VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Theoretical investigations of functional materials: TlBr and MoS2

This dissertation presents theoretical investigations of two novel functional materials, TlBr and MoS2. TlBr is interesting due to its potential application as a high-quality room temperature radiation detector. The stability and electronic structures of three phases of TlBr are studied using Density Functional Theorem (DFT) calculations employing a hybrid functional. The calculated band gaps from DFT with the hybrid functional are in excellent agreement with experimental measurements. The inﬂuence of some interstitial and substitutional dopants on TlBr properties is further studied. DFT predicts that interstitial and substitutional C, N, and O dopants in TlBr can display large, localized magnetic moments. A simple model that employs Pauli exclusion principle and group theory is introduced to explain the magnitude of the moments. Van der Waals (VDW) bonded, layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are promising 2D materials and have drawn much research attention recently. A theory for the epitaxial growth on the transition metal dichalcogenides is developed and analyzed. A prototypical example of Au epitaxially grown on MoS2 is studied. It is demonstrated that if one accounts for interfacial energies and strains, the presence of misﬁt dislocations, and the compliance of the MoS2 substrate, the experimentally observed growth orientation (Au {111} orientation) will be energetically favored. Meanwhile, with only the top substrate layer being compliant (strained), this epitaxy method can serve as a means to exfoliate and transfer large single layers sheets of MoS2. The exfoliation of monolayer based on this epitaxy idea has been realized experimentally. This epitaxy model could prove technologically useful in 2D electronic devices and in epitaxial thin ﬁlm growth applications.

Advisor: Chrzan, Daryl
Feature Design for Robust Speech Recognition: Nurture and Nature

As has been extensively shown, acoustic features for speech recognition can be nurtured from training data using neural networks (DNN) with multiple hidden layers. Although a large body of research has shown these learned features are superior to standard front- ends, this superiority is usually demonstrated when the data used to learn the features is very similar to the data used to test recognition performance. However, realistic environments cover many unanticipated types of novel inputs including noise, channel distortion, reverberation, accented speech, speaking rate variation, overlapped speech, etc. A quantitative analysis using bootstrap sampling shows that these trained features are easily specialized to training data and corrupted in mismatched scenarios. Gabor filtered spectrograms, on the other hand, are generated from spectro-temporal filters to model natural human auditory processing, which can be instrumental in improving generalization to unanticipated deviations from what was seen in training. In this thesis, I used Gabor filtering as feature processing or a convolutional kernel in neural networks where the former used filter outputs as DNN inputs while the latter used filter coefficients and structures to initialize a convolutional neural network (CNN). Experiments show that the proposed features perform better than other noise-robust features that I have tried on several noisy corpora. In addition, I demonstrate that inclusion of Gabor filters with lower or higher temporal modulations could be used to correlate better with human perception of slow or rapid speech. Finally, I report on the analysis of human cortical signals to demonstrate the relative robustness of these signals to the mixed signal phenomenon in contrast to a DNN-based ASR system. With a number of example tasks in the thesis, I conclude that designed feature is useful for greater robustness than just relying on DNN or CNN.

Advisor: Morgan, Nelson
Synthesis, Ion Exchange, and Properties of New Semiconductor Nanostructures

Advances in the synthetic control of semiconductor nanostructures and material properties offers many opportunities to enable new technologies. This is especially true for advances in the areas of photovoltaics, light emitting diodes, photodetectors, transistors, miniaturized lasers, and thermoelectrics. In this work, I demonstrate the synthesis and properties of several novel nanoscale morphologies composed of copper sulfide, cadmium sulfide, and halide perovskite, which can be useful for these applications. Here, I demonstrate the first synthesis of Cu2S-CdS core-shell nanowires by reverse cation exchange, and I explore the evolution of the epitaxial interface during the cation exchange. In addition, I demonstrate the synthesis and photovoltaic properties of core-shell CdS-Cu2S nanorod arrays with power conversion efficiencies approaching 4%. I also demonstrate the first bottom-up synthesis of CH3NH3PbBr3 nanorod arrays and the first example of morphology-conserving anion exchange to CH3NH3PbI3. As a demonstration of this, I created and characterized the first halide perovskite nanorod array light emitting diodes. Furthermore, using the first example of ultrathin halide perovskites, I demonstrate the unexpected changes in the structural and optical properties of layered halide perovskites as they approach ultrathin thicknesses. Finally, I synthesized the first example of all-inorganic, lead-free perovskite CsSnI3, which is shown to possess strong photoluminescence at 1.3 eV, metallic electrical conductivity, and ultralow thermal conductivity. These research directions all contribute towards the ultimate goal of providing new nanostructured materials to enable new technologies and innovations, which might also lead to new energy generating and energy saving applications.

