VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The structural transformation of the lettered city : the politics of culture and territory in modern Bogotá, Colombia

This dissertation is an history and analysis the cultural and territorial policies and thinking of lettered elites in modern Bogotá, Colombia. Building upon the work of Ángel Rama, who coined the term the lettered city to describe the close relation between lettered elites and the state apparatus during the colonial and postcolonial periods in Latin America, this study focuses on the cultural, social, institutional, and policy transformations of the Colombian lettered city centered in Bogotá between the end of the nineteenth and the end of the twentieth centuries. The analysis of the transformation of the bogotano lettered city is framed against the backdrop of the development of modernity as a global complex structured by what the philosopher Eduardo Mendieta argues are two axes standing in tension: a vertical axis of capitalist globalization imposed from above; and a horizontal axis of cosmopolitan globalization based on the implementation of what Jürgen Habermas calls the principle of democracy. This study looks first at the rise to power of a reactionary lettered city in Bogotá at the end of the nineteenth century. It then traces the transformation of this letrocracy into a technocracy during the postwar era, a process reflected in the development of modern architecture and urban planning in Bogotá. The study ends with an analysis of the politics of culture and territory of Bogotá's mayors at the end of the 1990s, arguing that these policies are marked by the influence of the lettered city. The principal argument of this dissertation is that the persistence of the lettered city in the Colombian context is due to various structural factors: from the geographical division of the Colombian territory to Colombia's position of economic dependency within the modern world system

Advisor: Hoyos Ayala Héctor
Barry Fabio
Denson Shane
Frank Zephyr L.
Ma Jean
The structure and growth of arborescent lycopsids

The biology of arborescent lycopsids has been debated for over a century, however basic aspects of their structure and growth have remained unknown. In this dissertation I apply statistical analyses of the fossil record and describe new fossil specimens to elucidate how arborescent lycopsids produced their bark, secondary vasculature, and rooting organs. Contrary to previous understanding, their bark production would have been limited, their wood production was relatively complex, they produced secondary phloem, and their rooting organs experienced aboveground lateral growth early in ontogeny. Together these findings motivate development of a new establishment model likely involving sequential production of progressively larger stigmarian axes through upright growth

Keywords: Geological Sciences.
Advisor: Boyce C. Kevin
Leslie Andrew (Andrew B.) 
Payne Jonathan L.
Structure and mechanism of the blood-brain barrier lipid transporter MFSD2A

Ion channels and transporters carry out a variety of critical physiological processes, being pivotal in signal transduction, metabolism, and cellular homeostasis. The Major Facilitator Superfamily (MFS) represents the largest group of secondary active transporters identified to date, responsible for translocating numerous diverse substrates. Due to their diverse array of substrates, the MFS proteins represent attractive targets for drug discovery and mechanistic studies. Major facilitator superfamily containing domain 2a (Mfsd2a) is a novel lysolipid transporter within MFS, transporting docosahexanoic acid (DHA) conjugated to lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC), which is crucial for proper brain development. Mfsd2a's lipid transport function has also been found to be key for inhibiting transcytosis at the blood-brain barrier (BBB), ultimately regulating BBB permeability. An exciting possibility raised by this physiological function is modulating Mfsd2a to manipulate BBB permeability for therapeutic treatments. However, a lack of structural information impedes a mechanistic understanding of this key transporter. Herein, I detail the work to determine the cryo-EM structure of Mfsd2a. Based on the Mfsd2a structure, key residues important for activity have also been mapped out in order to improve our understanding of Mfsd2a transport mechanism. The insights into Mfsd2a lipid transport can be leveraged as a foundation to guide future therapeutic development

Keywords: Molecular and Cellular Physiology.
Advisor: Feng Liang
Kobilka Brian K.
Maduke Merritt C.
Structure and mechanism of the cation chloride cotransporter NKCC1

Ion transport is fundamental to cell homeostasis, and plays an important role in numerous physiological processes such as cell signaling and volume regulation. The cation-chloride cotransporter (CCC) family of proteins is critical for regulating volume through the careful control of sodium, potassium, and chloride transport. The intricate balance and transport of these diverse ions is responsible for maintaining cellular health, with various diseases arising when dysregulation occurs. Given their importance, CCC family members serve as major drug targets. Such proteins have been studied for decades, but structural information has been lacking due to the difficulty associated with studying membrane proteins of this size, as well as a relatively disordered N-terminus. However, in recent years technical advances in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) have made it possible to study proteins such as CCC transporters in far greater detail. Here, I describe my efforts to understand the mechanism of action of a particular member of the CCC transporter family, NKCC1. NKCC1 transports sodium, potassium, and chloride in cells throughout the body. I describe the structure of NKCC1, which shows the general fold of the CCC transporter family and the unique positioning of both cytosolic and transmembrane domains. The structure of this protein, combined with functional studies and molecular dynamics simulations allow for a deeper understanding of the CCC family of proteins. Aspects covered include the overall structure of the protein, identification of specific residues responsible for ion binding, and a proposed transport mechanism. Together, these studies shed light on this important family of proteins

