VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Deconstruct, Imagine, Build: Bringing Advanced Manufacturing to the Maker Community

Physical prototypes serve as a common starting point for the process of innovation, improvement of an existing product, and experimentation of new interactions. As the shapes, forms, and functions of the electronic landscape rapidly evolve, fabrication and prototyping methods need to keep up with the changing needs as well. This dissertation contributes concepts and techniques that answer two research questions:/n1. What type of prototyping processes and tools could support the rapidly evolving field of interactive technology?/n2. How can these prototyping processes and tools be selected to add value to the broader community - one that includes engineers, designers, and hobbyists?/nIn this thesis, I will demonstrate that by using concepts inspired by various advanced manufacturing fields - such as MEMS, structural electronics, and flexible electronics - novel interaction modalities can be prototyped with commercially accessible materials. Electronics presented in this dissertation include circuit boards with mechanically functional shapes, non-emissive textile displays, and on-skin electronic devices. Moreover, this thesis also describes a web-based digital tool that allows users to free-form sketch basic circuits and also provides step-by-step fabrication and debugging guidance. Using this tool, users will be able to sketch, design, and prototype electronics with materials such as silver/graphite pen, conductive thread, paper, and fabric. We hope that this thesis will inspire the community to create innovative interactions that utilize readily available prototyping tools.

Advisor: Paulos, Eric
Prosocial Behavior and Neurodegenerative Disease

Behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive and dramatic changes in behavior and emotional responses. In particular, patients with bvFTD have deficits in empathy, including the ability to relate and respond to the emotions of others. These deficits are important precursors for prosocial behaviors – actions intended to benefit people other than oneself – and were thus hypothesized to be impaired in patients with bvFTD. Thus far, no known studies have utilized objective laboratory tests to examine patients’ prosocial behaviors. The present study addressed these gaps by using objective laboratory measures (i.e., a donation paradigm) and a multi-method approach by studying the neural and emotional responses (i.e., autonomic and somatic peripheral physiology, facial expressions) associated with prosocial behavior across a sample of patients with neurodegenerative diseases and non-symptomatic aging caregivers. In the present study, 88 participants (17 with bvFTD, 12 with Alzheimer’s disease, and 59 non-symptomatic caregivers) viewed a film of others in distress. Participants were then given the option to donate their own money as a measure of prosocial behavior. Results revealed that patients with bvFTD donated significantly less money than non-symptomatic caregivers, while patients with Alzheimer’s disease and non-symptomatic caregivers donated comparable amounts. When examining emotional responses and regions of neural degeneration as potential mediators of the relationship between diagnosis and prosocial behavior, neither emotional responses nor neural regions were found to mediate the findings with one exception: lower ventral striatum volume was significantly associated with lower levels of prosocial behavior. This finding aligns with research that suggests that the ventral striatum plays a central role in the reward network of the brain, and how evolutionarily, feeling reward when engaging in prosocial behaviors likely conferred benefits in the context of interpersonal relationships. The study extends our understanding of a neurodegenerative disease that profoundly impacts the lives of patients and their families and contributes important new information to the literature on prosocial behavior.

Advisor: Levenson, Robert W.
Strongly Correlated Electron Systems Near Criticality: From Nodal Semimetals to High-Temperature Superconductors

In this thesis, we will study aspects of two phases close to criticality arising in solid state systems with strong interactions between electrons. In the first part, we study finite temperature transport in a non-Fermi-liquid phase arising from a nodal semimetal with long-range interactions – the so-called Luttinger-Abrikosov-Beneslavskii phase. We are particularly interested in calculating the finite temperature shear viscosity of the phase and find that it is consistent with a bound proposed in the context of gauge-gravity duality. In the second part of the thesis, we study a minimal model of nematic fluctuations in the high-temperature superconductor iron selenide. Nematic fluctuations arising from a quantum critical point have been proposed to explain the phenomenology of several high-temperature superconductors. In a numerical simulation using determinant quantum Monte Carlo methods, we find no direct evidence of a nematic critical point. However, we still observe a wide region of superconductivity correlated with nematic fluctuations as well as an unusual antiferro-quadrupole order.

