VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Philo’s Jewish Law: Uncovering the Foundations of a Second-Temple System of Jewish Law

Among Philo of Alexandria’s many writings, he dedicated quite-a-few treatises to the exposition of Jewish Law. The purpose of this dissertation is to identify what is distinctive in Philo’s approach towards Jewish law and to reveal the ideological, hermeneutical and practical considerations behind it./nIn addition, I have presented the study of Philo’s Jewish law from a comparative point of view, introducing many Second-Temple --and especially rabbinic texts-- in order to better understand the processes underlying the development of Jewish law in Late-Antiquity and Philo’s place in it. I analyze the relationship between Philo’s own different writings and genres such as law, narrative and allegory, as well. The dissertation deals with five major halakhic subjects: the halakhic implications of both the Septuagint and Speech-Acts, Marital laws, The Sabbath, and the Temple Cult and Priesthood./nMy examination of Philo’s law raises the following observations:/n1. Philo reflects an internalization of Hellenistic concepts and values while implementing these concepts into distinctively Jewish practices. Occasionally, laws which were shaped by Greco-Roman concepts found their way into other halakhic corpora. This phenomenon attests to a process through which rabbinic traditions were influenced by Greek ideas through the agency of Jews like Philo./n2. At times, Philo shared certain halakhic traditions with other Palestinian corpora, while at others he reflected a totally independent approach. While in certain cases Philo’s independence can be accounted for by his essential, distinctive views in quite a few cases Philo represents an early stage in the development of halakha./n3. Philo’s formulation of Jewish law gives weight to ideological (predominantly Greek), exegetical and practical considerations. Among the exegetical considerations I identify several midrashic interpretations, some of which are similar to other Second-Temple and rabbinic traditions. This does not render Philo as “eclectic” but rather his approach is a typical example for the formulation of Jewish law in Late-Antiquity./n4. Philo indeed reflects certain sentiments, which could be characterized as “Diasporic”, but more than a representative of a Diasporic version of Judaism, Philo should be understood as a representative of Greek-Speaking Jews, a group which was part of the Social reality of Palestine, as well./n5. Philo’s most distinctive feature with respect to Jewish law is his view of Jewish law as a cure against excessive desires (ἐπιθυμίας) through the exercise of self-control (ἐγκράτεια). While Philo lacks a conception of defined measures for the fulfillment of religious obligations, this is consistent with both the early stage Philo represents in the development of halakha and with the view of Jewish law as geared towards self-improvement, rather than appeasing or pleasing God.

Advisor: Boyarin, Daniel
Using Aspects of the Site Frequency Spectrum to Determine Demographic History in Ancient and Modern Populations

The site frequency spectrum characterizes the variation found within diﬀerent studied populations, providing insight on past demographic history. Here, I describe two methods of studying demographic history that condition or transform the site frequency spectrum to provide greater understanding of demographic history. The doubly conditioned site frequency spectrum helps to highlight diﬀerences between admixture and ancient structure models, helping to conﬁrm that Neanderthals did admix with the ancestors of non-African humans. Projection analysis compares a single test genome to a reference population and provides insight on the demographic relationship between the reference and test populations analyzed. This method has been applied in humans to better articulate human demographic history and demonstrate the utility of the method. It has also been applied to genomic data from ancient and modern horses, highlighting admixture between the Przewalski’s horse and domestic horses, as well as the relationship of several ancient horse genomes to present day horse populations.

Advisor: Slatkin, Montgomery
Nielsen, Rasmus
Functional Genomics for Improving Gene Function Assessment in Bacteria

Functional genomics uses system-wide approaches to generate genome-scale data and to describe gene functions. Recent genome-wide transcriptome studies have observed a great number of unexpected transcripts internal or antisense to known genes in bacteria and archaea, but the function of these unexpected transcripts is unclear. Here, we use the metal-reducing bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 and its relatives to study the evolutionary conservation of unexpected transcriptional start sites (TSSs)./nIn the first part of this thesis, we present the methodology to generate a set of high-confidence TSSs. Using high-resolution tiling microarrays and 5’-end RNA sequencing, combined with a semi-supervised machine learning approach, we identified 2,531 TSSs in S. oneidensis MR-1. We then classified them based on their relative positive compared with the current gene model. 18% of the identified TSSs were located inside coding sequences (CDSs)./nIn the second part of this thesis, we present the conservation study of the high-confidence TSSs identified in MR-1. Comparative transcriptome analysis with seven additional Shewanella species revealed that the majority (76%) of the TSSs within the upstream regions of annotated genes (gTSSs) were conserved. 30% of the TSSs that were inside genes and on the sense strand (iTSSs) were also conserved. Sequence analysis around these iTSSs showed conserved promoter motifs, suggesting that many iTSS are under purifying selection. Furthermore, conserved iTSSs are enriched for regulatory motifs, suggesting that they are regulated. Combining with the genome-wide mutagenesis data, we show that having internal promoters significantly eliminate polar effects which are expected if the internal promoters are not functional./nIn contrast, the transcription of antisense TSSs located inside CDSs (aTSSs) were significantly less likely to be conserved (22%). However, aTSSs whose transcription was conserved often have conserved promoter motifs and drive the expression of nearby genes. Overall, our findings demonstrate that some internal TSSs are conserved and drive protein expression despite their unusual locations, but the majority are not conserved and may reflect noisy initiation of transcription rather than a biological function./nIn the last part of the thesis, I present the development of a high-throughput assay, bacterial two-hybrid sequencing (B2H-seq), to construct protein interactome in bacteria. This technique, if successful, will complement the existing large-scale mutant fitness profiling method in Arkin lab, and improve the gene function annotation.