Advisor: Feng Liang
Kobilka Brian K.
Maduke Merritt C.
Structure engineering and electrochemical applications of metal-organic framework-based materials

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of crystalline porous solids consisting of metal ions or clusters coordinated to organic ligands. Because of their appealing features such as regular and adjustable pore size, large specific surface area, and diverse topologies and morphologies, MOFs are traditionally used in many applications including gas/vapor separation, gas storage, and catalysis. In the past decade, MOFs have been identified as a promising platform in electrochemical applications. The very recent advances in electrically conductive MOFs further enhanced the prospect of electrochemical applications for MOFs. Despite the increasing interest of applying MOF-based materials in many electrochemical applications, there is still much to be investigated, including the stability, particle size engineering, electronic property, and novel structure development for the next generation of MOF-based materials to promote their electrochemical applications. In this work, I explore the possibility of employing metal-organic framework (MOF)-based materials in electrochemical applications. Chapter 1 introduces the background and motivation of this thesis. Chapter 2 demonstrates the efforts to employ an Aluminum porphyrinic MOF for oxygen reduction reaction. Chapter 3 focuses on particle size study in oxygen electroreduction done by a Zirconium porphyrinic MOF with impressive stability in acidic electrolyte, which provides general guidelines for utilizing non-conductive MOF materials in electrocatalysis. Chapter 4 presents tuning the electronic properties of a series of conductive MOFs comprised of otcaaminophthalocynine ligands and divalent transition metals (Co, Ni and Cu) and then studied their electrocatalytic performances in oxygen reduction under basic condition. The remainder of the dissertation focuses on the design and synthesis of a 3D conductive MOF and its valence-dependent conductivity. These findings provide general guidelines for utilizing MOF materials in electrochemical applications

Keywords: Materials Science and Engineering.
Advisor: Bao Zhenan
Salleo Alberto
Cui Yi
Stuck in a Bubble: Examining Kindergarten Teachers' Approaches to Social Justice Education in Private Bay Area Classrooms

The current study aims to highlight the voices of teachers that identify as committed to bringing social justice approaches and curriculums to private early-childhood settings. Particularly, this research attempts to explore the question of how a selection of Bay Area private school kindergarten teachers utilize their own identities and understandings of social justice-oriented approaches to education to affirm diverse identities and embolden students to reflect on and take action toward greater social justice. A series of semi-structured interviews with 11 teachers, representing multiple gender and racial identities, were conducted, transcribed, and coded using an iterative and inductive process. Teachers name personal reflection and continual education as necessary tools they use to help address their own identities and biases, how they interact with their understandings of social justice, and their teaching role. Teachers emphasize how they try to empower students to participate in similar self-reflection and understanding throughout several pedagogical approaches. This study highlights the powerful role early childhood educators view themselves to have in helping students understand and reflect on their own identities, biases, and understandings of social justice. This study also points to the need for further research, structure, support, and evidence-based approaches to aid teachers in successfully teaching and implementing social justice-oriented approaches to education in private early childhood settings.

Keywords:  Graduate School of Education
social justice education
early-childhood
private school
kindergarten
teacher identity
bias
Thesis
Advisor: Kelman Ari
Smith Daniel Scott
Willinsky John
Lit Ira
Studies of neural circuit modulation

Neural circuit modulations are closely related, if not causally connected, with animal behavioral changes, such as acquired behaviors during learning, periodic sexual behaviors or environment-induced behavioral adaptations. Circuit modulations can be implemented through various ways. For example, at the neuronal level, cellular excitability and excitation-inhibition input balance may be adjusted; at the synaptic transmission level, synaptic strength or numbers may be regulated; and at the population level, particular region may exhibit differential activity intensity or network pattern during the behavioral change. My graduate research involved the neural circuit modulation in the context of three different behavioral adaptations. In the first study, I focused on the modulation of striatal circuits by a neuropeptide called dynorphin. Conditional knocking out dynorphin from the striatum led to an enhanced long-term potentiation (LTP) in the striatal direct-pathway neurons, and rendered the mice to perform better during the reward-guided instrumental learning. This indicates dynorphin may suppress striatal LTP expression and downregulate instrumental learning. The second study focused on the modulation of sensory cortex by long-term environmental stress. We showed that stress led to loss of dendritic spines of layer 5 pyramidal neurons, and a deteriorated performance during whisker-dependent texture discrimination task. This might be caused by the reduced excitability of parvalbumin-expressing inhibitory interneurons (PV+ INs), which altered the excitation-inhibition input balance onto layer 5 pyramidal neurons. The third study focused on the modulation of a ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) circuit during female sexual cycle. We reported that projections from progesterone receptor expressing neurons in the VMH (PR+ VMH) to the anteroventral periventricular (AVPV) nucleus change across the 5-day mouse estrous cycle, with ~3-fold more termini and functional connections during estrus. This cyclic increase is regulated by estrogen signaling, and essential for female sexual behaviors. This study showed the neural circuit mechanism that links female sexual behavior to the hormonal cycle

