VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Flexible Photonics with High Contrast Metastructures

Light manipulation on a flexible, conformable, wearable surface with functions of light emission, detection and processing is the next frontier for many applications, including ubiquitous environment-awareness sensors for bridge, buildings, airplanes and robots; wearable health monitoring devices for public health; active camouflage; wearable displays and visual arts for commercial products; systems on a foil. However, the rigidness of the conventional photonic devices and systems limits their use in the flexible photonics application./nDespite the efforts that facilitate the flexible devices based on the organic materials, the performance of the devices are still compromised comparing with the devices made of the semiconductors. The transfer printing method provides an alternative paradigm in implementing the flexible photonic devices, by transferring the devices made of semiconductors on to the flexible substrates. However, many new challenges are arisen to incorporate the conventional photonic devices in the flexible platform, including thermal management, optical interconnect, etc./nThe high contrast metastructure (HCM) is an emerging element for photonics, with its unique capability to achieve the light wave engineering in the sub-wavelength scale. It has abundant properties and design versatility. The HCM can be designed to be an ultra-thin broadband high reflectivity mirror, replacing the conventional DBR reflector with a superior performance. It can also be configured as a mirrorless resonator to achieve high quality factor resonance with convenient free space coupling./nThis dissertation is devoted to explore the physics of the HCM in the near-wavelength regime, especially for its unique property in diffraction order enhancement and coupling. We present the new optical phenomena in the dual order diffraction regime and utilize this anomalous diffraction for making the first artificial chameleon skin. We also leverage on the ultra-thin thickness of the HCM reflector to significantly improve the thermal conductance for a heterogeneously integrated vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL). Through this effort, we demonstrate the first flexible VCSEL operating at the silicon transparent wavelength. Based on the HCM and external photonic structure coupling, we also demonstrate a variety devices for the efficient photonic integration on the flexible platform.

Advisor: Chang-Hasnain, Constance J
Making Ivan-Uzbek: War, Friendship of the Peoples, and the Creation of Soviet Uzbekistan, 1941-1945

This dissertation addresses the impact of World War II on Uzbek society and contends that the war era should be seen as seen as equally transformative to the tumultuous 1920s and 1930s for Soviet Central Asia. It argues that via the processes of military service, labor mobilization, and the evacuation of Soviet elites and common citizens that Uzbeks joined the broader “Soviet people” or sovetskii narod and overcame the prejudices of being “formerly backward” in Marxist ideology. The dissertation argues that the army was a flexible institution that both catered to national cultural (including Islamic ritual) and linguistic difference but also offered avenues for assimilation to become Ivan-Uzbeks, part of a Russian-speaking, pan-Soviet community of victors. Yet as the war wound down the reemergence of tradition and violence against women made clear the limits of this integration. The dissertation contends that the war shaped the contours of Central Asian society that endured through 1991 and created the basis for thinking of the “Soviet people” as a nation in the 1950s and 1960s./nThe first chapter addresses the experience of soldiers in the Red Army, paying special attention to the army’s policies to support Central Asian men with agitation. The second chapter focuses on the laborers who faced high mortality in the mines and industrial sites of the Urals and Siberia. Deprived of cultural support, agitators, and segregated from Slavic workers, they offer a case study in how the Soviet war-time state could operate both as a nation and an empire at the same time. The next two chapters address the Uzbek homefront, the contributions of Uzbek women who stayed in the region, and changing gender roles. Via an “emancipation of necessity” Uzbek women continued the professional gains they made during collectivization and replaced men in mechanized agriculture and in leadership positions. I examine the wartime contributions of three noteworthy women to show how the state both respected cultural mores that prevented them from serving at the front, but also pressed them into new, public roles. The next chapter focuses the interaction between evacuated Russian and Uzbek writers. I argue that their cooperation facilitated the narrative of Friendship of the Peoples while also allowing the evacuees to assert their tutorial rights as elder brother and masters of socialist realism. The final chapter addresses the durability of the Ivan-Uzbek identity in the face of social breakdown and resurgent religious tradition after the war.

