VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Creating Cultures of Piety: Secularism, Mobility, Gender and the IHL Schools in Turkey 1951- 2010

This dissertation is a comparative analysis of the trajectory of the relations between state, society and religion in Turkey with a focus on its reflection on religious education. Turkey’s Imam Hatip high schools (IHLs) stand out as a key Islamic education institution where a rigidly secular state, religion, and society have encountered one another. This study challenges the existing literature by offering a comparative analysis of the experiences of three generations of IHL graduates between 1951 and 2010. This intergenerational comparative allows capturing the changing socio-economic dynamics of devout Muslims in Turkey./nComparison among the religious education systems in five countries, France, the United Kingdom, the US, Indonesia, and Egypt, illustrates that relationship between state and religion is a dynamic one. Different interpretations of secularism emerge in relation to sociological changes over time, which assert itself on rethinking systems of religious education around the world. Much of the contemporary debates revolve around crafting secularism such that it helps the deepening of democracy. Turkey’s experience with secularism however offers an exceptional case where the state observes a separationist approach to religion, but also controls it. IHLs gained popularity, within this framework, as state schools where the secularist norms of the state and the spiritual values of the devout Muslims in society encountered./nThis sociological analysis also illustrates that in a society where Islam is deeply embedded religious education acts as a function of upward social mobility especially for pious women. The findings of the study contributes to our understandings of gender and religious education and suggests new concepts such as “social fusion,” “self-making,” and “culture of piety” as tools for better analyzing social transformations that took place in Turkey over the last 60 years.

Advisor: Ray, Raka
Characterization of the Essential Role of the miR-200 family of microRNAs in Mucociliogenesis

MicroRNAs are small, noncoding RNAs that play essential roles in regulation of a variety of processes including development, cellular feedback mechanisms, and reproductive biology. The studies that follow focus on a particularly pleiotropic set of miRNAs: the miR-200 family. For example, the miR-200 family is known to be crucial for differentiation and maintenance of specialized epithelial cell types, which corresponds to its role in regulation of Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT).1–4 miR-200 consists of five homologous members, divided between two distinct genomic loci and can be further segregated into two subfamilies based on seed sequence homology: miR-200a/141 and miR-200b/200c/429. In an effort to discern the importance of the miR-200 family of miRNAs, we acquired and intercrossed mir-200b/a/429 (“200ab”) and mir-200c/141 (“200c”) heterozygotes to breed single and double knockout mice (a generous gift from the Bradley Lab at the Sanger Institute).5 I discovered a striking postnatal lethality in mir-200ab/c double knockout (DKO) progeny, whereby neonates survive less than 16 hours post parturition. In an effort to characterize the lethal effect of losing miR-200, I performed behavioral studies, expression profiling, histopathological analysis, and electron microscopy. Interestingly, DKO pups exhibit no milk spot, and develop labored breathing, along with pale, sticky skin within hours after birth. As expected, epithelial tissues such as the lungs and gastrointestinal tract exhibit the highest expression level of miR-200 between E18.5 and P0. Although tissue architecture appears relatively normal in DKO epithelial tissues immediately after birth, I observed rapid accumulation of debris and mucus in the large and small airways that correlates with cyanosis. Intriguingly, the phenotypic changes in the lungs, gut, and skin of DKO pups are comparable to human symptoms of cystic fibrosis and asthma, which may provide novel insights into these diseases, where current mouse models fail.6,7 We have acquired a mir-200c/141: LacZ reporter (a generous gift from the McManus Lab, UCSF), and used double immunofluorescence (IF), FACS, and single cell qPCR to determine the cell population expressing miR-200 is largely motile ciliated cells (MCCs). In addition, we have found that miR-200 is highly enriched in MCCs during frog development in published datasets.8 Finally, in single (200ab) knockout males, I observed an infertility defect that correlates with mislocalized flagella – a structure related to the cilia in MCCs. Future studies include further characterizing the mucociliary defect, and identifying miR-200 targets. Overall, I have shown that miR-200 is absolutely essential for the proper function and maintenance of the mucociliary epithelium lining the airways. Loss of miR-200 leads to excessive mucus secretion into the airway lumen, and correspondingly, respiratory distress culminating in death.

