VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Capacitive-Gap MEMS Resonator-Based Oscillator Systems for Low-Power Signal Processing

Wireless technology, which already plays a major part in our daily lives, is expected to further expand to networks of billions of autonomous sensors in coming years: the so-called Internet of Things. In one vision, sensors employing low-cost, low-power wireless motes collect and transmit data through a mesh network while operating only on scavenged or battery power. RF MEMS provides one approach to the stringent power and performance required by sensor networks./nThis dissertation presents improvement to these MEMS technologies and introduces new approaches for wireless communication in low power wireless networks. First, this work presents oscillators based on the capacitive-gap transduced MEMS resonator. As wireless radio needs at least one such oscillator, the space and power savings offered by these MEMS oscillators make them compelling alternatives over bulky quartz-based devices. The high quality factors (Q) > 100,000 possible in these on-chip resonators allow for phase noise performance of the oscillator exceeding even the challenging GSM specifications using less than 100 uW of power consumption. Despite their small size and tiny capacitive gaps, MEMS-based oscillators are found to be insensitive to vibration and achieve only a few ppm shift in frequency over 10 months of measurement: the performance shown is on par or better than the off-the-shelf crystal oscillators. Interestingly, exploiting nonlinearities in the MEMS resonators also allows multiple simultaneous oscillation frequencies using one amplifier. Combined with electrical stiffness-based frequency tuning, this enables Frequency-Shift Keyed modulation of the output waveform, offering a space and power-efficient multichannel transmitter, as desired for mobile applications requiring long battery life./nIntrinsically, oscillator systems involve positive feedback loops, which regeneratively amplify signals in the loop. Taking advantage of this property, MEMS oscillator systems may be used for other wireless signal processing applications. This dissertation explores such systems applied to: 1) a narrow channel-select filter with low insertion loss unachievable using passive resonators only and 2) a super-regenerative amplification-based channel-selecting radio transceiver. Finally, this dissertation presents two capacitive-gap transduced micromechanical resonator designs which can achieve the high Q at GHz frequencies needed for many wireless communication standards. The methods and solutions provided here pave a path towards realization of future low-power wireless technologies.

Advisor: Nguyen, Clark T.-C.
Between Soundtrack and Performance: Music and History in Italian Film Melodrama, 1940-2010

Melodrama manifests itself in a variety of forms – as a film and theatre practice, as a discursive category, as a mode of imagination. This dissertation discusses film melodrama in its visual, gestural, and aural manifestations. My focus is on the persistence of melodrama and the traces it leaves on post-World War II Italian cinema: from the Neorealist canon of the 1940s to works that engage with the psychological and physical, private, and collective traumas after the experience of a totalitarian regime (Cavani’s Il portiere di notte, 1974), to postmodern Viscontian experiments set in a 21st-century capitalist society (Guadagnino’s Io sono l’amore, 2009). The aural dimension is fundamental as an opening to the epistemology of each film. I pay particular attention to the presence of operatic music – as evoked directly or through semiotic displacement involving the film’s aesthetic and expressive figures – and I acknowledge the existence of a long legacy of practical and imaginative influences, infiltrations and borrowings between the screen and the operatic stage in the Italian cinematographic tradition. In doing so, I challenge the theoretical bias that associates melodrama with a reliance on grandiose theatrical settings, clichéd symphonic soundtracks, Manichean narrative tropes, redundancy and excess./nMy contribution to the understanding of cinematic melodrama encompasses two main dimensions. First, I show how the melos in films is crucial to the epistemological structure of every film, rather than a separate or ancillary entity. Whereas realist cinema and melodrama are usually regarded as opposites or antagonists, realism in fact relies on melodramatic aural and gestural figures to fashion its reality effects. Second, my investigation contributes to an understanding of melodrama, in its visual and aural manifestations, both as a mode and as a discourse – a system of mutually enlightening relationships that are influenced by and, in turn, can influence historical and social changes.

Advisor: Spackman, Barbara
Affecting Chemicals: An Ethnography of Clinical Research, MDMA (Ecstasy), and the Experimental Structuring of Effects

This dissertation ethnographically follows the efforts of researchers to develop MDMA (Ecstasy) as a prescription pharmaceutical. In the 1970’s MDMA became popular among psychedelic therapists as a legal alternative to banned substances like LSD and psilocybin. However, legal MDMA-assisted therapy came to a halt in 1985 when the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)—reacting to recreational use of MDMA in nightclubs—classified the drug as a Schedule 1 substance—which has no therapeutic application. In the decades following, activists, therapists and researchers have organized clinical trials with MDMA in order to contest the scheduling. The dissertation is based upon in depth ethnographic fieldwork with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which has sponsored an international clinical trial program on MDMA-assisted therapy. If successful, these studies will provide the basis for the organization to petition the Food and Drug Administration to approve a novel pharmaceutical treatment./nThis dissertation examines the ways that various practices of experimentation grant robustness to the chemical, the body, and even experience. The shift to epistemological practice that characterizes this work as a whole is an effort to avoid the constructivist bind by focusing not on what MDMA is or is not, or what it does or does not do, or when it is or is not agentive, but rather how it is apprehended. At several junctures, I argue that the chemical cannot speak for its own identity, but rather requires documentary, regulatory and experimental structures to guarantee it. The focus on practice in my dissertation allows MDMA’s status to remain fraught and allows central tensions to manifest—such as the distinction between MDMA and Ecstasy, which is central to MAPS clinical trial program. I argue that understanding the political work of these trials requires close attention to the minute practices of experimentation at work in clinical research.

