VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Walkability and Housing: A Comparative Study of Income, Neighborhood Change and Socio-Cultural Dynamics in the San Francisco Bay Area

Planning research has shown correlations between urban sprawl and obesity. Additional work has correlated higher walkability with increased walking behavior and improved population health independent of race, education, income, or lifestyle preferences. Presumably, people with access to a walkable neighborhood might improve their total well-being; however, housing research suggests that walkability is not equitably allocated and that price, sorting, discrimination and individual preferences may pose barriers to walkable neighborhoods as a health resource./nAs such, this work evaluates the inclusiveness of walkable neighborhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area, with the primary question of whether or not those with lower income can afford to live in walkable neighborhoods. Based on exploratory analysis and mapping, while the study finds no evidence of a positive association between income and walkable neighborhoods, the analysis does suggest a negative correlation between race and walkability for the most concentrated populations. Specifically, neighborhoods that are more Black, in locations with a higher share of the total regional population, appear correlated with less walkability./nThis pattern leads to the hypotheses that affordability and socio-cultural factors may be contributing to Black clustering in less walkable neighborhoods - that there may be barriers for these individuals to live in the most walkable areas and that many of these individuals may be either, 1) moving to less walkable suburban areas, or 2) left in less-walkable urban pockets. Interviews inform these hypotheses, suggesting that walkability may not factor in to housing decisions and that more research is needed to analyze whether or not income is a barrier to accessing a walkable neighborhood./nGiven the possibility that barriers exist, policies are suggested to improve streets, increase affordability, influence behavior, and to change the type of housing and financial tools available - with the goal of encouraging inclusiveness, and better ensuring that more individuals have access to walkable neighborhoods and the health benefits associated with walking.

Advisor: Cervero, Robert
Satariano, William A
Where is the Foreign?: An Inquiry into Person, Place, and the Possibility of Dialogue in an Online French Language Class

This study brings a qualitative, case study approach to bear upon an ongoing internet-mediated foreign language-learning project between students of French at an American university and their tutors at a partner institution in France, in order to ask a basic question of the telecollaborative language classroom (Belz & Thorne, 2006; O'Dowd, 2007). "Where is the foreign?" represents an attempt to expose the ontological conditions that might enable online students of language in the U.S. to "learn to comprehend speakers of the target language as members of foreign societies and to grasp themselves as Americans"--a central, reflexive component of translingual and transcultural competence as elaborated by the Modern Language Association (2007)./nThroughout the dissertation, I employ the dialogic principles of philosophers and literary theorists Mikhail Bakhtin and Martin Buber, grounded in a frame analytic approach to online and multimodal discourse, in order to understand whether digital communications technologies affording immediacy and co-presence also afford the boundary-setting, outsideness of perspective, and wholeness of person characteristic of dialogue. Analysis is organized in three case studies that take up, in turn, questions of distance and place, embodiment and person, and interface and reflexivity as they relate to the central concept of foreignness. In each of these areas, I find, students' learning experiences, as represented in their own classroom and retrospective discourse, raise the possibility that simulation (Baudrillard, 1994) plays a significant role in defining the reality of the foreign: foreign places signify difference, but with little ability to contextualize interaction; foreign bodies are audible and visible as images, but difficult to address in their totality; and the cultural mediations of the interface become nearly invisible in the face and gaze of the other./nIn the conclusion, I suggest that the rise of internet-mediated intercultural language learning projects may be accompanied by unexpected transformations in relations between students and teachers in the face-to-face language classroom, and recommend critical pedagogical interventions that expose the connections between student experiences of body, place, and technology, in realms both online and off, with the goal of creating optimal conditions for language learners' "operation between languages" (MLA, 2007).

Advisor: Kramsch, Claire J
The Role of the Circadian System in Reproductive, Neural, and Immune Health

