VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Learning Islam: Identity, Education, and Empire

Situating education within world-systems analysis and in the longue durée of capitalist history affords a critical view of public schooling and Islamic education in the US. While the American Muslim community copes with the aftermath of 9/11 and the effects of the war on terror, the business of providing Islamic education to young American Muslims and educating them about the larger world they live in remains a challenge. Public schooling represents democracy, the right to free and universal education, and the prospect of social mobility, but it also hides the underlying historical forces of colonialism, capitalism, cultural domination, cultural genocide, and segregation. Yet, unlike many centuries past, Islamic education during the Cold War also served a geopolitical agenda against communism, distorting and defaming the teachings of Islam. Contrasting epistemological and ontological dissimilarities between California public school standards and Islamic education makes visible the tensions and tendencies that arise out of combining the two in a private Islamic school. Centering on a private Islamic school located in the Silicon Valley, and with a view to serving the learning needs of Muslim children in the US post 9/11, this dissertation surveys the fears and hopes of the Muslim community, and the opportunities and challenges of Islamic education that lie ahead. Effectively, the necessity arises in formulating a new vision of Islamic education that prepares young American Muslims to contribute positively to an increasingly militarized, racialized, divided world. Based on the longue durée of Abrahamic faiths, relating modern and Islamic history, Islamic education inside the US must re-conceptualize the understanding of the Qur’an and Islam, so as to develop a spirituality and worldview that prepare young American Muslims to serve the social and political needs of their communities, their country, and the world at large.

Advisor: Nasir, Na’ilah S
Grosfoguel, Ramon
Language Development of Children who Use AAC: Early Verb Categories and Inflection and the Emergence of Clause Constructions

For typically developing children, the process that allows them to master their first language and to acquire adult-like forms by the age of five is well documented through a large body of research (Brown, 1973; Clark, 2016; Miller & Chapman, 1981). However, for children with congenital severe motor and speech disorders (MSDs) who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) instead of their natural speech to communicate, the situation is much different. The field of AAC is relatively young and very few empirical studies have been conducted on the grammatical development of such children (Binger & Light, 2008; Sutton, Soto, & Blockberger, 2002). The goal of this dissertation is to raise the question: to what extent does the grammatical development of these children differ from that of typically developing children? To answer this question the dissertation is presented in two distinct but related studies examining the developmental patterns of 1) the production of early verb categories and their inflection and 2) the emergence of clause constructions. These studies were conducted by analyzing a corpus of four children, aged 9 to 13 years, with severe motor and speech disorders (MSDs) who used speech generative devices (SGDs) as they interacted with a familiar adult over the period of nine months. This corpus was collected as part of a larger study exploring the effect of conversation-based intervention on the acquisition of vocabulary and grammatical markers by these children (Soto & Clarke, 2017). Implications of this research suggest that children with severe MSDs and no evidence of cognitive impairment develop mental representations similar to typically developing children. This predicts similarities in the emergence of verbal categories, verbal inflection, and complex clause structures. Discrepancies in development are explained in terms of the characteristics and constraints of aided communication.

Advisor: Cunningham, Anne
Soto, Gloria
A Novel Approach to Medical Exoskeleton Stabilization

In the year 2016, it is estimated that 282,000 people were living with a spinal cord injury (SCI) in the United States. Furthermore, it is estimated that 17,000 new SCI cases arise each year in the United States. As a result of their injuries, those affected by SCIs are commonly subjected to a plethora of physical, psychological, and financial hardships. These hardships can be so severe that, on average, individuals affected by SCIs experience significantly lower life expectancies than those without SCIs. In an attempt to improve the quality and span of life of individuals with SCIs, there has been an increased interest in pursuing technologies such as the exoskeleton - a wearable robotic device which provides support and bipedal locomotion for individuals with mobility disorders. Despite the promise of exoskeletons, there are still clear technical inadequacies that exist in the field itself. One of the most glaring inadequacies pertains to user safety and the prevention of falls while wearing an exoskeleton./n/nTo maintain stability, an exoskeleton user will almost always walk with the assistance of crutches. While the use of crutches clearly provides some degree of stability, crutch usage inherently places substantial responsibility on the exoskeleton user to manipulate said crutches correctly. With one small misplacement of the crutches as the prerequisite for an adverse event, even the most experienced exoskeleton users run a high risk of falling at all times. Thus, in the opinion of the author, crutches are not an acceptable solution for stable exoskeleton locomotion./nIn this thesis, the primary objective is to provide locomotion in an exoskeleton with a reduced chance of falling (compared to locomotion in an exoskeleton with crutches). To satisfy said objective, an exoskeleton support mechanism (ESM) is proposed by the author. This thesis provides a thorough explanation of the background theory, system architecture, and design analysis that went into making the ESM a reality. Additionally, through a combination of experimentation and anecdotal findings (described within), use of the ESM in combination with a walker is shown to provide locomotion in an exoskeleton with a reduced chance of falling - thereby satisfying the primary objective. The exoskeleton support mechanism presented in this thesis clearly advances the state of the art in medical exoskeleton stabilization while also acting as a critical puzzle piece in providing a better quality of life for those affected by spinal cord injuries.

