VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Regionalizing NAFTA: Theaters of Translation in Mexico City and Quebec

This dissertation is a study of theater networks between Mexico City and Quebec during the NAFTA years (1994-2018) and their role in regionalizing North America. It examines the regional imaginaries enacted through theater collaborations, considering both the material and imagined dimensions of these networks, exposing the role of theater and its translations in the politics of international and intercultural exchange. It explores the dis/connections between the political agendas that draft continental projects and the everyday practices enacted across these geographic and cultural spaces. Conceptually, the intercultural is theorized in the project as the reassembly of the networks that enable these intercultural performances, and not through principles of hybridity. In this process, translation is foregrounded in order to reveal the implications of paraphrasing and referencing meaning in another context, as well as the new configurations of knowledge and aesthetic languages produced by this contact./nThe dissertation extends the hemispheric conceit of what the North is to Mexico and of Canada’s broader South, re-thinking the region from a perspective less centered on Anglophone meditations or on the discourses of official leadership. It begins with the theories of translation, regionalism and interculturalism that guide it, followed by a reassembly of theater networks between Mexico City and Quebec established primarily via the activation of latinité as an imaginative tool. The last two chapters are close readings of case studies representative of these networks: a co-production – La vida no vale nada/La vie ne vaut rien – created by a Mexican and a Quebecois company, and a Quebecois text – La divine illusion by Michel Marc Bouchard – in production in Mexico City. These last two chapters rely heavily on translation for their analysis, and test the limits of the intercultural in our understanding of global cultural production. The project thus expands its cultural analysis by introducing hypercultural as an analytical frame, one that accounts for the rhizomatic accumulation of shifting meaning and aesthetics beyond the premises of national or cultural essence. I argue that these theater networks – while enabled by political agendas and economic regulations – perform the superabundance of culture that results from contact in global times, and evidence the complex work of mis/translation that makes it possible for us to imagine and inhabit regions.

Advisor: Steen, Shannon
Cabranes-Grant, Leo
On the Local Sensitivity of M-Estimation: Bayesian and Frequentist Applications

This thesis uses the local sensitivity of M-estimators to address a number of/nextant problems in Bayesian and frequentist statistics. First, by exploiting a/nduality from the Bayesian robustness literature between sensitivity and/ncovariances, I provide significantly improved covariance estimates for mean/nfield variational Bayes (MFVB) procedures at little extra computational cost./nPrior to this work, applications of MFVB have arguably been limited to/nprediction problems rather than inference problems for lack of reliable/nuncertainty measures. Second, I provide practical finite-sample accuracy bounds/nfor the ``infinitesimal jackknife'' (IJ), a classical measure of local/nsensitivity to an empirical process. In doing so, I bridge a gap between/nclassical IJ theory and recent machine learning practice, showing that stringent/nclassical conditions for the consistency of the IJ can be relaxed for restricted/nbut useful classes of weight vectors, such as those of leave-K-out cross/nvalidation. Finally, I provide techniques to quantify the sensitivity of the/ninferred number of clusters in Bayesian nonparametric (BNP) unsupervised/nclustering problems to the form of the Dirichlet process prior. By considering/nlocal sensitivity to be an approximation to global sensitivity rather than a/nmeasure of robustness per se, I provide tools with considerably/nimproved ability to extrapolate to different priors. Because each of these/ndiverse applications are based on the same formal technique---the Taylor series/nexpansion of an M-estimator---this work captures in a unified way the/ncomputational difficulties associated with each, and I provide open-source tools/nin Python and R to assist in their computation.

Advisor: Jordan, Michael I
McAuliffe, Jon
Examining Factors Associated with Learning and Performance in Primary Care Graduate Medical Education Organizations

Despite calls to improve Graduate Medical Education (GME), little is known about the organizational factors influencing training design, resident learning, and assessment. This dissertation examines the organizational behavior factors in primary care GME associated with time spent training in ambulatory care, resident clinical competency learning rates, and quality of care. Linked databases from medical education accreditors and policymakers, population health sources, federal cost reports, and an integrated health system were analyzed to investigate the extent to which primary care GME’s competing internal and external organizational factors influence the professional training environment and performance of primary care residents. Key findings include: 1. Experience in ambulatory care for residents varies among their ACGME-accredited programs, with more time in ambulatory care settings most strongly associated with additional faculty, receipt of federal Teaching Health Center GME funding, and accreditation warnings; 2. Improved resident learning rates in the Accreditation Council for GME (ACGME) Milestones for family medicine and internal medicine programs were more associated with external factors than internal factors. Patient care, practice-based learning and improvement, and systems-based practice learning rates were dependent on the program’s geographic setting, organizational structural characteristics, and the type of resident learning experiences; and 3. Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measure reliability in ambulatory care for residents varies among ACGME-accredited primary care residency programs with potential opportunities to utilize publicly reported quality data for GME programs. Overall, these empirical studies help clarify the organizational and associated environmental factors influencing training design, resident learning, and performance in order to assist policymakers in understanding the fragmented GME learning environment and move GME toward improved accountability. As trainee experiences may have a downstream impact on patient care, the systematic study on primary care GME organizations helps improve the design of the resident learning environment and training the future primary care workforce, especially in ambulatory care, the most common delivery setting for primary care health services today.

