VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Making Sex Public: Cinema and the Liberal Social Body

During and after the 1960s, representations of sex proliferated on French and American screens and became increasingly explicit. By bringing sexual images into the public sphere of representation, cinema, in a literal sense, made images of sex more public. Cinema also began to figure forms of sexuality which were no longer associated strictly with domesticity nor limited to heterosexual relations between loving couples. This transformation in the relation between sex and publicity, I argue, brought a new political focus to sexuality and both occasioned and evidenced a broad cultural conjoining of sexual and political imaginaries. Making Sex Public explores the deeper significance of this transformation in the ways French and US visual culture imagined and represented sex, in a historical span beginning with the Brigitte Bardot vehicle Et Dieu créa... la femme [And God Created Woman] (France, Roger Vadim, 1956) and ending with Shortbus (US, John Cameron Mitchell, 2006)./nThrough readings of a generically diverse range of films that brought the body and its pleasures into view in important new ways, I develop three main arguments about this chapter in the history of sexual representation in the West. First, I show how cinema produced images of a pleasure now understood as a quantifiable property of an individual subject. In films which celebrated sex as both a private property and a public good, representations of sexuality converged with liberal concepts of freedom, equality, and autonomy, fashioning a newly sexualized version of the liberal subject. Second, I show how a countervailing discourse brought sex and the body into view as a site of radical contradiction in the liberal premise of equality. Feminist artists and film-makers developed new figures of bodily difference that rendered the body a site of political critique and even political impasse. Meanwhile, new figures of queerness alternately integrated queerness into a liberal imaginary or invested it as what could not be so integrated. Throughout these readings, I show how a fundamental tension characterized the way sex came into public view, between sex as emancipatory vs. sex as unfreedom, sex as individual property vs. sex as scene of relationality, sex as public good vs. sex as antisocial, sex as equality vs. sex as instrumentalization. Spanning these oppositions I argue, finally, that the elaborate cinematic discourse on sexuality that plays such a prominent role in post-`60s French and US cinema renders sex a problem not of the subject but of the social. In some cases, this "on scene" cinema perversely fulfills Michel Foucault's call for an experience of "bodies and pleasures" that would be liberated from a discourse of desire. Ultimately, however, I suggest that the untethering of sex from desire leads not to liberation but to an ethos of transparency that renders even pleasure a site of neoliberal rationalization.

Advisor: Williams, Linda
Control and Optimization of Power Systems with Renewables: Voltage Regulation and Generator Dispatch

The electric power system is undergoing dramatic transformations due to the emergence of renewable resources. However, integrating these resources into the electric grid has proven to be difficult for two main reasons: these resources are uncertain and distributed. This thesis discusses how uncertainty and distributedness of the new resources are manifested as challenges in time and spatial scales, and how we can optimally control the power grid to overcome these challenges./nThe theme of this thesis is that in order to control the new resources, we need a better understanding of the physical power flow in the system. To illustrate the spatial-scale challenge, we consider the voltage regulation problem for distribution networks. With a deep penetration of distributed energy resources the voltage magnitudes in a distribution system can fluctuate significantly. To control these resources such that voltage profiles remain flat, we need to coordinate the tens of thousands of households in the distribution network. By studying the geometry of power flows in the network, we show that even though the voltage regulation problem is non-convex, it can be convexified exactly through a semidefinite relaxation . Based on this insight, we an optimal and decentralized algorithm for this problem. Only communication between electrical neighbors are required in the algorithm, thus allowing it to scale to problem of large sizes./nThe second problem we consider is dispatching generators in the transmission network under deep penetration of wind power. Because of on/off and ramp-rate constraints, traditional generators need to be dispatched before the actual time of delivery of energy. On the other hand, wind power cannot be dispatched and is difficult to predict in advance. This creates a mismatch in time-scale between the controls (traditional generators) and the randomness in the system (wind). We capture this challenge as a two-stage stochastic dispatch problem. In contrast to the standard Monte Carlo solutions, we show that the dimensional of the problem can be reduced dramatically by using forecast informations. This dimensional reduction is based on a better understanding of congested DC optimal power flow problems. Using this reduction, we show how to calculate the optimal reserve margin for the system in the presence of renewables, and quantify the intrinsic impact of uncertainties on the system cost.