Advisor: Arkin, Adam P
Savage, David F
“GREEN ARCHITECTURE”: THE INTERPLAY OF ART AND NATURE IN ROMAN HOUSES AND VILLAS

This dissertation explores the intersection of ancient Roman art, architecture, and literature. In particular, it examines the convergence of art and nature in Roman wall painting and garden design in three domestic, and historically significant, sites in Italy. Chapter 2 examines the painted garden room from Livia’s Villa at Prima Porta; Chapter 3 investigates the garden imagery of the Auditorium of Maecenas; Chapters 4 and 5 encourage a new approach to interpreting the garden design of the Villa of the Poppaei at Oplontis. In each instance we see a Roman approach to nature that always involves both labor and ars, in the creation of what I call “green architecture.” Because villa architecture puts into implicit question the ambiguous relationship between nature and artifice, its critical study allows us a more nuanced understanding of gardens within the broader Roman imagination./nPushing critical scholarship into new and fertile territory, my dissertation attempts to think of the Roman garden as posing a series questions that exceed our current archaeological emphasis on typologies or the social historian’s focus on status and self-representation in the Roman garden. Toward this end, my analysis tacks between close readings of these sites and contemporary Latin literature in order to situate what is at work and at stake in Roman gardens—artistically, culturally, and historically—at the level of both “text” and “context.”/nFinally, because my dissertation bears upon, and engages with, broader, more abiding debates within the discipline about “the Natural,” mimesis, picturesque and pastoral landscapes, and gardens as liminal spaces or where boundaries between interior and exterior worlds collapse, I also consider what difference Roman gardens make for art historical scholarship today.

Advisor: Hallett, Christopher H
HipHopathy, A Socio-Curricular Study of Introductory Computer Science

This work presents a study investigating social and curricular factors that lead to student retention and attrition in introductory Computer Science at UC Berkeley. CS10 and CS61A are identified as critical gateway classes in the curricula pipeline. To address the impedance match between the performance of CS10 students in CS61A, a new curricula Data Science unit, with a culturally-relevant learning experience, has been created for CS10. Preliminary results show agreement with theoretical predictions and significant improvement over previous efforts. The central argument of this work is the belief that historically under-represented students in Computer Science increase their affinity for and ability to persist in Computer Science classes when they feel like what they are learning has some relevance outside the Computer Science classroom. This work introduces a learning framework for the computational exploration of data, within the context of an introductory Computer Science class. The work presented here has profound implications for future studies of how culturally resonant curriculum may one day help solve the problem of low-representation of female and ethnic minority students in the field of Computer Science.

Advisor: Agogino, Alice
A Micro Loop Heat Pipe Thermal Management System with an Interline Optimized Evaporator and a Coherent Porous Silicon Wick