Advisor: Hayden, Cori
The Non-Linear Relationship between Agricultural Productivity and the Environment and its Effects on Human Health and the Economy

It has become increasingly clear that the relationship between agricultural productivity and the environment is highly non-linear. In this dissertation I evaluate yield measures commonly used to quantify agricultural productivity and demonstrate that the largest shocks, damages causing crops to become unharvestable, are omitted from the most commonly used productivity measure. I find that these losses are highly non-linear, and that infrequent but extreme damages account for substantial losses to global agriculture yet are often ignored. Accounting for these non-linearities, I examine the impact of climate (temperature, rainfall) and environmental condition (flood, drought) induced changes in agricultural productivity on human health (mortality rates) and the economy (farmer loans). I find that extreme climate conditions have significant impacts on agriculture and that losses in agricultural productivity, in turn, increase mortality rates and the amount of money borrowed by farmers in Southeast Asia. These findings have implications for our understanding of the broader importance of climate vulnerability in agriculture and how governments might value climate adaptation options for agriculture.

Advisor: Zilberman, David
Problem-Solving Courts for Taiwan Family Courts

This study is a reflection of the author's experience working as a family court judge for nine years in Taiwan. It lays out the practical problems in Taiwan’s legal system, in regards to domestic violence, which is mainly transplanted from the U.S. It explores the query as to whether problem-solving courts provide a helpful alternative, as well as examining the possible challenges of implementing a problem-solving court system./nThis thesis begins with a statement of the problems of domestic violence court system in Taiwan, then synthesizes the literature review to introduce the Problem-Solving Courts from a broader perception of specialized courts and also Domestic Violence Courts, and their transformation into Integrated Domestic Violence Courts. This is followed by the description of Taiwan’s domestic violence legal system and its practical matters. Before attempting to propose a localized problem-solving court—the Integrated Family Court— as an alternative for Taiwan, the author makes comparisons of domestic violence case handling between Domestic Violence Courts in the U.S. and Taiwanese Courts through the lens of Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Restorative Justice. Lastly, the author depicts recommendations and explains how the proposed Integrated Family Court may provide a solution to the mentioned problems and its possible challenges.

Advisor: Kay, Herma Hill
Nuclear Air‐Brayton Combined Cycle Power Conversion Design, Physical Performance Estimation and Economic Assessment

The combination of an increased demand for electricity for economic development in parallel with the widespread push for adoption of renewable energy sources and the trend toward liberalized markets has placed a tremendous amount of stress on generators, system operators, and consumers. Non-guaranteed cost recovery, intermittent capacity, and highly volatile market prices are all part of new electricity grids./nIn order to try and remediate some of these effects, this dissertation proposes and studies the design and performance, both physical and economic, of a novel power conversion system, the Nuclear Air-Brayton Combined Cycle (NACC). The NACC is a power conversion system that takes a conventional industrial frame type gas turbine, modifies it to accept external nuclear heat at 670°C, while also maintaining its ability to co-fire with natural gas to increase temperature and power output at a very quick ramp rate. The NACC addresses the above issues by allowing the generator to gain extra revenue through the provision of ancillary services in addition to energy payments, the grid operator to have a highly flexible source of capacity to back up intermittent renewable energy sources, and the consumer to possibly see less volatile electricity prices and a reduced probability of black/brown outs./nThis dissertation is split into six sections that delve into specific design and economic issues related to the NACC. The first section describes the basic design and modifications necessary to create a functional externally heated gas turbine, sets a baseline design based upon the GE 7FB, and estimates its physical performance under nominal conditions./nThe second section explores the off-nominal performance of the NACC and characterizes its startup and shutdown sequences, along with some of its safety measures. The third section deals with the power ramp rate estimation of the NACC, a key performance parameter in a renewable-heavy grid that needs flexible capacity. The fourth section lays out the cost structure of the Mk1 Pebble-Bed Fluoride-salt-cooled High-temperature Reactor (FHR) with the NACC, since the NACC cannot be treated separately from its heat source./nThe fifth section evaluates the cost structure of a twelve-unit Mk1 FHR and NACC, including capital construction costs, operating costs, fuel and decommissioning costs in bottom up methodology. The sixth section proposes alternative NACC configurations and scales (mobile, remote NACC) or alternative power cycles to the NACC that can be coupled to the FHR (supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle).

