VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Optimal aircraft rerouting during space launches

Commercial interest in space exploration and capabilities has seen steady growth. This growth has the potential to advance science, inspire innovation, introduce space tourism, and address global concerns such geospatial monitoring and data access, universal data communications, and weather. One challenge facing space exploration is how to expand operations while minimizing the disruption to shared resources like airspace. Currently, during a space launch or reentry, the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits air traffic within a large column of airspace around the launch trajectory. The prohibited airspace is often active for hours at a time, resulting in the rerouting of hundreds of flights at the cost of thousands of dollars to airlines per launch. If the current launch and reentry procedures do not change, they could limit technology advancement and space exploration or hurt airlines. A new method of managing the airspace during space launches would need to maintain safety, maximize efficiency, and not increase air traffic controller workload. To address safety and efficiency, recent research has focused on leveraging new technology to make the prohibited airspace dynamic throughout the space launch and to limit the geographical extent. To do this successfully, the approach must accurately model the airspace, including both the aircraft and the dispersion of debris in case of an anomaly, and must capture the inherent uncertainty of launch anomalies to provide encompassing rerouting regions. This thesis uses Markov decision processes to model the problem of aircraft rerouting during space launches and dynamic programming to solve for optimal rerouting policies. The resulting policies are run through simulated scenarios to measure their effects on safety and efficiency. The results produce smaller prohibited regions and provide real-time reroutes for air traffic controllers to relay to pilots during a space launch. These outputs can be used as the foundation for a decision support tool that assists air traffic controllers in rerouting flights during space launches.

Keywords: Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Advisor: Kochenderfer Mykel J.
Alonso Juan José
Erzberger Heinz 
Manchester Zachary
Optimization-based modeling in investment and data science

Optimization has played a key role in numerous fields including data science, statistics, machine learning, decision science, control and quantitative investment. Optimization offers a way for users to focus on the modeling step. Convex optimization has been a very successful and powerful modeling framework. By formulating a problem as convex optimization, practitioners could focus on the modeling side without worrying about designing problem-specific optimization algorithms during prototyping time. However, there are hurdles in applying this convex modeling framework. First, lots of signal processing and machine learning problems are most naturally formulated as non-convex problems. Second, not all convex problems are tractable. Third, it may be hard to encode the knowledge of data into a simple regularizer or constraint and specify the mathematical form of the optimization problem. In this thesis, we talk about topics in optimization-based modeling, including 1) distributional robust Kelly strategy in investment and gambling; 2) convex sparse blind deconvolution; 3) missing data imputation via a new structure called matrix network; 4) neural proximal method for compressive sensing.In these works. I try to expand the boundary of convex optimization based modeling by conquering several hurdles. In the distributional robust Kelly problem, the original distributional robust optimization formulation isconvex but non-tractable; we transform the problem into a tractable form. In the sparse blind deconvolutionproblem, blind deconvolution has been perceived as a non-convex problem for a long time, we proposea scalable convex formulation, and find a phase transition for the convex algorithm. In the missing dataimputation problem, we study a slice-wise missing pattern on tensorial type data that is beyond the capabilityof typical tensor completion algorithms. We propose a new type of underlying low-dimensional structure thatallows us to impute the missing data. In the first three topics, we solve these problems via convex optimizationformulations. In the last topic, we step out of the safety zone of convexity. On the linear inverse problem, we go beyond the sparsity and1−norm regularizer for compressive sensing. To model complex structure innatural/medical images, we propose a learning-based idea to parameterize the proximal map of an unknownregularizer. This idea is inspired by the convex optimization modeling framework and the learning-basedmethod, although the result need not correspond to convex optimization.

Keywords: Mathematics.
Advisor: Boyd Stephen P. 
Donoho David Leigh 
Candès Emmanuel J. (Emmanuel Jean)
Orchestrating opioid memories in thalamic circuits

Disrupting associations between environmental cues and drug experiences holds promise for treating drug addiction. To do so, it is essential to access and manipulate the distributed neural network that maintains such memories. Here we demonstrate that the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) orchestrates the acquisition and maintenance of opioid-associated memories through its projections to the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc). Activation of the PVT→CeA pathway associates morphine reward to the environment, whereas transient silencing of the PVT→NAc pathway during retrieval disrupts that association and provides enduring protection against relapse. Using whole-brain activity mapping, we revealed altered distributed network activity in these non-relapsing mice, including activity in the lateral hypothalamus (LH). This finding led to the discovery that activation of the downstream NAc→LH pathway also robustly prevents relapse. Together, our results establish the PVT as a key node in the opioid-associated memories network by its projections to the CeA and NAc, and highlight the PVT→NAc→LH pathway as a promising target for treating opioid addiction.

