VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Housing Polish Greenpoint: Property and Power in a Gentrifying Brooklyn Neighborhood

This dissertation will examine the rise and fall of the Polish immigrant enclave of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, over the past 30 years (1980 to 2010), focusing on the changing social relations of housing within the Polish immigrant community during this time. Greenpoint today stands at the cusp of disintegration as classic immigrant enclave, with property values and residential and commercial rent levels that prohibit new immigrants from settling, while forcing out many of the old immigrants who did so years ago. The political economy of immigrant housing in Greenpoint, I will argue, was both creator and destroyer of the Polish enclave - engine of its growth and barrier to its further expansion. A central argument of this dissertation is that the housing market is a social construct, embedded within and conditioned by social relations specific to a particular place and time. Though socially-embedded, however, the immigrant housing market is never fully divorced from the wider urban housing market; it is in fact structured by this impersonal market and its imperative to realize profit. There is an ongoing tension or dialectic between two forms of housing relations -one subordinated to the social utility of housing, another driven by the profit motive - that is manifest within any socio-spatial formation. In the pages that follow I will explore this dialectic as it drives the evolving social relations of housing within the Polish immigrant enclave of Greenpoint, where the political economy of immigrant housing has undergone significant and rapid change in the face of a real estate boom, the likes of which New York City - and the country as a whole - has perhaps never seen before.

Advisor: Walker, Richard
Electric Modulation of Conduction and Optical Characteristics in Ca-doped BiFeO3 Films for Memory Device Applications

This dissertation details the synthesis and properties of Ca-doped BiFeO3 thin films. The phase diagram was established as a function of the Ca doping concentration and temperature through structural analysis to study the effect of divalent-ion-calcium doping on BiFeO3 films. A ferroelectric-paraelectric boundary exists around at 10% Ca doping ratio. For this doping concentration, the largest transition of conduction states was observed. The mechanisms for the observed effects are discussed on the basis of the interplay of ionic and electronic conduction through the redistribution of oxygen vacancies by application of electric fields. Application of electric fields enables to control and manipulate this electronic transition to the extent that a p-n junction can be created, erased and inverted in this material. Beside this conduction transition, the visible shading effect was observed with application of electric fields. Based on these reversible transitions of the electrical and optical characteristics of Ca-doped BiFeO3, electrical and optical memory devices are proposed in this dissertation. The memory device built with a hetero-junction presented a nonvolatile conduction modulation with a rectified current behavior, which is essential for realizing random access memory devices. The switching mechanism is elucidated by junction property modification ascribed to the change of local oxygen vacancy concentration. In addition, the optical characteristics of Ca-doped BiFeO3 films for potential electro-optic memory devices were measured and evaluated. Detailed discussion about the origin of the shading effect is given based on the change of a polar order parameter and an oxygen vacancy ordered state.

Advisor: Ramesh, Ramamoorthy
Essays in Development Economics and Trade

Economic development has the potential to improve lives. Three issues that directly affect economic development are conflict, trade, and innovation, the subjects of the three chapters in this dissertation./nConflict causes enormous suffering, but the study of peacekeeping is plagued by endogeneity issues. The first chapter in this dissertation uses an instrumental variables approach to estimate the effectiveness of U.N. peacekeepers at ending episodes of conflict, maintaining the peace once peace has been obtained, and preventing another episode from ever re-occurring. I find that the likelihood of being sent U.N. peacekeepers varies with temporary membership in the U.N. Security Council and exploit this variation in my estimation. This variation also suggests that the leaders of countries in conflict often do not want their country to receive peacekeepers. The results indicate that even though peacekeepers are often unwanted, they help to maintain the peace after an episode of conflict has ended and reduce the likelihood that the conflict resumes./nAfter peace, trade is also considered crucial to development. In the standard trade literature, more productive firms should export over less productive firms, all else equal. This premise appears in Melitz (2003), Luttmer (2007), and Eaton et al. (2009), among others. However, we know that developing countries often suffer from market distortions (Hsieh and Klenow, 2009). The theory behind the second chapter of this dissertation combines Hsieh and Klenow-like distortions with a Melitz-like model that accords productivity a key role. Under this model, firm productivity matters less in the decision to export in sectors with greater distortions and firms facing greater distortions exhibit less of the productivity-based "churning" and re-allocation that Melitz predicts. The implication is that trade is less beneficial to productivity in developing countries. These predictions are tested using plant-level data from Colombia./nFinally, new products have been shown to increase welfare in a few studies. One branch of the literature has focused on estimating the welfare effects of very narrow and specific new products; another has estimated elasticities of substitution across a large number of varieties and then imputed gains from the new varieties that appear in the data. However, one might suspect that the most important innovations occurred over a much longer period of time than has been studied to date. Thus, the final chapter of my dissertation focuses on a different question. It assigns an innovation date to each good and asks the question: how would welfare be affected if one were restricted to the set of goods available at an earlier time period? I modify the methodology in Feenstra (1994) and Broda and Weinstein (2006a) to answer this question. The estimates suggest that innovations are more important to welfare than previously thought. I also find that the price index that takes varieties into consideration favoured by the literature can yield deeply misleading results.