Advisor: Tse, David
Well-posedness of the three-form field equation and the minimal surface equation in Minkowski space

This dissertation deals with the question of well-posedness for the three-form field equation in eleven dimensional supergravity and the minimal time-like hypersurface equation in Minkowski space. Both of these equations are nonlinear wave equations./nThe three-form field equation arises in the classical field theory formulation that underlies string theory. After making simplifying assumptions, it becomes a system for a differential three-form on $\R^{3+1}\times K^7$, where $K$ is a compact Riemannian manifold. A suitable gauge choice turns the the equation into a semilinear wave equation. We show that the three-form field equation is globally in time well posed for small, smooth, compactly supported initial data./nThe minimal surface equation in Minkowski space $\R^{(n+1)+1}$ describes a submanifold, which has a vanishing mean curvature. If the submanifold is time-like, the equation is a quasilinear wave equation. We prove that for $n=2,3$ and under some further geometrical assumptions, the equation is locally well posed for initial data in $H^\frac{n+3}{2}(\R^n)\times H^\frac{n+1}{2}(\R^n)$./nThe nonlinearities in the equations above belong to a restricted class of nonlinearities that are said to satisfy the null condition. The goal of the null condition is to select the nonlinearities that limit the amount of interactions between waves that have a small angle of incidence. The precise formulation of the null condition depends on the context of the Cauchy problem and it is not yet clear in all cases. In particular, our investigation of the minimal surface equation falls in the context of questions regarding large data quasilinear equations for which there is still only a conjectured formulation of the condition. We hope that our treatment of the particular example can shed some light on the general case.

Advisor: Tataru, Daniel
Binaleg at Sinulug para sa Orkestra

Binaleg at Sinulug para sa Orkestra is a music composition for orchestra and various Philippine traditional instruments such as bamboo percussions and the kulintang ensemble. These traditional instruments are commonly used by indigenous groups from the northern and southern regions of the Philippine islands. The inspiration for the piece comes from Philippine and other Asian music cultures such as the cyclical structures of Indonesian traditional music, interlocking melodies of Kalingga music, heterophonic textures of traditional vocal practices, and ritualistic performances./nIt explores the use of these traditional instruments within the context of the western orchestra.

Advisor: Cox, Cindy
BAG: A Designer-Oriented Framework for the Development of AMS Circuit Generators

The recent trend in embedding multiple applications into a single System-on-Chip (SoC) has resulted in an increase in the number of Analog/Mixed-Signal (AMS) components integrated per die. Although the AMS components typically occupy a small fraction of the whole IC, they often require the longest design time because typical AMS design flows require substantial manual intervention from the designer throughout the design process. It would thus be desirable to automate the design of AMS circuits and foster their reuse across multiple SoCs and technology generations, to shorten time-to-market of new products and to free analog designers from performing repetitive tasks. In this thesis, we present the Berkeley Analog Generator (BAG) framework, an integrated framework for the development of generators of AMS circuits./nGenerators are parameterized design procedures that produce sized schematics and correct layouts optimized to meet a set of input specifications. BAG extends previous work by implementing interfaces to integrate all steps of the design flow into a single environment and by providing helper classes - at the schematic and particularly at the layout level - to aid the designer in developing truly parameterized and technology-independent AMS circuit generators. The BAG framework simplifies and helps codify common tasks in the AMS design flow including technology characterization, schematic and testbench translation, simulator interfacing, physical verification and extraction, and layout creation. BAG addresses one of the most labor-intensive tasks, layout, by providing template-based extensible layout generators for different styles of circuits to help designers create their own parameterized layout generators. In order to demonstrate the completeness of the BAG framework, the development process of several generators for an integrated switched-capacitor (SC) regulator and its associated subcircuits are presented as a case study and the top level SC regulator generator is used to create three instances of a SC voltage regulator targeting different power densities, absolute output power, and aspect ratios.

Advisor: Alon, Elad
Harsh Environment Silicon Carbide UV Sensor and Junction Field-Effect Transistor

A harsh environment can be defined by one or more of the following: High temperature, high shock, high radiation, erosive flow, and corrosive media. Among all the harsh environment applications, high temperature applications have drawn lots of attention due to the emerging activity in automotive, turbine engine, space exploration and deep-well drilling telemetry. Silicon carbide has become the candidate for these harsh environment applications because of its wide bandgap, excellent chemical and thermal stability, and high breakdown electric field strength. This dissertation details the two building blocks of high-temperature UV sensing chip, namely Ultraviolet sensor and transistors. High temperature performance of silicon carbide metal-semiconductor-metal UV sensor is characterized at high temperatures for the first time. The sensor exhibits high photo-to-dark current ratio and fast rise and fall time even at high temperatures. Complementary SiC junction field-effect transistors of different gate configurations are proposed, fabricated and characterized from room temperature to 600 °C for the first time. High intrinsic gains at high temperatures suggest that complementary junction field-effect transistors are suitable devices for high temperature operational amplifier.