Keywords: Biology.
Advisor: Ding Jun (Jun B.)
Chen Xiaoke
Luo Liqun
Shah Nirao
A study of select covalent and non-covalent post-translational modifications and their biological consequences

Post-translational modifications (PTMs) occur on many proteins, and generally exist to change the behavior of the proteins upon which they are found. These modifications can be added or removed by certain classes of enzymes, called "writers" and "erasers" respectively, and their activity can lead to vastly different biological consequences. Still another class of proteins called "readers" are capable of specifically recognizing and binding to proteins that bear certain PTMs, adding another layer of regulation to many different cellular processes. Herein, we expand on the knowledge regarding both "reader" and "writer" proteins, showing evidence for specific interaction between acyl molecules and HEAT- and ARM-repeat containing proteins, as well as demonstrating RPL12 as the physiological substrate of the methyltransferase SETD4 and the role this methylation event plays in regulating mRNA translation elongation

Advisor: Chua Katrin Faye
Gozani Or Pinchas
Dixon Scott James
Van Rechem Capucine
A study of the photogalvanic effect in bismuth-based cuprate superconductors

In this thesis, we probe the fate of inversion symmetry in the pseudogap phase of cuprate high-temperature superconductors. We study the photogalvanic effect in both single and double layer bismuth-based cuprates with an emphasis on both the circular and linear photogalvanic effects. Through a detailed analysis of photogalvanic currents on the (i) polarization of excitation light, (ii) temperature, (iii) angle of incidence, and (iv) orientation of crystals, we find that the pseudogap state breaks inversion symmetry and exhibits a chiral behavior at the length scale of micrometers. We also carry out a full symmetry analysis on photogalvanic tensors, and find that the point group symmetry of the pseudogap is either mm2 (antiferromagnetic) or mm21 (paramagnetic). With domain averaging that maintains chirality, these symmetry groups are consistent with previous measurements that specifically probe rotation symmetry breaking, time-reversal symmetry breaking, or inversion symmetry breaking, and also with some models of the pseudogap order parameter. The origin of such domain averaging is yet to be understood

Keywords: Applied Physics.
Advisor: Kapitulnik Aharon
Fisher Ian R. (Ian Randal)
Kivelson Steven
A study on the biological and physical effects of radiation on lung and skin in mice

Radiation therapy is one of the main treatments against cancer. Approximately 50% of all cancer patients are treated with radiation therapy. Despite the high utilization rate of radiation in the treatment of cancer, not all biological effects of radiation on living tissues are understood. Here, I describe my research on two such effects: radiation-induced enhanced growth of cancer cells in irradiated tissue, and the lower toxicity of ultrahigh dose-rate radiation on skin tissue. The first part of this dissertation describes my work on studying the effect of radiation in enhancing the growth of circulating cancer cells in irradiated tissues. Here, I show that radiation enhances the growth of three different breast cancer cell lines in irradiated lung tissue injected into the circulation of immunodeficient mice. I also show that this phenomenon is regulated by T cells, as radiation is unable to enhance the growth of circulating breast cancer cells in immunocompetent mice, but after depletion of T cells, the effect is the same as in immunodeficient mice. The second part of this dissertation focuses on the lower toxicity associated with the delivery of ultrahigh dose-rate radiation to living tissues. I show that FLASH radiation is less toxic to skin tissue in mice than conventional dose-rate radiation. I also show that FLASH radiation is associated with decreased mortality in mice following hemithoracic irradiation compared to conventional dose-rate radiation. In conclusion, this dissertation focuses on two biological and physical effects of radiation that are not fully understood and aims to expand and contribute to the knowledge in the fields of radiation and cancer biology

Advisor: Graves Edward (Edward Elliot)
Engleman Edgar G.
Rankin Erinn
Sage Julien
Style in time : online perception of sociolinguistic cues

