VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
People and pedagogies : children's accounts of loving and mattering that shape their wellbeing in school

Over the last few decades, there has been a growing interest and advocacy of children's wellbeing around the world. To better understand and address the wellbeing of children in schools this study focuses on the perspectives of 121 students in six urban classrooms from two elementary schools serving mostly Brown and Black families from low-income communities. Findings revealed that the children in this study generally perceived school to be positive experiences according to survey responses, especially as they related to questions about school and life satisfaction, relationships, and health. Aspects of "Loving, " the quality of children's social relationship (Allardt, 1976; Konu & Rimpelä, 2002), appeared to be a particularly important aspect of their wellbeing with relationship-related items being the only survey category that produced strong correlation coefficients with children's overall satisfaction with life and with school. Further analysis of qualitative data, such as classroom observations and children's captured images and words, further supported and complexified the important role that people and school pedagogies had on their wellbeing, especially as they related to children's ability to exist as their full selves as well as to participate in community (e.g., "communal constructions") with their peers and with grown-ups in school. This study hopes to contribute to the larger discourse of children's wellbeing, school practices, and broadly to other disciplines concerned with improving children's lives, such as children's health, social work, and juvenile justice reform. It concludes by arguing that if grown-ups truly seek to promote children's wellbeing, they need to rethink what it means to love children and to advocate for children's mattering for their full intersectional identities, including their childhood

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: Aukerman Maren (Maren Songmy)
Martínez Ramón
Garcia Antero 
Rosas Lisa G.
Performing intersectional identities : four Jewish women poets in the 20th century

This dissertation considers how poetry can be a mode of performing identity, particularly for those on the margins. I argue that because it is not only composed of but also always draws our attention back to language itself, poetry is a kind of performative utterance that constitutes that which it names. Through a consideration of works by four poets positioned at the intersection of multiple margins, as women and Jews, some of them queer, some immigrants, I demonstrate the particular strategies that poetry offers for reappropriating tactics of oppression in the performance of a self. The first chapter focuses on Gertrude Stein's "surface poetics" through which Stein reappropriates modes of objectification while resisting a penetrative/interpretive gaze, drawing our attention to the surface of her poems, a surface on which, I argue, her performance of a lesbian Jewish identity unfolds. In the second chapter, I examine anti-grammaticality in the works of the first "native" modern Hebrew poet, Esther Raab, and show how she deploys Hebrew's highly gendered grammar to enact a female-Jewish identity in a language and tradition that has historically erased women's voices and experiences. A third chapter on Zelda Schneerson explores how the poet reappropriates Hebrew's capacity for agentless and impersonal constructions in the enactment of her identity as a religious woman poet in a literary milieu dominated by secular men. My final chapter on Adrienne Rich focuses on her revaluation of relationality as a poetic and political strategy through which the poet reimagines personal and collective identities, revealing the ties that bind us to one another

Keywords: Comparative Literature.
Advisor: Greene Roland
Eshel Amir
Safran Gabriella
Shemtov Vered Karti
Performing, recording, and producing immersive music in virtual acoustics

The systems that allow us to experience the auditory world in three spatial dimensions are extraordinarily complex. Humans possess a remarkable ability for identifying the distance, location, and size of a sound source with high accuracy, and these spatial auditory cues fundamentally shape the way we interact with the world. Moreover, spaces impart their own distinctive coloration to sounds occurring within their walls. This thesis explores how spatial cues affect they way we create, produce, and listen to music. We take two approaches: the first uses virtual acoustics to model and simulate the acoustics of specific spaces. We show approaches for using real-time signal processing to perform concerts, produce recordings, rehearse, and study aspects of performance practice in the virtual acoustics of spaces the performers do not physically inhabit. We demonstrate our methods using acoustic measurements of two spaces: the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and the Chiesa di Sant'Aniceto in Rome. The second topic of this thesis is signal decorrelation, a class of algorithm used to create copies of an audio signal with a controlled amount of correlation. We show several allpass filter-based decorrelation techniques and describe methods for evaluating their performance. Overall, this thesis is about understanding how architecture, music composition, and performance practice are intertwined

Keywords: Music.
Advisor: Berger Jonathan
Abel Jonathan (Jonathan Stuart)
Chafe Chris 
Fujioka Takako
Perovskite solar cells : out of the lab and into a panel

