VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Libidinal engineers [electronic resource] : three studies in cybernetics and its discontents

Libidinal Engineers offers a cultural history of automatic control in North American avant-garde media cultures of the Cold War. It tells the story of how three artists worked through the implications of Cold War "closed world" discourses of control and communication, their disastrous application in the "technowar" in Vietnam, and in the lived condition of "control societies." The dissertation follows this trajectory by means of three dilating rings: from instruments to delimited environments to lived conditions. First, I examine an instrument of automatic control, the Camera Activating Machine in Michael Snow's now-canonical La région centrale (1971) and its heretofore unknown relation to discourses of Cold War surveillance, in particular technologies of the Early Warning Line and anxieties of representation. Second, I address a delimited environment of multimedia assemblage, Carolee Schneemann's Meat System 1: Electronic Activation Room (1970), and how it appropriated both the discourse and devices of automatic control, such as human intrusion detectors, as a means to foreground issues of sexuality and gender immanent to media cultures of the Vietnam War. Finally, I introduce an examination of the lived conditions of technocratic determination, formulated in Tom Sherman's performance Hyperventilation (1970) and his construction of the part-instruments, part-sculptures Orgone Energy Accumulator (1972) and Faraday Cage (1972), where Sherman explores the darker side of American counterculture's techno-utopia and the coextensive character of control and communication on terms of not only cybernetics but a longer history of discourses of mind control. Based in new, in-depth archival research, I examine the interrelation of technologies and discourses of national defense and artistic experiments in film, video, and multimedia design. Emphasis is placed on terms of desire and affect. I focus especially on cybernetics, defined as "control and communication in the human and machine, " a discourse originating in the defense industries of World War II and scientific research in fields of physics, mathematics, and engineering. Drawing upon primary sources such as patent records, declassified wartime reports, and operating manuals, I assert artists' engagement with the mechanical basis of cybernetics in mechanical and electrical engineering, insisting upon a necessary shift from the prevailing focus upon metaphors of feedback to the hardware by which feedback was materially constituted: servomechanisms, the technology of automatic control.

Keywords: Art and Art History.
Advisor: Levi Pavle primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Turner Fred primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Alter Nora M.
Wolf Bryan Jay advisor. Thesis advisor
Life cycle design of polypropylene fiber reinforced cement-based composites [electronic resource]

Fiber reinforcement is now used for concrete applications globally to reduce shrinkage and temperature cracking, control crack widths, and provide structural reinforcement. A number of fiber types are used which include metallic fibers, polymeric fibers, and natural fibers. Of the natural fibers, asbestos fibers are used in developing countries due to their low cost and high strength as a reinforcement material in a cementitious matrix. However, asbestos has documented human health impacts which can be severe in developing countries. Polypropylene (PP) is a thermoplastic polymer that has found wide adoption for concrete fiber reinforcement. Its use has been for control of shrinkage and temperature cracking rather than as structural reinforcement of fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) due to its low bond strength in cementitious matrices. The hydrophobic nature of PP leads to low chemical bonding between fibers and the surrounding cementitious matrix. Polarity control through additive copolymerization shows substantive promise in modifying the hydrophobicity of PP to be more hydrophilic. Leveraging this hydrophilic nature, modified PP fibers can be used to structurally reinforce cementitious matrices through formation of a stronger bond with the surrounding cementitious matrix. This thesis presents a novel material design methodology which leverages multi-scale modelling and experimental testing to develop a more sustainable replacement for asbestos fiber cement roofing tiles in developing countries. At micron-scale, single fiber pullout tests are used to determine the chemical and frictional bond strength of untreated and treated PP fibers in a cement matrix. At the millimeter-scale the composite response is analytically modelled to predict bridging stress versus crack width relationships. This response is used to determine the flexural behavior of structural roofing tiles. At the meter-scale (and kilometer-scale of distribution chains), life cycle assessment models are created to quantify the social, environmental, and economic impacts of the new composites. These are used for material composite design at all scales. Ultimately, a polypropylene-based fiber for reinforcing concrete will be created using life cycle assessment as a guiding design tool and with the ability to displace harmful asbestos reinforced concretes in developing countries.

