VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Visionary Landscape of Wutai Shan in Tibetan Buddhism from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

The sacred mountain range of Wutai Shan (known in Tibetan as Riwo Tsegna) on the northern frontier of China offers a unique site for examining the religious culture of the Qing empire. Not only did it become one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Tibetans and Mongolians, it is also the location where Tibetan and Chinese Buddhist cosmographies converged. While surviving texts and images of Wutai Shan from medieval China have attracted considerable scholarly attention, artistic and literary representations of the mountain range in the later periods have rarely been studied. Drawing on a panoply of textual, pictorial, and architectural sources from Qing dynasty (1644-1912) onward, this dissertation explores the shifting dynamics of this holy site as a geographical, visual, and visionary destination in Tibetan Buddhism. Primary objects of my analysis include pilgrims' maps, mural programs that include Wutai Shan, praise poems, travel narratives and guidebooks, as well as sculptural and architectural replicas of the mountain range by Tibetan Buddhists in Tibet, Mongolia, the Manchu court in Beijing, and at Wutai Shan itself./n/nEach chapter coheres around individual(s) responsible for producing knowledge about Wutai Shan. Taken together, these case studies reveal the building blocks of Wutai Shan's visionary landscape: the discourse of visionary encounters, memories of previous masters, rituals, travel, and cosmography. I show that representations of these seemingly ephemeral or intangible histories, concepts, and experiences constitute the core of the mountain's religious identity, defining the ways Wutai Shan came to be viewed in the Tibetan Buddhist world with a potency and persistence that outstrips its physical topography and material structure or holdings. I argue that these ideas and visions of the mountain range significantly reconfigured sacred cosmography and political identities of the Qing empire and beyond.

Advisor: Berger, Patricia A
Mechatronic Considerations of Assistive Systems for Gait Rehabilitation

As the number of patients requiring gait rehabilitation treatments is increasing, assistive systems for gait rehabilitation are being actively investigated. Assistive systems enable more efficient rehabilitation by providing objective values for indicating the patient's status and assistive torque for practicing normal trajectories for rehabilitation. This thesis investigates several mechatronic technologies of assistive systems for gait rehabilitation, including (1) estimation and evaluation of the patient's status, (2) monitoring systems, (3) control of assistive systems, and (4) implementation of rehabilitation algorithms./nEstimation and evaluation of a patient's status based on pertinent measurements is the first step toward determining appropriate rehabilitation intervention methods. This thesis introduces an algorithm that estimates gait phases using a hidden Markov model (HMM) based on ground reaction forces (GRFs) measured by force sensors embedded in shoes, called Smart Shoes. The GRFs and the center of the GRFs (CoGRF) are used for observing the patient's status, and gait abnormality is calculated based on deviations from healthy GRF levels. This information is supplied to the monitoring system, which is implemented as a mobile system and a tele-system using the Internet. Assistive torque is required for seriously impaired patients to achieve the desired motion or practice normal trajectories. Ideal force mode control is necessary for natural interactions between the assistive system and the patient. In this thesis, robust control algorithms for precise and safe generation of the desired torque are discussed. The proposed algorithms have been applied to the previously developed assistive systems such as a rotary series elastic actuator (RSEA), a compact rotary series elastic actuator (cRSEA), and a cable-driven assistive system. As a decision-making process for rehabilitation, both a power augmentation method and a rehabilitation method are discussed. For the power augmentation method, the joint torque of the lower extremities is estimated using a human model with seven links and four different ground contact conditions. For gait rehabilitation, a potential field around the desired trajectory and an iterative learning algorithm inspired by repetitive gait motions are proposed for determining the desired assistive torque. The proposed methods have been verified experimentally, including clinical tests using actual patients.