In mammals, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) acts as the master circadian pacemaker of the body. The SCN coordinate the thousands of individual oscillators throughout the body to maintain optimal health and homeostatic functioning. The importance of maintaining circadian rhythmicity is exemplified by its role in reproduction, as disruption of the circadian clock inhibits reproduction. Experiment 1 shows that the proper temporal coordination by the SCN of two hypothalamic neuropeptides, GnRH and RFRP-3, is imperative to initiation of the luteinizing hormone (LH) surge that stimulates ovulation in the Syrian hamster. The maintenance of temporal homeostasis in reproductive, neural, and immune health was further studied using a model of circadian disruption similar to chronic jet lag that resulted in an incongruence between the endogenous ~24-hour rhythm generated by the SCN and the environmental 24-hour day. In Experiment 2, jet-lagged hamsters exposed to 6-hour shifts in the light:dark cycle every 3 days for 25 days exhibit a dysregulation in the temporal activation of the GnRH and kisspeptin systems, two neuropeptide populations that stimulate the LH surge, and in the temporal deactivation of the RFRP-3 system that inhibits the reproductive axis, around the time of the LH surge. The importance of temporal homeostasis was further explored in Experiment 3, in which jet-lagged hamsters exhibit decreases in hippocampal cell proliferation and neurogenesis compared to non-jet-lagged controls. Interestingly, jet lag hamsters not only exhibit deficits in learning and memory during the period of repeated phase shifts, but also one month following the cessation of chronic jet lag, suggesting that the jet-lag-induced decrease in neurogenesis has long lasting effects on hippocampal function. Similarly, as jet lag influences hippocampal cell proliferation, it is also shown to impact immune function by dysregulating splenocyte proliferation in Experiment 4. Additionally, both innate and humoral immune functions, including complement system activity, total antibody production, and bacterial killing, are suppressed in jet-lagged hamsters compared to controls. Taken together, the previous studies strongly implicate the necessity of coordination between an intact circadian system and environmental cues to maintain proper homeostatic function.

Advisor: Kriegsfeld, Lance J
The deformation and fracture of human cortical bone across multiple length-scales

The complex structure of human cortical bone evolves over multiple length-scales from its basic constituents of collagen molecules and hydroxyapatite crystals at the nanoscale to the osteonal structures at near-millimeter dimensions. There is a need to understand how all levels of the structure contribute to the deformation and fracture resistance of cortical bone under physiological loading conditions and how structural changes due to aging and disease lead to diminished mechanical properties. The first part of this thesis addresses the latter by using non-enzymatic crosslinking measurements and in situ small- and wide-angle x-ray scattering/diffraction to characterize changes in the bone structure at sub-micron dimensions, while synchrotron x-ray computed micro-tomography and in situ fracture-toughness measurements in the scanning electron microscope were performed to characterize corresponding changes at micron-scale dimensions. This multi-scale analysis allows us to better understand how load is transferred across multiple length-scales and how biological aging impacts energy absorption throughout the structure. The second part of this thesis addresses the fracture toughness of human cortical bone under multiaxial loading. Most studies to date have only considered the toughness of bone under mode I (tensile) loading conditions; however, due to the complex, anisotropic structure of cortical bone, the mode I fracture toughness is not necessarily the limiting value. Thus, this research investigates the effects of combined tensile and shear loading at the crack tip on the initiation and crack-growth toughnesses to better understand how bone fractures under physiologically relevant loading conditions.

Advisor: Ritchie, Robert O
Emigration and the Foundation of West Germany, 1933-1963

This dissertation traces the development of German national life from the disintegration of the Weimar Republic in 1933 to the end of the foundational period of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1963. Charting the alliances between previously hostile groups formed in emigration in response to National Socialism, I offer a way of understanding the ideological strength of reconstruction and nation-building after Hitler. The study covers four principal areas of activity: law and politics, humanistic culture, higher education, and religion. It takes as representative case studies the careers of young Weimar-era leaders who fled the Nazi regime in the 1930s and returned to help build the infrastructure of the Federal Republic after 1945. Extensive use is made of their personal papers and other archival material from the institutions with which they were affiliated. Examining the legal, cultural, intellectual, and theological response to the failure of Germany's first democracy, I challenge arguments that have privileged economic success as the driving cause of postwar democratization in West Germany. Instead, the dissertation points to the indispensability of social and ideological reconciliation as preconditions for development.

Advisor: Jay, Martin
Measurement of the Upsilon(1S) Production Cross Section in Proton-Proton Collisions at Center of Mass Energy 7 TeV

A measurement of the cross section for &Upsilon(1S) production in proton-proton collisions at center of mass energy 7 TeV is presented. The measurement uses the &Upsilon(1S) &rarr &mu+&mu- decay mode and covers up to a transverse momentum of 26 GeV in two bins of rapidity; |y&Upsilon(1S)| < 1.2 and 1.2 < |y&Upsilon(1S)| < 2.4. The results are based on an integrated luminosity of 1.13 pb-1, collected with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Templates derived from data are used to model the continuum background. In order to eliminate theoretical uncertainties due to the unknown polarization, the measurement is restricted to the case where both muons have a transverse momentum of p&muT > 4 GeV and a pseudorapidity |&eta&mu| < 2.5. The results are compared to two theoretical predictions: they agree to within a factor of two with the PYTHIA implementation of NRQCD while disagreeing by up to a factor of ten with the color singlet model at next-to-leading order.