Advisor: Miguel, Edward
Housing the Truth: The Archived Legacy of Transitional Justice in Timor-Leste

Based on testimony and documentation in the archives of Timor-Leste and Indonesia, participant observation and interviews with key actors in the transitional justice process, this study seeks to document and analyze the fate of the thousands of stories that were given by the Timorese and Indonesian people to transitional justice institutions established by Timor-Leste since 1999. By tracing the life of these stories and their tropes, these institutions' truth-telling processes will be assessed./nKey analytical questions include: How do transitional justice institutions create and express "truth" narratives, and how are those forms of expression relative to the local cultural context? What are victims' and perpetrators' roles in the creation, transformation and preservation of these narratives? What becomes of these stories after the institutional truth-seeking mandates end? Finally, what can the study of Timor-Leste teach us about truth-telling in other post-conflict states?/nThis study will document both the synchronization and discord of local knowledge with the production of universal narratives of justice in Timor-Leste through the transitional justice process. Interlocutors, referred to as narrative centers, are shown to be indispensible animators of truth-telling and loci for bringing victims' truths from the margins to the centers of national discourses.

Advisor: Cohen, David J
Synthesis and Evaluation of Environmentally Responsive Polymeric Materials

Drug delivery is generally concerned with improving the pharmacokinetics of therapeutic molecules. This can be done by improving distribution to target tissues, improving biological retention time, co-delivery of multiple therapeutics, and decrease in the total amount of therapeutic necessary to get the desired effect. Because they are highly tunable and synthetically addressable, polymeric particulate carriers represent a promising approach for improved delivery of therapeutics, and are the subject of this dissertation. In particular, the development is described for degradable materials, which are capable of releasing encapsulated cargo following uptake by cells and subsequent trafficking to endosomal vesicles. Degradation is responsive to acidic or oxidizing environments found in targeted tissues. Materials developed include hydrogels, hydrophobic microparticles, and liquid-filled microcapsules./nChapter 1 introduces various delivery strategies for polymeric delivery vehicles and some of their main applications. Additionally, the modes of environmentally responsive degradation are reviewed, with a focus on relevant design criteria for materials intended for delivery applications./nIn Chapter 2, the synthesis of a multifunctional acid-sensitive hydrogel carrier is described for immunotherapy applications. Antigen and an immunostimulatory adjuvant are encapsulated in particles decorated with targeting antibodies and the effectiveness of stimulation and targeting are assayed./nChapters 3 and 4 discuss the synthesis and characterization of a hydrophobic acid-sensitive delivery vehicle based on acetal-modified dextran. The preparation of particles from acetal- modified dextran and their pH-dependent degradation behavior is described. Further/noptimization acetal modification and its effect on degradation rate and uptake pathways are investigated./nChapter 5 describes the synthesis and characterization of a hydrophobic oxidation-sensitive delivery vehicle based on a modified dextran. The preparation of particles, their degradation profile, and their use in a proof-of-principle immunostimulation experiment is described./nChapter 6 describes the synthesis and characterization of a acid-sensitive liquid-filled microcapsules with burst release kinetics. The preparation and degradation of these capsules is investigated and their use in a proof-of-principle cytotoxicity experiment is described./nChapter 7 describes preliminary work toward the development of materials that feature autocatalytic acid-mediated degradation.

Advisor: Frechet, Jean M.J.
How Does Law Matter to Social Movements? A Case Study of Gay Activism in Singapore