Advisor: Tomizuka, Masayoshi
Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy and Applications Toward Thin Film Analysis

Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) provides the opportunity to analyze almost any element, from any material, in any environment. Among the many applications of LIBS is the analysis of thin films and multilayered structures. An automated system was designed and built to conduct LIBS using Nd:YAG and Ti:Sapphire lasers, broadband and high-resolution spectrometers and detectors. This system incorporates the sample manipulation as well as laser and spectrometer control and timing./nA series of experiments were conducted to analyze the ability of nanosecond and femtosecond lasers to detect Mg impurities in thin TiO2 films using LIBS. It was determined that optimal detection occurs early in the plasma ionic/atomic emission with detection capabilities in the parts-per-million range. Another series of experiments were conducted using LIBS to analyze thin transparent organic films, with specific emphasis on the effect of film thickness and interplay between film and substrate. The challenges of ablating and measuring multiple layers have also been explored using various laser wavelengths. The effectiveness of LIBS has been demonstrated for depth profiling of CIGS solar cells. Ablation crater and ablation threshold analysis aided in understanding and overcoming some of the obstacles in depth profiling. One of the challenges with LIBS is the identification and mitigation of matrix effects. This problem was explored using a Mg tracer element and various compositions of the suspected elements Si, Ca, and Sr which can cause errors in LIBS analysis. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the ability of LIBS to conduct detailed thin film analysis for a variety of materials and potential applications. This includes analyzing trace elements from a traditionally noisy background, measuring difficult to ablate thin films, and the unique challenges associated with multilayered structures.

Advisor: Grigoropoulos, Costas P
The City as a Historical Actor: The Urbanization and Ottomanization of the Halvetiye Sufi Order by the City of Amasya in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

This dissertation argues for the historical agency of the North Anatolian city of Amasya through an analysis of the social and political history of Islamic mysticism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Ottoman Empire. The story of the transmission of the Halvetiye Sufi order from geographical and political margins to the imperial center in both ideological and physical sense underlines Amasya's contribution to the making of the socio-religious scene of the Ottoman capital at its formative stages. The city exerted its agency as it urbanized, "Ottomanized" and catapulted marginalized Halvetiye Sufi order to Istanbul where the Ottoman socio-religious fabric was in the making./nThis study constitutes one of the first broad-ranging histories of an Ottoman Sufi order, as a social group shaped by regional networks of politics and patronage in the formative fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A prosopographical approach to the earliest Ottoman biographical works on Sufi orders brings the regionalist coloring in the rivalry between major Sufi orders to the fore. The ancient socio-political rivalry between two Anatolian regions surfaced in the strife between different Sufi orders in the socio-religious scene of the nascent imperial capital Istanbul. One of the contending Sufi orders, the Halvetiye was the product of the north central Anatolian city of Amasya. At the outset of the fifteenth century, the local landholding practices in Amasya in combination with contemporary political developments resulted in the proliferation of a particular type of Sufi architecture and the concurrent urbanization of Sufi activities. In the first half of the fifteenth century, the Halvetiye Sufi order, which originated in the rural areas of Azerbaijan, was appropriated by the city and assumed an urban identity. In Amasya, the Halvetiye, which was challenged by more established urban orders elsewhere in the Islamic world, found a safe haven and established its first contacts with the Ottoman elite. The final phase in the "Ottomanization" of the Halvetiye order took place in the second half of the fifteenth century. During the succession struggle of the late fifteenth century, the Halvetis joined a political faction led by Prince Bayezid (d.918/1512) who eventually succeeded to the Ottoman throne. Through association with one of the contending political parties via Halvetiye order, Amasya made a bid for influence in the socio-religious domain in the Ottoman core lands, especially in the imperial capital at its formative period./nThis dissertation concludes by problematizing the modern perception of the early Ottoman Anatolia as unified and monolithic, and a backwater to the rising Ottoman world. In so doing it attempts to shift the formative process of the Ottoman polity from the "core lands" covering Western Asia Minor and Southern Balkans to the Anatolian provinces.

