VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Settler Pedagogy: The Hampton Institute and Schooling in Indian Country, the Black South, and Colonial Hawaii, 1840-1923

This dissertation examines the rhetoric and actions of white reformers during the 19th and early 20th centuries and how they constructed gendered racial narratives of Indigenous and Black Education. It functions as a genealogy of colonial and antiblack education, unearthing how gendered racial narratives of schooling came into existence and propagated. Through a case study of the Hampton Institute, I analyze how white reformers established connections between Indigenous and Black education in relation to each other. By examining the work of the Hampton Institute, I excavate the underpinnings of the gendered racial narratives that present day schools reproduce about Black and Indigenous students. The archival sources I analyze in the dissertation range in time from 1840 to 1923. The Hampton University Archives represent my focal point and the largest portion of the data for this dissertation alongside archival data from the Williams College Samuel Chapman Armstrong papers. I contextualize these sources with data from other archival and digitally available sources relating to Hampton and other industrial schooling programs. Through a historical elaboration of the processes of settler pedagogy, which I define as an enactment of spatial processes of settlement that endeavors to eliminate Native peoples and further antiblack structures, I examine the pedagogical work of instruction and paradigms of learning at Hampton. This discussion of the forms and function of settler pedagogy adds to the literature on the connections and intersections between Indigenous education and Black education, particularly the settler pedagogies that traveled and became part of common sense understandings of schooling through institutions like Hampton./nI outline three aspects of settler pedagogy and how it functions through an attention to settler colonialism and antiblackness as organizing theoretical structures, giving analytic weight to space and gender. First, I define and discuss settler colonial racial grammars and how they work by defining Black and Indigenous women in relationship to space, time and ontological condition. I then turn to examining the ways that settler didactic space defines the notions of proximity to whiteness, labor, and the productive use of space as pedagogic actions. Finally, I analyze how Hampton socially constructed race and gender through spatial logics. In particular, I break down how teaching functioned as a domestication of Black and Indigenous women and as a means of expanding settler space making practices through domesticity. This dissertation contributes to the field of education by underscoring the interconnected nature of Black and Indigenous education, specifically how white reformers tried to construct racial narratives about both during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I argue that because of these co-constructed educational programs we must read histories of Black and Indigenous education in relation to each other and not in isolation.

Advisor: Baquedano Lopez, Patricia
Machine Learning Approaches Toward Diagnosis and Biomechanical Analysis of Cardiovascular Disease

Machine learning with deep neural networks has demonstrated high performance for high dimensionality prediction tasks across multiple domains with sufficient sample data. Cardiovascular disease is a pertinent public health issue that has the potential to be better understood and addressed via deep learning approaches. In this work, we study machine learning approaches toward diagnosing various forms of cardiovascular disease and predicting its biomechanical behavior across multiple scales./nWe begin by training deep learning models for an initial classification objective in echocardiography, a ubiquitous imaging modality for cardiologists. For view classification, we are able to demonstrate physician-level performance. We then expand the work from a methods and clinical application perspective. We address the high cost of annotation in medical imaging by examining data-efficient supervised and semi-supervised algorithms. In addition, we expand our prediction tasks towards the ultimate goal of automated, accurate cardiovascular disease diagnosis by predicting left ventricular hypertrophy./nTo understand the nature of cardiovascular disease and develop treatments, a close look at the underlying biomechanics is important. For atherosclerosis, a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, we bridge finite element methods and machine learning to predict arterial tissue stress. Likewise for cytoskeletal proteins, which are the structural building blocks of human biology and influence cardiovascular health, we develop graph neural network algorithms to predict force response and conformational dynamics in calponin homology domains./nMoreover, we hope to lay the groundwork to advance the intersection of machine learning, biomechanics, and cardiovascular disease.