Keywords: Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Advisor: Lepech Michael primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Billington Sarah L. (Sarah Longstreth)
Deierlein Gregory G. (Gregory Gerard)
Linking human genetic variation to population level phenotypic diversity and individual disease susceptibility [electronic resource]

Following major efforts to assemble and annotate the human genome, a present challenge for human genomics is the functional interpretation of genetic variation in human health. This dissertation provides insights to the technical and molecular challenges of interpreting genomic variation, and presents successful case studies leveraging cross-disciplinary approaches. Chapter 2 characterizes gene expression variation and the resulting phenotypic impact in lymphoblastoid cell lines obtained across seven populations from the Human Genome Diversity Project. Chapter 3 clinically interprets an individual patient's cancer genome, identifies a novel putative driver mutation, and proposes a targeted therapeutic route. Chapter 4 explores a non-BRCA multi-generational familial pedigree with early-onset breast cancer and identifies a putative causal mutation. Together, these chapters present attempts to establish new approaches and methods to incorporate and assess the functional impact of genetic variation on human phenotypes and disease.

Keywords: Genetics.
Advisor: Bustamante Carlos (Carlos D.) primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Altman Russ advisor. Thesis advisor
Ford James M. (James Matthew) advisor. Thesis advisor
Montgomery Stephen
Look at That: Faunal Sightings and Tourist Satisfaction in the Peruvian Amazon

Ecotourism is an increasingly popular conservation/development strategy being used throughout the tropics. Scholars have shown the positive impact of community run ecotourism lodges throughout Central and South America on conservation efforts, community empowerment, and economic stability within the region. To increase the popularity of ecolodges and by extension their conservation benefits, this research seeks to understand the motivation behind tourists’ expectations for and satisfaction of ecotourism vacations. Previous studies on tourism show the importance of promotional materials and pre-determined destination image on tourist satisfaction. This study is novel in applying this lens to an ecotourism venue. The impact of promotional materials, portrayals of the rainforest by the media and viewings of wild fauna on tourists’ overall satisfaction are investigated. Using Rainforest Expeditions’ ecolodge Refugio Amazonas in Peru as a case study, data collection on tourists’ expectations, observations on tourists’ reactions to charismatic wildlife sightings and ratings of varying trail experience are used to understand tourists’ overall ecotour satisfaction.
Results support the hypotheses that tourist motivations for attending the ecolodge as well as their predetermined destination image created a highly correlated relationship between charismatic faunal sightings and tour satisfaction. Materials promoting the lodge have been found to be over-selling the experience resulting in lowered overall satisfaction, especially for those tourists who expected “an adventure of a lifetime.” I also found that popular cultural portrayals of the rainforest did impact tourists’ expectations and resulted in lower satisfaction ratings when an abundance of primates, exotic birds and jaguars were not experienced. Overall, tourist satisfaction was largely dependent on sighting of charismatic fauna throughout their time in the rainforest due to expectations before arrival. This study has led to many concrete steps tropical ecolodges can take to modify promotional materials, increase the frequency of sightings and use popular rainforest media portrayals to increase tourist satisfaction.

Keywords:  Department of Anthropology
ecotourism
Anthropology
Stanford
ecolodge
Amazon
rainforest
conservation
development
sustainable
ecotour
south america
economic
tourism
environment
tourist satisfaction
fauna
Thesis
Advisor: Durham William
Curran Lisa
Looking like a Roman, looking like a Greek [electronic resource] : viewing as cultural performance in the late republic and early empire

This dissertation explores the cultural conundrum captured in Horace's much-quoted aphorism: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit; Greek art in Rome potentially signals both captive Greece and captivated Rome. Whether plundered or purchased, a Greek masterpiece on display might proclaim Rome's geopolitical and economic ascendancy, or the Romans' own sophistication, but it might also act as compelling evidence of Greece's artistic superiority. I focus on two bodies of evidence for how viewers responded to this semantic instability: Greek and Latin ekphrastic poems written in response to Greek artworks on display in Rome (Chapters 1 and 2); and wallpaintings inscribed with Greek and Latin texts from Rome, Assisi, Pompeii, and Ostia (Chapters 3 and 4). I argue that these ekphrastic texts and inscribed images showcase strategic answers to the question of how to look at Greek art through the eyes of a captor rather than a captive. Ranging from elite texts and grand residences, to the taverns frequented by non-elites, my case studies trace the cultural coding of visualities across the strata of Roman society. The project sheds light on the entanglement of art, empire, and identity in the Graeco-Roman world, demonstrating that viewing was one of the cultural practices through which Greekness and Romanness came to be defined.