Speakers use styles - combinations of socially meaningful sounds - to construct and project different social identities, or personae. How do listeners recognize these sounds as belonging to a particular linguistic style, spoken by a particular kind of person? Sociolinguistic work has shown that the contribution of individual speech features (or cues) is highly mutable, and context-dependent - suggesting that listeners must integrate the meaning contributions of individual cues with all the other social impressions that arise when hearing someone talk. In this dissertation, I ask how and when they do so. I present results from a series of web-based experiments that ask how two cues - -in' (vs. -ing) and HRT ('uptalk') - modulate listeners' implicit, online inferences, and explicit, offline judgments about two social personae; a Tough and a Valley Girl speaker. I first show that the contribution of these cues on explicit, offline judgments is dependent on the contextual information available to listeners: sociolinguistic cues don't vary just in the range of meanings they elicit, but also in the degree to which they give rise to specific meanings. I then show that listeners rapidly reconcile the meaning contributions of sociolinguistic cues when making inferences about a speaker's persona, and that the extent to which listeners' online and offline beliefs are modulated by a given cue is broadly proportional to the cue's socioindexical informativity. I then ask whether these results generalize to an additional set of four voices: I show that they do, and that listeners weigh the meaning contributions of a cue against their existing expectations about the speaker. Finally, I show that when faced with conflicting information about a speaker's persona, listeners will variably weight the contribution of a given cue based on voice-specific detail. Together, these results point to a probabilistic account of sociolinguistic perception in which listeners integrate various sources of contextual and linguistic information, but prioritize and place the greatest weight on the most informative aspects. This dissertation draws on insights from the cognitive sciences in systematically investigating problems and phenomena that are central to the study of sociolinguistic style. In doing so, it provides a methodological and conceptual framework for future experimentation and theorization

Keywords: Linguistics.
Advisor: Degen Judith
Podesva Robert
Eckert Penelope
Subsequent risk of stillbirth, preterm birth, and small for gestational age: A cross-outcomes analysis of adverse birth outcomes in California from 1997-2011

Individuals who experience an adverse birth outcome such as stillbirth, preterm birth, or small for gestational age (SGA) have an increased risk of outcome recurrence in a subsequent pregnancy. There is limited research on cross-outcome risks, i.e., given an adverse outcome in index pregnancy, the risk of a different but related adverse outcome in subsequent pregnancy. Therefore, we assessed cross-outcome risks for subsequent stillbirth, preterm birth, and SGA.
We used birth certificate and fetal death data from 1997-2011 for singleton California births. The study population consisted of sequential birth pairs (index birth and subsequent birth). Stillbirth was defined as delivery at 20 weeks of gestation of a fetus that died in utero; preterm birth as live birth at 20-36 weeks; and SGA as birthweight <10th percentile for infants of the same sex and gestational age. Relative Risks (RR) were computed using modified Poisson regression with robust standard errors; models were adjusted for variables known to be associated with adverse birth outcomes (e.g., maternal age).
Of 1,992,577 birth pairs, 0.6%, 9.2%, and 10.6% of index births were stillborn, preterm, and SGA, respectively. Individuals experiencing a stillbirth at index birth had an adjusted RR 1.98 (95% CI 1.90, 2.07) for the next birth being preterm and 1.39 (95% CI 1.31, 1.47) for subsequent SGA. Among those with preterm birth at index birth, the adjusted RRs were 1.97 (95% CI 1.84, 2.10) and 1.44 (95% CI 1.42, 1.46) for stillbirth and SGA. Among those with SGA at index birth, the adjusted RRs were 1.56 (95% CI 1.46, 1.67) and 1.48 (95% CI 1.46, 1.50) for stillbirth and preterm birth. The adjusted recurrence risk of each adverse outcome was higher than for cross outcomes: 3.50 (95% CI 2.91, 4.21) for stillbirth, 2.80 (95% CI 2.76, 2.83) for preterm birth, and 3.50 (95% CI 3.46, 3.54) for SGA. Similar RRs for cross-outcome risks were reported in the sensitivity cohort restricted to first and second births only, and with adjustment using inverse-probability censoring weights to account for potential selection bias introduced due to differential censorship.
In addition to an increased risk of recurrent adverse outcomes, we found that individuals experiencing an adverse outcome in one pregnancy had an increased risk of a different adverse outcome in a subsequent pregnancy. These findings support the relatedness of the outcomes and could inform mechanistic studies as well as reproductive planning discussions for individuals experiencing an adverse birth outcome, if subsequent pregnancy is desired.

Keywords:  Department of Health Research & Policy
Birth outcomes
Epidemiology
Reproductive Epidemiology
Pregnancy
Stanford School of Medicine
Department of Epidemiology and Population Health
Thesis
Advisor: Carmichael Suzan L
Simard Julia