Throughout the history of electronics, technology has been driven by shrinking devices and increasing performance. This progress has hit a wall that is limiting everyone, and this surprising limitation is thermal management and overheating. Cooling systems for electronics used to be one of the last design elements considered, fins, fans and graphite sheets were sufficient solutions, but that is no longer the case. The technology landscape has changed, and a new wave of solutions must be created and implemented quickly, or innovation will come to a standstill. The solution proposed in this research is the micro hybrid loop heat pipe (HLHP). This device fits in with the recent innovations in using phase change devices, such as micro heat pipes and micro vapor chambers, but uses cutting edge silicon heat transfer technology to improve upon these other approaches./nThe system is a three layer stack with an interline, optimized evaporator surface and a coherent porous silicon wick, sometimes referred to as a multi-scale pore membrane (MPM) [1]. Connecting the enhanced silicon components is an aluminum housing to act as the piping. The total stack thickness is less than 3mm, and has the potential to be slimmed to 1-2 mm. The hybrid system is tested at fluxes of 25 W/cm^2 and higher. The evaporator structure has heat transfer coefficients as high at 50,000 W/m^2 K. The work in this dissertation is, to the authors knowledge, the first loop heat pipe that is able to dissipate this amount of heat with such a thin form factor and utilizes a never before tested evaporator arrangement. Data showing a functioning system, the heat transfer rates of that system, the thermal resistance, and other metrics of this cutting edge device are presented in this work./nThe path of the research from an initial design to a final system, gives rise to an important discussion of how this device was created. On this path, background research was done that lead to increased focus on each component of the final system. The wick, the evaporator, new possibilities in laser fabrication techniques, and the sealing of the device were all thoroughly explored before the system was built. Once the groundwork of the component research was laid, modeling of the system was conducted to try and determine the limitations and room for improvement in future iterations of this design. Finally, the system was built, assembled and tested, creating the first micro loop heat pipe (uLHP) of this size scale. In addition, this device, shown here in its 3mm version, could be built out of silicon (or other materials) and shrunk to under 1mm without changing any of the channel depths or geometries. The structure was designed to be less than 1mm thick and was made thicker for ease of fabrication. Information on all of the component advancements and the process for creating a system that can handle up to 12W with 50W/cm^2 heat flux is presented here.

Advisor: Pisano, Albert P
Spatial and Mechanical Regulation of EphB Receptor in Neural Stem Cell Function

EphB4 receptor tyrosine kinases bind and cluster with membrane bound ephrinB2 ligands on apposing cells to signal juxtacrine. While this signal activation plays a regulatory role in neural stem cell differentiation, the underlying biophysical mechanism remains poorly understood. We reconstituted this juxtacrine signalling geometry between live EphB4-expressing neural stem cells and a supported lipid bilayer presenting laterally mobile monomeric ephrinB2 ligands. A novel method was developed to study neural stem cell differentiation by this hybrid system. This setup allows for observations of the timescale and spatial distribution of receptor-ligand binding and clustering. Furthermore, it accommodates the method of spatial mutation—whereby physical constraints are imposed by lithographically patterned micro-corrals—to restrict EphB4 receptor mobility and precisely control the spatial patterns of receptor-ligand organisation. We found that this physical reorganisation of EphB4-ephrinB2 inhibits neuronal differentiation, suggesting spatial and mechanical sensing of EphB4 signalling in neural stem cells.

Advisor: Groves, Jay T
The Impact of Sleep Improvement on Food Choices in Adolescents with an Eveningness Circadian Preference

Purpose: The aim was to investigate the relationship between sleep and desire for and intake of weight gain promoting foods at pre-treatment and following an intervention designed to improve sleep in adolescents with late bedtimes./nMethods: A sample of adolescents with late bedtimes was randomized to an intervention designed to improve sleep (TranS-C-Youth) or a control condition (Psychoeducation) and their food desire and intake in the morning was assessed at pre-treatment and post-treatment./nResults: At pre-treatment more sleep was associated with increased desire for dairy. No effects on desire for and intake of weight promoting food were observed for TranS-C-Youth compared to Psychoeducation. Adolescents with earlier bedtimes at post-treatment relative to pre-treatment ate more low Glycemic Index and dairy foods at post-treatment. This effect was not observed in those who did not improve their bedtime at pre-treatment relative to post-treatment./nConclusions: These findings suggest that bedtime improvement can improve breakfast choices, an important meal for obesity prevention during adolescence.

Advisor: Harvey, Allison
In Situ and On Location: The Early Works of Maria Nordman

This dissertation begins with Maria Nordman’s early forays into capturing time and space through photography, film, and performance and it arrives at the dozen important room works she constructed between 1969 and 1979. For these spaces in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, Italy, and Germany, the artist manipulated architecture to train sunshine into specific spatial effects. Hard to describe and even harder to illustrate, Nordman’s works elude definition and definitiveness, yet they remain very specific in their conception and depend on precision for their execution. Many of these rooms were constructed within museums, but just as many took place in her studio and in other storefronts in the working-class neighborhoods of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Milan, Genoa, Kassel, and Düsseldorf. If not truly outside of the art system then at least on its fringes, these works were premised physically and conceptually on their location in the city./nThis project pays particular attention to the relationship between studio and storefront works in Los Angeles vis-à-vis not only their museum-based and international counterparts, but not before exploring Nordman’s earliest films and desert performances to set up fundamental terms, conditions, and themes consistent throughout her oeuvre./nUltimately, I argue that rather than a “Light and Space” artist, her seemingly exclusively formal and phenomenological room works are actually in close dialogue with Hollywood movie-making, cinematic avant-gardes, and the “post-studio” and feminist art movements. Because the works’ difference is most visibly manifest in their use of space and place and sight, I draw on theories of vision and feminist geography to investigate the cultural, social and political dynamics at play within the work and between its concept and site and to suggest a more intrinsic political reading of Nordman’s works.