Keywords: Classics.
Advisor: Trimble Jennifer
Barchiesi Alessandro advisor. Thesis advisor
Connolly Joy
Stephens Susan A. advisor. Thesis advisor
Machine learning for model uncertainties in turbulence models and Monte Carlo integral approximation [electronic resource]

While computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is playing an ever-increasing role in the design process, physical experiments are still required for final verification. There is a demand for certification through simulation, but there is a gap in predictive quality. Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes flow simulations have known deficiencies, especially for high Reynolds number flows with turbulent transition and separation, and higher fidelity Large Eddy Simulations (LES) and Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) are not generally affordable. Quantification and reduction of uncertainty in simulation results is necessary, and yet it is rare for error bounds to be returned by a simulation, and progress towards more accurate turbulent closures in RANS models seems to have stalled. Today, however, the community is better equipped than ever to address this challenge. The rise in data science has driven the creation of tools and techniques to analyze and synthesize massive data sets. Most importantly, the data needed for statistical inference is available; computational budgets allow for RANS calculations on a number of input conditions and design settings, LES advances to increasingly complex geometries, and DNS continues to expand its Reynolds-number range. This dissertation harnesses data-driven approaches to address issues of uncertainty in predictive tools. First, the dissertation explores creating accurate models from data by replicating the behavior of a known model. Computational data is collected from the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model, a neural network algorithm is trained on this data, and the learned model is re-embedded within a CFD flow solver. The robustness and accuracy of this procedure is explored as influenced by loss function choice, feature selection, and training data. Next, the dissertation considers model uncertainty in low-fidelity models. High-fidelity data from DNS of combustion (using finite-rate chemistry) are used to augment the low-fidelity flamelet progress variable-based RANS approach (FPVA). Supervised learning approaches are used to construct two error models, one for the local inaccuracies in the model and a second addressing the spatial correlation of these errors. These uncertainty models are combined to estimate the uncertainty in the FPVA model. Finally, a methodology is presented for quantifying the effects of input uncertainty on an output variable of interest. This is done by constructing an approximate model of the system using available data samples, and then using this as a control variate to reduced the squared estimation error in the output. Results are presented which demonstrate improved accuracy for a wide range of problem dimensions, function types, and sampling types. Taken together, these approaches indicate the potential of data-driven techniques to identify and reduce uncertainties in complex flow simulations.

Keywords: Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Advisor: Alonso Juan José
Duraisamy Karthikeyan
Iaccarino Gianluca advisor. Thesis advisor
Kochenderfer Mykel J.
Machine learning meets mammalian learning [electronic resource] : statistical tools for large-scale calcium imaging and the study of changing neural codes

In this thesis, I describe my work creating computational and statistical tools for neuroscience, and the application of these tools to the study of how neural coding changes with learning. In particular, I apply these tools to study several facets of the dynamics of place cells in hippocampal area CA1. First, I describe a Bayesian decoding method for predicting an animal's position in a room solely from his brain imaging data. I use this method to demonstrate retention of spatial information despite changes in place coding population. Further, I demonstrate that place coding ensemble turnover resembles a random process that nevertheless contains significant information about the time of the experience. Secondly, I introduce and validate a method for extracting neural images and fluorescence traces from large-scale calcium imaging movies. I use this method to study the relationship between the place-coding properties of nearby cells in area CA1. Lastly, I apply these decoding and cell extraction methods to the study of how place cells change during learning. I find that there is significant refinement in the place code, and that the neural spatial information is correlated with the animal's ability to navigate. This final demonstration is consistent with the hypothesis that improved fidelity of the internal place-coding map underlies the animal's navigational learning. Taken together, the tools in this thesis are advancements that contribute to the ability of neuroscientists to process and glean meaning from large datasets, a challenge that is presently at the forefront of the field.

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Schnitzer Mark Jacob
El Gamal Abbas A. advisor. Thesis advisor
Goldsmith Andrea
Magical Orality in Tess Uriza Holthe’s When the Elephants Dance

Nearly half a century after the end of World War II, Filipino-American author Tess Uriza Holthe brings to life the near-forgotten history of the Battle of Manila in her 2002 novel, When the Elephants Dance. Through an illumination of character systems in relation to "magical orality," Pacio demonstrates how Holthe's reclamation of memory serves to disrupt traditional historical portrayals and create an entirely new narrative of the revolutionary history of the Philippines.

