VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Boron nitride and graphene for thermal management : from fundamentals to devices

Decades of advances in semiconductor technology have led to the scaling of silicon transistors towards nanometer scale dimensions, culminating in physical limitations to transistor size, and the concurrent issue of thermal degradation and excessive energy consumption. As the semiconductor industry moves towards continuously increasing computational density, for example from planar to 3-dimensional (3D) vertical stacking, the ability to effectively regulate temperature and manage heat has become a pressing bottleneck to the realization of these dense architectures. Thermal challenges in high-density memory and computation require new thermal and material considerations at the nanoscale. Accurate knowledge of temperature and heat transport within a complex system is the essential first step to successful thermal management. To this end, experimental validation of material thermal conductivity is fundamental both to understanding thermal transport and to implementing solid state thermal management approaches. The complexity of thermal transport within a dense system also necessitates novel thermal management tactics including active methods of routing heat, such as thermal switching. This dissertation evaluates the intersection of nanoscale thermal transport and nanomaterials, assessing materials that show promise for low-temperature integration in semiconductor-based systems. The studies presented in this thesis range from fundamental thermal, electrical, and material characterization thin films to the design, demonstration, and characterization of an active thermal switch. We first present thermal characterization of nanoscale boron nitride thin films transferred and deposited at low temperature (< 500 °C) for back-end of the line (BEOL) temperature compatible processes. We report the in-plane thermal conductivity measurement of large area hexagonal boron nitride thin films grown using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and transferred at room temperature to be 55-78 W/m/K from 300-400 K. We also evaluate the complementary thermal and electrical properties of low thermal conductivity boron nitride films deposited at room temperature using electron enhanced atomic layer deposition (EE-ALD). These electrically insulating films have very low cross-plane thermal conductivities (< 0.6 W/m/K) with 10 nm thick films approaching the amorphous thermal limit of BN (~0.13 W/m/k). Finally, we present the fabrication and thermal characterization of graphene-based thermal switches for active thermal management, reporting the first thermal switch based on flexible, collapsible graphene membranes with low operating voltage (~2V)

Keywords: Engineering.
Materials Science and Engineering.
Advisor: Pop Eric
Salleo Alberto
Howe Roger Thomas
Borrowed Theory: Overshooting Storm Tops as Cloud Mountains

Wind dynamics atop supercell storms play a pivotal role in water-content transfer between the troposphere and stratosphere and may enable early, satellite-image detection of hazardous weather conditions on the ground. However, to date their study has remained limited to empirical and observational analyses. This study tests the ability of hydraulic jump theory borrowed from mountain wave theory to capture the dynamics of wind flowing over supercell storms and into Above Anvil Cirrus Plumes. I find significant agreement between mountain theory and storm top dynamics and explore modifications that may enable a complete hydraulic jump theory of extreme winds at the top of supercell thunderstorms.

Keywords: Geophysics
Above Anvil Cirrus Plume
Hydraulic Jump
Supercell Thunderstorm
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Thesis
Advisor: O'Neill Morgan
Brass orchids : techniques of the posthuman in Black popular music

In this dissertation, I analyze the musical and sonic techniques employed in works by four Black American artists - the musicians J Dilla and Kanye West, and the authors Nathaniel Mackey and Samuel Delany - to develop three overlapping conceptions of the posthuman. Popular music has been a powerful tool for humans to navigate the intersection of subjectivity and technology, and the history of African-American music in particular is characterized by experimentation with music's ability to augment, extend, or mediate human subjectivity. To unpack this history, my project follows the work of theorists like Kodwo Eshun, Alexander Weheliye in proposing a critical methodology in which, as Eshun puts it, "Instead of theory saving music from itself... music is heard as the pop analysis it already is." By treating these artists' work as both aesthetic and theoretical documents, I develop a conception of the posthuman subject based on an enhanced notion of technique and reframe the posthuman not as a singular, clearly-defined subject position but rather as a broader tradition of skepticism towards the human subject woven into the legacy of Black cultural production

Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Modern Thought and Literature.
Advisor: Bukatman Scott
Elam Michele
Kronengold Charles (Charles Stewart)
Breaking the Ice: Russian and Chinese Sharp Power in the Interstate System