Advisor: Rodriguez, Hector P
Chronic stress induces activity, synaptic and transcriptional remodeling of the lateral habenula associated with deficits in motivated behaviors

Chronic stress is a major risk factor for the development of depression. In recent years, the lateral habenula (LHb) has emerged as a potential key structure in depression. LHb is connected with dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and serotoninergic neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus (DR), and changes in these monoaminergic systems have been associated with depression-related behaviors. In my dissertation, I demonstrate that chronic stress-induced hyperactivity in LHb neurons projecting to VTA is associated with increased passive coping but not anxiety or anhedonia. Moreover, LHb→VTA neurons in mice with increased passive coping show increased burst and tonic firing as well as synaptic adaptations in excitatory inputs from the entopeduncular nucleus (EP). In vivo manipulations of EP→LHb or LHb→VTA neurons also selectively alter passive coping and effort-related motivation. Conversely, dorsal raphe (DR)-projecting LHb neurons do not show chronic stress-induced hyperactivity and are targeted indirectly by the EP. Using single-cell transcriptomics I reveal a set of genes that can collectively serve as biomarkers to identify mice with increased passive coping phenotype and differentiate LHb→VTA from LHb→DR neurons. Together, I provide a set of biological markers at the level of genes, synapses, cells and circuits that define a distinctive chronic stress-induced behavioral phenotype.

Advisor: Lammel, Stephan
Becoming Botanical: Entanglements of Plant Life and Human Subjectivity in Modern Japan

This dissertation argues that plant life offered a number of modern Japanese writers and filmmakers a model through which to rethink human subjectivity in response to turbulent historical events. Informed by the adaptability and resilience of vegetal life (so-called phenotypic plasticity, in which plants change in response to changes in their environments), the authors and directors I discuss posit a form of destructive plasticity available to humans in the face of crises brought on by war, colonial violence, natural disaster, and economic depression. Across genres and media—in poetry, novels, scientific writing, and films—subjectivity is reconfigured beyond the confines of the human body, beyond conventional sense perception, and beyond human temporality. Drawing from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, I call the reconfiguration of subjectivity in cultural texts inspired by plant life “becoming botanical.”/nMy first chapter examines two writers: poet and novelist Osaki Midori and biologist Imanishi Kinji. For both, evolutionary thinking informed by new research in botanical science provided a framework to think through and reconfigure human subjectivity amidst the violence of the early Shōwa period, as well as providing a means to envision a notion of family through shared resemblance that included plants. From their utopian figurations of becoming botanical I turn to the dystopian critique of colonial modernity written into Abe Kōbō’s 1949 novella Denodorokakariya (Dendrocacalia). A tale of metamorphosis in which a human turns into a plant native only to the Bonin Islands, Dendorokakariya uses new theories of botanical life that exposed the previously hidden internal life of plants (as characterized by the novella’s diegetic inclusion of Russian botanist Kliment Timiryazev’s scientific treatise The Life of the Plant) to expose a history of colonial violence seemingly fading from memory in the postwar moment. Chapter three examines how three writers (postwar novelist and critic Haniya Yutaka, parascientist Hashimoto Ken, and novelist and rapper Itō Seikō) situate human subjectivity on a spectrum between life and death at the intersection of science and spirituality, and posit a continuation of identity after death within the vegetal world of the forest. This chapter reads trees in the works of these three writers as media that open a channel between the living and the dead in order to work through contemporaneous trauma. Chapter four takes up the eco-films of Yanagimachi Mitsuo and Kawase Naomi, and examines how human subjectivity becomes a part of a greater forest assemblage. In this chapter I argue that Yanagimachi’s Himatsuri (Fire Festival) and Kawase’s Vision look to stage a renewal of Japan’s rural forestry communities through the logic of disturbance ecology. In both films, a ritual engagement with fire is introduced into the forest ecosystem in order to open space for a future to take hold.