Keywords:  Department of English
magical realism
magic
orality
trauma
Filipino-American literature
miseducation
World War II
Manila
Battle of Manila
Holthe
imperialism
Japanese colonization
Stanford University
Department of English
Thesis
Advisor: Palumbo-Liu David
Elam Michele
Magnetic resonance angiography using non-Cartesian trajectories [electronic resource]

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a versatile medical imaging modality that provides excellent soft-tissue contrast without ionizing radiation. Magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) is a type of MRI that is specifically aimed to image blood vessels, and is a powerful clinical tool for the diagnosis and management of arterial diseases. Various techniques can be used for MRA to produce bright blood signals while suppressing background signals such as muscle and fat. This dissertation describes two MRA methods that use non-Cartesian k-space trajectories to improve the contrast between the arterial signals and the background signals while achieving shorter scan times than conventional approaches. The ultimate goal of this work is to make MRA more clinically practical and reliable in terms of scan time and diagnostic image quality. The first method is a non-contrast-enhanced peripheral MRA sequence using a 3D concentric cylinders trajectory. The concentric cylinders are acquired in a sliding interleaved manner over a series of thin slabs. Concentric cylinders enable improved scan time efficiency while providing less noticeable artifacts from k-space amplitude modulation compared to a conventional Cartesian sequence. The thin-slab-scan nature of the proposed sequence and the centric-ordered sampling geometry of concentric cylinders are exploited to implement efficient fluid-suppression and parallel imaging approaches. In vivo experiments in healthy subjects and a patient with arterial stenosis demonstrate that the proposed method can provide improved artery-vein contrast even with slow arterial flow. The second method is a first-pass contrast-enhanced coronary MRA sequence using a 2D spiral-ring trajectory. In addition to the speed inherited from a regular spiral trajectory, the spiral-ring trajectory is capable of effectively capturing transient contrast generated by the first-pass contrast agent. The centric-ordered structure of the spiral-ring trajectory is exploited to efficiently generate time-resolved datasets, which makes the sequence more robust to the variation of the timing of contrast bolus and more flexible to capture different contrast fillings in different coronary branches. In vivo experiments in healthy subjects and patients demonstrate that the proposed method can provide improved blood-muscle contrast within a single breath-hold.

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Nishimura Dwight George primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Hu Bob advisor. Thesis advisor
Pauly John (John M.) advisor. Thesis advisor
La Mamelle [electronic resource] : early Bay Area conceptual performance art and the alternative art archive

La Mamelle: Bay Area Conceptual Performance Art and The Alternative Art Archive examines the La Mamelle/Art Com archive. This project frames the relation between conceptual performance art and the alternative art space movement of the 1970s as deeply co-productive in terms of aesthetic development, engagment with new media, and the advancement of collaborative and participatory art practices. I historicize La Mamelle's production of various sites for the exhibition of performance art. These sites include alternative print publications, video and televisual productions, social networks, and the archive. While tracing this relation between conceptual performance and its spaces of emergence, I redress the dominant focus on New York and European neo-avant gardes in performance art history through an inclusion of West Coast conceptualists. Ultimately, I argue for creative models of archival research through what I describe as 'performative archiving.'.

Keywords: Theater and Performance Studies.
Advisor: Hill Leslie
Jakovljević Branislav advisor. Thesis advisor
Ross Janice advisor. Thesis advisor
Mandibular mechanics uncover patterns of dietary evolution in Eulipotyphlan mammals

Mammalian orders that are highly speciose in the modern day tend to be comprised of species covering a broad range of feeding behaviors, as indicated by a diverse dentition. Yet the order Eulipotyphla, which includes the shrews, moles, and hedgehogs and relatives, all have teeth adapted for shearing, despite dietary specialization of the Eulipotyphlan families. To test the hypothesis that Eulipotyphlans pursue an alternative pathway to achieving dietary diversity by altering the amount of force they can apply with their jaws, I sampled specimens from across the order, photographing mandibles and measuring their mechanical potential, a metric of bite force. I found that there is highly significant between-family variation in mechanical potential in Eulipotyphlans; I also found this between-family diversity is tied to prey hardness. Further, there is high phylogenetic signal of mechanical potential, agreeing with family-specific results. To broaden my analyses, I compared the mechanical potential of modern Eulipotyphlans to two fossil groups: (1) two species of the earliest known mammaliaform fossils, which were also insectivorous and lived during the Jurassic, and (2) extinct stem-group Eulipotyphlans that lived in the Paleocene. My results tentatively suggest increasing bite force from the Jurassic to the Paleocene, such that these insectivorans appear to have adapted to apply greater force, possibly an adaptation to pierce through harder insect carapaces, thereby accessing a broad niche. This paper presents the first quantitative analysis that spans all of the families in the order, including one of the most recently extinct mammalian families, the Nesophontidae, and contributes to a growing body of biomechanics-based knowledge on mammalian dietary patterns.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
Eulipotyphla
Mechanical Potential
Thesis
Advisor: Hadly Elizabeth
Dirzo Rodolfo