VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Relationship between School-based Health Center Utilization, School Connectedness, and Academic Outcomes

School-based health centers (SBHCs) have gained popularity as an approach to provide adolescents with access to health and mental health services in a convenient, youth friendly environment. Although evidence exists regarding SBHC’s impact on access and health domains, clarification of the relationship between SBHC utilization and academic outcomes is needed. Yet, understanding the relationship between utilization of SBHCs and educational outcomes is fraught with many challenges. Although various studies attempt to singularly address these challenges, this study fully integrates these important prior insights into a single study. First, this study capitalizes upon a unique opportunity link three secondary data sources (administrative service utilization, education outcome data, and student survey data), which allows for analysis of the type of services used (medical services, general counseling, and behavioral health counseling) and dosage of each service used. Second, this study limits the impact school contextual differences by limiting the study population to one school, further enabling clarification of the general approach of the intervention. Third, this study employs propensity scoring methods to carefully control for differences between SBHC users and non-users. Specifically, this study aims to (1) clarify student level SBHC utilization patterns; (2) replicate prior research on school connection pathways (i.e. student perceptions of teacher support (school support) and student perceptions of their belonging to school (school connectedness), adding new analysis on specific types and dosages of SBHC use; and (3) replicate prior research linking SBHC utilization to academic outcomes, adding new analysis on specific types and dosages of SBHC use. Results indicate that students who use SBHC services have heterogeneous demographic characteristics and health and mental health needs compared to students who do not use SBHCs. This study did not find a relationship between SBHC service use and connection to school or education outcomes at the end of one school year. This study may serve as model for how we might approach future SBHC research.

Advisor: Stone, Susan
The role of the ion channel, TRPA1, in itch transduction in the mammalian peripheral nervous system.

Itch is defined as an unpleasant sensation that evokes a desire to scratch. In contrast to acute itch that is transient, chronic itch is a persistent, debilitating condition for which there are few treatment options. Chronic itch accompanies a number of skin diseases and systemic conditions, as well as a variety of neurological disorders. However, little is known about the molecules and cell types that mediate acute or chronic itch in primary sensory neurons and skin./nWe have established an essential role for the ion channel, TRPA1, in multiple forms of both acute and chronic itch. We have shown that TRPA1 is required for neuronal activation and itch behaviors in mice downstream of acute exogenous and endogenous itch compounds. Similarly, TRPA1 is required for itch behavior and itch-evoked expressional changes in both sensory neurons and skin in a mouse model of dry skin./nWe have also identified a novel itch-causing compound: Thymic Stromal Lymphopoietin (TSLP). Numerous studies suggest that the epithelially-derived cytokine TSLP acts as a master switch that triggers both the initiation and maintenance of the chronic itch disease atopic dermatitis. Our work demonstrates that TSLP activates sensory neurons directly and leads to acute itch behaviors. TRPA1 is required for both TSLP-evoked neuronal activation and itch behaviors. Taken together, our work shows that TRPA1 is a master regulator of itch signaling.

Advisor: Bautista, Diana M
Numerical and Experimental Investigation of Bridges with Columns Supported on Rocking Foundations

The objectives of this dissertation is to investigate the use of rocking foundations in bridges for enhanced seismic design and performance and the reduction of post-earthquake damage. The seismic response of bridge systems was studied numerically using three-dimensional nonlinear models, whereas bridge columns with rocking foundations and superstructure mass were studied both numerically and experimentally. The experimental part consisted of the shake-table testing of large scale bridge columns with shallow rocking foundations using physical modeling of the underlying soil. Using the data from these tests, a three-dimensional model with Winkler springs was modified and validated for rocking shallow foundations designed with high factors of safety against vertical loads. The proposed model was then used on a parametric study to investigate the seismic demand on a large variety of bridge piers with rocking shallow foundations.

Advisor: Panagiotou, Marios A.
Distribution of Resonances in Scattering by Thin Barriers

This thesis contains a detailed study of the rates of wave decay for scattering by thin barriers. Thin barriers are systems in which, except for a narrow region, waves do not interact. This type of behavior is observed in physical systems including concert halls and quantum corrals. A quantum corral is constructed by configuring individual atoms or molecules to form a barrier which partially confines electrons to its interior. Here, the atoms produce a potential which plays the role of the thin barrier. In the setting of concert halls, the walls play the role of the barrier and produce partial confinement of sound waves./nRather than studying systems with a finite width interaction region, we imagine that the interaction region is reduced to a single hypersurface in R^d by taking a limit of barriers whose width is decreasing and intensity is increasing./nSpecifically, we are interested in wave equations with delta and delta' potentials on a hypersurface. These operators are used as models for leaky quantum graphs and quantum corrals.