Advisor: Yang, Peidong
Beautiful Lives: Priests, Beauticians, and Performance of Islamic Piety in a Non-Gendered Economy in South Sulawesi, Indonesia

The dissertation unravels how the indigenous transgender identity of the bissu experiences reconfigurations within the Indonesian modern culture dominated by Islamic heterosexual norm. Based on the data collected from the field research in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, archival research in the Netherlands, and media research, the dissertation traces the inflections of bissu identity at the intersection between local traditions and the emergent modern spectator community, artistic experimentation, global culture industry, and homosexual movement in the aftermath of Suharto’s fall in 1998. Within this multicultural network, the indigenous identity of the bissu constitutes a paradox in which the convergence between the bissu traditional practices and modern artistic practices transcends the bissu’s distinct transgender position from its local reality and engenders a discursive and social space that allows the bissu to overcome the constraint of Islamic heterosexual norm and to provide a cultural and historical register for the urban transgender groups to claim their local cultural root. The location of the bissu indigeneity and transgender identity lies within the dynamic interactions among the bissu, the state, and culture industry, in which moral sentiments and aesthetic sensibility emerge in their distinct forms. The research poses a critique against the failure of the mainstream narratives to address the emerging moral space the bissu inhabit. The space, which I call a spiritual aesthetic space, contains disparate religious and cultural elements as the bissu unite three strands of identity: transgender, Islamic, and indigenous.

Advisor: Tiwon, Sylvia
Coordination of patterning and morphogenesis during early development in Xenopus laevis

Over the course of development, cells and tissues of the embryo must take on the correct fates and morphologies to produce a functioning organism. The patterning events and morphogenetic processes that accomplish this task have been the subject of decades of research, the consequence of which has been a detailed comprehension of the molecular mechanisms that regulate each. Equally important is an understanding of the mechanisms that coordinate patterning with morphogenesis, such that they occur with the correct relative spatiotemporal dynamics. My thesis work sought to characterize such co-regulation in the context of two developmental events in a vertebrate model, the African clawed frog Xenopus laevis: induction of bottle cell formation at the onset of gastrulation after germ layer induction, and regulation of the morphogenetic movements of neurulation in relation to neural plate patterning./nChapter 1 of this dissertation provides a general introduction to the patterning and morphogenetic events of early development relevant to my thesis. Chapter 2 presents a discussion of my work to characterize the function of two signaling pathways, namely Nodal signaling and Wnt/Planar Cell Polarity, in the induction of bottle cells. My experiments confirm the requirement for Nodal signaling in bottle cell induction, but do not support a role for the individual transcriptional targets of Nodal signaling tested here or for Wnt/PCP. Chapter 3 summarizes my work to address the function of two transcription factor-encoding genes, sall1 and sall4, in neural development, including their roles in anteroposterior neural patterning, neural tube morphogenesis, and neural differentiation. My work shows that both sall1 and sall4 are required for all three processes, and supports the hypothesis that their key role in this context is to transcriptionally repress stem cell factors of the pou5f3 family, allowing progression through neural development. As a whole, this work summarizes my research to characterize molecules that co-regulate early patterning and morphogenetic events in the X. laevis embryo.

Advisor: Harland, Richard M
Quantum Measurement with Atomic Cavity Optomechanics

A cloud of ultracold atoms trapped within the confines of a high-finesse optical cavity shakes from the pressure of the light that probes it. This form of measurement backaction, a central component of quantum measurement theory, is the subject of this dissertation. Enlisting the collective motion of ultracold atoms as the mechanical degree of freedom in a cavity optomechanical system, we reach settings cold and quiet enough to allow for the effects of measurement backaction to manifest. We report predictions for and experimental observa- tions of the Standard Quantum Limit for force sensitivity, optical ponderomotive squeezing, and the possibility of complex squeezing through generalized optical correlations.

