fine-tuned. These results severely constraint the feasibility of nonthermal inverse bremsstrahlung process producing hard X-ray emissions. In Appendix A, we also derive and present a formula for the energy loss rate by the proton-proton interaction, which becomes the dominant energy loss process for protons of kinetic energy higher than 320 MeV.

Keywords:  Department of Physics
galaxies
clusters
acceleration of particles
x-rays
Thesis
Advisor: Petrosian Vahe
Madejski Grzegorz (Greg)
Helioseismic detections of sunspot regions [electronic resource]

Sunspots are regions where strong magnetic fields emerge from the solar interior and where major eruptive events occur. Sunspot studies are needed to understand the generation and emergence of magnetic fields in the photosphere and monitor the solar magnetic activity. In this thesis, local helioseismology methods are used to detect and study sunspot regions on the far-side of the Sun, the photosphere, and the deep convection zone, before these magnetic regions become visible on the solar disc. One of the successes of helioseismology is the imaging of solar far-side magnetic regions. Helioseismic holography and time-distance technique are capable of detecting sunspot regions on the far side of the sun and provide useful warnings for space weather forecasts. These techniques employ acoustic waves that travel to the far side and return to the front side after multiple bounces in the photosphere. We explore the possibility of far-side imaging by the time-distance technique using three-skip acoustic signals. This method is first validated with use of numerical simulation data and then it is used to detect sunspot regions on the solar far side using SOHO/MDI observations. It is shown that if these maps are combined with maps of existing methods, the appearance of spurious signals is reduced. Sunspot observations in the photosphere show that the acoustic power inside a sunspot region is significantly reduced compared to the quiet Sun. The power deficit is due to three main groups of physical mechanisms: absorption, emissivity reduction, and local suppression. These effects are separated with a measurement scheme that utilizes one- and double-skip waves in sunspots and quiet-sun regions. Using a large sample of sunspots observed with SOHO/MDI, the coefficients of each mechanism are measured as functions of travel distance and their relative contribution to the total power reduction is determined as well. The methods and the results of this study will be utilized for the detection of emerging sunspot regions in the convection zone. Helioseismic methods can be used to detect and study the properties of sunspot regions not only on the solar far side and the photosphere but also in the deep solar interior. We develop a measurement procedure which is capable of detecting emerging sunspot regions at depths around 60,000 km and 1-2 days before the detected magnetic structures emerge to the surface. The detection is based on measurements of the acoustic phase travel-time perturbations with the time-distance helioseismology technique using SOHO/MDI, SDO/HMI, and GONG datasets. The travel-time anomalies are related with cross-covariance frequency perturbations that depend strongly on the acoustic frequency. The implications of these measurements to studies of magnetic flux emergence in the solar convection zone and the potential applications to space weather forecasts are discussed.

Keywords: Physics
Advisor: Scherrer Philip H.
Petrosian Vahe advisor. Thesis advisor
Zhao Junwei advisor. Thesis advisor
Heterogeneous integration by parallel insertion of chiplets into wafer [electronic resource]

The HIPPI process (Heterogeneous Integration by Palletized Parallel Insertion) embeds CMOS chiplets into MEMS wafers, to bypass the monolithic integration challenges of combining MEMS functionality with CMOS circuitry. Dry alignment is provided by passive guide tabs, which are created through polysilicon refill of front-side etched trenches. The guide tabs are compatible with further processing on the wafer. Precision chiplets are created by through-wafer etching. After chiplet drop-in, optical detection provides feedback of chiplet jamming, and horizontal driving of the chiplets finishes the zero insertion force assembly process. We demonstrate less than 2.5[mu]m of chiplet to substrate alignment error. Theoretical scaling of alignment accuracy reaches numbers comparable to photolithography, allowing high density interconnects for heterogeneous integration without precision manipulators.