Advisor: Slezkine, Yuri
Lethal and Sublethal Effects of Pesticides Used in Western United States Orchards on Hippodamia convergens

We examined the effects of two fungicides (copper+mancozeb and sulfur) and five reduced-risk insecticides (chlorantraniliprole, cyantraniliprole, lambda-cyhalothrin, novaluron, and spinetoram) on Hippodamia convergens (Guerin-Meneville) (Col.: Coccinellidae), an important natural enemy in western United States orchards. Acute toxicity of pesticides was tested via three different exposure routes: oral, residual, and topical. Lambda-cyhalothrin caused significant mortality to adults and larvae via all exposure routes (57-100%). Cyantraniliprole was toxic to adults and larvae when orally exposed, but it was less toxic for other exposure routes. Cyantraniliprole, spinetoram, and novaluron were moderately toxic to larvae when topically exposed (40-63% mortality), but not to adults (<4% mortality). Chlorantraniliprole, copper+mancozeb, and sulfur demonstrated low toxicity (<30% mortality) to adults and larvae, regardless of exposure route. Lethal and sublethal effects were tested by treating insects topically in the inactive stages (egg, pupa) and simultaneously through oral, residual, and topical exposure in the active stages (larva, adult). Larvae were vulnerable to all pesticides except copper+mancozeb, and lambda-cyhalothrin also reduced survivorship for pupae and eggs (3-19%). Exposure to novaluron lowered survivorship for treated eggs (14%) and fertility of treated females (9%). Fecundity was increased by exposure to copper+mancozeb. Corrected acute adult mortality alone was sufficient to detect the harmful effects of chlorantraniliprole and lambda-cyhalothrin, but combined effects of corrected adult mortality and daily fertility were needed to highlight the harmful effect of novaluron. Estimates of the intrinsic rate of increase indicated substantial delays in the population recovery of H. convergens following exposure to chlorantraniliprole, cyantraniliprole, novaluron, and sulfur, and local extinction for lambda-cyhalothrin. The effects of a combination pesticide (chlorantraniliprole and lambda-cyhalothrin) were tested on larvae and adults exposed to residues aged 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and 38 d in a laboratory or field setting. For field-aged residues, both life stages were highly susceptible to 0 and 1d residue (> 80%), but acute mortality declined for residues aged 16 and 38 d adults (< 53%). For laboratory-aged residues, both life stages had high acute mortality rates (> 80%) regardless of residue age. The rate of decay of the pesticide impact on adults (0.059) was greater than for larvae (0.024) for the field-aged residues, and greater than for adults exposed to laboratory-aged residues (a = 0.004). The results indicate that even reduced-risk insecticides may have harmful effects that vary by pesticide, life stage, and exposure route. Pesticide risk assessments can be improved by using lethal and sublethal data to estimate changes in population growth, and by incorporating both laboratory and field-based bioassays to better understand how pesticides impact natural enemies in the field.

Advisor: Mills, Nicholas J
Effective Theories in Few-Body Physics

Effective theories are a controlled approach to making approximations in physics. We describe here work on two applications of effective theory techniques in few-body physics, specifically to nuclear and atomic systems./nFirst, we analytically reduce the chiral three-nucleon interaction at NNLO to a density-dependent effective two-body potential by summing the third particle over the states of a spin-symmetric Fermi gas. Results are given for the potential in momentum space and in coordinate space, where the potential is seen to be nonlocal. An expansion of the potential in the difference of the nonlocal coordinates is made in order to arrive at a fully local effective two-body potential./nWe then explore the two-body spectra of spin-1/2 fermions in isotropic harmonic traps with external spin-orbit potentials and short range two-body interactions. Using a truncated basis of total angular momentum eigenstates, which is known to be equivalent to an effective theory when the atomic gas is harmonically confined, nonperturbative results are presented for experimentally realistic forms of the spin-orbit coupling: a pure Rashba coupling, Rashba and Dresselhaus couplings in equal parts, and a Weyl-type coupling. The technique is easily adapted to bosonic systems and other forms of spin-orbit coupling.

Advisor: Haxton, Wick C
The Politics of the Palate: Taste and Knowledge in Early Modern England

This dissertation explores the sense of taste’s significance to knowledge production in seventeenth and eighteenth century England./nBiologically and culturally intertwined with our primal desire for food, scholars historically have considered our sense of taste as a poor stepsister to our detached, rational faculty of vision. Many have dismissed it as a base and primitive modality of experience in early modern Europe, which became still less important with the intellectual ferment of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Yet these very qualities, I argue, made taste an especially attractive object of study, informing larger discussions of knowledge, authority, and behavior at a moment when learned understandings of food and the body were undergoing revision./nThe following pages sketch the historical anthropology of taste in early modern England. During the seventeenth century, it captured the attention of physicians, scholars, critics, and cooks, animating vehement debates over the constitution of ‘useful’ knowledge and what kinds of people should have access to it. In the eighteenth century, fashionable culinary writers and a new generation of profit-minded nerve doctors reinvented the palate as an embodied mark of refinement, animating controversies about appetite, agency, and reason. In short, my project departs from conventional interpretations of taste as subjective information that can neither be measured nor judged. To argue about taste, this dissertation contends, is to argue about the deepest recesses of human nature.