Advisor: Pisano, Albert P.
Causal attribution: insights from developmental, cross-cultural work on social and physical reasoning

This series of studies examines the relationship between causal inference and attribution from a developmental and cross-cultural perspective. In the first study, we consider how children at the ages of four and six reason about person by situation covariation information (Kelley, 1967), both younger than previously demonstrated trait biases or spontaneously using trait words. We then compare children's explanations of people's behavior to the actual behavioral evidence. Next, we extend the paradigm to include physical causation and the potential overhypotheses that guide the formation of domain specific reasoning. We will determine whether there are domain differences in perceiving virtually identical data construed as physical events or intentional actions. And finally, in the last study, we examine the role of culture in shaping the developmental trajectory of attributional style. As in physical causal inference, social causal inference combines covariational evidence and prior knowledge. We can use the tools of causal inference to understand how culturally-mediated prior beliefs affect the construal of person-by-situation information in a domain specific manner and trace the origins of attributional biases in adults.

Advisor: Gopnik, Alison
Variability in wildfire emissions of nitrogen oxides as observed from space

Wildfires are a significant source of nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2) to the global atmosphere, representing approximately 15% of the total NOx budget. Fire conditions that govern NOx emission vary significantly from fire to fire, resulting in highly variable emissions. Emissions from fires burned in a laboratory setting fail to reproduce the conditions in which large wildfires occur, such as fire size and meteorology; however, in situ measurements of fire emissions are challenging to make, in part due to the destructive nature of large wildfires. As a result, systematic variability of NOx emissions--even when normalized for biomass burned--across or within biomes is poorly understood and documented./nIn this dissertation, I demonstrate that the high spatial and temporal coverage of space-based observations can be used to greatly increase the number and scope of available observations of actively burning wildfires. I derive a method to estimate NOx emission coefficients (ECs in g NOx MJ-1) using NO2 column densities from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and fire radiative power from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), two Earth-observing satellite instruments. I show that this method, when applied in California and Nevada, reproduces differences in fire emission factors (EFs in g NOx kg-1) between fuel types that have been previously observed using in situ measurements. I then identify and explore sources of variability in NOx ECs in fires across the globe. I compare mean ECs for fires in different locations but similar biomes (e.g. grasses) and find that while most ECs cover a relatively narrow range, ECs for several locations are significantly different from the mean biome EC. I examine seasonal variability in ECs, finding that ECs in African woody savannas have a strong seasonal dependence that is not observed in open savannas; this behavior may be related to reallocation of nitrogen to below ground during the fire season by plants and/or the seasonal variation of fire fuel composition in woody savannas. I also find that this behavior extends to other woody savanna regions in South America and Australia, and that ECs in several biomes exhibit a dependence on wind speed.

Advisor: Cohen, Ronald C
(Re)Centering the discourse and practice of caring labor: The intersection of feminist thought and cooperative childcare

This research examines a range of differences among for-profit, non-profit, and cooperative childcare centers using cross-sectional survey data obtained from approximately 748 childcare centers and 2,743 staff members throughout Canada (Doherty, Lero, Goelman, LaGrange, & Tougas, 2000). I make use of feminist theories of care to critically analyze the ways in which for-profit, non-profit, and cooperative childcare centers "value" this type of care, as evidenced by several indicators of labor quality (e.g., wages, benefits, advancement opportunity, workplace social capital). Findings indicate that much like previous research demonstrating a non-profit labor advantage (e.g., Doherty, Friendly, & Forer, 2002), cooperatives also tend to "value" this labor to a greater extent than do for-profit centers, as evidenced by: higher wages; greater employee satisfaction with pay, benefits, and promotional opportunities; better assessments of work situation (e.g., my work gives me a sense of accomplishment); higher levels of de-centralization (i.e., extent to which others can and do have input into decision-making), formalization (i.e., extent to which roles and responsibilities are standardized and explicit), and overall organizational influence; as well as, greater odds of unionization, participation in professional development, and intentions to remain working in the childcare field. And, cooperative employees in particular, reported the highest levels of de-centralized decision-making practices. These findings have implications in several domains. First, continued research and development of non-profit and cooperative models of childcare is warranted, given the ways in which they significantly outperformed for-profit centers with respect to several indicators of labor quality. Second, a (re)assessment of current union legislation is also merited, based on the strong, positive association between unionization and hourly wages. Third, further development and codification of de-centralized decision making practices is supported, given their demonstrated associations with enhanced service quality in previous research. Forth, further development and enhancement of educational advancement opportunities among early childhood educators--to include the creation of a work climate that more adequately supports more highly educators providers (e.g., greater mentoring opportunities, higher salary, lower turnover)--appears necessary given the finding that more highly educated staff are less likely to remain in the field. And, finally, there is a call for continued use of research concerning childcare labor to inform and enrich the theoretical dialogue concerning caring labor more generally.