Advisor: He, Lin
Functionalization and Multi-Dimensional Structure Fabrication using Ultrafast Laser Direct Writing (FS-LDW)

Femtosecond laser-direct writing (FS-LDW) can functionalize the surface of diverse device components, including cell culture plates and medical implants. Since FS-LDW is in essence a non-contact fabrication method, it allows the surface patterning and micro-/nano-machining of material with minimal mechanical/thermal deformation. Hence, micro-/nanofabrication and material processing by femtosecond laser has attracted intense interest./nUltrafast laser ablation using far-field optics in a tight focusing configuration offers substantial advantages for the direct, maskless and arbitrary patterning of various materials and curved surfaces, while maintaining high feature resolution. Patterned surfaces with nanoscale craters or ablated pattern on electrospinning fibrous scaffolds can control and direct the cell migration. Control of topographical features in the cellular microenvironment can be achieved by combining FS-LDW with new materials. Direct laser writing by multi-photon polymerization is a nonlinear optical technique that allows the fabrication of 3D structures with resolution beyond the diffraction limit (~100nm). Incorporation of self-assembled block-copolymer nanomaterials into such structure fabricated by two-photon polymerization and, produced mesoscale structures endowed with guided nanoscale patterns (~10nm). This new capability can be used in many applications, including advanced optical metamaterials as well as for efficient photovoltaic energy conversion. In contrast, using low numerical aperture objective lens, fast fibrous structure (high aspect ratio) fabrication is possible. Well-organized fibrous structure can be used for patient-/disease-specific drug testing platform./nFemtosecond laser direct writing is promising technique that can induce surface (e.g., via ablation) or volumetric patterning in a serial fashion (multi-photon polymerization). We applied these techniques to design and control multi-functional platform fabrication. As a result, FS-LDW fabricated structures exhibit higher resolution fabrication, and efficient functionality (e.g., in controlling the migration on 2D and 3D structure / tuning of mechanical stiffness of structure / directed self-assembly of block copolymer / enhancement of fluidic mixing.

Advisor: Grigoropoulos, Costas P
On Self-Forgetting: Receptivity and the Inhuman Encounter in the Modernist Moment

The site of this study is the zone of indistinction between the human and the object. Looking to the writings of Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, and Virginia Woolf, this dissertation offers reflections on various attempts to let go of the self (qua human) as the cardinal point of reference for value—whether epistemic, aesthetic, economic, or otherwise. Both forget and the German counterpart vergessen are composed of a prefix that rebuts a stem, meaning “to get,” “to grasp,” “to seize.” Self-forgetting names a range of heterogenous practices, not always located in the field of intentionality, which involve losing hold of the self or loosening the grip of possession over what is proper to the I./nDistinct from post-structuralist critiques of the subject, these modernist experiments in selfforgetting are animated by an effort to refuse or improvise a momentary reprieve from the/nimperatives of anthropocentrism. My dissertation follows, in other words, thinkers who regard desubjectivation as related intimately to the capacity to imagine an otherwise to the primacy of the human. In addition to calling into question the masculinist thrust of Enlightenment ideals of self-determination, these writers prompt a reconsideration of receptivity as a (sometimes non-volitional) faculty that helps to negotiate the threshold between anthropos and the inhuman. Newly imagined as a form of praxis, receptivity discomposes commitments to aesthetic autonomy, as well as to the fortified individual that is its subjective analogue. These visions of the human as decidedly nonsovereign—and taken aside from the scene of assertion over the object-world—comprise a forceful rejoinder to capitalist modernity’s legitimation of (epistemic) violence against nature, so as to serve the ends of productive enterprise.

Advisor: Abel, Elizabeth
Butler, Judith
Essays on Microeconomic Applications in Political Economy and Business Strategy

This paper uses the sudden deaths of retired government officials who were acting as independent directors of private firms to study the effects of losing political connections on the firm’s economic performance. Employing an event study, we find that, if a private firm loses political connections because of the sudden death of an independent director who was previously a government official, its stock price drops 1.47% on average within ten trading days. Moreover, after the sudden loss of political connections, there is a reduction in the economic benefits (e.g., bank loans, tax preference, and government subsidies) that a private firm can get from the government or banks, which provides a reasonable explanation for the negative stock price reaction. This paper also finds that, when a politically connected private firm unexpectedly loses its political connection, it increases investments in physical capital in order to regain its competitive advantage, which suggests that physical capital serves as a substitute for political capital.

Advisor: Wright, Brian
Electronic Structure and Transport in Solids from First Principles