Advisor: Algar, Hamid
Shockwave Spectroscopy of Nanoparticles

This dissertation examines the effects of laser-generated shockwaves on colloidally prepared nanocrystals. Their microscopic structure is first examined utilizing gold nanoparticles. The properties under scrutiny in the first study are used to then initiate a polymorphic phase transition in CdSe quantum dots. In the final study, hollow CdS particles are used to show the utility of nanoparticles as possible energy attenuation materials./nIn gold nanoparticles it is shown, for the first time, a direct observation of the effect of density increase on the optical properties of gold nanoparticles. The splitting of the plasmon resonance into two distinct peaks illustrates the result of a uniaxial compression characteristic of a shock wave./nThe behavior of CdSe nanocrystals shocked to stresses of 2&ndash3.75 GPa has been studied. Above 3 GPa a near-complete disappearance of the first excitonic feature and broadening of the low-energy absorption edge were observed, consistent with a wurtzite to rocksalt structural transformation. The transformation pressure is reduced relative to hydrostatic compression in a diamond anvil cell. Also, the rate of the phase transition increases. These effects are attributed to shock induced shear stress along the reaction coordinate. The especially rapid rate observed for a 3.75 GPa shock suggests multiple nucleation events per particle./nHollow CdS nanospheres have been fractured under the action of laser-induced shock waves. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) have been used to image the recovered fragmented particles. Additionally, time-resolved measurements of the transmission of the shock wave through a polymer layer containing hollow nanospheres have been carried out. The hollow nanospheres can attenuate the transmitted shock above a threshold stress. At the highest shock stresses measured, the shock attenuation layer acts as a composite shocked above its elastic limit./nTo these ends we show that nanoparticles are useful in studying and altering the properties of shockwaves. Shockwaves are also shown to be useful in high time-resolution studies of the morphological processes in solids, using nanocrystals as the archetypical, single-domain sample.

Advisor: Alivisatos, Armand P
Control and Trajectory Generation of a Wearable Mobility Exoskeleton for Spinal Cord Injury Patients

There are currently nearly 1.3 million people in the United States who have some form of lower extremity paralysis due to a spinal cord injury (SCI). For many of these subjects, a wheelchair is their primary means of mobility which brings along with it a collection of health complications stemming from extended periods of time in a seated position. To provide these SCI patients with a viable upright mobility option, this work presents the control structure and trajectory generation method for a mobility exoskeleton that allows them to ambulate while reliably generating a gait similar to that of an unimpaired subject. Also included are theoretical extensions to the trajectory generation structure and results from initial rounds of subject testing.

Advisor: Kazerooni, Homayoon
The Definition of Public Space in Republican Rome

This dissertation uses a combination of literary and archeological evidence to ask how Romans understood and defined public space in Rome during the Republic. The definition of concepts of `public' and `private' in Roman culture differed from that current in modern Western discourse, but just like modern definitions, it was ambiguous and manipulable. Taking public space as a starting-point offers new insights into the Roman concepts, and a behavioural approach, aided by insights from space syntax theory, allows for a partial reconstruction of the diversity of spatial experience in the city. Traditionally, lack of behavioural control has been associated with private space, but for the majority of the population, who were not householders, it was public spaces which were characterised by greater freedom of access and behaviour. Public space was not a monolith, but offered a variety of spatial experiences and was experienced differently by different groups. Moreover, just as the space of the Roman elite house was more `public' than we might naively suspect, public space in the city of Rome was determined by and thoroughly saturated by the private. The Republican Forum Romanum incorporated domestic and commercial space as well as political space, which itself was never neutrally `public' but always contested. The grand victory porticoes of the Campus Martius mark out sacred space but also space associated with an individual general, and their architecture and decoration increasingly mark them as semi-private, until eventually Pompey's theatre-portico complex incorporates not only a curia but also his own house. We see attempts to exploit the ambiguities of existing discourses of public and private, creating spaces like victory complexes and basilicas. Although Latin uses publicus and privatus as a natural and exclusive pair, the terms were in fact contested even in ancient times, and very little space in Rome was entirely public or entirely private.

Advisor: Gruen, Erich S
"Dying in Full Detail": Mortality and Duration in Digital Documentary

In examining one of documentary's greatest taboos, the recording of actual death, this dissertation engages with the moving image's temporality, its potential to preserve the past, and the major impact of its technological shifts on American visual culture. While film's technological limitations and expense make it a difficult medium for capturing death, the digital age's affordable and user-friendly cameras - along with DVD and YouTube distribution - support previously unfeasible projects. More accessible than ever, documentary death footage evokes a fundamental issue of film and digital media: the illusory promise that we can preserve what we record. In the face of death's finality, this promise is achingly seductive; but it is also rife with cognitive dissonance, since the moment saved is a person's last. A documented death is simultaneously a rare memento mori in a death-denying age and a pledge that some spectral form of immortality is possible - that we can hold on to what would otherwise be lost and retrieve it anew with each viewing./nThe first half of my dissertation historicizes death in documentary film and photography from 1839-1975 and then analyzes digital-era documentaries on natural death. The combination exposes a cultural fixation on the "moment" of violent death, at the expense of the process of dying that typifies the end of life in modern America. In the second half, my study of duration shifts to the technology itself, identifying distinctive digital temporalities. Digital technology can record for very long periods and at very little cost, as it does in the 10,000 hours of footage shot to capture Golden Gate Bridge suicides for The Bridge, a work whose innovation and ethical transgressions both lie in its sublime aesthetics. In contrast to this capacity for length, death footage distributed on YouTube must be brief and spectacle-oriented to succeed, and is often stripped of cultural and political circumstances./nPaying close attention to both content and contexts, I argue that the burgeoning combination of death and the digital illuminates crucial qualities of each. Death's totality remains beyond representation, as even advanced technologies can capture it only in fragments, but digital media's partial successes - or instructive failures - in documenting death highlight unique digital temporalities. Further, I make an intervention in reigning theories of the digital as "disembodied" or "immaterial" by emphasizing the visceral impact of watching this bodily transformation - an impact not dulled by our awareness that digital images are transmitted algorithmically rather than indexically.