Advisor: Stamper-Kurn, Dan M
Classical Molecular Dynamics Simulations for Crystalline Solids using Truncated Taylor Series Interatomic Potential

This thesis discusses a general method for constructing interatomic potentials for crystal lattices based on a truncated Taylor series expansion. Such an interatomic potential may be constructed analytically, as in the case of a Lennard-Jones solid, or using ab initio methods such as Density Functional Theory. Specifically, it addresses the scope of application of the method, and demonstrates its practical importance in capturing anharmonicity for a Lennard-Jones solid. In particular, the third-order terms in the truncated potential are shown to accurately approximate the thermal conductivity of the standard interaction Lennard-Jones potential. The thesis also describes an efficient algorithm for locating the equilibrium lattice site of an atom in a three-dimensional crystal lattice displaced from its equilibrium position./nIn addition, a procedure is outlined to compute the coefficients in the truncated Taylor series expansion using Density Functional Theory, which is an ab initio method. The procedure is applied to germanium, a material for which, an exact analytical interatomic potential is not known. The computed coefficients may then be used to construct an interatomic potential for germanium of ab initio accuracy. This interatomic potential is then used in MD simulations to estimate various thermophysical properties of a germanium crystal lattice within the range of applicability of this method.

Advisor: Papadopoulos, Panayiotis
Ordinary Failures: Toward a Diasporan Ethics

In Ordinary Failures I develop a new conception of “diaspora” as the ordinary failure of recognitions and solidarities founded on ideological and ancestral ties. Informed by the queer studies turn toward negativity and the relational turn in African diaspora studies, my project examines the interventions of artists and writers of the diaspora who opt to recite intraracial failure (between blacks) in the face of their structurally overdetermined failure as minoritized subjects. I identify in textual and visual objects an engagement with the promise of intimacy attendant to the artist’s lived experience of diaspora and there I aim to expose the limits of diaspora discourse. My explorations of the failures of diaspora are aided by pushing on queer theories of negativity to speak to race. This project departs from traditional approaches to black failure such as the black mainstream’s condemnation or eschewal of black failure in favor of respectability politics and the black left’s redemption of failure through revisionist narratives of resistance. In doing so, this project holds space for betrayal, exhaustion, and laziness without fear of reifying speculations on the failures of blackness to allow for visions of blackness that are unbound by the binary racial logic of success and failure and instead turn our eyes toward instances in which resistance and defeat are overlapping./nIn the first chapter, “Reciting Diaspora,” I examine diasporic misrecognitions in the memoirs Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman, Triangular Road by Paule Marshall, and My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid to interrogate what is at stake for the black diasporic memoirist in reciting failure, and the strategies these authors employ to reconcile themselves with the damage incurred in these moments of misrecognition. The second chapter, “The Repetition of Betrayal,” wrestles with the “cruel optimism” of racial solidarity and the afterlife of the suggestion of betrayal in the artwork of Wilmer Jennings to understand how the repetitive and reductive form of wood engravings contributes to a visual language of intraracial solidarity, vulnerability, and intimacy. Chapter three, “A woman should have something of her own,” examines black feminine tiredness in the neo-slave narrative Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler, the history of slave suicide, and challenges readings of resistance. The final chapter, “Desireless Diasporans,” examines black asexuality and black idleness and argues for the liberatory potential of failing to contribute to normative social and economic reproductivity.

Advisor: Scott, Darieck B.
A Search for Supersymmetry in Events with a Z Boson, Jets, and Missing Transverse Energy in pp Collisions with sqrt(s)=13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector

A search for new phenomena in final states containing a Z boson decaying to electrons or muons, jets, and large missing transverse momentum is presented. This search uses proton--proton collision data collected during 2015 and 2016 at a center of mass energy sqrt(s)=13 TeV by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider, which correspond to an integrated luminosity of 14.7 fb-1. The search targets the pair production of supersymmetric particles, squarks or gluinos, which decay via jets and a Z boson to the lightest Supersymmetric particle, which does not interact with the ATLAS detector. Results are interpreted in simplified models of gluino-pair (squark-pair) production, and provide sensitivity to gluinos (squarks) with masses as large as 1.3 (1.0) TeV.

Advisor: Heinemann, Beate
The Field of Consumption: Statistical Models and Analyses

This dissertation develops a general quantitative model of field structure for analyzing the field theoretic properties of social phenomena. I use core structural principles found in the dominant variants of field theory (Lewin, Bourdieu, Dimaggio and Powell, Martin, and Fligstein and McAdam) to outline and elaborate a broad class of models consistent with the major assertions of field theory. These models use nonparametric local regressions to estimate field effect over multidimensional social space. By using univariate and multivariate statistics, these models enable determination of the existence or nonexistence of the field, the best description for the axes of the field and the complex patterns of variation in field effects over social space./nIn three distinct analyses based on data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I demonstrate how the organization of consumption as whole has changed over time and how individuals at different points in social space have been affected. Using a synthetic cohort design, I show how lifecycle consumption is differentiated by age, income, and education, and how these effects interact and moderate each other. Finally, I analyze how households changed their consumption in response the Great Recession. I find that cultural change in consumption preferences are a better explanation for changes in consumption than recession-related economic shocks or drops in consumer confidence./nThis dissertation makes two contributions. First, it attempts to further the development of field theory by outlining and demonstrating a quantitative model of field structure. This model offers an improvement over the current state of field modeling in terms of statistical rigor and flexibility. The model I present here enables more detailed and careful analysis of field structure and transformation and is general enough to help adjudicate between competing claims of conflicting field theories. Second, this dissertation highlights the necessity of considering economic and cultural determinants of consumption in conjunction. Consumption patterns are highly contingent on the specific conditions under which individuals make consumption decisions. While income, wealth, and savings are important, age, education, and family size are equally and frequently more important for predicting variations in consumption.