Advisor: Kazerooni, Homayoon
Essays in Labour Economics

This dissertation contains three chapters. The first studies police killings in USA and its determinants. Among other things, it finds that federal data collected on police killings undercount the number of kills by at least two-thirds. Additionally, we find evidence that some policy relevant levers such as the racial diversity of the force affect the number of police killings in an area./nChapters two and three both relate to the importance of new firms to a local labour market. Studying the region of Veneto, Italy, I find that new firms benefit the local regions they set up in through the creation of new jobs, many of which go to local inhabitants including those not previously employed. I find evidence that a large new firm opening can affect the hazard rate of reentry into the labour force by 1\%. However, I find limited evidence of spillovers in wages. New firms mechanically raise the wages of their workers but do not affect the overall region's wages. However, they enable the flow information that allows those workers not initially hired by new firms to find better paying jobs, demonstrating the importance of social networks in wage growth and job creation.

Advisor: Card, David E
The Creation of a ‘People’s Hero’: Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev and the Fate of Soviet Popular History

This dissertation is an analysis of the relationship between grand narratives and individual identity in the Soviet context analyzed through the popular mythology of Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev. It uses the concept of heroism effectively to bridge the divide between the collective and the discrete historical actor. The category of the hero, long central to historical narratives, has garnered scant attention in recent years. Contemporary history, which tends to emphasize the ‘bottom-up,’ has rightly pushed back against the representation of history as the province of powerful individuals. Yet heroism, too, can be explored from a bottom-up perspective by analyzing individual and popular engagement with, and influence on, heroic ideals./nThe popular mythology of Vasilii Ivanovich Chapaev is without an equivalent in Soviet History and offers critical insight into the dialectics of popular legitimacy in the world’s first socialist state. In Russia today, the widespread proliferation of images and stories about the peasant partisan leader, who went on to command a Bolshevik division during the Russian Civil War before dying in battle in 1919, is known as the “Chapaev Phenomenon.” Chapaev’s status in Russian memory is second only to that of Lenin, both in prevalence and longevity. Unlike Lenin, however, Chapaev was neither a founder of the state nor even a representative of its political class. On the contrary, his social origins in the peasantry made him politically suspect during his lifetime. And yet Chapaev’s popular appeal not only supported every political regime since the 1920s, it has endured well beyond the collapse of the Soviet state. In five chapters, my dissertation explains why. Centering on the concept of myth, it focuses on representations of Chapaev as a ‘people’s hero’ to explain how an individual became a cultural icon central to the self-representation of the Soviet state, and why a multitude of individuals appropriated this myth, building it into their own lives. Historically significant not only for its longevity, but for the cultural importance of the works it has spawned, Chapaev’s lives and afterlives inspired some of the most influential artistic and literary documents of the Soviet era, in some cases with heavy funding by the state. Nevertheless, beginning in the 1960s, he became a central figure in the irreverent jokes about the regime prominent in late Soviet culture. Paradoxically, these jokes underscored the willingness of Soviet citizens to make an ideological hero their own. Chapaev’s popularity ultimately transcended the collapse of the state that spawned it, enduring to become a condensed metaphor for Soviet History itself.

Advisor: Slezkine, Yuri
Regulation and Assembly of the Proteasome Base

The ubiquitin-proteasome system is largely responsible for the turnover of proteins in the/neukaryotic cell. The proteasome is a compartmental protease of the AAA+ family, and it/nmechanically unfolds ubiquitinated substrates into a proteolytic chamber in an ATPdependent/nmanner for degradation. This mechanical unfolding is performed by the/nproteasome base, but the AAA-motor can only function as a part of the larger proteasome/ncomplex. In addition to unfolding, the proteasome must first be recognize substrates by/ntheir attached ubiquitin chains and thread them into the motor. Ubiquitin modifications/nmust be removed by the deubiquitinase Rpn11. This dissertation focuses on the effect of/nsubstoichiometric proteasome components in the assembly and function of the base. First,/nthis dissertation focuses on how substoichiometric proteasome components Ubp6 and/nRad23 affect proteasomal degradation through their interactions with the base./nUbp6, a deubiquitinase, affects the conformational state of the proteasome through direct/ninteraction with the N-ring in the base in addition to interactions with base subunit Rpn1./nBy enforcing a substrate-engaged conformation in the proteasome, ubiquitin-bound Ubp6/ninhibits Rpn11, stimulates ATPase activity, and shuts down substrate turnover. Ubp6 acts/nmore slowly on ubiquitin-protein substrates than Rpn11 but displays higher activity towards/nnon-translocation dependent ubiquitin substrates. Rad23 also binds to Rpn1 and serves as a/nubiquitin receptor at the proteasome. Substrates delivered through Rad23 are/ndeubiquitinated and degraded more slowly than those delivered through the intrinsic/nubiquitin receptor, Rpn10. However, substrates delivered through either receptor are/ndeubiquitinated by Ubp6 at similar rates./nFinally, this dissertation examines the importance of four base-specific assembly factors in/nheterologous expression of the base. These assembly factors, Nas6, Rpn14, Hsm3, and/nNas2, help to stabilize base subunits, which allows for assembly, but they are unable to/nprevent the assembly of base subunits into incorrect complexes. In addition, other/ncomponents of the proteasome, Ubp6 and core, discriminate between properly and/nimproperly assembled base.