Advisor: Bryan-Wilson, Julia
Mass Communication: The Eucharist and Authorship in Early Modern England

This dissertation argues that in the two centuries following the incunabula, one group of authors writing for the press understood the feeling of being “in print” through the language and form of a much older technology, the Eucharist. The Eucharist’s role in distributing Christ to believers over time and space made it an irresistible analogue for the author’s publication through the printing press. The defining characteristics of print—namely, theoretically exact replicability and massively increased distributivity—are the same characteristics celebrated by Christ at the Last Supper when he shared his body. Far from robbing texts of aura, the press transmitted it. Like priests who personate and impart Christ, these writers were able to disseminate typographic versions of their own “real presences” to far-flung yet virtually gathered readers in an equally amplifying and exposing experience. Revealing the influence of the Eucharist on writers who identified the experience of authorship with the technology of the printing press, I show how mechanization—so often associated with the loss of aura—in fact made a powerful new mode of auratic presence available to writers whose engagement with print production and priestly identities led them to a new conception of what it meant to be a modern Protestant author. For John Foxe, technical and deictic innovations available only in print make the Actes and Monuments into a vessel in which the textual presences of the martyrs and even himself are stored, ready to be witnessed and consumed in the endlessly iterable moment of reading. For Robert Burton in the Anatomy of Melancholy, the commercial market reveals the tendency of the eucharistic miracle to turn to waste as one’s work is buried under ever-increasing piles of freshly-printed books, pamphlets, and “new news.” For John Milton, the vulnerability of publication leads to his consecration as a living textual martyr in the controversial prose—an act of self-fashioning that shapes our understanding of his protagonists in Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. I conclude by examining the eighteenth-century subsumption of the author’s eucharistic voice into the collective journalistic voice of an entire nation—the beginning of a process that culminates in mass communication in the fully modern sense.

Advisor: Picciotto, Joanna
Using outcomes to inform social decision-making in schizophrenia: Implications for motivation and functioning

The outcomes of decisions we make are integral for guiding our behavior. In this study, we investigated if and how people with and without schizophrenia use positive and negative social outcomes and social partners’ emotional displays to inform decisions to trust as well as whether they could detect reversals in behavior even as emotion displays remained unchanged. Thirty-two people with schizophrenia and 29 control participants completed a task where they decided how much trust to place in social partners showing either a dynamic emotional (smiling, scowling) or neutral display. Interactions were designed to result in either positive (trust reciprocated) or negative (trust abused) outcomes, allowing us to model changes in decisions to trust over the course of repeated interactions. Compared to controls, people with schizophrenia were less sensitive to positive social outcomes as evidence by their placing less trust in trustworthy social partners during initial interactions. On the other hand, people with schizophrenia were more sensitive to negative social outcomes during initial interactions with untrustworthy social partners, placing less trust in these partners compared to controls. Interestingly, people with schizophrenia were just as able as controls to detect reversals in social partners’ behavior as it changed from trustworthy to untrustworthy, but were less able to detect changes in the untrustworthy to trustworthy direction. Importantly, decisions to trust were associated with real-world social functioning. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding social engagement among people with schizophrenia and the development of psychosocial interventions for social functioning.

Advisor: Kring, Ann M
General Properties of Landscapes: Vacuum Structure, Dynamics and Statistics

Even the simplest extra-dimensional theory, when compactified, can lead to a vast and complex landscape. To make progress, it is useful to focus on generic features of landscapes and compactifications. In this work we will explore universal features and consequences of (i) vacuum structure, (ii) dynamics resulting from symmetry breaking, and (iii) statistical predictions for low-energy parameters and observations. First, we focus on deriving general properties of the vacuum structure of a theory independent of the details of the geometry. We refine the procedure for performing compactifications by proposing a general gauge-invariant method to obtain the full set of Kaluza-Klein towers of fields for any internal geometry. Next, we study dynamics in a toy model for flux compactifications. We show that the model exhibits symmetry-breaking instabilities for the geometry to develop lumps, and suggest that similar dynamical effects may occur generically in other landscapes. The questions of the observed arrow of time as well as the observed value of the neutrino mass lead us to consider statistics within a landscape, and we verify that our observations are in fact typical given the correct vacuum structure and (in the case of the arrow of time) initial conditions. Finally, we address the question of subregion duality in AdS/CFT, arguing for a criterion for a bulk region to be reconstructable from a given boundary subregion by local operators. While of less direct relevance to cosmological space-times, this work provides an improved understanding of the UV/IR correspondence, a principle that underlies the construction of many holographically-inspired measures used to make statistical predictions in landscapes.

Advisor: Bousso, Raphael