Advisor: Vishwanath, Ashvin
A Theory of MiXtopia: Critical Performance Life/Art in Three MiXtopias

ABSTRACT: The heart of my project lies at the praxis of life/art. I call miXtopia the sites where performance art blurs the line between life/art, where life is self-consciously in performative mode. At the life/art crossroad (X), life turns from mundane to marvelous in critical and creative performances. The X in miXtopia opens up passages between narrative and body through which I enter and exit at the crossroad of extra-text and inter-text between the real and fiction./nMiXtopia is a concept I have coined based on the practice of “art as life itself” where the mundane crosses into the marvelous, and the “souls of folk” meet at these and other crossroads. MiXtopia is conceptualized by fusing theories of third, non-binary spaces and methodologies taken from performance art. Like Allan Kaprow (1960s) and Judith Butler (1990), I stretch the definition of performance art by thinking of life as performance. Moreover, I reconfigure the third as mixed or hybrid being, object, or space to embody and describe a performative mode that operates through what I identify and name as a mixed-multiplying principle. The principle operates in the transnational and translational borders of Okinawa as other sites that are within the contexts of colonial, imperial and racial legacies of the world order. In this study, decolonial Okinawan cultural practices are explored through the non-binary theoretical and methodological framework of miXtopia, which brings into view the colonial, imperial, and racial elements of the tripartite relationship between Okinawa, America, and Japan, and complex forms of resistance and cultural persistence with respect to these. My theoretical neologisms aim to render elements of Okinawan culture legible as decolonial projects. MiXtopia merges critical ethnic studies analysis and performance art praxis to illuminate life as the crossroads of critical and creative performance in Okinawa, against histories of cultural and political imperialisms.

Advisor: Perez, Laura E
Essays in Macroeconomic History and Policy

The Making of a Monetary Union: Evidence from the U.S. Discount Market 1914-1935/nThe decentralized structure of the Federal Reserve gave regional Reserve banks a large degree of autonomy in setting discount rates. This created repeated and continued periods of non-uniform discount rates across the 12 Federal Reserve districts. Commercial banks did not take full advantage of these differentials, reflecting the effectiveness of qualitative restrictions on the use of discount window liquidity in limiting the geographical movement of funds. While the choice of regional autonomy over complete financial integration was reasonable given the characteristics of the U.S. monetary union in the interwar period, the Federal Reserve failed to use this autonomy to stabilize regional economic activity relative to the national average. The diagnosis that the costs of decentralization outweighed the gains from regional differentiation motivated reforms that standardized and centralized control of Reserve bank discount policies./nSupply-Side Policies in the Depression: Evidence from France/nThe effects of supply-side policies in depressed economies are controversial. We shed light on this debate using evidence from France in the 1930s. In 1936, France departed from the gold standard and implemented mandatory wage increases and hours restrictions. Deflation ended but output stagnated. We present time-series and cross-sectional evidence that these supply-side policies, in particular the 40-hour law, contributed to French stagflation. These results are inconsistent both with the standard one-sector new Keynesian model and with a medium scale, multi-sector model calibrated to match our cross-sectional estimates. We conclude that the new Keynesian model is a poor guide to the effects of supply-side shocks in depressed economies./nFiscal Policy in the Depression: Evidence from Digging Holes and Filling Them/nI use historical data on military spending on a strategic defense system - the Maginot Line - during the interwar period in France to estimate the effect of fiscal policy in a depressed economy. Planning for the construction of the defense system took place in the 1920s, while actual spending mostly occurred in the 1930s. Factors such as the natural local terrain, and the location of military threat generated variations in spending across space and time that were not related to current or expected levels of economic activity in these areas. I exploit these variations to estimate a local government spending multiplier that controls for aggregate shocks and aggregate policy, such as changes in distortionary taxes and aggregate monetary policy. I find a local multiplier of 1. Given the likely bias introduced by the use of fiscal data to proxy local economic activity and by the \textit{ad-hoc} assumptions made to reconstruct a precise geographical allocation of border fortification spending, I see my result as evidence that the true local government spending multiplier is at least equal to 1.

Advisor: Eichengreen, Barry J
Postpartum family planning in Mozambique: Factors for use, decision-making, and the promise of community-based distribution

The benefits of family planning are well documented and unequivocal. Allowing women to space or limit pregnancies through access to modern contraceptive methods can empower women to achieve their desired fertility, prevent deaths and disability that result from pregnancy and unsafe abortion, and may lead to broader benefits, such as increased education and economic opportunities for women and their children. Postpartum family planning is defined as the prevention of pregnancy during the 12 months after childbirth, and it has the potential to improve the health of women, infants, and children in less developed countries. Research has shown that short birth-to-conception intervals are associated with adverse infant, child, and maternal outcomes. The World Health Organization recommends postpartum family planning as a critical component of health care that has the potential to meet women’s desire for contraception, and save millions of lives./nDespite the importance of postpartum family planning, some countries continue to face challenges related to improving contraceptive use. Mozambique has had particular difficulty meeting its family planning goals. The fertility rate in Mozambique increased from 5.5 in 2003 to 5.9 in 2011, with the highest levels of fertility found in rural areas (TFR 6.6) and among the poorest (TFR 7.2) and least educated women (TFR 6.8). Estimates from 2011 show that only 13.2% of married Mozambican women age 15-49 years used modern methods of contraception, and the unmet need for family planning is relatively high at 12.8%./nThis dissertation establishes the factors associated with postpartum family planning use in Mozambique. The research then aims to describe the contraceptive decision-making processes of postpartum women participating in a community-based injectables project in rural Mozambique. Finally, this dissertation presents a policy analysis of the strategic financing options for the community-based health services delivery program in Mozambique, which is integrally tied to expanding access to postpartum family planning.