Advisor: Fligstein, Neil
Haveman, Heather
Zola's Experiment: Perception and Attention in Les Rougon-Macquart

In contrast to traditional readings of his work, I argue that Zola stages the mediation of sensory data in the urban metropolis and in his own writing in order to curate different modes of spectatorship that can navigate the disruptive, dissociative effects of modernity. This differs from the conventional discourse of theorists such as Simmel and Benjamin who consider the 19th century – with its industrialization, technological innovation, and rapid urban expansion – an era of fragmentation and overstimulation. Recent scholarship reinforces this position and places focus 1) on the visual, and not other senses, and 2) on the writer’s supposedly negative representation of social entropy./nI begin with the cultivation and adaptation of touch in Au Bonheur des Dames. How do literature and capitalist enterprise reformat human information processing? Following Benjamin’s dictum that “technology has subjected the human sensorium to a complex kind of training,” I consider the grand magasin, and Zola’s fictional version of one, as a site of haptic training. Examining the shopper’s contact with fabrics, I argue that the department store fosters an empowering form of calculation along with phantasmagorical experience. Next, I turn to sensorial mismatching and fantastical descriptions of produce in Le Ventre de Paris to illustrate that Zola’s naturalism joins together scientific discourses and aesthetic trends of his era. His use of synaesthesia, I argue, is just as much a fruitful conversation with Baudelaire’s poetics as it is a serious dialogue with psychologists, such as Helmholtz, who are trying to map out perceptual incongruities. Zola’s focus on distorted perception provides not only an artistic education of the senses, but also a kind of “cognitive architecture” meant to simulate the processes through which sensory input is received and (dis)ordered by the brain./nFinally, I read La Curée as an enactment of modernity’s proliferation of copies. I step through a scientific treatise (Duchenne) and a theatrical debate (over a production of Phèdre) that provide theories on how to accurately duplicate “human expression” across media. I show that Zola’s tableaux vivants and his embedded Phèdre scene are not meant to produce, or suggest higher fidelity; instead, his copies of copies depict perceptual practices encouraged by different, competing media. By depicting various modes of attention within his narratives, and by explicitly showing how sensory data is mediated (and manipulated) in various media, the author ultimately experiments with reader awareness and participation. If we can consider this perceptual reformatting as entailing knowledge sets and adaptive tools, then we can begin to rethink the notions of dissociation and loss in modernity.

Advisor: Sanyal, Debarati
From Instrumental Genesis to Digital Exodus: Supporting Urban Elementary Teachers Through Technology-Mediated Systemic Reform

This dissertation is a story about instrumental genesis, or the lack thereof, and digital exodus in technology-mediated systemic reform in urban elementary education. The purpose of this design study was to develop a support-oriented intervention for exploring new practices aimed at organizational change in K-12 schools, in particular, the case of teachers adopting mandated digital assessment technology and developing new data use practices. The intervention was job-embedded, locally situated, and specific to the needs of a small group of three urban elementary school teachers. Through structured professional learning sessions emphasizing peer modeling and reflection, the ADAPT model created space for instrumental genesis and the potential adoption of the educational technology. While ADAPT proved effective in increasing teacher use of the new technology, it failed in terms of changing teachers’ practices regarding data use and assessment. The design failed to support teachers through instrumental genesis (specifically, the instrumentalization of the new technology) because of a perceived mismatch between the objective and the artifact: the intended systemic reform objective of the technology adoption did not align with the selection of the digital artifact itself for teachers. Findings from the iterative development and evaluation of ADAPT suggest a need to reframe teacher resistance to technology adoption as a resource in systemic reform, and a need to improve the alignment of data visualization models embedded in technology tools with teacher professional vision. The instrumental genesis model is elaborated to account for the social and dynamic nature of systemic reform with technology in education.

Advisor: Abrahamson, Dor