Organic-Inorganic Metal Halide Perovskites are an increasingly promising next-generation solar absorber technology on pace to take the solar industry by storm. Although efficiency is the oft quoted figure of merit for solar cell technologies, their energy yield is a potentially more relevant metric when comparing different solar technologies as energy yield considers local weather conditions for a desired installation location. Energy yield calculations are used to compare the performance of various perovskite modules under a variety of weather conditions. As perovskites progress towards commercialization, problems that are not easily explored in typical laboratory conditions become more important. When a single solar cell in a panel is shaded, the illuminated cells that are connected in series with it can place a large reverse bias on the shaded cell to attempt to force current through it. While this situation can allow the panel to continue to produce power, it can cause significant problems for the shaded cell. Specifically, in the case of perovskite solar modules, a combination of Joule heating and irreversible electrochemical reactions will degrade the cell. We explore how many solar cells can be protected by one bypass diode in both single junction and multijunction perovskite modules. We also discuss how one might integrate bypass diodes into modules that are made by connecting singulated cells with wires versus those that are monolithically integrated. We show that an advantage of perovskite-silicon tandems is that the silicon substantially increases the breakdown voltage and thereby the number of cells that can be protected by one bypass diode. It is well known that stability is a major concern that must be addressed before perovskites enter the solar market. Accelerated aging is commonly used to evaluate the viability of any new technology on a reasonable time scale by probing various degradation mechanisms. Thermal acceleration factors for perovskites are explored as well as their relationship with the residual stress in the thin film absorber

Keywords: Applied Physics.
Advisor: Lee Young Sang
Clemens B. M. (Bruce M.)
McGehee Michael
Phaneron

Included in this thesis are the score materials and documentation for Phaneron (2019), an intermedia piece for violin, electronics, projection, and lighting, created for and in collaboration with Marco Fusi and Michiko Theurer. This project was a means to explore the topic of Hyperrealism through musical composition, resulting in a deeper study of its surrounding theory, aesthetics, and philosophy. My understanding of this term, and also the impetus for this project, was informed by the writings of Jean Baudrillard in his 1981 treatise, "Simulacra and Simulation." This provided a structural basis for the piece while also prompting a philosophical-aesthetic question: how can the real and artificial become blurred, and, furthermore, what are the perceptual effects of these blurrings? In Phaneron, I endeavored to create a piece in which stagecraft, rhetorical techniques, and the incorporation of different media were employed to cause confusion between the real and fake, and to explore nuances within this space

Keywords: Music.
Advisor: Kapuscinski Jaroslaw
Alessandrini Patricia
Ulman Erik
Pharmacogenomics at scale : population analysis and machine learning applications in pharmacogenomics

Pharmacogenomics promises the ability to provide personalized therapeutic guidance for patients based on their genetics. Understanding how genetic variation leads to heterogeneity in drug response could dramatically increase patient outcomes by increasing efficacy and minimizing adverse drug reactions. Pharmacogenomics research has historically suffered from small sample sizes, which limits our understanding of global allele frequencies, drug-gene associations, and the identification and functional assessment of rare variants. In recent years, biobanks containing phenotype-linked genetic data for hundreds of thousands of participants have become available, presenting an unprecedented opportunity for population-scale analysis of the effect of genetics on drug response. Simultaneously, the capabilities of deep learning algorithms have advanced significantly, enabling powerful predictions about properties of DNA sequence data. This dissertation illustrates how biobanks can be used to study pharmacogenetics and how deep neural networks can be used to predict metabolic function of haplotypes in pharmacogenes. I present results from the largest pharmacogenetic study to date, analyzing pharmacogenetic allele and phenotype frequencies and a cohort of 500,000 individuals. I demonstrate how these data can be used to discover drug-gene associations and drug-gene-response associations through genome-wide and candidate gene studies by integrating clinical records and prescription data. Finally, I present a novel deep learning approach to predicting haplotype function in an important drug-metabolizing enzyme, CYP2D6

Keywords: Biomedical Informatics.
Advisor: Altman Russ 
Ashley Euan A.
Rivas Manuel
Zou James
Phenomena of interacting quantum many-body systems

Strongly correlated electron systems are one of the central topics of condensed matter physics. The myriad of combinations of diverse Fermiologies, phonon spectra and electron-electron, electron-phonon interactions, together with spin-orbit couplings, Kondo couplings, and effects of disorder and external magnetic fields, leads to a truly dazzling range of quantum many-body phenomena. Superconductivity (conventional and unconventional) and magnetism are among the most prominent examples of quantum phases of matter that occur in such systems. We know that powerful emergent principles such as symmetry and topology are required to explain these emergent phenomena. However, due to the inherent difficulty of studying systems with macroscopically large number of strongly interacting particles, there remains the challenge of connecting these somewhat abstract mathematical principles with the underlying microscopic interactions. In this thesis, we illustrate, through two examples of systems with electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions, how one can simplify intractable quantum chemistry problems by reducing them to effective model Hamiltonians that capture the essence of microscopic interactions important to low-energy excitations, which we can then study using a variety of tools, such as determinantal quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC), exact diagonalization, weak and strong coupling considerations and mean-field theory. In the first example we encounter a novel deconfined quantum critical point (DQCP) with emergent O(4) symmetry. In the second example we offer a phenomenological explanation of superconducting and insulating phases of twisted bilayer graphene. Lastly, we also visit the more field-theoretic problem of boson-fermion duality in two spatial dimensions, for which we provide an exact lattice construction. This duality is closely related to the half-filled Landau level problem in quantum Hall physics