The focus of this dissertation is the determination of the electronic structure and trans-/nport properties of solids. We first review some of the theory and computational methodology/nused in the calculation of electronic structure and materials properties. Throughout the dis-/nsertation, we make extensive use of state-of-the-art software packages that implement den-/nsity functional theory, density functional perturbation theory, and the GW approximation,/nin addition to specialized methods for interpolating matrix elements for extremely accurate/nresults. The first application of the computational framework introduced is the determi-/nnation of band offsets in semiconductor heterojunctions using a theory of quantum dipoles/nat the interface. This method is applied to the case of heterojunction formed between a/nnew metastable phase of silicon, with a rhombohedral structure, and cubic silicon. Next, we/nintroduce a novel method for the construction of localized Wannier functions, which we have/nnamed the optimized projection functions method (OPFM). We illustrate the method on a/nvariety of systems and find that it can reliably construct localized Wannier functions with/nminimal user intervention. We further develop the OPFM to investigate a class of materials/ncalled topological insulators, which are insulating in the bulk but have conductive surface/nstates. These properties are a result of a nontrivial topology in their band structure, which/nhas interesting effects on the character of the Wannier functions. In the last sections of the/nmain text, the noble metals are studied in great detail, including their electronic properties/nand carrier dynamics. In particular, we investigate, the Fermi surface properties of the no-/nble metals, specifically electron-phonon scattering lifetimes, and subsequently the transport/nproperties determined by carriers on the Fermi surface. To achieve this, a novel sampling/ntechnique is developed, with wide applicability to transport calculations. Additionally, the/ngeneration and transport of hot carriers is studied extensively. The distribution of hot carri-/ners generated from the decay of plasmons is explored over a range of energy, and the transport/nproperties, particularly the lifetimes and mean-free-paths, of the hot carriers are determined./nLastly, appendices detailing the implementation of the algorithms developed in the work is/npresented, along with a useful derivation of the electron-plasmon matrix elements.

Advisor: Louie, Steven G
Integrating Demand Flexibility in Power System Markets

Demand Response (DR) serves to reduce the demand for electricity especially during times when supply is scarce or expensive. The program entails calling the recruited consumers to reduce their energy consumption from an established baseline. Baseline is an estimate of the counter-factual against which load reductions are measured to determine payments to consumers. This creates an incentive for consumers to inflate their baseline so that their payments are inflated. There have been reported cases where consumers have inflated their baseline to increase their payments. To address this, we propose a novel self-reported baseline mechanism for DR programs in both retail and wholesale electricity markets. Also by comparing with mechanisms used in practice by System Operator's like CAISO (California Independent System Operator) we show that the proposed mechanism is either reliable or requires less payments for the same level of load curtailment provided by consumers./nFinally we consider a repeated DR setting where the DR events repeat. We propose a baseline DR mechanism and a pricing policy that learns consumer's response to payments and exploits the learnt information such that the cumulative losses in savings, compared to the oracle determined optimal pricing mechanism, does not grow at an uncontrolled rate. In particular we show that it grows at a sub-linear rate.

Advisor: Poolla, Kameshwar
Deficiency of microRNA miR-34a expands cell fate potential in pluripotent stem cells

Embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells have pluripotent developmental potential, efficiently giving rise to all embryonic cell types, but rarely extra-embryonic lineages. Here, we identify a microRNA miR-34a, whose deficiency in mouse pluripotent stem cells expands their developmental potential to generate both embryonic and extra-embryonic lineages in vitro and in vivo. miR-34a-/- pluripotent stem cells with this bidirectional cell fate potential resemble totipotent 2-cell (2C) blastomeres not only in their cell fate potential, but also in the key molecular signature, namely a strong induction of the MuERV-L (MERVL) family of murine endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). miR-34a represses MERVL expression through transcriptional regulation, at least in part, by repressing the transcription factor GATA-binding protein 2 (Gata2). Consistently, the miR-34a/Gata2 pathway restricts the acquisition of bidirectional cell fate potential in pluripotent stem cells. Altogether, our findings provide vital insights into the complex molecular network that defines and restrict the developmental potential of pluripotent stem cells.

Advisor: He, Lin
Gel-Seq: An Approach for Simultaneously Sequencing the Genome and Transcriptome in Small Populations of Cells

The advent of next generation sequencing (NGS) has fundamentally changed genetics research. Where researchers were once focused on sequencing the genome of a species, they now can sequence the genome of a particular tumor or even a single cell. NGS has also made it cost effective to sequence the RNA transcripts found within a cell, a collection of data known as the transcriptome. Unfortunately, current protocols for sequencing the genome and the transcriptome are incompatible. This leaves researchers with a choice: for a given sample you can examine either the DNA or the RNA. The work presented here makes it so that researchers no longer have to make this choice. This dissertation describes the development of a new protocol, known as Gel-Seq, that makes it possible to sequence both DNA and RNA from as few as 400 cells. This technology will allow researchers to directly examine the ways that changes in the genome impact the transcriptome. At the heart of the Gel-Seq protocol is the physical separation of DNA from RNA. This separation is achieved electrophoretically using a newly designed combination of polyacrylamide membranes that take advantage of the size differences between these molecules./nTwo different device options were developed as a part of the Gel-Seq protocol. One device, designed for rapid adoption, was fabricated using standard equipment found inside of a biology laboratory. The second device, designed for separating low input samples, was fabricated using newly developed micro-scale fabrication techniques. In addition to the development of these physical devices, a biological protocol was developed to generate genome and transcriptome data using these devices. In order to validate this technology, a cell line with a stable genome and transcriptome was used. Comparing the Gel-Seq protocol to standard protocols, the results showed a high correlation for both the genome (R = 0.88) and transcriptome (R = 0.96) data. This supports the conclusion that the device can be used to produce correlated genome and transcriptome libraries. This dissertation reports on the development, optimization, and validation of the Gel-Seq protocol.