Advisor: Chen Xiaoke
Giocomo Lisa
Knutson Brian 
Malenka Robert C.
The organization of educational markets and effects on individuals' decisions : an empirical analysis using Brazilian educational policies

This dissertation aims to provide new evidence about how educational policies affect school markets and the decisions of their participants. To do so, I analyze two policies implemented in two regions in Brazil: Pernambuco and the city of Sao Paulo, respectively. In Pernambuco, I study the effects on student enrollment decisions and test scores of a policy that increased the length of the school day from 4.5 to 8 hours for public high school students: the full-day school policy. In Sao Paulo, I examine which school attributes influence the school choice decisions of public-school teachers. I do so in a context where teachers have all the power when deciding which schools they want to work at, without any interference of school administrators. I divide the analysis of the full-day high school policy into two papers. In the first paper, I show the program has a strong effect on the dynamics of the educational market. Specifically, my results suggest that migration from private middle schools to public high schools increased in Pernambuco after the full-day program's implementation. In the second paper, I compare student test scores gains throughout high school, accounting for fixed differences between the schools and common time effects. My results indicate the program has a positive effect of nearly 0.2 standard deviations on student test scores. Finally, in the third paper, I analyze the teacher labor market in the city of Sao Paulo. My results indicate that teachers are most influenced by a school's location as well as the average socioeconomic characteristics of the school. Also, I show that a small wage-premiums (about 5-7%) do not affect teacher choices. Altogether, my analysis indicates that the organization of educational markets have a significant influence on individual decisions and affects the distribution of physical and human resources across schools.

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: Bettinger Eric 
Carnoy Martin 
Dupas Pascaline 
Hoxby Caroline Minter
Organized Labor and Social Value Creation in Silicon Valley

Ahmi Dhuna’s capstone project explored the relationship between organized labor, the growing tech industry, and economic disparities in the Silicon Valley. More specifically, she focused on the history of organized labor in the Silicon Valley, detailing the virulently anti-worker nature of tech’s market incentives and dominant business models, and contrasting these destructive anti-worker tactics with tech’s rhetoric of ‘bettering mankind.’ Her paper offers a critical look at how anti-union industries affect working conditions, low-income communities, and growing income inequality.
Student project deposited by department for archival purposes. Original work unavailable for public download due to permission restriction preferences of the author.

Keywords: Labor movement
High technology industries
Income inequality
Text
Thesis
The origin of rice agriculture in the Lower Yangtze Valley, China

The transition to agriculture is one of the most consequential events in human history. Rice agriculture is known to have originated from the Lower Yangtze River, but despite more than two decades of extensive studies, how and why rice first became domesticated remain unclear. Traditional theories tend to consider the transition as a result of resource stress, but recent archaeological data indicate no such evidence in this area. This dissertation provides a new approach to explain this phenomenon. Data for this research come from two sources: 1) a review of published materials of excavated sites dating to the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in China, and 2) a residue (starch and phytolith) and use-wear study on a total of 142 ceramic and stone artifacts from the Shangshan culture (11,400 -- 8,600 BP). Based on my analysis, I propose that the agricultural transition was a two-stage process, the first stage involving the self-domestication of humans and the second stage featuring human domestication of other species. The first stage began around the terminal Pleistocene (ca. 30,000-11,700 BP), when humans invented a diversified array of technologies (e.g. grinding stone, pottery, polished stones). These new technologies enabled humans to exploit more wild foods but also physically and culturally "domesticated" them, creating an irreversible reliance on external tools. The second stage arose in the warming climate of the early Holocene, when humans began a "mass production" of their Pleistocene innovations in order to process newly abundant plant resources, especially acorns. The physicality of tools and plants further tied people to specific locales and allowed them to experiment with plant cultivation. In the Lower Yangtze River, rice domestication occurred as an unintended consequence. Initially, rice was used as an important pottery temper and a minor food supplement; later a series of intensification events transformed the crop into a common staple food. Taken together, these conclusions depart from the anthropocentric approaches that consider plant domestication as a human strategy to produce sustenance. Instead, this research emphasizes how the active agencies of plants and tools resulted in the domestication of humans by eventually "trapping" them into a sedentary farming life with labor-demanding activities.