This study is aimed at gaining a better understanding of how people fight for change collectively in societies that, unlike the United States, have less of democratic processes, and fundamental civil-political rights, and, of how law matters to their processes of doing so. It focuses on a particular minority group, gay people, in one particular society - Singapore, an Asian country with shades of authoritarianism - and explored how gay activists make sense of their grievances, strategize and take action to achieve their goals, and evaluate their own efforts./nBased on systematic collection and analysis of data, including in-depth interviews with 100 activists, the study found: Unlike what sociology of law has learned in the United States, law - in the form of legal rights - is neither a strategic nor symbolic resource for these activists. The role of law in collective fights for social change goes beyond that of rights, which are stymied by the very legal system set up by the powers in control. Gay activists in Singapore regard law as a key source of oppression that obstructs their movement. The ruling party, in control for the past 45 years, has used law's power of sanction and delegitimization not only to deter legally, but also to cultivate cultural norms that discourage its people from coming together to agitate for social change, to use rights, and to ask for change in the form of rights, which are painted as confrontational, and detrimental to their society's stability and economic progress./nHence, these activists focus on achieving social changes outside formal law, such as gaining acceptance from society at large, and the state to come out, speak out, and have their grievances heard, and to organize, and assemble more publicly as a group of people with shared concerns and interests. Rather than turning to the law to aid their cause, they resist it through "pragmatic resistance," a strategy that precariously balances movement survival, and advancement. To "live to fight another day," they abide by the law, and oppressive cultural norms so as to avoid legal sanctions that could lead to the repression of their movement, and demise of small gains already accumulated, thus reversing their hard work; meanwhile, to advance their goals, without changing formal law they imperceptibly push the boundaries of those cultural norms - which are backed by legal sanctions - on what are socially and politically acceptable. They are conscious of, and accept, their strategy as a trade-off between the accumulation of informal gains outside formal law, and the reification and reinforcement of legal power that perpetuates the cultural legitimacy of the existing political order.

Advisor: Luker, Kristin
Twisted Gromov-Witten invariants and applications to quantum K-theory

Given a projective smooth complex variety X, one way to associate to it numerical/ninvariants is by taking holomorphic Euler characteristics of interesting vector bundles on/nthe moduli spaces of genus 0, degree d stable maps with n marked points to X. We/ncall these numbers genuine quantum K-theoretic invariants of X. Their generating series is/ncalled the genus 0 K-theoretic descendant potential of X and can be viewed as a function/non a suitable infinite dimensional vector space K+. Its graph is a uniruled Lagrangian cone/nin the cotangent bundle of K+./nWe give a complete characterisation of points on the cone, proving a Hirzebruch Riemann/nRoch type theorem for the genuine K-theory of X. In particular, our result can be used/nto recursively express all genus 0 K-theoretic invariants of X in terms of cohomological/nones (usually known as Gromov-Witten invariants). The main technical tool we use is the/nKawasaki Riemann Roch theorem of [Ka], which reduces the computation of holomorphic/nEuler characteristic of a bundle on an orbifold to the computation of a cohomological integral/non the inertia orbifold./nIn the process, we need to study more general cohomological Gromov-Witten invariants/nof an orbifold X, which we call twisted invariants. These are obtained by capping the virtual/nfundamental classes of the moduli spaces with certain multiplicative characteristic/nclasses. We twist the Gromov-Witten potential by three types of twisting classes and we/nallow several twistings of each type. We use a Mumford's Grothendieck-Riemann-Roch/ncomputation on the universal curve to give closed formulae which show the eect of each/ntype of twist on their generating series (the twisted potential). This generalizes earlier results/nof [CG] and [TS].

Advisor: Givental, Alexander
Poselets and Their Applications in High-Level Computer Vision

Part detectors are a common way to handle the variability in appearance in high-level computer vision problems, such as detection and semantic segmentation. Identifying good parts, however, remains an open question. Anatomical parts, such as arms and legs, are difficult to detect reliably because parallel lines are common in natural images. In contrast, a visual conjunction such as "half of a frontal face and a left shoulder" may be a perfectly good discriminative visual pattern. We propose a new computer vision part, called a poselet<\italic>, which is trained to respond to a given part of the object at a given viewpoint and pose. There is a wide variety of poselets -- a frontal face, a profile face, a head-and-shoulder configuration, etc. A requirement for training poselets is that the visual correspondence of object parts in the training images be provided. We create a new dataset, H3D, in which we annotate the locations of keypoints of people, infer their 3D pose and label their parts (the face, hair, upper clothes, etc.). Our richly annotated dataset allows for creation of poselets as well as other queries not possible with traditional datasets./nTo train a poselet associated with a given image patch, we find other patches that have the same local configuration of keypoints and use them as positive training examples. We use HOG features and linear SVM classifiers. The resulting poselet is trained to recognize the visual patterns associated with the given local configuration of keypoints, which, in turn, makes it respond to a specific pose under a specific viewpoint regardless of the variation in appearance./nHigh-level computer vision is challenging because the image is a function of multiple somewhat independent factors, such as the appearance model of the object, its pose, and the camera viewpoint. Poselets allow us to "untie the knot", i.e. decouple the pose from the appearance and model them separately. We show that this property helps in a variety of high-level computer vision tasks. Our person detector based on poselets is the leading method on the PASCAL VOC 2009 and 2010 person detection competitions and naturally extends to other visual classes. We currently have the best semantic segmentation engine for person and several other categories on the PASCAL 2010 segmentation datasets. We report competitive performance for pose and action recognition and we are the first method to do attribute classification for people under any viewpoint and pose.