Advisor: Pisano, Albert P
Lin, Liwei
The Politics of Bracero Migration

From 1942 to 1964, a bilateral agreement known as the Bracero Program allowed Mexican men to work in the United States as seasonal contract laborers. During the program’s 22-year duration, Mexican officials distributed 4.64 million contracts. This dissertation examines two interrelated questions. First, how did the Mexican government distribute contracts? And second, what motivated rural workers from the center-western states of Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Michoacán – the states that sent the most braceros, between one-third and one-half of the total, to the U.S. – to want to migrate as braceros./nPolitical factors linked to the implementation of and conservative Catholic opposition to the government-sponsored agrarian reform heavily influenced demand for bracero contracts. During the 1920s and 1930s, the federal government expropriated millions of hectares of land in the center-west and redistributed them among hundreds of thousands of rural workers. But numerous agrarian reform beneficiaries were granted insufficient or poor-quality lands, and the statutes that governed agrarian reform communities limited what beneficiaries could do with their lands. Those beneficiaries who had been adversely affected by the agrarian reform’s structures expressed an interest in migrating through the Bracero Program. The land redistribution process also drew the ire of conservative Catholics who believed that private property was sacrosanct and who were also upset with a series of anticlerical measures implemented by federal- and state-level administrations. This discontent led to open rebellion between 1926 and 1929, and Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Michoacán were the epicenter of the conflict. Community-level clashes between conservative Catholic and pro-government factions continued into the years of the Bracero Program and center-western rural workers who were pushed off their lands because of these conflicts also became interested in migrating as braceros. Federal officials acknowledged this demand by sending a significant number of contracts to center-western state governments. But because they had failed when they tried to directly recruit and select braceros, and because state-level officials did not want to risk losing control of that process, it was municipal-level officials that ultimately determined who received bracero contracts. Municipal authorities then used the bracero recruitment and selection process to enrich themselves, reward local allies, or remove local opponents. Thus, this dissertation shows that bracero migration was a deeply politicized process.

Advisor: Chowning, Margaret
A Framework for Computing the Stability of Human Motion

Every year, 2.5 million people visit the emergency department accounting for $34 billion in hospital visits, stays and treatment. Financial considerations aside, falling once results in the fear of falling further increasing the likelihood of falling. For the past few decades, much work has gone into identifying those likely of falling or those who are stable by determining features that distinguish fallers from non-fallers. The holy grail of such an identification scheme would inform how much perturbation the subject can reject, which is also known as the basin of stability. The more perturbation that can be rejected, the larger the basin of stability is and the more stable the individual is. However, determining this basin of stability experimentally is an impractical task. Rather than performing perturbation experiments, recent advances in control theory and reachability analysis allow us to compute this basin of stability in simulation./nIn this thesis, we present a personalized and automated framework for computing the basin of stability for human motion. To do this, we first develop a tool to compute the basin of stability for dynamical systems and apply this to human motion. The utility of this framework is illustrated on the Sit-to-Stand task, though it can handle more general motions such as gait. The framework is broken down into three components. First, a representative hybrid model is chosen for the standing motion. Second, a controller is constructed to track the motion using optimal control and PD control. Third, using recent advances in hybrid occupation measures, an outer-approximation of the basin of stability is computed. We study the Sit-to-Stand action of 15 subjects (10 young and 5 older) and the computed basin of stability can differentiate between less and more stable Sit-to-Stand strategies. The contributions are the first steps towards developing a numerical method for determining the basin of stability of human motion.

Advisor: Bajcsy, Ruzena
Voluntary Disclosure of Strategic Alternatives: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

This dissertation studies a firm’s decision to voluntarily disclose that it is seeking “strategic alternatives,” effectively setting out to explore the potential sale or merger of the company. Firms appear to use these voluntary disclosures to maximize shareholder value and credibly convey private information. Voluntary disclosures of strategic alternatives are associated with a three-day return of +5.8 percent on average. Compared to an entropy-balanced control group with similar characteristics in expectation, disclosing firms that are subsequently acquired experience positive abnormal takeover returns (reflecting benefits from a more favorable sale process and improved information), whereas disclosing firms that are not subsequently acquired experience negative abnormal returns (reflecting costs from more dysfunction). The existence of economically significant costs and benefits is consistent with a general voluntary disclosure framework resulting in a threshold equilibrium. The decision to seek strategic alternatives appears to be prompted by poor performance, poor information environment, and the presence of corporate governance catalysts, namely, blockholders, activists, and golden parachutes.

Advisor: Sloan, Richard G