This study identifies two actors, China and Russia, and investigates their relationship through the lens of sharp power––that which is less pugnacious than hard power, but more coercive than soft power, and undermines faith in or the function of democratic processes and institutions. Specifically, sharp power is one method through which states can express national attitudes within the interstate system. Sharp power is a useful theoretical framework on two fronts. First, it aids scholars in gleaning the motivations behind how Russia and China jointly and separately interface with conceptions of “order.” Second, it helps scholars and analysts to discern the robustness of Sino-Russian cooperation and identify areas of competition. The two lines of thought are synthesized in how China’s and Russia’s use of sharp power in the interstate system reveals strategic convergence or dissonance. That is, Russia’s and China’s bilateral approaches to each other are informed by how they conceive of their status within and adherence to the interstate order. To that end, this thesis addresses the question, “To what extent are the Chinese and Russian states converging on a mutual set of coercive instruments in multilateral organizations, and what threat, if any, does the Sino-Russian relationship pose to the current world order?” The following investigation hypothesizes that the sharp power framework elucidates nuances regarding how states interface with notions of order, and therefore lends insights into the Sino-Russian relationship that are not easily gleaned from the facts on the ground. In substantiating this hypothesis, the thesis covers the character of sharp power instruments, how they can be deployed in the interstate context, Russian and Chinese approaches to order (as informed by sharp power usage in multilateral forums), what these insights tell scholars about the nature of their relationship, how these dynamics play out in a key security theater––the Arctic––and possible responses from Western actors. It posits two main conclusions: (1) China is a more “responsible” player with deeper stakes in the interstate system than Russia; (2) the Sino-Russian relationship is limited primarily by a lack of coherence in their respective approaches to order and each’s status within it. Nestled in this conclusion is the assertion that the prevailing conceptualization of the “liberal international order” in political science literature risks conflating the states’ motivations, resulting in possible misdiagnosis and mal-prescription. A more accurate depiction of this order is as a highly heterogeneous and primarily legal framework, indicating that scholars need more refined analytical instruments to distinguish between illegitimate power projection and legitimate interest or presence.

Keywords: Arctic
Hybrid warfare
Gray-zone
Interstate
Sharp Power
Russia
China
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Capstone
Thesis
Student project report
Advisor: McFaul Michael
Gottemoeller Rose
Building a B Cell Differentiation Model for X-Linked Agammaglobulinemia Using Pluripotent Stem Cells

X-Linked Agammaglobulinemia (XLA) is the most common primary immunodeficiency in males in the United States. It is characterized by the inability to produce mature B cells due to mutations in the BTK gene. Current treatments involve repeated injection of immunoglobulins, but these have limitations, as patients can have adverse reactions and this treatment does not replace the entire immune response. As a result, gene correction is considered a viable therapy for XLA; however, a robust B cell differentiation model to study the effect of using gene therapy to treat XLA has not been established. Although cytokines are not sufficient to induce differentiation, studies have shown that transcription factor-driven differentiation systems have been proven to be successful in producing differentiated cells from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs). Therefore, this project aimed to study and replicate B cell development in vitro with the purpose of designing a new differentiation model using B cell-specific transcription factors (TFs), EBF1 and PAX5. This was approached by using the gene editing tool clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-Cas9 (CRISPR-Cas9) and adeno-associated virus type 6 (AAV6) on human PSCs. First, assessment of wild type PSC potential to differentiate into B cells using cytokines confirmed inefficient B cell development. Then, an in-depth study of BTK mutations led to the generation of three pluripotent XLA-knockout cell lines that imitate the disease phenotype. The design and integration of GFP reporter constructs into the B-cell specific marker CD20 is still being studied. Finally, TF constructs were designed with the purpose of enhancing a cytokine-based B cell differentiation. These results support the development of PSC lines with transgenic B cell differentiation TFs as a model for XLA and other B cell-related malignancies, while eliminating the need for patients to provide bone marrow or hematopoietic stem cell samples.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
B cell
Differentiation
Transcription factors
Pluripotent stem cells
X-Linked Agammaglobulinemia
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Thesis
Advisor: Porteus Matthew
Ghanim Hana
Dixon Scott
Building and evaluating computational models of the mammalian visual system

Animals continuously and dynamically process sensory information in service of both flexible and inflexible behaviours. To understand the brain's complex information-processing pipeline by which such behaviours arise, we must first understand how the brain transforms sensory information from its raw form. This will then allow us determine what information is accessible downstream in the process. In this dissertation, we try to understand how the brain processes visual information, which entails building and evaluating computational models that can predict how the animal will respond to novel visual inputs. We focus on a class of models known as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and demonstrate ways in which they can be evaluated against and be built for primates and for rodents to better understand how the mammalian visual system supports behaviour. We first demonstrate a time-resolved correspondence between a feedforward CNN and whole-brain neural responses during human object processing and develop a data-driven optimization approach to improve upon correlations achieved between the model and the neural data. Motivated by extensive empirical work in rodents on navigational and on decision-making behaviours and by the desire to integrate models of cortical and of subcortical areas that support these behaviours, we build quantitatively accurate CNN models of the mouse visual system. Although CNNs are state-of-the-art models of primate and of rodent visual processing, they are extremely brittle. We therefore examine the nature of their brittleness and show the existence of representational differences between primary visual cortex of non-human primates and the models. Finally, we suggest that building less-brittle models will require us to incorporate the temporally-continuous nature of the visual inputs that animals receive. Looking forward, we hope that models of sensory cortex can be integrated with computational models of downstream cortical and subcortical areas, so that we can better understand how flexible and inflexible behaviours arise

Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Psychology.
Advisor: Norcia Anthony Matthew
Gardner Justin
Grill-Spector Kalanit
Yamins Daniel
Building blocks for hybrid metal-semiconductor quantum circuits in InAs two-dimensional electron gases

In this work, we build up InAs as a platform for mesoscopic physics toward the eventual goal of analog quantum simulation. Specifically, we demonstrate in an InAs 2DEG quantum point contacts and quantum dots that are operational in the quantum Hall regime. Together, these serve as the basic circuit elements for controlling the flow of electrons at the nanoscale. In analogy to quantum optics, point contacts can serve as beam splitters and quantum dots can serve as artificial atoms, and having these building blocks allows us to further probe electron interactions. Our highly transparent, hybrid metal-semiconductor quantum dots have charging energies several times larger than has been achieved in other solid-state platforms, and this encourages the potential for scaling to quantum dot arrays and simulating many-body phenomena like the charge Kondo effect

Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Applied Physics.
Advisor: Goldhaber-Gordon David
Devereaux Thomas Peter
Feldman Ben (Benjamin Ezekiel)
Building models of spectroscopy for condensed phase systems with atomistic detail using theory and machine learning

Spectroscopic techniques provide us with a means of investigating a system's microscopic structure and dynamics. Accurate atomistic simulations can help us explicitly connect spectroscopic features to the underlying electronic and nuclear structure and dynamics that give rise to them. In this dissertation, I highlight my work in rendering accurate atomistic simulations of different linear and multidimensional spectroscopies more computationally tractable by leveraging semiclassical approaches for theoretically treating spectroscopies and developing machine learning (ML) models to serve as proxies for ab initio electronic structure calculations. Chapter 1 provides a quick overview of the ML approaches I employed and theoretical background for how I used molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to simulate different spectroscopies. Chapter 2 presents work I have conducted in training ML potential energy surfaces for liquid water using transfer learning to target high-level ab initio electronic structure theories in order to accurately and efficiently conduct MD simulations. In Chapters 3 and 4, I develop ML models for electronic excitation energies in order to simulate linear and 2D electronic absorption spectroscopies for various solvated chromophore systems and highlight the inability of TDDFT to treat the extent to which hydrogen-bonding affects the distribution of excitation energies. Lastly, Chapter 5 highlights my work in developing a theoretical framework to simulate novel time-resolved X-ray diffraction experiments, which can be used to probe the orientational structural dynamics of disordered condensed phase systems, and benchmarking with results for liquid chloroform

Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Chemistry.
Advisor: Markland Thomas E.
Kanan Matthew William
Rotskoff Grant
Bureaucracy matters : organizational structure and performance in Brazil's protected areas agency

While scientists and practitioners call for increasing ambition in environmental objectives, state capacity to meet existing goals is in many places weak. I examine potential to improve government agencies' implementation of environmental public policy through more strategic resource deployment. I do so through a mixed-methods study of personnel management and deforestation control in Brazil's federal protected areas agency, the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), which manages one of the world's largest systems of protected areas. First, I examine the subjurisdiction conditions under which additional public employees will most positively impact deforestation outcomes. To do so, I combine a comparative case study of six ICMBio management teams operating in the Amazon region with panel regression analysis covering 322 federal protected areas over ten years. I find that the Chico Mendes Institute could have prevented on the order of 1,700 km2 of deforestation over this period through more strategic allocation of its personnel. I then examine the geographic, political, and organizational factors that produced a misalignment between subjurisdiction personnel needs and actual personnel allocation in the agency's first decade. This chapter draws on historical institutional analysis and descriptive analysis of quantitative data related to personnel, protected areas, and socioeconomic characteristics of the regions in which Brazil's federal protected areas are located. Altogether, I demonstrate the value of "looking inside" of public environmental organizations to understand environmental outcomes. In addition, I generate concrete policy recommendations for the Chico Mendes Institute itself: the principal guardian of some of the most important ecosystems on Earth

Keywords: Sustainability.
Advisor: Fukuyama Francis
Ortolano Leonard
Honig Dan
Lambin Eric F.
Burned: Measuring the Effects of Wildfires on Suicide