Advisor: Heinemann, Beate
High School Students Whose Parents Did Not Attend College: Do Stressful Circumstances Relate to their Academic Success?

A growing body of evidence links demographic characteristics such as socio-economic status with exposure to stressful circumstances and physical and mental health outcomes (Adler, Boyce, Chesney, Cohen, Folkman, Kahn & Syme, 1994; Aldwin, 2007; Cohen, Doyle & Baum, 2006). This study applies a stress and coping framework to the relationship between stressful life experience and secondary and post-secondary schooling outcomes among students. This research investigates how parental level of education relates to exposure to stressful circumstances (life events, school stressors, and role strain) and whether these relationships influence four educational outcomes: high school math and reading achievement, college matriculation, and college degree attainment. This study is a secondary analysis of the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88/2000), using a subsample of 7,989 high school students followed between 1988 and 2000. Results showed that students without college-educated parents are exposed to more stressful circumstances. This difference in exposure did not account for group differences in learning outcomes. Still, overall, exposure to certain stressors affects student high school achievement over the entire sample, and total life event stress exposure in high school relates to students' overall ability to finish a college degree. The unique contribution of this work is that it 1) employs a stress and coping conceptual framework applied to high school achievement and post-secondary opportunity; and 2) constitutes a rigorous study with robust statistical controls. This research informs interventions aimed at improved achievement and opportunity among high school students with high stressor exposure, in which low income and students of color are disproportionately represented (Organista, 2007).

Advisor: Stone, Susan I.
Time-Domain Ultra-Wideband Synthetic Imager in Silicon

Low-cost and portable medical devices will play a more significant role in wellness, healthcare and medicine. While consumer electronics have become ubiquitous and inexpensive, medical devices, by contrast, are still primarily found only in hospitals. There is a great potential benefit in using techniques developed in the consumer electronic industry and applying them to the healthcare market. To do this, substantial innovation is required to develop new sensors and devices that are fundamentally less invasive and use profoundly different physical phenomena to address medical applications./nThis research aims at designing a non-invasive, low-cost, and portable imaging device for cancer screening. Detection in early stages has proven to be essential for reducing the mortality rate in cancer. This requires pursuit of modalities that could be widespread and are safe to be used for more frequent screening. This research uses the available contrast in microwave frequencies to detect abnormalities./nConceptualization, architectural and system-level design, and finally implementation of the system called TUSI, Time-Domain Ultra-Wideband Synthetic Imager, are addressed. Using an array of closely controlled radiating silicon chips, acting as transceivers in microwave /mm-wave frequencies, this device transmits short "beam-steered" pulses and picks up reflections from tissue abnormalities (e.g. cancerous tissue). By processing the data from multiple transceivers, a larger aperture is synthesized. In essence, this imager probes the "electrical" properties of the tissue. Various challenges related to generating, controlling, transmitting, and detecting these coherent ultra-short pulses are examined and new solutions proposed. A pixel-scalable integrated transceiver consisting of elements from antenna-to-antenna is designed and implemented in a SiGe BiCMOS process.

Advisor: Niknejad, Ali M
Stumbling Toward Capitalism: The State, Global Production Networks, and the Unexpected Emergence of China's Independent Auto Industry

The auto industry has long been of interest to political scientists because of the crucial role the state has played in brokering investment into local firms and coordinating relationships between suppliers and assemblers. In Japan and Korea, a centralized and institutionalized policymaking apparatus is often credited with establishing a globally competitive domestic auto industry without the need for foreign direct investment (FDI). Yet in China, where the policymaking apparatus is fragmented and decentralized, FDI was the primary policy tool used to infuse capital, technology, and management expertise into the backwards state-owned auto sector. Despite the central government's staunch support of state-owned firms, the most globally competitive domestic automakers in China today are not the traditional state-owned firms, but a group of new domestic firms with no ties to the central government or foreign automakers./nContrary to those scholars that credit the Chinese party-state with the modernization of China's auto industry, this dissertation argues that one of the sector's most significant developments - the emergence of independent Chinese automakers - was not the outcome of well-executed industrial policies, as was the case in Japan and Korea. Rather, the ability of China's independent automakers to overcome financial, technological, and regulatory barriers to entry was largely shaped by China's accession to the World Trade Organization, the economic initiative of local governments, and China's integration into an increasingly fragmented global automotive production networks. This dissertation also explores the consequences of China's new appetite for cars, such as growing oil imports and greenhouse gas emissions, and assesses the prospect of vehicle electrification as a way to solve the country's dire energy and environmental problems./nThis research examines from a sectoral perspective the inherent limitations to China's fragmented and decentralized approach to policymaking. Though this approach has been one of the primary drivers of economic growth up to now, it will hinder not only necessary consolidation in the Chinese auto industry, but the next stage of China's economic transition.