Advisor: Martin, Andreas
Towards a model theory of almost complex manifolds

We develop notions of "almost complex analytic subsets" of almost complex manifolds, modelled after complex analytic subsets of complex manifolds. Basic analytic-geometric results are presented, including an identity principle for almost complex maps, and a proof that the singular locus of an almost complex analytic set is itself an "equational" almost complex analytic set, under certain conditions./nThis work is partly motivated by geometric model theory. B. Zilber observed that a compact complex manifold, equipped with the logico-topological structure given by its complex analytic subsets, satisfies the axioms for a so-called "Zariski geometry", kick-starting a fruitful model-theoretic study of complex manifolds. Our results point towards a natural generalization of Zilber’s theorem to almost complex manifolds, using our notions of almost complex analytic subset. We include a discussion of progress towards this goal./nOur development draws inspiration from Y. Peterzil and S. Starchenko’s theory of nonstandard complex analytic geometry. We work primarily in the real analytic setting.

Advisor: Scanlon, Thomas
Improving Mentoring of Early Childhood Education Students in Oral Language and Vocabulary Skills

Pre-service teachers depend on hands-on training to acquire the necessary practical skills to effectively work in the classroom. This is especially true for pre-service teachers in Early Childhood Education (ECE), who often rely on mentoring programs to learn to successfully work with children and influence their developmental outcomes. This study used a theory of action and an intervention design to improve mentoring skills of senior teachers (mentors) to prepare pre-service teachers (mentees) to address children’s oral language and vocabulary skill deficiencies. The methodology combined Design Development and Action Research using multiple data collection points (e.g. third party observations, mentor’s self-assessments, , mentee’s assessments, and interviews) to ensure unbiased conclusions. The study implemented an intervention in a Child Development Center Lab School staffed with five senior teachers. The intervention consisted of a series of training sessions, lectures, analyses of videotaped pre-staged practices, reflective workshops, in-classroom practice sessions, and the development of a mentoring guideline. It focused on three major areas of mentoring: Relationship Building (RB), Instructional Support (IS), and Oral Language and Vocabulary Skills in Children (OL). Improvements in RB were mainly driven by gains in mentors’ ability to provide timely support. Mentors who showed improvement in RB also showed improvement in IS. Both videotaping and reflections proved to be very useful in helping mentors to solidify theoretical concepts through practical activities. However, mentor improvements in advanced ECE technical areas after building such mentoring foundation, as is the case of OL, seem to need a good number of opportunities to practice them before starting to produce positive results. This study shows that good mentoring training requires pre-selecting participants by their top learning traits, that there is a domino effect in the way skills are built or developed, and that sufficient practice of the desired skills is indispensable. The effectiveness of the intervention also depends on mentors becoming aware of their role’s potential, the quality of the classroom instruction they receive, the maturity of the mentor-mentee relationship, and on the mentee’s side, on their level of ECE experience and their mastery of the language of instruction.

Advisor: Fuller, Bruce
Mintrop, Heinrich
Claiming the Cross: How Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Catholic Church Worked to Create a More Inclusive National State, 1923-1986