Advisor: Mofrad, Mohammad
Human Intranet: Connecting Wearable and Implantable Devices

With the explosive growth of the smart society and Internet of Things, enormous amounts of information are available in the enhanced world around us and the cyber-world beyond. Hence the traditional human input/output modalities (sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch as inputs, and motor control as output) no longer have the necessary bandwidth or expressiveness to effectively deal with the increasing pace of this augmented world. One possible solution is extending the range of human body's existing input/output modalities through wearable and implantable sensors and actuators. Human Intranet (HI) is an open and scalable platform enabling efficient and robust connectivity of wearable and implantable nodes surrounding the human body to each other and to the cloud./nThe first half of this thesis presents two embedded systems that are developed as HI nodes: an implantable neuromodulation device featuring closed-loop sense-interpret-actuate functionality aimed at treating neuropsychiatric disorders, and a wearable electromyography-based hand gesture recognition device with real-time classification and in-sensor model training and updates for human-machine interface applications. The experimental results showing simultaneous low-noise, low-power neural recording of local field potential with high-compliance electrical stimulation in a nonhuman primate and online recognition of 21 hand gestures in human subjects are presented./nThe second half focuses on the efficient and robust design of the HI data network. A design space exploration platform is developed that leverages mixed integer linear programming and discrete-event simulations to find the optimum network configuration that maximizes its lifetime under reliability constraints. In order to cope with the highly dynamic and lossy wireless channel around the human body, an adaptive network scheme is proposed that learns the network state based on body kinematics and biosignals and reconfigures its parameters accordingly to reduce energy consumption and increase robustness.

Advisor: Rabaey, Jan M.
Alon, Elad
Fur Dress, Art, and Class Identity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England and Holland

My dissertation examines painted representations of fur clothing in early modern England and the Netherlands. Looking at portraits of elites and urban professionals from 1509 to 1670, I argue that fur dress played a fundamentally important role in actively remaking the image of middle-class and noble subjects. While demonstrating that fur was important to establishing male authority in court culture, my project shows that, by the late sixteenth century, the iconographic status and fashionability of fur garments were changing, rendering furs less central to elite displays of magnificence and more apt to bourgeois demonstrations of virtue and gravitas. This project explores the changing meanings of fur dress as it moved over the bodies of different social groups, male and female, European and non-European. My project deploys methods from several disciplines to discuss how fur’s shifting status was related to emerging technologies in art and fashion, new concepts of luxury, and contemporary knowledge in medicine and health.

Advisor: Honig, Elizabeth
Remedying Security Concerns at an Internet Scale

The state of security across the Internet is poor, and it has been so since the advent of the modern Internet. While the research community has made tremendous progress over the years in learning how to design and build secure computer systems, network protocols, and algorithms, we are far from a world where we can truly trust the security of deployed Internet systems. In reality, we may never reach such a world. Security concerns continue to be identified at scale through-out the software ecosystem, with thousands of vulnerabilities discovered each year. Meanwhile, attacks have become ever more frequent and consequential./nAs Internet systems will continue to be inevitably affected by newly found security concerns, the research community must develop more effective ways to remedy these issues. To that end, in this dissertation, we conduct extensive empirical measurements to understand how remediation occurs in practice for Internet systems, and explore methods for spurring improved remediation behavior. This dissertation provides a treatment of the complete remediation life cycle, investigating the creation, dissemination, and deployment of remedies. We start by focusing on security patches that address vulnerabilities, and analyze at scale their creation process, characteristics of the resulting fixes, and how these impact vulnerability remediation. We then investigate and systematize how administrators of Internet systems deploy software updates which patch vulnerabilities across the many machines they manage on behalf of organizations. Finally, we conduct the first systematic exploration of Internet-scale outreach efforts to disseminate information about security concerns and their remedies to system administrators, with an aim of driving their remediation decisions. Our results show that such outreach campaigns can effectively galvanize positive reactions./nImproving remediation, particularly at scale, is challenging, as the problem space exhibits many dimensions beyond traditional computer technical considerations, including human, social, organizational, economic, and policy facets. To make meaningful progress, this work uses a diversity of empirical methods, from software data mining to user studies to Internet-wide network measurements, to systematically collect and evaluate large-scale datasets. Ultimately, this dissertation establishes broad empirical grounding on security remediation in practice today, as well as new approaches for improved remediation at an Internet scale.