Keywords: East Asian Languages and Cultures.
Advisor: Liu Li
Bauer Andrew M. 
Hodder Ian
The origins of diversity in the adaptive immune system and the brain

Multicellular organisms are composed of many individual cells having diverse form and function. Even though differences between cells are essential for tissue and organism function, the processes that create and shape cellular diversity remain poorly understood in many living systems. Here, I explore cellular diversity in the adaptive immune system and the brain. In my work on human antibodies, I showed how somatic evolution unfolding in B cell populations generates and focuses the diversity of the antibody repertoire, enabling highly sensitive and specific recognition of foreign molecules. I also examined how antibody diversity is related to the transcriptional programs and clonal population dynamics of B cells. Finally, I comprehensively mapped the landscape of antibody class switch recombination, showing how antibodies of different classes are created in living humans and revealing cellular mechanisms that control class switch fate. In the developing fruit fly brain, using single-cell transcriptional profiling and genetic labeling strategies, I demonstrated that the transcriptional identity of individual neurons corresponds well to their anatomical and physiological function, and illuminated several principles of cell identity in neural development.

Advisor: Quake Stephen Ronald 
Kim Peter
Pritchard Jonathan (Jonathan K.)
The other Floridas : ecofeminist bioregionalism and post-rural white identity politics in the facebook era

Florida is a crucible for environmental politics: once in the vanguard of environmental protection, in the 2010s, the state was a leader in the Tea Party dismantling of environmental protection. While the state's largest oyster population collapsed and cyanobacteria choked rivers, the Scott Administration brought the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to its regulatory low point. Based on sixteen months of fieldwork between 2014 and 2017 in public education settings, this oral history project examines ecological nativism among settlers in "the Other Florida, " a region of the Florida Panhandle that missed the state's twentieth-century population boom. In the twenty-first, it was remade by sustainable development discourse as a prized site of salable cultural and ecological heritage. The "ecological natives" were oysterfolk, mullet fisherman, and others in a demographic category steeped in political fantasy, rural whites. This dissertation describes two movements that both latched onto the ecologies of the Other Florida as the same fodder for very different visions of place-based identity: ecofeminist bioregionalism and post-rural white identity politics. Nature memoirists combined ecofeminism, with its critique of western "Man" exploiting and objectifying people and ecologies alike, with bioregionalism, a movement to build national identities around watersheds. Its potential to reform settler environmentalism has been overlooked because of lack of attention to women's contributions to environmentalism. Considering the status of the Apalachicola River in water management, this dissertation also finds multiple ontologies among settlers, as for some white settlers the Apalachicola is a living whole imbued with life force. "Post-rural" refuses to take rural white populations as a priori and instead attends to how during suburbanization, identity markers associated with white rurality remained and were politically mobilized to oppose regulation of the resource frontier by outsiders invested in real estate. Post-rural white identity politics was spread through Facebook, an addictive product whose behavior-modifying feedback loops were designed to amplify inflammatory content for profit. Facebook was also used to promote mullet, a "trash fish, " as a quasi-ethnic object for expressing a minoritized "white trash" identity laden with Christian symbolism. The dissertation concludes with consideration of the figure of "Man, " which ecofeminists criticize, as central to the advent of anthropos as a biogeochemical force. Might a queer anthropocene inaugurate Man's end?.

Keywords: Anthropology.
Advisor: Ebron Paulla A.
Ferguson James
Garcia Angela
Yanagisako Sylvia Junko
Outdoing Zarathustra : Salvador Dalí's rendering of Nietzsche's Übermensch

Salvador Dalí is mainly known as a painter, but his artistic production expanded to other disciplines, particularly writing. In this dissertation, I examine his written work in relation to Friedrich Nietzsche. The objective of this study is to conduct a reading of Dalí that confronts his work with his boundless existential ambition, and, in the process, offer a particular definition of Nietzsche's Übermensch. I begin with a contextualization of Nietzsche's reception in early 20th century Spain and his direct influence on the young Dalí, who, since childhood, had the intention of embodying the Übermensch. Having established this relationship, this essay is then divided across three thematic chapters: accumulation, affirmation and generosity. In the first chapter, I show how Dalí integrated the entirety of his experiences into his autobiography (conceived as a work of art), and I use the work of Alexander Nehamas to illuminate Nietzsche's philosophy as a tool to make literature out of life. In the second chapter, I focus on the capacity of affirming everything accumulated, with Gilles Deleuze's reading of Zarathustra's dice-throw as an instrument for understanding Dalí's paranoiac-critical method. In the third chapter, I argue that generosity is a logical consequence of the previous two stages, and following Peter Sloterdijk, I show how self-eulogy can lead to munificence. In 1975, Dalí proclaimed that he was "the absolute Übermensch." By his early seventies, he had identified the mechanism of exaggeration as one of the most effective in his life. It was through exaggeration that he self-identified as the Übermensch. However, I argue that such a boastful claim is also an exaggeration, and conclude that he instead falls into the category of artist-tyrant -- practically the same, but less extreme. With this dissertation, I try to propose a new understanding of Dalí that goes beyond any moral judgment of him, as well as contribute a case study of the Übermensch that will hopefully shed some light on such a contested concept.