Keywords: Electrical Engineering
Advisor: Howe Roger Thomas primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Lee Thomas advisor. Thesis advisor
Solgaard Olav advisor. Thesis advisor
High fidelity simulations of reactive liquid-fuel jets [electronic resource]

Most of the propulsion combustion engines, due to weight and volume restrictions, rely on liquid phase combustion processes. The multi-physics aspect of liquid phase combustion introduced by the fuel evaporation along with combustion in a highly-turbulent environment makes experimental investigation of such a system a very challenging endeavor. This lack of high fidelity experimental data explaining complex interaction between different physical mechanisms motivates the need for detailed simulations in order to improve our understanding and thereby advance model development. Traditionally in turbulent combustion research, focus is directed towards understanding the fully burning state. However our understanding of the transition from an unburnt state to a fully burning state is relatively underdeveloped and therefore is the focus of the present work. While most of the industrial combustion devices rely on either an external ignition source or auto-ignition to start combustion, this work will solely focus on understanding and modeling auto-ignition in liquid hydrocarbon fuel jets. To study the phenomena of auto-ignition we have performed three-dimensional high fidelity simulations of reacting n-heptane liquid-fuel temporal jet in Diesel engine type conditions. In these simulations the continuous phase is described using an Eulerian representation whereas Lagrangian particle tracking is used to model the dispersed phase. The chemical kinetics are described using a reduced n-heptane chemical mechanism with 42 species and 304 reactions. The results from the simulations are used to characterize auto-ignition in turbulent spray flames. Auto-ignition kernels are first seen in fuel-lean mixture fraction regions. The role of scalar dissipation rate on auto-ignition is highlighted. Auto-ignition is observed only in the regions of low scalar dissipation rate. Subsequent to formation of auto-ignition kernels, reaction fronts propagate towards the fuel-rich regions and establish regions of increased reaction rate. Dominance of partially premixed mode of burning is also noted. Finally, the flamelet combustion models are analyzed using the simulation database. The a-priori tests highlight the deficiencies of premixed progress variable based model in reproducing auto-ignition. The a-priori tests also reveal the superior performance of non-premixed progress variable model in capturing the auto-ignition behavior.

Keywords: Mechanical Engineering
Advisor: Pitsch Heinz
Iaccarino Gianluca advisor. Thesis advisor
Mungal Mark Godfrey advisor. Thesis advisor
High-k dielectric layers and their application in organic electronics [electronic resource]

Solution processed organic field effect transistor (OFETs) have being proposed for low-cost electronic applications such as sensors, RFID tags, and electronic paper. In order to achieve high performance, the effects of microstructure on charge transport as well as the design of new organic semiconductors have been investigated. Equally important, however, is the influence of the gate dielectric interface on the properties of organic semiconductors for various applications. In the first chapter, the functionality of a dual gate transistor as a chemical sensor will be demonstrated. The top high-[kappa] dielectric, Al2O3, is deposited on a conventional single gate OTFT to build the sensing element. When polar molecules of interest attach to the top high-k dielectric, an electric field is induced on the top surface of semiconductor, affecting the response of the transistor thereby providing a sensing mechanism. As a result, such top dielectric sensing architecture produces a high-sensitivity response and mitigates the poor ambient stability of organic semiconductors. The second chapter of this dissertation will focus on room-temperature, solution-based fabrication of high-[kappa] ZrO2 thin films for low-voltage-operated OFETs. An alternative UV curing method for the densification of Zr-based gel films, which allows for low-temperature processing, is compared to the conventional thermal annealing method. Electrical and microstructural analysis shows that UV-curing induces the decomposition of organic-metal bonds and causes the densification of the metal oxide film, just as the conventional thermal annealing of gel films does, resulting in a high-[kappa] dielectric layer from Zr-based solutions. Using this dielectric layer with an octadecylphosphonic acid self-assembled monolayer, solution-processed polymer OFETs with PBTTT-C-14 as the organic semiconductor function well at low voltage (below -3 V). The effect of SAM on the morphology and microstructure of the organic semiconductor deposited on the ZrO2 dielectrics is investigated. We also demonstrate a solution-processed OFETs fabricated on a flexible substrate at low temperature (T< 70°C). In third chapter, the third part of the presentation will focus on dielectric surface modification effects on an ambipolar organic semiconductor in order to control on-set voltage by introducing known amounts of deep trap states. Self-assembled monolayers with different head group were used to modify the charge transport properties of an ambipolar organic semiconductor, poly(3,6-bis-selenophene-2-octyl-1-dodecyl-diketopyrrolopyrrole- co-benzothiadiazole (PSeDPPBT). To further investigate the origin of the surface modification effect, micro- and electronic structure of PSeDPPBT were characterized with grazing incident x-ray diffraction and temperature dependent charge transport measurements.

Keywords: Materials Science and Engineering
Advisor: Salleo Alberto
Bao Zhenan advisor. Thesis advisor
McIntyre Paul Cameron advisor. Thesis advisor