Advisor: Laqueur, Thomas
The Search for Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay in $^{130}$Te With CUORE-0

This thesis describes the design, operation and results of an/nexperimental search for neutrinoless double beta decay (0$\nu\beta\beta$) of/n$^{130}$Te using the CUORE-0 detector./nThe discovery of 0$\nu\beta\beta$ would have profound implications for particle/nphysics and our understanding of the Universe. Its discovery would/ndemonstrate the violation of lepton number and imply that neutrinos/nare Majorana fermions and therefore their own anti-particles. Combined/nwith other experimental results, the discovery of 0$\nu\beta\beta$ could also/nhave implications for understanding the absolute neutrino mass scale/nas well as the presently unknown neutrino mass hierarchy./nThe CUORE experiment is a ton-scale search for 0$\nu\beta\beta$ in $^{130}$Te/nexpected to begin operation in late 2015. The first stage of/nthis experiment is a smaller 39-kg active-mass detector called CUORE-0. This/ndetector contains 11~kg of $^{130}$Te and operates in the Laboratori/nNazionali del Gran Sasso lab in Italy from 2013 -- 2015./nThe results presented here are based on a $^\text{nat}$TeO$_2$/nexposure of 35.2~kg$\cdot$yr, or 9.8~kg$\cdot$yr exposure of $^{130}$Te collected/nbetween 2013 -- 2015. We see no evidence of 0$\nu\beta\beta$ and place an/nupper limit on the 0$\nu\beta\beta$ decay rate of/n$\Gamma_{0\nu\beta\beta}<0.25\times10^{-24}$~yr$^{-1}$ (90\% C.L.),/ncorresponding to a lower limit on the half-life of/n$T^{0\nu}_{1/2}>2.8\times10^{24}$~yr (90\% C.L.)./nWe combine the present result with the results of previous searches in/n$^{130}$Te. Combining it with the 1.2~kg$\cdot$yr $^{130}$Te exposure from the/nThree Towers Test run we place a half-life limit of/n$T_{1/2}^{0\nu}>3.3\times10^{24}$~yr (90\% C.L.). And combining these/nresults with the 19.75~kg$\cdot$yr $^{130}$Te exposure from CUORE-0ino, we place/nthe strongest limit on the 0$\nu\beta\beta$ half-life of $^{130}$Te to date, at/n$T^{0\nu}_{1/2}>4.5\times10^{24}$~yr (90\% C.L.). Using the present/nnuclear matrix element calculations for $^{130}$Te, this result/ncorresponds to a 90\% upper limit range on the effective Majorana/nmass of $m_{\beta\beta}<250-710$~meV.

Advisor: Kolomensky, Yury G
Charge Transport in Molecular Junctions: A Study of Level-Alignment, Thermoelectric Properties, and Environmental Effects

Here, we use and develop first-principles methods based on density functional theory (DFT) and beyond to understand and predict charge transport phenomena in the novel class of nanostructured devices: molecular junctions. Molecular junctions, individual molecules contacted to two metallic leads, which can be systematically altered by modifying the chemistry of each component, serve as test beds for the study of transport at the nanoscale. To date, various experimental methods have been designed to reliably assemble and mea- sure transport properties of molecular junctions. Furthermore, theoretical methods built on DFT designed to yield quantitative agreement with these experiments for certain classes of molecular junctions have been developed. In order to gain insight into a broader range of molecular junctions and environmental effects associated with the surrounding solution, this dissertation will employ, explore and extend first-principles DFT calculations coupled with approximate self-energy corrections known to yield quantitative agreement with experiments for certain classes of molecular junctions./nTo start we examine molecular junctions in which the molecule is strongly hybridized with the leads: a challenging limit for the existing methodology. Using a physically motivated tight-binding model, we find that the experimental trends observed for such molecules can be explained by the presence of a so-called “gateway” state associated with the chemical bond that bridges the molecule and the lead. We discuss the ingredients of a self-energy corrected DFT based approach to quantitatively predict conductance in the presence of these hybridization effects./nWe also develop and apply an approach to account for the surrounding environment on the conductance, which has been predominantly ignored in past transport calculations due to computational complexity. Many experiments are performed in a solution of non-conducting molecules; far from benign, this solution is known to impact the measured conductance by as much as a factor of two. Here, we show that the dominant effect of the solution stems from nearby molecules binding to the lead surface surrounding the junction and altering the local electrostatics. This effect operates in much the same way adsorbates alter the work function of a surface. We develop a framework which implicitly includes the surrounding molecules through an electrostatic-based lattice model with parameters from DFT calculations, reducing the computational complexity of this problem while retaining predictive power. Our approach for computing environmental effects on charge transport in such junctions will pave the way for a better understanding of the physics of nanoscale devices, which are known to be highly sensitive to their surroundings.