Advisor: Zysman, John
Moving Images Against The Current: The Aesthetics and Geopolitics of (Im)mobility in Contemporary Europe

This dissertation investigates the historical and contemporary tensions around mobility and identity in Europe since WWII, with particular emphasis on their contemporary configurations. Drawing on recent theories of migrant and diasporic cinema, moving image art, and mobility studies, I provide close and historically situated readings of films, videos, and installations within a larger geographic and historical scope of European migration that encompasses the Middle East and Africa. The films and videos I study establish a non-Western countergeography of Europe that has produced multiple "others" in its constant efforts to recompose its borders and identity. They address psychological and sociological processes of integration and cultural syncretism as well as discrimination and racism against minorities and migrants. Although the geopolitical focus of my dissertation is Europe, the works I analyze challenge territorially bounded conceptions of identity and culture. They extend representation to socially disenfranchised groups such as undocumented migrants by narrating multiple, and often times perilous, forms of travel and border-crossing from migrants' perspective. With attention not only to the shifting political and geographic borders of Europe but also to the shifting institutional and aesthetic borders of cinema, these works likewise invoke a powerful cinematic-countergeography that investigates the changing terrains of cinema and contemporary art./nThe first chapter, on The Edge of Heaven (2007) by Fatih Akin and Countess Sophia Hatun (1997) by Ayse Polat, focuses on second-generation Turkish German labor migrants and analyzes the cinematic production of heterogeneous diasporic spaces and subjects that transcend binaries of host-home or migrant-citizen. My second chapter, on Hidden (2005) by Michael Haneke and Exiles (2004) by Tony Gatlif, discusses the second-generation North African migrants in France and the violent history of French colonization of Algeria in relation to contemporary (postcolonial) French society. The third chapter, on the site-specific video installation Küba (2004) by Kutlug Ataman, focuses on the counter-stereotypical representation of migration in relation to the multichannel installation format as well as traditional forms of political cinema. The fourth and fifth chapters, on the video essay Sudeuropa (2005-7) by Raphael Cuomo and Maria Iorio and the video installation Sahara Chronicle (2006-9) by Ursula Biemann, respectively, examine the relationship between "illegal" migration and the creation of new borderlands in Southern Europe and North, West, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Advisor: Jackson, Shannon
Characterization of Listeria monocytogenes Peptidoglycan N-Deacetylase and O-Acetylase Mutations and the Role of Lysozyme Resistance During Infection

Listeria monocytogenes is a Gram-positive intracellular pathogen that is naturally resistant to lysozyme. Recently, it was shown that peptidoglycan modification by N-deacetylation or O-acetylation confers resistance to lysozyme in various Gram-positive bacteria including L. monocytogenes. L. monocytogenes peptidoglycan is deacetylated by the action of N-acetylglucosamine deacetylase (Pgd) and acetylated by an O-acetylmuramic acid transferase (Oat). We characterized Pgd-minus, Oat-minus and double mutants to determine the specific role of L. monocytogenes peptidoglycan acetylation in conferring lysozyme sensitivity and during infection of macrophages and mice. Pgd-minus and Pgd-minus/Oat-minus double mutants were attenuated approximately 2 and 3.5 logs respectively, in vivo. In bone-marrow derived macrophages, the mutants demonstrated intracellular growth defects and increased induction of cytokine transcriptional responses that emanated from a phagosome and the cytosol. Lysozyme-sensitive mutants underwent bacteriolysis in the macrophage cytosol resulting in AIM-2-dependent pyroptosis. Each of the in vitro phenotypes was rescued upon infection of LysM-minus macrophages. The addition of extracellular lysozyme to LysM-minus macrophages restored cytokine induction, host-cell death and L. monocytogenes growth inhibition. This surprising observation suggested that extracellular lysozyme can access the macrophage cytosol and act on intracellular, lysozyme-sensitive, bacteria.

Advisor: Portnoy, Dan