Advisor: Tansman, Alan
Essays in Labor Economics and the Criminal Justice System

This dissertation investigates key aspects of the U.S. criminal justice system./nThe first chapter studies different methods of providing a legal counsel to low-income criminal defendants. Most criminal defendants in the U.S. cannot afford to hire an attorney. To provide constitutionally mandated legal services, states commonly use either private court-appointed attorneys or a public defender organization. This paper investigates the relative efficacy of these two modes of indigent defense by comparing outcomes of co-defendants assigned to different types of attorneys within the same case. Using data from San Francisco, I show that in multiple defendant cases public defender assignment is plausibly as good as random. I find that defendants who have been assigned a public defenders obtain more favorable sentencing outcomes./nThe second chapter investigate the causal effect of incarceration on reoffending using discontinuities in state sentencing guidelines and two decades of administrative records from North Carolina. A regression discontinuity analysis shows that one year of incarceration reduces the likelihood of committing new assault, property, and drug offenses within three years of conviction by 38%, 24%, and 20%, respectively. Incarceration sentences temporarily incapacitate offenders by removing them from society but can also influence post-release criminal behavior./nThe third chapter parses the non-linear and heterogeneous effects of incarceration on post-release criminal behavior, I develop an econometric model of sentencing length and recidivism. This model model allows for Roy-style selection into sentencing on the basis of latent criminality. I propose a two-step control function estimator of the model parameters and show that our estimates accurately reproduce the reduced form effects of the sentencing discontinuities that I study. The parameter estimates indicate that incarceration has modest crime-reducing behavioral effects that are diminishing in incarceration length. A cost-benefit analysis suggests, however, that the benefit of reducing crime by lengthening sentences (through both incapacitation and behavioral channels) is outweighed by the large fiscal costs of incarceration.

Advisor: Kline, Patrick
Efficient Methods for Calculating and Analyzing Excited States in Molecular Complexes

Understanding excited states is vital to photochemistry and spectroscopy, yet the study of excited states from a theoretical viewpoint is often much more challenging than that of ground states due to the more complicated nature of excited states systems. This thesis is primarily focused on a series of topics regarding excited state electronic structure theory, aiming to improve the accuracy, efficiency and interpretability of computational methods. In particular, we generalize the recently developed ALMO-CIS approach, which is a formulation of configuration interaction singles (CIS) for molecular complexes or clusters based on absolutely-localized molecular orbitals (ALMOs), in two ways. The first is to reintroduce charge-transfer (CT) effects, and the resulting ALMO-CIS+CT method is shown to provide better accuracy in simulating spectra of large helium clusters. Secondly, a multi-reference version of ALMO-CIS is formulated, and shown to be a promising method for systems where pure charge-transfer excitations are important. We also develop and implement an energy decomposition analysis (EDA) method for studying intermolecular interactions in excited molecular systems. This EDA scheme brings insight to interesting excited-state phenomena such as solvatochromism, charge-transfer-to-solvent (CTTS) spectrum and the formation of excimers.

Advisor: Head-Grodon, Martin P
Fiber-optic Seismology in Theory and Practice

Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is an emerging tool in array seismology, which uses high frequency interferometry of pulsed laser backscattering inside optical fiber to analyze the axial strain induced on the fiber cable commonly buried in horizontal trenches and vertical wells at the surface of the Earth. This technology was developed over the last decade for hydrocarbon and carbon sequestration reservoir imaging and monitoring, but the focus in this thesis is to explore its application to problems in earth science, broadly defined. Combining DAS with telecommunications optical fiber networks offers meter-scale, long-term observations of ground motion over watershed apertures in sectors of the planet where traditional geophysics has been hindered by cost and field logistics, such as offshore and in urban areas. The thesis is organized as follows. I introduce the motivation for using fiber-optic seismology in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, I define principles of the methodology and describe how the instrument works. In Chapter 3, I use continuous DAS recordings of ambient vehicular seismic noise generated on a local road to study degrading permafrost over a two-month period of artificial warming. In Chapter 4, I focus on earthquake ground motions recorded on horizontal DAS arrays. Unlike classic inertial seismometers, there is presently a limited amount of information about DAS instrument response, thus in Chapter 5 the aim is to use natural signals to quantify the broadband frequency range of DAS instruments and deduce the related amplitude and phase response functions. Lastly, in Chapter 6, I use fiber-optics on the seafloor of Monterey Bay, CA inside of an unused science cable to investigate the production of nearcoast primary and secondary microseisms, identify unmapped seafloor faults, and observe quasi-geodetic hydrodynamic phenomena in the milli-Hertz frequency range. In Chapter 7, I summarize findings and speculate about future directions in this field.