Advisor: Williams, Linda
Kaes, Anton
Biological and Physical Assessment of Streams in Northern California: Evaluating the Effects of Global Change and Human Disturbance

Human disturbance at global and local scales is profoundly impacting stream ecosystems in California. For example, climate change, which is considered a form of human disturbance in this dissertation, is causing notable increases in air temperature and decreases in precipitation in some regions of the state. These changes are outside the range of natural variability and are expected to intensify. Furthermore, these changes affect stream-water temperatures, stream-flow levels, and aquatic biota. Human disturbance at the local scale in California includes, but is not limited to, urbanization, the development and use of land for timber extraction and agriculture, and manipulation of habitats for recreation or for the preservation of endangered species./nI examined the impacts of global change and human disturbance on stream ecosystems in Northern California at a variety of sites and using a variety of biological and physical techniques. The sites were located in five California counties, including Lake, Marin, Napa, Siskiyou, and Sonoma. Monitoring and analytical techniques for benthic macroinvertebrates used both standard and novel approaches and metrics of biological assessment. Physical techniques included surveys of channel widths and longitudinal profiles, bankfull-channel estimates, flow measurements, pebble counts, fine-sediment measurements, and large-wood inventories, which were analyzed using a variety of geomorphological and hydrological approaches./nI found that: 1) the common metrics used in biological assessment will have continued applicability for biological assessment programs in Northern California and that a new metric for detecting climate-change effects could be developed; 2) stream-crossing reconstruction was causing increased patchiness of benthic-macroinvertebrate communities in the short term; 3) vineyard water-withdrawals were having an effect on stream communities that occurred after a threshold level of vineyard coverage and extent was reached; and 4) the addition of engineered, large-wood structures to streams for physical-habitat restoration increased pool frequency and caused changes in the benthic community, although the resulting levels of large wood in the channels were still lower than levels typically found in other regions of the northwestern United States.

Advisor: Resh, Vincent H
Exploring literary negotiations of culture and identity from the journal, Cultura Tropical (열대 문화) and how Korean Brazilians construct a hybrid cultural identity

The dissertation explores the negotiation of culture and identity from the literary production of Korean immigrants in Brazil. The dissertation also explores how Korean immigrants begin a process of diasporic narrative as a way to construct an alternative space and a Korean Brazilian identity. By following the status of Self through the writings of Cultura Tropical, a Korean Brazilian identity evolves through three stages of negotiation. The Korean community of 50, 000 is a small minority group but rapidly growing in socioeconomic sectors of Brazil. Their narratives and cultural discourse convey experiences of tension and cultural affiliation. They create a literary space to debate and contemplate how Korea or Brazil is a sanctuary to mix languages, literary genres, voices and reflections related to the Brazilian immigrant life./nThe study of this dissertation presents the search and the trace of new Asian voices in Brazil for further understanding of how they view themselves within Brazilian culture and what it means for them to claim "Brazilian" as part of their identity. The focus of this piece will concentrate on Korean immigration in Brazil and thus far the only existent literary journal by the community known as Cultura Tropical. Finding themselves, quickly building a business and social space in SÃ£o Paulo, their experiences are embodied as short stories, poems and essays in which they manifest a new and contemporary relationship between the Korean and Brazilian cultures. Can the notion of Asian ethnicity pose to be included or excluded in Brazilian society and literary culture? From this, we will be able to further identify if Korean immigrant discourses can be part of the current framework of Brazilian foundational literature and cultural studies.

Advisor: Slater, Candace