Advisor: Neaton, Jeffrey B
Prevalence of Earth-size Planets Orbiting Sun-like Stars

In this thesis, I explore two topics in exoplanet science. The first is the prevalence of Earth-size planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. To determine the occurrence of planets having different sizes, orbital periods, and other properties, I conducted a survey of extrasolar planets using data collected by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. This project involved writing new algorithms to analyze Kepler data, finding planets, and conducting follow-up work using ground-based telescopes. I found that most stars have at least one planet at or within Earth’s orbit and that 26% of Sun-like stars have an Earth-size planet with an orbital period of 100 days or less./nThe second topic is the connection between the properties of planets and their host stars. The precise characterization of exoplanet hosts helps to bring planet properties like mass, size, and equilibrium temperature into sharper focus and probes the physical processes that form planets. I studied the abundance of carbon and oxygen in over 1000 nearby stars using optical spectra taken by the California Planet Search. I found a large range in the relative abundance of carbon and oxygen in this sample, including a handful of carbon-rich stars. I also developed a new technique called SpecMatch for extracting fundamental stellar parameters from optical spectra. SpecMatch is particularly applicable to the relatively faint planet-hosting stars discovered by Kepler.

Advisor: Marcy, Geoffrey
Extravagant Passing: Spanish Masquerade in the American Literary Imagination

The dissertation discusses the figure and narrative of Spanish masquerade in the history of passing in American literature and culture, beginning with Spanish historias and English histories in the 16th and 17th centuries that provide a frame for the study of 19th century Chicana/o and African American literature. In the works by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá, John Smith, Herman Melville, Ellen Craft and William Craft, and María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, the manuscript provides literary readings, cultural history, and archival research, also making use of queer theory, post-colonial theory, and theories of mestiza consciousness in order to connect these particular case studies to a broader field of inquiry concerning boundary crossing and its representational practices. Whereas most critical readings on the history of passing concentrate on black-to-white performances of mobility, this dissertation introduces a new kind of passing that changes how we think about the traditional genre in order to explore how the variable of disability and illness cross-racially intervenes into the figure of the Spanish decadent colonial. Through readings of social moblity in these authors’ works, I generate a theory of extravagance, or surplus signification, in the performance of passing. A specific integer of extravagance’s operation and which the dissertation is interested is “Spanishness” as an added problem to extravagant passing. I thus situate the content of this study in the context of the traditional genre and recent theoretical discussions. The dissertation ultimately argues that by studying this confounding borderland figure what emerges is the missing historia in the history of passing, a ghosting of Spanishness in the American literary imagination, and a plural mode of subjectivity deployed by racial subjects, including la mestiza, where the dissertation uncovers a poetics of extravagance in la conciencia de la mestiza.

Advisor: Padilla, Genaro M
Donegan, Kathleen M
Certainty Posing: The Motives and Morality of Exaggerating One's Degree of Certainty

In this dissertation I examine a form of deception that I refer to as certainty posing, or exaggerating one’s degree of certainty. People are often expected to convey certainty in their ability to know the truth or forecast the future. As I argue, this expectation can motivate them to deliberately exaggerate their degree of certainty. In the first chapter of this dissertation, I find support for this assertion across a series of six experiments. Specifically, I find evidence that certainty posing is motivated by impression management concerns to appear knowledgeable and credible—particularly in situations where people can attribute uncertainty to inadequate knowledge. Additionally, I document that this behavior has the potential to bias consumers of advice. In the second chapter of this dissertation, I consider the moral acceptability of certainty posing and argue that people should perceive it as more morally acceptable than other forms of deception documented in the literature. I find limited evidence for this proposition: While certainty posing is perceived as more morally acceptable than blatant deception (telling the polar opposite of the truth), it is not perceived as any more acceptable than feigning uncertainty. Overall, this research makes two primary contributions to the literature. First, it documents that impression management motives can cause people to engage in strategic displays of overconfidence. Second, it establishes that individuals’ motivation to engage in these displays is largely determined by the source to which they can attribute their uncertainty.

Advisor: Kray, Laura J