Advisor: Duerr Berrick, Jill
On the Fluctuations that Order and Frustrate Liquid Water

At ambient conditions, water sits close to phase coexistence with its crystal. More so than in many other materials, this fact is manifested in the fluctuations that maintain a large degree of local order in the liquid. These fluctuations and how they result in long-ranged order, or its absence, are emergent features of many interacting molecules. Their study therefore requires using the tools of statistical mechanics for their their systematic understanding. In this dissertation we develop such an understanding. In particular, we focus on collective behavior that emerges in liquid and solid water. At room temperatures, the thermophysical properties of water are quantified and rationalized with simple molecular models. A key feature of these models is the correct characterization of the competition between entropic forces of packing and the energetic preference for tetrahedral order. At cold temperatures, the properties of ice surfaces are studied with statistical field theory. The theory we develop for the long wavelength features of ice interfaces allows us to explain the existence of a premelting layer on the surface of ice and the stability of ice in confinement. In between these extremes, the dynamics of supercooled water are considered. A detailed theory for the early stages of coarsening is developed and used to explain the peculiar observation of a transient second liquid state of water. When coarsening dynamics are arrested, the result is the formation of a glassy states of water. We show that out-of-equilibrium the phase diagram for supercooled water exhibits a rich amount of structure, including a triple point between two glass phases of water and the liquid. At the end, we explore possible technological implications for the interplay between ordering and frustration in studies of water at metal interfaces.

Advisor: Chandler, David
Acyclic Monte Carlo: Efficient multi-level sampling of undirected graphical models through fast marginalization

We present a method for sampling high-dimensional probability spaces, applicable to Markov fields with both discrete and continuous variables, based on an approximate acyclic representation of the probability density. Our method generalizes and places in a common framework some recent work on computing renormalized Hamiltonians and stochastic multigrid sampling./nAn acyclic representation of a probability distribution function (PDF) is obtained when one chooses an ordering of the variables and writes the PDF as a product of conditional probabilities, so that the probability of any variable is conditional only on the variables that precede it in the ordering. An acyclic representation makes the sampling efficient, because it uses the sparsity present in the model. We derive an approximate acyclic representation for general graphs by finding marginals through a fast marginalization scheme. The partial derivatives of the logarithm of the marginal probability are computed approximately through stochastic linear projection onto a polynomial basis, followed by reconstruction of the marginal through integration. The projection is based on an optimized inner product, making possible the use of Gaussian quadrature. Probability distributions involving discrete variables are handled by embedding the PDFs in differentiable extensions. Our algorithm can be extended to the evaluation of renormalized Hamiltonians formed using general renormalization schemes./nThe approximate acyclic representation of the PDF is then used for sampling. The variables are sampled in a fixed order, producing independent samples together with their sampling weights. We present an optimized sampling strategy that uses a maximum amount of information to choose individual variable values. The samples are further improved using techniques from particle filtering. We also introduce a block Markov chain Monte Carlo scheme based on the sampling weights. Finally, we present applications of our methodology to the Ising model.

Advisor: Chorin, Alexandre J
Development and Application of Oxidative Coupling Bioconjugation Reactions with ortho-Aminophenols

The synthetic modification of proteins plays an important role in the fields of chemical biology and biomaterials science. As applications of protein-based materials continue to become more complex, improved methods for the covalent modification of proteins are needed. Although many methods for the modification of native and artificial amino acids exist, they often require long reaction times or lengthy syntheses of reactive substrates. This work describes the development and application of a suite of bioconjugation reactions that utilize ortho-aminophenols. The oxidative coupling of aniline residues with o-aminophenol substrates was optimized. Potassium ferricyanide was identified as an alternative, mild oxidant for this coupling. These new conditions enabled the use of the oxidative coupling reaction in the presence of free cysteines and glycoslated substrates. Aminophenols were also discovered to react with native residues on protein substrates in addition to artificial aniline moieties. Cysteine and the N-terminus were identified as the reactive residues. The oxidative coupling of o-aminophenols with the N-terminus was optimized to achieve high levels of modification on peptide and protein substrates. The oxidative coupling of anilines and o-aminophenols was applied to the synthesis of a targeted, virus-like particle and to the detection of protein tyrosine-nitration. Overall, these updated and novel oxidative coupling methods expand the utility ortho-aminophenols for the modification of proteins.

Advisor: Francis, Matthew B