Advisor: Prata, Ndola
Designing and Assessing Density Functionals

This thesis is concerned with the development of minimally-parameterized and highly-transferable density functionals. A methodology for searching a given functional space is developed and used to parameterize three novel functionals: ωB97X-V -- a 10-parameter, range-separated hybrid, generalized gradient approximation density functional with VV10 nonlocal correlation, B97M-V -- a 12-parameter, local meta-generalized gradient approximation density funcitonal with VV10 nonlocal correlation, and ωB97M-V -- a 12-parameter, range-separated hybrid, meta-generalized gradient approximation density functional with VV10 nonlocal correlation. These three functionals are validated by comparisons to the best existing density functionals in their class, and their proper usage (with respect to basis sets and integration grids) is documented to facilitate use in chemical applications.

Advisor: Head-Gordon, Martin P
Ionization Collection in Detectors of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search

Determining the composition of dark matter is at the forefront of modern scientific research. There is compelling evidence for the existence of vast quantities of dark matter throughout the universe, however it has so-far eluded all direct detection efforts and its identity remains a mystery. Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are a favored dark matter candidate and have been the primary focus of direct detection for several decades. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) has developed the Z-dependent Ionization and Phonon (ZIP) detector to search for such particles. Typically made from germanium, these detectors are capable of distinguishing between electromagnetic background and a putative WIMP signal through the simultaneous measurement of ionization and phonons produced by scattering events. CDMS has operated several arrays of these detectors at the Soudan Underground Laboratory (Soudan, MN, USA) resulting in many competitive (often world-leading) WIMP exclusion limits./nThis dissertation focuses on ionization collection in these detectors under the sub-Kelvin, low electric field, and high crystal purity conditions unique to CDMS. The design and performance of a fully cryogenic HEMT-based amplifier capable of achieving the SuperCDMS SNOLAB ionization energy resolution goal of 100 eVee is presented. The experimental apparatus which has been used to record electron and hole properties under CDMS conditions is described. Measurements of charge transport, trapping, and impact ionization as a function of electric field in two CDMS detectors are shown, and the ionization collection efficiency is determined. The data is used to predict the error in the nuclear recoil energy scale under both CDMSlite and iZIP operating modes. A two species, two state model is developed to describe how ionization collection and space charge generation in CDMS detectors are controlled by the presence of ``overcharged'' $D^-$ donor and $A^+$ acceptor impurity states. The thermal stability of these states is exclusive to sub-Kelvin operation, explaining why ionization collection in CDMS detectors differs from similar semiconductor detectors operating at higher temperature. This work represents a solid foundation for the understanding ionization collection in CDMS detectors.

Advisor: Sadoulet, Bernard
Grothendieck resolution, affine Grassmannian, and Yangian

In this thesis we address several questions on the structure and representation theory of quantum groups. The inspiration for problems and obtained solutions come from Poisson geometry. In the first chapter we classify the symplectic leaves on (a Poisson ind-subvariety of) the thick affine Grassmannian. Our classification extends previous results on the Poisson geometry of SL(n)-monopoles and the thin affine Grassmannian in type A. In the second chapter we show that a generic symplectic leaf (of maximal dimension) allows for a natural atlas and study transition maps between the charts. In particular we obtain a family of intertwining operators for the Yangian Y(gl(n)) by quantizing these transition maps. Finally, the third chapter is devoted to a different but closely related problem. Namely, we construct a quantum version of the multiplicative Grothendieck-Springer resolution. As a corollary we obtain an embedding of the quantum group into the algebra of “quantum differential operators” on the principal affine space, realized as the Heisenberg double of the quantum Borel subalgebra.

Advisor: Reshetikhin, Nicolai
Financialization and the New Organizational Inequality in U.S. Higher Education

This dissertation advances scholarship on how financialization – the increasing power of financial ideologies and markets – has transformed diverse organizations, including non-profits, state institutions, and households. In three papers, I explain how financialization has contributed to rising organizational inequality in U.S. undergraduate education education since the 1990s: 1) “The Financialization of U.S. Higher Education” develops new quantitative measures to find large but skewed relative increases in the financial costs and returns from endowments, colleges’ institutional borrowing, equity offerings by for-profit colleges, and student loan borrowing, 2) “The Transformation of U.S. For-Profit Colleges,” uses a unique college-level and multi-wave longitudinal dataset to show how the spread of shareholder value ideology led to a new industrial-scale business model with negative consequences for student outcomes, and 3) “The Ivory Tower Tax Haven” explains how long-standing tax exemptions have supported new endowment investment strategies that have fueled rising expenditures to maximize the prestige of the wealthiest universities. Altogether, I highlight the importance of finance ideologies in the shifting balance of resources between and within the many heterogeneous types of U.S. colleges.