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Kivelson Steven
Feldman Ben (Benjamin Ezekiel) 
Raghu Srinivas
Phenomenology of novel models of dark matter : searching for portal interactions at the large Hadron Collider and beyond

This dissertation explores several novel models of dark matter, and the phenomenology thereof. Chapter 2 focuses on how models can produce the correct dark matter abundance using only Kaluza-Klein modes of the graviton in several realizations of Randall-Sundrum models of extra dimensions. Chapter 3 studies the phenomenology of an extension of the Standard Model in which additional TeV-scale "portal" fermions produce kinetic mixing between the Standard Model photon and a dark photon arising from an extended gauge group, under which dark matter is charged. Chapter 4 investigates a minimal model of kinetic mixing between the Standard Model photon and a dark photon, where the mixing is mediated solely by an extended Higgs sector. Finally Chapter 5 studies the implications of a generalized thermodynamics, known as Tsallis statistics, on the thermal freeze-out of dark matter in the early universe

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Hewett JoAnne L.
Graham Peter (Peter Wickelgren)
Rizzo Thomas G.
Toro Natalia
Photogrammetry as a Tool for Community Based Science in British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands

The Caribbean Sea has seen a degradation of 80%-90% of its coral reefs since the 1970s. This is catastrophic for the 40 million residents of the region who depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods, recreation, storm protection, and culture. There is a need for finer scale, streamlined monitoring of reefs to address the challenges they are facing. Structure from Motion (SFM) Photogrammetry facilitates and enables monitoring using community-based science. Collaboration with community partners across the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands led to the co-design of effective methods to implement photogrammetry in their local reefs. Measurements derived from photogrammetric models provided surface rugosity data for 28 sites across the region, providing quantitative data on the state of the reefs after the devastating hurricanes that occurred in September of 2017. The average value for the region was 1.505, and only four sites had regions with a rugosity greater than 2, the common threshold for a structurally complex reef, which is linked to increased biodiversity and high functioning ecosystem services. Regional averages varied between 1.409 in the northeastern region of Puerto Rico, to 1.813 in Culebra, Puerto Rico. This project was an initial run of what will be a longer term project that facilitates community-based monitoring of Caribbean reefs. The most significant contribution of this research is the development of one of the first frameworks for applying photogrammetry as an effective community-based science tool. This framework includes the evaluation of the main objectives of the community partner, access to resources, skill in the water, previous experience with research, capacity for work intensity, and number of volunteers. These frameworks can be applied when using photogrammetry in other coastal environments, and when working with community based scientists in an underwater setting.

Keywords:  Department of Earth Systems
Earth Systems
School of Earth Energy and Environmental Sciences
Coral Reefs
Photogrammetry
Community-Based Science
Text
Thesis
Advisor: Arrigo Kevin
Dunbar Rob
Photonic design of dielectric laser accelerators and quantum features of free electrons

Particle accelerators are important in areas ranging from fundamental science to medical care. To advance particle accelerators, it is critical to achieve high acceleration gradient, compact size and low cost. Dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs) are promising candidates which have more than 10 times higher acceleration gradient than conventional radio-frequency accelerators and can be integrated on-chip. In this thesis, we present a few DLA designs to solve critical challenges for DLAs, such as providing continuous acceleration as the electron velocity increases using a tapered slot waveguide and increasing the electron current throughput with a photonic crystal multi-channel DLA. We also discuss the design principles of apodized grating couplers, which are crucial elements in the on-chip power delivery system for DLAs. We demonstrate how basic electromagnetic theory and physical intuitions guide the design of such devices. On the other hand, sub-femtosecond manipulation of the electron in DLAs makes it a versatile electron probe to study fundamental science. Along this direction, we also discuss the quantum features of the free electron by studying the interaction between a free electron and a two-level atom. We show that resonantly modulating the free electron with optical field can enhance the electron-atom interaction. It is possible to probe the atomic coherence with the modulated electron. Also, entanglement between two-level atoms can be created by interacting them with the same free electron. Those provide new perspectives for ultrafast physics studies using the free-electron probe