“Claiming the Cross” examines the shifting relationship between the Catholic Church, the federal government, Mexican immigrants, and Mexican Americans during the 20th century. It argues that over the course of the 20th century, Mexicans and Mexican Americans pushed for and won a change from adversary to advocate in the Church’s role as mediator between them and the national state. Focusing primarily on the US Southwest and Washington, DC, “Claiming the Cross” shows that the Catholic Church initially aligned itself with state actions against interests of people of Mexican descent. Over time, however, as Catholic officials assumed advisory positions at all levels of the federal government, Catholics of Mexican descent leveraged their Catholicism to promote advocacy on their behalf. Securing Church advocacy granted Mexicans and Mexican Americans access to federal dollars for social welfare programs that increasingly came under the control of Catholic organizations. It also meant obtaining Catholic support for immigration legislation that included civil rights protections for undocumented immigrants./n“Claiming the Cross” is part of a broader research program that integrates civil rights, Mexican American, and religious history. It offers a new perspective on the traditional story of civil rights history by illustrating how Mexicans and Mexican Americans drove civil rights reform. Focusing on people of Mexican descent and the Catholic Church that so many of them claimed as their own, recasts the civil rights movement as both long and wide, chronologically, geographically, demographically, and substantively. Issues such as citizenship, bilingualism, immigration reform, and labor unionism emerge as pressing concerns. In addition, it demonstrates that religion was integral to how Mexicans and Mexican Americans fought for greater equality. Finally, the shifting alliance between Mexicans, Mexican Americans, the Catholic Church, and the US federal government reveals a robust and little known church-state partnership that directly impacted political change in the 20th century United States.

Advisor: Brilliant, Mark
Interventions to Encourage and Facilitate Greener Industrial Chemicals Selection

Despite their ubiquity in modern life, industrial chemicals are poorly regulated in the United States. Statutory law defines industrial chemicals as chemicals that are not foods, drugs, cosmetics, nor pesticides, but may be used in consumer products, and this distinction places them under the purview of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which received a substantial update when the US congress passed a revision of the act in 2016. The revised law, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act addresses many but not all of TSCA’s failings, and rightfully emphasizes the development and adoption of high throughput screens, in vitro, and alternative assays to improve the process for registering new chemicals and to address the tens of thousands of untested chemicals currently in the TSCA inventory. As the discipline of toxicology gradually shifts from its’ history as a reactive science (responding to problems after they’ve occurred) to a proactive science (attempting to predict and circumvent dangers to human and environmental health), two things become clear: 1.) traditional low throughput toxicological testing methodologies are inadequate to address both the volume of chemicals of interest and the pace of research; and 2.) the modern industrial chemical ecosystem is complex and no single testing solution will be appropriate for all the actors that populate that ecosystem./nTo address these challenges, three interventions are proposed, each of which targets a different population within the industrial chemical ecosystem. The first intervention is a suite of computational toxicology methods targeted towards chemists in the initial phases of chemical design and development. The second intervention is an alternative assay, the yeast functional toxicogenomic assay, permits industrial or government labs to rapidly investigate differences in cytotoxic mechanism between different chemicals – even if they are structurally very similar. The third intervention explored in this work is a method for enhancing the metabolic capacity of cell lines currently used by regulators for high throughput cytotoxicity testing. These interventions individually are not necessarily appropriate for all actors across the US industrial chemicals ecosystem, but as bespoke solutions they may be quite useful, and, it is hoped, support a larger exploration of where and how similar efforts may be spent most effectively to reduce industrial chemical hazard.

Advisor: Vulpe, Christopher D
Wang, Jen-Chywan
Optimal Control of Commercial Office Battery Systems, and Grid Integrated Energy Resources on Distribution Networks

The proliferation of new sensing and actuation technologies presents new opportunities for enhanced supervision, optimization, and control of energy systems. In the commercial office environment, the use of smart power strips, uninterruptible power supplies, and advanced building energy management systems is growing as a means to implement control of energy efficiency measures and demand response. In electricity distribution networks, phasor measurement units and inverters are enabling utility operators to monitor and manage distribution systems more effectively. The physics or operational constraints of systems within the commercial office environment or distribution networks are often nonlinear or nonconvex, and thus difficult to incorporate into optimization programs. This dissertation presents research into modeling and optimal control of two nonlinear energy systems./nAt the commercial office scale, we discuss the development and implementation of optimal control of plug loads and office scale battery storage. Building upon successes in optimal control of plug loads, we propose a model predictive controller (MPC) for the incorporation of battery storage. We derive a model of an off the shelf battery storage system through experimental data, and discuss extensions to allow controllable charging. We investigate two methods to solve the nonlinear and binary MPC, and simulations show the promise dynamic programming method./nAt the distribution network scale, we discuss power flow models for optimization of grid distributed energy resources (DER), and techniques for solving nonlinear optimal power flow (OPF) problems. First, we study semidefinite programming as a method for solving nonlinear OPFs for control of voltage phasors. Simulation results motivate the development of novel models. We then derive a linearized unbalanced power flow model (LUPFM) for use in convex optimal power flow (OPF) formulations. The LUPFM builds upon previous work by adding a relationship between voltage phasor and complex power flow. A study into the LUPFM accuracy shows its fidelity for benchmark networks. We discuss two applications of the LUPFM. The first is balancing of voltage magnitude on a distribution network, and simulations are successful for both radial and mesh networks. The second application is minimization of voltage magnitude and angle difference for switching operations. Simulations show the success and potential of the LUPFM for OPF control of voltage phasors.

Advisor: Auslander, Dave