Advisor: Malik, Jitendra
Unthinkable Rebellion and the Praxis of the Possible: Ch'orti' Campesin@ Struggles in Guatemala's Eastern Highlands

This dissertation examines the production of rural struggle in Guatemala' indigenous eastern highlands, a place where after decades of silence, 36 years of civil war and two centuries of marginalization, the seemingly unthinkable--organized resistance and alternative proposals--became palpable. In the face of crisis, attempts to turn rural producers, into neoliberal subjects of credit resurrected the historical specter of dispossession and catalyzed an unlikely alliance to oppose unjust agrarian debt that transformed into a vibrant movement for defense of Maya-Ch'orti' territory. Yet, the contours of that alliance, its limits, and possibilities, its concrete splits and expansion are deeply linked to both place-based histories and memories of racialized dispossession, specific reworkings of 1990s discourses and practices of development and "peace"-making, and the concrete practice of starting from "common sense"./nI sieve a total of 26 months of participant-action research that spanned over four years with this nascent organization through a Lefebvrian method of rereading the past through the light of the present. Through this spatially and historically relational analysis based on critical ethnographic practice, I present an analysis where the present speaks powerfully to the past making three fundamental contributions./nFirst, I produce an analytic that challenges narratives of spontaneous rebellion and/or seamless neoliberal development, demonstrating concretely how neither adequately address the relationship between racialized dispossession and ongoing rural efforts of repossession and or maintaining possession. Instead I draw attention to how the limits of neoliberal projects shape the contours of rebellion and spontaneous rebellions limit the aims of neoliberal projects: yet how these processes of entailment unfold hinges on particular articulations of past processes of dis/possession, development and difference./nSecond, I offer a rereading of the Guatemalan Civil War that hinges on rethinking the connections between the so-called ladino military East and indigenous militant West. In so doing I make break down divisive binaries that pervade Guatemalan common sense and offer a new understanding of Guatemala's 1980-83 racial genocide and creating openings for future alliances based not necessarily on an abstract sense of defense of territory or pan-Mayan identity, but in recognition of shared experiences and analyses of indigenous repression and resistance./nThird, I show how particular articulations of race, class, gender and space are worked and reworked in and through the concrete practices of struggle and acquiescence, reaccommodation and flight that are shaped by the historical production of place. Rebellion past or present is neither unthinkable nor inevitable. And its potential for social change is bound to ongoing praxis.

Advisor: Hart, Gillian P
Uncovering the Role of Global mRNA Degradation during the Gammaherpesvirus Lifecycle

The human gammaherpesviruses Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and Kaposi's Sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) are very common in the human population and cause a number of diseases. During a lytic infection, these viruses block host gene expression through the global mRNA degradation activity of the viral proteins BGLF5 and SOX, in EBV and KSHV respectively. Despite significant advancements in understanding the mechanism of this process, termed host shutoff, little is known regarding the contribution of this activity towards the viral lifecycle, predominately due to experimental difficulties in studying these viruses. In this study, we aimed to uncover the role of host shutoff during a gammaherpesviral infection using the related murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV68) as a model. Unlike EBV or KSHV, MHV68 has a tractable genetic system and readily available animal model. We first verified that the properties of host shutoff are conserved across KSHV, EBV, and MHV68. We then confirmed that host shutoff during MHV68 infection is executed by its SOX homolog, here termed muSOX. Deletion of muSOX from the viral genome resulted in a virus unable to replicate, likely due to the multi-functional nature of muSOX and its homologs. We therefore performed site-directed and random mutagenesis screens to identify mutants of muSOX which lacked host shutoff activity, but still retained its other known functions. We identified a single amino acid point mutant with the desired characteristics and introduced this mutant into the viral genome. The resulting virus caused significantly less mRNA degradation and host shutoff, yet was still viable for replication. By investigating the properties of infections with the mutant virus, we found host shutoff to be dispensable for lytic replication yet critical for latency establishment. These findings, for the first time, identify host shutoff as an important factor in the gammaherpesvirus lifecycle and link two distinct stages of the viral lifecycle, lytic replication and latency. Furthermore these findings suggest that the global manipulation of gene expression promotes a successfully lifelong gammaherpesvirus infection.

Advisor: Glaunsinger, Britt A