Advisor: Paxson, Vern
Disentangling the evolutionary history of a hyperdominant plant taxon in the Neotropics

With the technological advent of bioinformatics, next-generation sequencing, and population genomics, recent studies can rely on high-throughput molecular data to investigate the evolution and diversification of Neotropical plant lineages. Here, we review one of the most widespread and dominant plant groups in the Neotropics based on a multidisciplinary approach. We integrate molecular data based on next-generation sequencing, morphological and functional data to unveil the evolutionary history of Protium heptaphyllum (Aubl.) Marchand, a plant taxon recently classified as one of the top hyperdominant trees in Amazonia. The results have direct implications for biodiversity conservation, taxonomy, and systematics of tropical plants. The dissertation chapters are described below./nThe first chapter aimed to perform the most comprehensive review ever done in a hyperdominant taxa, long considered to be a taxonomically difficult group. By using morphological, genomic, and functional data, we showed that P. heptaphyllum sensu lato represents eight separately evolving lineages warranting species status. In addition, most of these newly discovered lineages are rare and threatened; few if any of them could be considered hyperdominant on their own. There is an urgent need to improve the classification of hyperdominant taxa in order to avoid oversimplified assumptions regarding diversity and functional aspects of tropical regions./nThe second chapter comprises a taxonomic review and a detailed description of P. cordatum. Molecular phylogeny indicates that populations of P. cordatum should not be classified as an intraspecific taxon within Protium heptaphyllum (Burseraceae), while morphology and near-infrared spectroscopy data provide additional support for the recognition of a separate entity. Species delimitation remains a challenge worldwide and this study demonstrates the importance of using multiple tools to characterize and distinguish plant species in highly diverse tropical regions./nIn the third chapter, I aimed to generate a novel genomic resource for Burseraceae, a family globally recognized for producing resins and essential oils with medical properties and economic values. In this section, I provide the transcriptome assembly of Protium copal, a widespread aromatic tree in Central America, and describe the functional annotation of terpene biosynthetic genes. Most of the aromatic and non-aromatic properties of Burseraceae resins are composed by terpene and terpenoid chemicals. The identification of terpene genes will be relevant for understanding the synthesis of economically important chemicals in Burseraceae.

Advisor: Fine, Paul V.A.
Pathways to Graduation and Beyond: Practices from two high schools for low-income students

The income-attainment gap in education has widened over the last several decades leaving children born into poverty few avenues of economic mobility. Based on two years of ethnographic research, this study examines how a majority low-income high school graduates and sends to college more than ninety percent of its students. Practices from this school are compared to an average performing low-income high school matched on size and demographic characteristics./nFindings highlight the ways in which structures, leadership strategies, and institutional cultures impact student achievement. In the model school, a combination of participatory leadership, integrated bureaucratic practices and a collective culture translated into more effective decision making, problem solving and implementation of initiatives. These stood in contrast to the autocratic leadership and individualistic culture that translated into contentious dynamics between leadership and staff and more superficial implementation of programs./nAlso delineated are the contrasting cultural outlooks I term “collectively guided success” and “limited resource pragmatism”. These cultures defined disparate visions of the features of a “successful school” and translated into a set of priorities, strategies and actions that drove teacher behavior. Practices at each school can be understood as rational extensions of these cultural lenses.

Advisor: Sanchez-Jankowski, Martin
An Adaptive Local Discrete Convolution Method for the Numerical Solution of Maxwell's Equations

A high order multilevel numerical solver for Maxwell's equations using local discrete convolutions is presented. Maxwell's equations are embedded in a system of wave equations. The solution to this system can be derived with the method of spherical means. When the source terms are prescribed functions then there is an explicit update formula using the propagator form of the solution and Duhamel's formula. And when the source terms are dependent on the fields, the propagator can be embedded in the system of differential equations by a change of variables by Lawson's method. The spherical means operations are discretized using the framework from Tornberg and on uniform spacing rectangular grids the procedure becomes constant coefficient stencil operations. While the source term integration is handled with a quadrature scheme or a time integrator. This method can be parallelized with standard domain decomposition. Since this method places the electric and magnetic fields on the same grids, as opposed to staggered grids used in standard grid based solvers for Maxwell's equations, and that it has no time stepping restriction, because it is a propagator based method, it can be extended to use local mesh refinement with only simple interpolating and sampling operators.

Advisor: Colella, Phillip
China’s Climate Governance with Focus on Pilot Programs

The idea of evaluating government program is a relatively new and ticklish idea to China's government and public policymakers. In the meantime, many environmental policy pilots are being carried out as important components of China's market-oriented reforms and climate policy package. These changes require us to rethink China's current process of creating environmental policy, as it seems to affect policy variation temporarily. This article argues that most of China's recent environmental campaign programs and policy innovations have embraced strict environmental enforcements, audits, and inspections, without a carefully designed environmental program evaluation system. It demonstrates that most of China's environmental program evaluation approaches are results-oriented, and most are internal evaluations; that evaluations are imposed mainly on project owners and lower-level government agencies through top-down governance-, rather than actually assessing agency performance and government accountability. It explains patterns in China's recent policies that might point to room for change.