Keywords: Iberian and Latin American Cultures.
Advisor: Resina Joan Ramon
Falgàs Jordi
Gumbrecht Hans Ulrich 
Hoyos Ayala Héctor
Pagan nature : grottos, nymphs, and tritons in early modern poetry (1492-1616)

This dissertation documents the contested interrelation of poetry with natural history in the early modern period. It assesses how seminal poetic texts from Italy, Spain, Portugal, and England negotiated and probed the meaning of grottos, nymphs, and tritons as fables from 1492 to 1616. It first describes the Renaissance revival of the grotto and their humanoid inhabitants, nymphs and tritons, as key components of an early modern natural history which turned to pagan poetry to explain the natural world. It subsequently traces the shifts in meaning such fables underwent as legible signs amenable to competing natural historical frames of reference as they spread across Europe. While at the turn of the sixteenth century, poets like Garcilaso de la Vega and Jacopo Sannazaro used nymphs and grottos to convey a Platonic natural history, subsequent generations of poets like Luís de Camões and Edmund Spenser turned to the beguiling forms of the pagan maritime gods to inscribe competing Epicurean understandings of nature. Though Miguel de Cervantes ultimately questions such maritime fables, his novels and plays also indicate the importance of pagan gods to mediating understandings of human nature that continue to this day.

Keywords: Comparative Literature.
Advisor: Greene Roland
Barletta Vincent 
Gumbrecht Hans Ulrich 
Parker Patricia A.
Parasite Diversity of Carnivores at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve

Anthropogenic stressors such as urbanization can cause physiological stress, which may impair the immune system response of wild animal populations and lead to dysfunction in wildlife communities. Animals with weakened immune systems are thus more susceptible to parasites and pathogens, which healthy animals might successfully eliminate or control. One way to measure the health of a population is to monitor parasite abundance and diversity within a population of wild animals. Yet few studies have directly documented the parasite load of wild animals in urban environments. The goals of this study were to (1) determine the parasite presence and diversity in four predator species at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve: puma (Puma concolor), bobcat (Lynx rufus), coyote (Canis latrans), gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus); (2) examine seasonal variation in numbers of infected animals and diversity of parasites; and (3) compare parasite identification methods (flotations vs DNA metabarcoding). Both morphological identification (72/113) and genetic identification (92/143) found 64% of samples tested to be positive for parasitic presence. Parasite prevalence amongst the species ranged from 40% (coyote) to 76% (bobcat) according to morphological data and from 50% (puma) to 69% (grey fox) according to genetic data. Seventeen morphologically distinct parasite species were discovered from fecal floatation which were conservatively grouped into eight separate morphotypes. Morphological data found higher parasite presence in the dry season, but there was no seasonal effect according to genetic data. Understanding the parasite load of wildlife populations will, in turn, help to protect domesticated animals as parasite spillover poses a threat to all animals in human-dominated systems.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
ecology
parasite
carnivore
Thesis
Advisor: Hadly Elizabeth
Mordecai Erin
Parsing Through Predictions

Can algorithms send us to jail? This research analyzes the role predictive algorithms play in sorting defendants in and out of custody. Specifically, it investigates the Santa Clara County pretrial risk assessment instrument and how judges and legal professionals interpret its scores to make pretrial decisions. Are risk assessment scores the primary determinants of pretrial decisions or just consulted as supplementary information? Moreover, how much do judges trust the information from risk assessment tools given their history of racially prejudiced training data and scores? 14 interviews with legal professionals in Santa Clara County and Orange County were conducted to tackle these questions. After the analysis, a hierarchy of information became apparent whereby some forms of information had more bearing on a judge's decision than risk assessment scores. Judges prioritize information in the following order: 1) Swing facts or improvements to a defendant's behavior or lifestyle had the most bearing on pretrial decisions. They have the potential for judges to go against pretrial services recommendations. 2) Simple facts about a defendant's case such as, how many failures to appear, were very indicative of a defendant's future behavior for a judge. They are the most reliant forms of information for judges. 3) Lastly, risk assessment scores or indicators that aggregate the aforementioned facts into a number or score are consulted. These are treated as supplemental and somewhat nebulous forms of information on which to base a decision. Overall, the risk assessment score was not the determining factor for pretrial custody decisions. I make a call for algorithmic literacy, weeding out factors and algorithmic transparency to make risk assessment scores more useful for pretrial decisions.

Keywords:  Program in Science Technology and Society
risk assessment tools
risk assessment scores
pretrial decisions
judges
predictive algorithms
courts
justice
judicial discretion
Science Technology and Society
Thesis
Advisor: Angèle Christin