With persistent drought and rising temperatures, wildfires in the United States have become increasingly numerous and destructive. In recent years, researchers have attempted to quantify the impacts of these wildfires across health, industrial, and environmental outcomes. One area of research in this growing body of literature that has been largely overlooked is the effect of wildfires on mental health outcomes. Wildfires and poor mental health outcomes share similar geospatial and seasonal patterns. Fires are also traumatic events to those nearby and indirectly influence many of the factors that affect mental health, including climate, illness and disease. In this paper, we quantify the relationship between wildfires – specifically, proximity to fire events and exposure to smoke – and the most extreme mental health outcome: suicide. We run a fixed effects regression that models county level suicide rate as a function of proximity to the closest wildfire and PM2.5 exposure from fires, incorporating lags to measure effect over time and a vector of meteorological controls that may effect both wildfires and suicide. Despite the trove of anecdotal evidence and speculation connecting wildfires with suicide, we find that proximity to fires and PM2.5 exposure from wildfire exhibit no effect on suicides rates.

Keywords: Wildfire, Mental Health, PM2.5, Climate Change.
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Thesis
Advisor: Burke Marshall
Heft-Neal Sam
Butterflies in disguise

Butterflies in Disguise is an album of original songs. It serves as an examination of our ever-growing dependency on technology, how the digital world brings about excessive noise and stifles room for wonder, and how we cope nostalgically, yearning for a simpler time. The title represents an interplay between nature and technology within the music, where acoustic elements become disguised by technology through digital transformation. The title references the opening lyric of the theme song from Reading Rainbow, an influential television show from my childhood. As part of the production process, I worked in the recording studio with musicians exploring various music production strategies such as live arranging, recording the outcome of musical games and structured improvisation, and placing musicians in custom designed virtual environments to influence musical responses. With the addition of many overdubs of vocals and multiple instruments from me and other musicians, the audio material was then digitally sculpted and transformed into an album of ten tracks

Keywords: Humanities and Sciences.
Music.
Advisor: Applebaum Mark
Chafe Chris
Kapuscinski Jaroslaw
Ulman Erik
Buying Into Selling Out: How Stanford Students Understand Corporate Career Funneling and Justify Their Decision to Participate

The relationship between the job market and elite higher education is understudied in
sociology. Some scholars have detailed the cultural and institutional mechanisms which
funnel students into tech, finance, and consulting: today’s predominant prestigious
post-grad jobs. However, none have captured how elite students understand corporate
career funneling. This deficiency is critical in the context of class reproduction and
inequality, specifically for understanding the process by which elite students stream into
jobs at the top of the occupational hierarchy. To fill this gap, I use ethnographic
observation and conduct in-depth interviews with graduating Stanford students from
wealthy backgrounds entering tech, finance, or consulting. My interview respondents felt
judged by their peers for their career choice, believing that some Stanford students
would label them “sellouts.” The term “sellout” represents a moral symbolic boundary
which Stanford upperclassmen use to distinguish themselves from their peers whose
career choices they deem morally objectionable. However, most of my respondents did
not self-identify as “sellouts” and instead employed justifications that redefined their
relationship to the work or redefined the work itself in order to preserve their moral
status. While these justifications do not necessarily give us insight into what motivates
job choice, they carry concerning implications for inequality.

Keywords: Elite higher education
Career funnelling
Career Inequality
Class and inequality
Stanford students and occupational hierarchy
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Thesis
Advisor: Kiviat Barbara
"Buying Into Selling Out: How Stanford Students Understand Corporate Career Funneling and Justify Their Decision to Participate"

The relationship between the job market and elite higher education is understudied in sociology. Some scholars have detailed the cultural and institutional mechanisms which funnel students into tech, finance, and consulting: today’s predominant prestigious post-grad jobs. However, none have captured how elite students understand corporate career funneling. This deficiency is critical in the context of class reproduction and inequality, specifically for understanding the process by which elite students stream into jobs at the top of the occupational hierarchy. To fill this gap, I use ethnographic observation and conduct in-depth interviews with graduating Stanford students from wealthy backgrounds entering tech, finance, or consulting. My interview respondents felt judged by their peers for their career choice, believing that some Stanford students would label them “sellouts.” The term “sellout” represents a moral symbolic boundary which Stanford upperclassmen use to distinguish themselves from their peers whose career choices they deem morally objectionable. However, most of my respondents did not self-identify as “sellouts” and instead employed justifications that redefined their relationship to the work or redefined the work itself in order to preserve their moral status. While these justifications do not necessarily give us insight into what motivates job choice, they carry concerning implications for inequality.

Keywords: career choice
career funneling
elite students
elite education
inequality
class reproduction
Selling out
Text
Thesis
Advisor: Kiviat Barbara