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Fan Shanhui
Byer R. L. (Robert L.)
Miller D. A. B.
Photon-mediated atom-atom interaction in a confocal cavity

Engineering complex and exotic many body states is a long standing goal for ultracold atom experiments, for which strong and tunable interaction is a crucial ingredient. In this thesis, I will describe our experimental efforts using photons in a multimode confocal cavity to mediate effective interaction among atoms confined within the cavity. In contrast with traditional optical cavities where only a single fundamental Gaussian mode is coupled to the atoms, multimode cavities can support near-degenerate resonances that are well approximated by a continuum of photon modes. Superposition of cavity modes with incommensurate spatial profiles then gives rise to supermodes that adapt to atom configurations and allow for further shaping of the interatomic potential landscape. In a single mode cavity, Raman coupling through atom internal states with the cavity mode is demonstrated, leading to a novel spinor organization and Ising type cavity mediated interaction. As a first experiment in a multimode cavity, I will show that the interference of near-degenerate cavity modes leads to a strong and tunable-range local interaction between Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) trapped within the cavity. Exploiting the symmetry of a confocal cavity, we measure the interaction between the BEC and its mirror image thus avoiding the complications of overlapping atom densities. I will then discuss how a confocal cavity also hosts a non-local sign-changing interaction due to the differing longitudinal Gouy phases of cavity modes. Using holographic imaging techniques, we reconstruct the complex intra-cavity electric field and confirm the spatial character of this non-local interaction. Finally, I will discuss additional control of the relative strength of the local and the non-local interaction by pumping on two degenerate resonances of the cavity. By canceling the non-local interaction, we restore the translational symmetry of the system. The strong local interaction can then induce a crystallization transition of the BEC where the resulting optical lattice responds dynamically to local changes in atomic density and accommodates a phonon excitation. Bragg spectroscopy measurements then reveal the dispersion of the phonon mode dependent on the BEC-photon coupling strength. I will conclude by briefly describing future experiments enabled by both the local and the non-local interactions

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Lev Benjamin L.
Hartnoll Sean
Hogan Jason
Phytoplankton photoacclimation in the Southern Ocean and Arctic Ocean

Polar regions are undergoing rapid and dramatic changes. Substantial shifts in the extent and thickness of sea ice have cascading effects on marine primary production and polar ecosystems. Primary production is closely tied to environmental variables such as light and nutrient availability, which are sensitive to these climate-induced changes. Climate change-induced shifts in phytoplankton communities can have far-reaching effects on nutrient cycling, carbon drawdown and export, higher trophic levels, and benthic-pelagic coupling. In the spring, light increases from wintertime lows and sea ice begins to retreat. During this time, phytoplankton can experience both very high light (when mixed to the surface) and very low light (when under sea ice or at the base of the mixed layer). To acclimate to this variable light field, phytoplankton must optimize carbon fixation while minimizing photodamage due to periods of excessive light. Determining how phytoplankton photoacclimate will help us understand how phytoplankton might adapt to future changing environmental conditions. My dissertation aims to understand how phytoplankton photoacclimate in spring in both the Southern Ocean and the Arctic Ocean. I employ field experiments investigating how phytoplankton respond to changes in light and, in one chapter, the interactive effects of both light and iron (in much of the Southern Ocean, iron can limit phytoplankton growth). Results from my Southern Ocean (western Antarctic Peninsula) field experiments showed that at moderate light exposure, phytoplankton experienced little photodamage or changes in net primary production, and high light exposure stimulated Phaeocystis antarctica growth (but not diatom growth). My combined light and iron experiments demonstrated that light limits phytoplankton growth, whereas iron does not, despite overall low iron concentrations and evidence of iron stress. In the Arctic Ocean (Baffin Bay), both my in situ measurements and experiments demonstrate that phytoplankton under the ice, in the marginal ice zone, and in open water are photoacclimated similarly. I observed high photoprotective pigments in phytoplankton in all three irradiance regimes, as well as high rates of photosynthesis. These findings lend support to the hypothesis that Arctic phytoplankton under sea ice are primed to bloom once they have access to sufficient light. Both the Southern Ocean and Arctic Ocean results provide evidence that early season polar phytoplankton are acclimated to higher light than they are experiencing and are thus prepared to manage rapid changes in light. As sea ice thins and retreats earlier in the season, phytoplankton will be exposed to light earlier, enabling them to bloom earlier. These findings further our ability to understand the impacts of climate-driven changes on phytoplankton communities

Keywords: Earth System Science.
Advisor: Arrigo Kevin R.
Casciotti Karen Lynn
Thomas Leif N.