Advisor: Farber, Daniel
Essays in Behavioral Economics

This dissertation studies empirically and theoretically how firms should and do respond to biased consumers. Specifically, I study the magnitude and implications of left-digit bias, the tendency of people to overweight left-most digits, on firms pricing behavior and profits./nIn the first chapter, I ask why do so many prices end with 99 cents? Firms arguably price at 99-ending prices because of left-digit bias, the tendency of consumers to perceive a $4.99 as much lower than $5.00. Using retail scanner data on thousands of products and dozens of retailers, I provide reduced-form support for this explanation. I then structurally estimate the magnitude of left-digit bias, and find that consumers respond to a 1-cent increase from a 99-ending price as if it were a 15-25 cent increase. Next, I analyze how firms should respond to left-digit biased demand. I solve and estimate a model that makes three key predictions: (1) prices should bunch at 99-ending prices; (2) there should be ranges of missing prices with low price-endings; (3) these ranges of missing prices should increase with the dollar digit. Qualitatively, these predictions hold. Firms respond to the bias with high shares of 99s and missing low-ending prices. Quantitatively, however, firms price as if the bias were much smaller and demand were more elastic, so they use dominated prices. I estimate that the retailer is forgoing 1-3 percents of potential gross profits due to this misperception./nIn the second chapter, I ask to what extent do firms understand their consumers? When consumers are left-digit biased, demand is discontinuous at round numbers making them dominated prices. I present evidence that firms exploit left-digit bias in the long-run. They act as if they know this demand structure, using round numbers only for 1%-2% of posted prices. However, due to a slight reform in the set of admissible prices, supermarket chains in Israel fail to respond optimally - Round numbers post-reform account for 20% of prices, making pricing sub-optimal. After about a year firms re-optimize, and the shares of round numbers drop. Suggestive evidence show that having more spatial competitors is correlated with faster re-learning. Combining the well-understood bias, data, and reform, allows a unique window to look into firms sophistication level. I conclude that firms do respond to biases in the long-run, but do not have a model of these biases in mind and hence fail to respond in the short-run.

Advisor: DellaVigna, Stefano
Bog znaet: The Ethics of Omniscience in Russian Narrative, 1845-1870

This dissertation examines how the narratives of Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Lev Tolstoy grapple with the consequences of their omniscience. Their narrators do not simply read minds and tell stories; they also become wrapped-up in the ethical implications of telling stories that require the reading of minds. In effect, they ask: what happens when narrators become godlike? Does the privilege of omniscience define—or disrupt—the novel’s ethical value? I argue that the phrase “God only knows” [Bog znaet] becomes the constant refrain of realist narrative, a performance of authority in the moment of divesting from it./nIn a series of close readings—from Turgenev’s early Sketches of a Hunter to his novel Fathers and Sons, from Dostoevsky’s first work Poor Folk to his late story “The Meek One,” and from Tolstoy’s earliest semi-autobiographical narrative experiments to the trilogy of novels Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth—I argue that the newly omniscient Russian narrator draws attention to the consequences of his gaze, highlighting the existence of a boundary in the moment he makes a display of crossing it, making sacrosanct the interior of the other in the process of laying it bare. These narratives of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy become deeply concerned with the troubling effects of their increasingly privileged intrusion into the minds of others and, in making us ever aware of the ethical consequences of reading the face to access the mind, cast a spotlight back onto our reading of them./nRecent works of literary criticism—from rhetorical humanists championing the value of literature to deconstructive examinations of the ethics of reading—investigate the intersection of narrative and ethics in the novel. This dissertation brings Russian narratives of the mid nineteenth-century into this conversation, which has not yet been done by Slavic scholars. Building on recent theories of narrative ethics and omniscience, this dissertation argues that an awareness of the transgressive nature of privileged knowledge becomes clearly manifest in realist prose, even when hidden feelings and unspoken thoughts are rendered legible. These works reckon with—and invite us to attend to—the troubling effects of their increasingly privileged intrusion into the minds of others. Turgenev’s, Dostoevsky’s, and Tolstoy’s narratives rely on strategies of representation that mark themselves as instances of self-aware transgression, defining their own devices of omniscience as an ethically fraught process, caught up in the problem of making knowable what “God only knows.”

Advisor: Paperno, Irina