Advisor: Manga, Michael
Measuring Drinking Water Affordability and Sustainability

Access to safe water is necessary for life, but safe water is not always affordable or accessible. The human right to water and the Sustainable Development Goals are landmark social visions for a world where everyone has access to safe and affordable water. These frameworks embed water access in broader aspirations for sustainably managing resources on earth. Metrics play a key role in developing policies and analyzing progress toward water access equity and sustainability. This dissertation contributes to scholarship on water access, economics, and sustainability through developing metrics of household water affordability and greenhouse gas impacts of bottled water./nThe impacts of unaffordable water can be substantial for economically vulnerable households, who may compromise health and food-related expenses to pay for water and utilities. In a comprehensive and critical review in Chapter 2, I evaluate the state of water affordability research to understand how water affordability should be measured to advance the human right to water and Sustainable Development Goals. In the following chapter, I aim to operationalize metrics for household water affordability in California as part of the state’s first human right to water tracking tool. The research in Chapter 3 offers insight into California’s water affordability challenges through the development of three water affordability indicators, as well as analyses by system size and poverty levels. At the same time, this study underscores the substantial data gaps facing researchers and policymakers aiming to improve water access equity in the U.S./nIn Chapter 4, I turn to the question of water access sustainability in Mexico, where water access is high, but trust in water quality is low–resulting in the highest per capita consumption of bottled water in the world. I develop a representative metric of greenhouse gas emissions associated with household bottled water use in Mexico using life cycle assessment modeling. To realize sustainable transitions, research into the antagonistic or synergistic interactions among Sustainable Development Goals is required. Achieving water access through the use of bottled water is a prime case study to evaluate such interactions and identify areas for emissions reductions on the pathway to water access for all./nThe projects in this dissertation enable me to quantify equity and sustainability dimensions of household water access in novel ways, and I explore the scholarship and policy implications of this work in a concluding chapter.

Advisor: Ray, Isha
Morello-Frosch, Rachel
Engineering a High-Yield Platform for Protein Secretion in Bacteria

Recombinant proteins comprise billion-dollar industries, from therapeutics to enzymes used as catalysts in industrial processes. As the application space of recombinant proteins expands as a result of advancements in protein design and engineering, so does the demand for production systems that minimize the cost of developing and manufacturing the new protein products. Protein secretion in bacteria has the potential to combine the inexpensive cultivation, genetic tractability, and high productivity of traditional intracellular bacteria expression with the simplified downstream processing provided by eukaryotic systems that secrete the product into the extracellular space. The SPI-1 type III secretion system (T3SS) of Salmonella enterica Typhimurium is an ideal engineering target for heterologous protein secretion in bacteria—it is well-characterized, not essential for cell viability, and has demonstrated the capability to secrete heterologous proteins at titers up to hundreds of milligrams per liter./nThis work expands upon initial engineering achievements in adapting the SPI-1 T3SS for heterologous protein production. Chapters 2 and 3 describe design rules for growth media promote high secretion titers. A simple combination of glycolytic carbon source, buffering agent, high osmolarity, and essential nutrients was sufficient to increase secretion titer at least fourfold for multiple secreted proteins. Chapter 4 describes the advantages and disadvantages of several methods to measure secretion titer. Chapter 5 combines the knowledge acquired in Chapters 2-4 to create a library construction and screening workflow to identify hypersecreting variants of the T3SS needle protein, PrgI, via systematic, comprehensive mutagenesis. In addition to identifying many hypersecreting variants, systematic mutagenesis of PrgI revealed design rules for functional needle assembly and high secretion titers. Finally, Chapter 6 outlines strain modifications that increase the utility of S. enterica Typhimurium as a recombinant protein production strain. Deletion of several pathogenic and non-essential genetic loci had a minimal effect on secretion titer, while deletion of the T3SS tip complex increased secretion titer. In combination with an optimized growth medium, genomic modifications that increased expression of the master regulator hilD produced higher secretion titers than observed in Chapter 2 and, importantly, simplified T3SS system expression. Collectively, the work described here advances the SPI-1 T3SS as a heterologous protein production platform and provides insight into the native function of the system.

Advisor: Keasling, Jay D
The Role of FUN in Sexual Differentiation and Leaf Development in Zea mays

While most angiosperms bear hermaphroditic flowers, Zea mays bears male and female flowers on separate inflorescences. Grasses have leaves that possess a sheath, ligule, auricle and blade. This Thesis describes a pleiotropic mutant named fun in Zea mays that bears female flowers where male flowers are expected; and deletes the auricle in adult leaves. Analysis of the interactions between fun and other leaf mutants allow the tentative construction of a developmental pathway including FUN. Double mutant analysis with other sex determination and leaf mutants is presented, demonstrating that the mutation is likely to be involved in multiple hormone pathways, displaying synergistic double mutant interactions with both Jasmoinc Acid and Brassinosteroid mutants. Steps towards creating an antibody to the causative gene are described, and the protein is found to be nuclear localised by YFP fusion and bioinformatic analysis. The FUN gene is found to be conserved across plants, with high conservation in the grasses.

Advisor: Hake, Sarah