Advisor: Zworski, Maciej R
Near-field Interaction With Dark Modes: Nanophotonics and Plasmonics Cases

With the advent of the information era, the ever-growing need for bandwidth and computing power is calling for the development of highly integrated and compact photonic circuits where controlling light at the nano-scale becomes the most critical aspect of information processing and transfer. However, the inherent cross-talk in densely packed waveguides is a major roadblock toward ultra-high density photonic integrated circuits. As a result, the diffraction limit is often considered as the lower bound for ultra-dense integrated photonics circuits. In recent years, analogies between light propagation in waveguides and atomic physics dynamics were explored leading to non-intuitive light propagation patterns in waveguides./nIn this dissertation we discuss the application of the Adiabatic Elimination concept from atomic physics into integrated photonics. We experimentally demonstrate that this scheme allows the control via a dark mode of the coupling between two outer waveguides in a three-waveguide configuration. In particular, we show that at the nano-scale, where higher order couplings occur, a zero coupling between all the waveguides can be achieved, thus allowing perfect shielding in very dense waveguides configuration. We also show the applicability of the Adiabatic Elimination in larger arrays of waveguides./nWe conclude by showing how dark mode interaction applied to a plasmonic system leads to a significant linewidth narrowing of the plasmonic resonance thus reducing the losses typically associated to these systems.

Advisor: ZHANG, Xiang
Exploiting Structure and Input-Output Properties in Networked Dynamical Systems

Large coupled networks of individual entities arise in multiple contexts in nature and engineered systems to produce rich dynamics and achieve complex behaviors. As the state-space dimension increases, the certification of stability and performance properties of these nonlinear dynamical systems becomes an intractable problem. In this thesis we develop decomposition methods that break up such convoluted systems into components of smaller dynamics whose behavior is dependent on the state of the neighboring components. These methods explore useful input-output properties of the subsystems in conjunction with the topology of their interconnections, providing results that scale well to large-scale networks./nWe begin by developing a mathematical approach to analyze spatial pattern formation in developmental biology that combines graph-theoretical and dynamical systems methods to systematically predict the emergence of patterns. This approach models the contact between cells by a graph and exploits its symmetries to create partitions of cells into classes of equal fate. Using monotone systems theory, we derive verifiable conditions that determine whether patterns consistent with such partitions exist and are stable. Then, we propose an engineered synthetic circuit that mimics contact inhibition by using diffusible molecules to spontaneously generate sharply contrasting patterns. Using a compartmental model, we determine a condition that serves as a parameter tuning guide for patterning./nWe next focus on exploring the symmetric topology of the interconnection to provide efficient certification of performance properties of large networks. Performance certification can be cast as a distributed optimization problem for which the existence of a solution is equivalent to the existence of a solution with repeated variables. We demonstrate that fast certification of stability and performance is possible by searching over solutions in a reduced order domain./nFinally, motivated by the stochastic behavior of biological networks, we provide stochastic stability results for systems modeled by stochastic differential equations. We use stochastic passivity properties of the subsystems and a diagonal stability condition of the interconnection matrix together with the passivity gains to guarantee stochastic stability and noise-to-state stability.

Advisor: Arcak, Murat
The Ecological Keynesian: Energy, Money, and Oil Cycles in the Global System

The Ecological Keynesian: Energy, Money, and Oil Cycles in the Global System/nby/nJalel Marti Sager/nDoctor of Philosophy in Energy and Resources/nUniversity of California, Berkeley/nProfessor Richard B. Norgaard, Chair/nThis dissertation focuses on energy-centered great power nations in the 20th and early 21st centuries—the United States, Great Britain, and China—and the economic waves created by their changing rates of energy production. Its goal is a better explanation of energy’s entanglement with global production, trade, and monetary systems, and of the crises linking them in the 1970s and 2000s. The post-Bretton Woods monetary-energy regime receives special attention, as does its future, given trajectories of key nations and the need to move toward low-carbon energy sources./nI proceed by integrating ecological economic and political economic thought, focusing on work of William Stanley Jevons and John Maynard Keynes that addresses key integrated macroeconomic-resource questions. I adapt natural resource linkages made by Keynes and Jevons—especially the influence of harvest fluctuations on the economy, and the investment cycles that transmit them—to investigate oil’s effect on US internal/external balances after Bretton Woods. In doing so I identify a clear signal of an “oil harvest cycle” regulating those balances./nThe oil harvest cycle provides provisional answers to important unresolved questions, such as the exact channels through which oil price shocks affect the economy (“Bernanke’s Puzzle"). I also describe how the oil price functions as an adjustment method for sterilized US external balances in the “disequilibrium system” entrenched in the 1970s. Finally, I relate these mechanisms to the “pulsing paradigm” of ecosystems proposed by Eugene and Howard Odum, arguing that an analogous signal appears in the economy via its key natural resource cycles.