Advisor: Weir, Margaret
Fligstein, Neil
Synthetic Strategies toward Aconitine-type and Hetisine-type Diterpenoid Alkaloids

Diterpenoid alkaloid natural products, isolated from plants in the Aconitum, Delphinium, Consolida, and Spiraea genera, possess complex, caged, highly oxygenated skeletons and display potent biological activities through interactions with voltage-gated ion channels. Several of these alkaloids are currently used clinically for the treatment of arrhythmia, while others act as incredibly potent neurotoxins. Until recently, there were very few successful total syntheses of any diterpenoid alkaloid natural products, a testament to the structural complexity of these molecules. We explored synthetic strategies targeting two major types of these natural products: the aconitine-type C19-diterpenoid alkaloids and the hetisine-type C20-diterpenoid alkaloids./nInitial work explored Diels–Alder cycloadditions with maleic anhydride-derived dienophiles toward the eventual construction of aconitine-type diterpenoid alkaloids. We examined the selective ring-opening of these adducts with a variety of nucleophiles and utilized an ester-stabilized benzylic nucleophile to achieve C–C bond formation with complete positional selectivity. This product was rapidly elaborated to a vinyl lactone intermediate, which following amine addition and oxidation underwent a high-yielding, diastereoselective methylation reaction to install the challenging C18 carbon atom./nSynthesis of the hetisine-type diterpenoid alkaloid cossonidine built off of previous work performed in the Sarpong lab. Reexamining the previously-developed route, we optimized several steps and implemented new reactions to increase the yield and reproducibility of the chemistry and reduce the overall step count. Subsequent functional group transformations involving deprotection and inversion of the C1 hydroxyl group and installation of the allylic alcohol moiety completed the first total synthesis of cossonidine./nRecognizing the connections between the various diterpenoid alkaloid types, we explored ways to convert the vinyl lactone intermediate developed in our studies toward aconitine-type natural products into the hetisine-type skeleton of cossonidine. Following the introduction of an iodine atom on the aromatic ring, magnesium-halogen exchange leads to an intramolecular cyclization reaction to forge the central 6-7-6 tricycle with carbonyl groups at all three nitrogen-bearing carbon atoms following oxidation. Efforts to install the C18 methyl group and accomplish a triple reductive amination cascade to complete this second-generation total synthesis are ongoing.

Advisor: Sarpong, Richmond
Study of cellular mechanotransduction by visualizing actin and nucleoskeleton dynamics in real-time

Cellular mechanotransduction, the tight coupling between biochemical and mechanical properties of the cytoskeleton and nucleus, drives a large range of cellular processes including cell mobility, cytokinesis, vesicle transportation, or even cell fate determination affected by alterations in gene expression. In this study, we study cellular mechanotransduction by direct imaging of the actin cytoskeleton and component of nucleoskeleton during normal cellular processes and under different stresses./nA novel class of cell permeable actin filament free barbed end dye was developed to achieve high spatial and temporal resolution of actin dynamic imaging. the generation of free barbed ends of actin filaments during lamellipodia protrusion, cytokinesis and endocytosis were monitored in this study, providing new insights on the regulation of free barbed end of actin filaments during these actin-driven processes. By distinguished visualization of the filaments and barbed end pool of actin in cells, the controversial views of whether new actin polymerization is involved during cleavage furrow closure and scission were resolved, we show that there is a surge of new actin polymerization during telophase, beginning with ingression of the contractile ring and ending with the separation of daughter cells, supporting the view that new actin polymerization is involved in cytokinesis./nwe further developed a triple labeling system with the genetically encoded florescent protein (FP) fused with nuclear component including emerin, Sun1, Sun2 and lamin A. The FP was carefully choosing so the excitation and emission spectrums of FP and (Si)TMR actin dyes are far apart enough to allow spontaneous imaging of the three components. Several chemicals were applied to disrupt cytoskeleton of the cells, the corresponding responses of the nucleus components were visualized real-time, providing insights on the interaction between nucleus and cytoskeleton./nwe also developed a label-free optical biosensor that employs a silicon-based high-contrast grating (HCG) resonator with a spectral linewidth of ~500pm sensitive to ligand-induced changes in surface properties in collaboration with Professor Constance Chang-Hasnain’s group. The device is used to generate thermodynamic and kinetic data on surface-attached antibodies with their respective antigens. The device can detect serum cardiac troponin I, a biomarker of cardiac disease to 100pg/ml within 4-minutes, which is much faster than and as sensitive as current enzyme-linked immuno-assays for cTnI.

Advisor: Marriott, Gerard