Advisor: Norgaard, Richard B.
Designing Critique for Knowledge Integration

Generating explanations is central to science and has the potential to have a powerful impact on students’ conceptual understanding in science instruction. However, improving conceptual understanding by generating explanations is a fraught affair: students may struggle with the sense of false clarity that may arise from generating explanations, fail to detect gaps in their understanding, and dismiss salient information that contradict their beliefs. Critiquing explanations has the potential to counteract these pitfalls by exposing students to alternative ideas to contrast with their own. This dissertation seeks to clarify how to design critique in technology-enhanced science instruction to support students in revising their explanations about scientific phenomena, and in doing so, refining their conceptual understanding./nUsing the Knowledge Integration framework, I revised two technology-enhanced curriculum units, Plate Tectonics and Global Climate Change, in a design partnership between teachers, researchers, and technologists. I conducted a series of studies with sixth-grade students to investigate the conditions under which guided critique of explanations can support revision. The pilot critique study investigated the impact of the revised Plate Tectonics unit on students’ understanding of convection, as well as of a preliminary design of critique where students generated and applied their own criteria for what makes a good explanation in science. The guidance study explored how incorporating a complex selection task that features meta-explanatory criteria into critique supports students in distinguishing among different criteria, as well as how students use peer or expert guidance on their initial explanation during revision. The critique study investigated how designing critique with a complex selection task that features plausible alternative ideas and giving guidance on students’ critiques support students in distinguishing among a range of relevant ideas and making productive revisions to their initial explanations./nThese studies clarify how critique can be designed to help students sort through various ideas in their conceptual repertoire, be they ideas about meta-explanatory criteria or science ideas about a specific phenomenon. The study findings illuminate the challenges of guiding students to examine or re-examine the full range of ideas for knowledge integration. Students struggle to identify salient, missing, or normative ideas in their own or another explanation, and to incorporate their insights in a coherent way through revision. The studies demonstrate that embedding complex selection tasks in critique encourages students to consider a broad range of ideas and supports them in making conceptual revisions of their explanations. The results have implications for the design of critique in technology-enhanced science instruction.

Advisor: Linn, Marcia C
Applications of Macdonald Ensembles

Multivariate orthogonal polynomials of Macdonald are an important tool to study a variety of topics in modern mathematical physics, such as chiral algebras, three-dimensional topological theories of Chern-Simons type, five-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories, and others. We describe several recent applications of Macdonald polynomials, based on original research contributions. Introduction gives an overview of Macdonald theory, with a view towards applications. In Chapter 2, we discuss a Macdonald deformation of three-dimensional Chern-Simons topological field theory and construct it explicitly in the case of Heegaard splitting of genus one. The resulting knot invariants turn out to be related to the recently developed theory of knot homology. In Chapter 3, we show that Macdonald ensembles are natural integral representations for the Nekrasov functions -- important special functions in the context of five-dimensional supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories. This allows us to prove, in vast generality, a conjecture that Nekrasov functions are equal to the chiral blocks of W-algebras.

Advisor: Reshetikhin, Nicolai Y
Parameter variation and scenario analysis in impact assessments of emerging energy technologies

There is a global need for energy technologies that reduce the adverse impacts of societal progress and that address today's challenges without creating tomorrow's problems. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) can support technology developers in achieving these prerequisites of sustainability by providing a systems perspective. However, modeling the early-stage scale up and impacts of technology systems may lead to unreliable or incomplete results due to a lack of representative technical, spatial, and temporal data. The goal of this dissertation is to support the acceleration of clean energy technology development by providing information about the regional variation of impacts and benefits resulting from plausible deployment scenarios. Three emerging energy technologies are selected as case studies: (1) brine management for carbon dioxide sequestration; (2) carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and sequestration; (3) stationary fuel cells for combined heat and power in commercial buildings. In all three case studies, priority areas are identified where more reliable data and models are necessary for reducing uncertainty, and vital information is revealed on how impacts vary spatially and temporally. Importantly, moving away from default technology and waste management hierarchies as a source of data fosters goal-driven systems thinking which in turn leads to the discovery of technology improvement potentials.

Advisor: McKone, Thomas E
Gadgil, Ashok
Abstract Semantics for Software Security Analysis

Program analysis and formal methods have enabled advanced automatic software security analysis such as security policy enforcement and vulnerability discovery. However, due to the complexity of the modern software, recent applications of such techniques exhibit serious usability and scalability problems. In this thesis, we address these problems using/nautomatically or semi-automatically constructed abstract program semantics. Specifically, we study two typical scenarios where the power of formal techniques is limited by the problems above, and develop novel techniques that address these issues. First, we propose a new/nalgorithm to construct event-based program abstraction, and check contextual security policies under this abstraction. Our approach addresses the usability and scalability problems in the model-checking of security policies in event-driven programs. Second, we propose a synthesis-based algorithm to learn and check web server logic without having access to the/nserver-side source code. The key insight is that the client-side behavior reflects partially the server-side logic, thus we infer server-side logic by observing the client-side’s execution. We develop a declarative language to encode our domain specific modeling of common server-side operations, as well as an efficient algorithm to synthesize a server model in that language. In summary, we demonstrate that abstract semantics can bridge the gap between the human and the massive details of the program, and make formal techniques applicable in a large scale.

Advisor: Song, Dawn
Scalable Transactions for Scalable Distributed Database Systems

With the advent of the Internet and Internet-connected devices, modern applications can experience very rapid growth of users from all parts of the world. A growing user base leads to greater usage and large data sizes, so scalable database systems capable of handling the great demands are critical for applications. With the emergence of cloud computing, a major movement in the industry, modern applications depend on distributed data stores for their scalable data management solutions. Many large-scale applications utilize NoSQL systems, such as distributed key-value stores, for their scalability and availability properties over traditional relational database systems. By simplifying the design and interface, NoSQL systems can provide high scalability and performance for large data sets and high volume workloads. However, to provide such benefits, NoSQL systems sacrifice traditional consistency models and support for transactions typically available in database systems. Without transaction semantics, it is harder for developers to reason about the correctness of the interactions with the data. Therefore, it is important to support transactions for distributed database systems without sacrificing scalability./nIn this thesis, I present new techniques for scalable transactions for scalable database systems. Distributed data stores need scalable transactions to take advantage of cloud computing, and to meet the demands of modern applications. Traditional techniques for transactions may not be appropriate in a large, distributed environment, so in this thesis, I describe new techniques for distributed transactions, without having to sacrifice traditional semantics or scalability./nI discuss three facets to improving transaction scalability and support in distributed database systems. First, I describe a new transaction commit protocol that reduces the response times for distributed transactions. Second, I propose a new transaction programming model that allows developers to better deal with the unexpected behavior of distributed transactions. Lastly, I present a new scalable view maintenance algorithm for convergent join views. Together, the new techniques in this thesis contribute to providing scalable transactions for modern, distributed database systems.

Advisor: Franklin, Michael J.
The Making of the Subject of the Leviathan

Rejected loudly by his own contemporaries, Thomas Hobbes remained notorious—a practically unspeakable name—for generations after his death, and the entire subsequent development of political practice and theory in England (and Scotland later on) could be seen as a frenzied reaction to his work. And, yet, the argument here is that Hobbes’s political testament was nevertheless in essence quietly realized. An underlying conservatism came to dominate 18th century England in ways that were extra-political, but which would continue to make a profound impact on the political reality of the state.

Advisor: Wintroub, Michael
Mechanobiological Regulation of Glioblastoma Initiation and Invasion

Glioblastoma remains elusive to treat due to the diffuse infiltration of single tumor cells into the surrounding tissue. Current standard therapies - surgery, radiation, chemotherapy - have been ineffective at significantly increasing survival time. Although many studies have focused on factors that affect glioma growth and invasion, it is still unclear how and why this disease is so aggressive. Promising chemotherapeutic drugs have failed in clinical trials even though specific targets were identified. The existence of tumor-initiating cells (TICs), a subpopulation within primary tumors, could explain how the heterogeneous makeup of the bulk tumor leads to quick adaptability to resist surrounding cues that limit migration and growth. The work presented in this dissertation has approached this problem from a biophysical perspective, demonstrating that the extracellular matrix (ECM) can serve as a regulator of TIC invasion and initiation both in vitro and in vivo./nWe first characterized TIC migration and growth on 2D ECMs and found that they were able to migrate readily even on soft ECMs. Noting that cellular contractility is important for cells to sense environmental cues in the surrounding tissue, we manipulated the TICs with upregulation of myosin activators. Thus, we were able to rescue mechanosensing in the TICs and found that migration of the CA RhoA TICs was limited on soft ECMs. We then used 3D invasion assays to confirm that high contractility in TICs limits invasion and migration in 3D as well. Lastly, we implanted CA RhoA TICs in orthotopic mouse models and found that increased cellular contractility limits tumor occupancy and significantly increases survival time.

Advisor: Kumar, Sanjay