Advisor: Peterson, Per F
Absolute Relativity: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism

This dissertation intervenes in the extensive literature within Cinema and Media Studies on the relationship between film and history. Challenging apparatus theory of the 1970s, which had presumed a basic uniformity and historical continuity in cinematic style and spectatorship, the ‘historical turn’ of recent decades has prompted greater attention to transformations in technology and modes of sensory perception and experience. In my view, while film scholarship has subsequently emphasized the historicity of moving images, from their conditions of production to their contexts of reception, it has all too often left the very concept of history underexamined and insufficiently historicized. In my project, I propose a more reflexive model of historiography—one that acknowledges shifts in conceptions of time and history—as well as an approach to studying film in conjunction with historical-philosophical concerns./nMy project stages this intervention through a close examination of the ‘crisis of historicism,’ which was widely diagnosed by German-speaking intellectuals in the interwar period. I argue that many pioneering and influential films of the Weimar Republic registered and responded to contemporaneous metahistorical debates, offering aesthetic answers to ontological and epistemological questions of the philosophy of history. In my analysis, the films’ extraordinary innovations in aesthetic and narrative form can be associated not only with technological advances and sociopolitical ruptures, but also with concurrent efforts to theorize history in an age of ‘absolute relativity.’ Combining archival research, theory, and formal analysis, my work thus contributes to scholarship on German cinema, placing films of the Weimar era in constellation with developments in Central European intellectual history.

Advisor: Kaes, Anton
Toxoplasma gondii infection-induced Loss of Innate Aversion to Cat Urine in Mice

Toxoplasma gondii infection-induced Loss of Innate Aversion to Cat Urine in Mice/nby/nWendy Marie Ingram/nDoctor of Philosophy in Molecular & Cell Biology/nUniversity of California, Berkeley/nProfessor Ellen Robey, Co-chair/nProfessor Michael Eisen, Co-chair/nToxoplasma gondii chronic infection in rodent secondary hosts has been reported to lead to a loss of innate, hard-wired fear toward cats, its primary host. However the generality of this response across T. gondii strains and the underlying mechanism for this pathogen-mediated behavioral change remains unknown. To begin exploring these questions, we evaluated the effects of infection with two previously uninvestigated isolates from the three major North American clonal lineages of T. gondii, Type III and an attenuated strain of Type I. Using an hour-long open field activity assay optimized for this purpose, we measured mouse aversion toward predator and non-predator urines. We show that loss of innate aversion of cat urine is a general trait caused by infection with any of the three major clonal lineages of parasite. Surprisingly, we found that infection with the attenuated Type I parasite results in sustained loss of aversion at times post infection when neither parasite nor ongoing brain inflammation were detectable. This suggests that T. gondii-mediated interruption of mouse innate aversion toward cat urine may occur during early acute infection in a permanent manner, not requiring persistence of parasite cysts or continuing brain inflammation. We investigated the role of the mouse immune system in this behavior manipulation and identify that interleukin 4 (IL4) is a key molecule required for the loss of innate aversion to cat urine. Characterization of the source of IL4 in mice following infection has revealed that there are a number of cell types from which the critical IL4 could be produced. Initial T cell transfer experiments suggest that CD4 T cells capable of making IL4 may be partially involved in mediating the behavior manipulation.

Advisor: Robey, Ellen A
Eisen, Michael B
Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro

In this dissertation a methodology for identifying and analyzing serial verb constructions (SVCs) is developed, and its application is exemplified through an analysis of SVCs in Koro, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. SVCs involve two main verbs that form a single predicate and share at least one of their arguments. In addition, they have shared values for tense, aspect, and mood, and they denote a single event. The unique syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs present a number of theoretical challenges, and thus they have invited great interest from syntacticians and typologists alike. But characterizing the nature of SVCs and making generalizations about the typology of serializing languages has proven difficult. There is still debate about both the surface properties of SVCs and their underlying syntactic structure. The current work addresses some of these issues by approaching serialization from two angles: the typological and the language-specific./nOn the typological front, it refines the definition of `SVC' and develops a principled set of cross-linguistically applicable diagnostics. From the existing set of surface properties, four core characteristics are distilled: main verbhood, monoclausality, single eventhood, and argument sharing. A construction must have all of these properties in order to qualify as an SVC. Once these underlying semantic and syntactic properties of SVCs are identified, a detailed and explicit set of criteria is developed that allows these underlying properties to be tested in any language./nThe latter part of the dissertation offers a case study in the use of these diagnostic criteria by applying them to multi-verb constructions in Koro. Testing these constructions against the definition of SVCs developed in the dissertation reveals that although there are numerous multi-verb constructions in Koro that appear to fulfill the surface criteria for SVCs, only one of these can be considered a true SVC. This construction has a VP-shell structure, in which V1 is a path or locative verb that takes V2 as its complement. The shared argument is the subject of V2, providing a counter-example to Baker's (1989) claim that SVCs obligatorily share an internal argument. Constructions that instead involve adjunction of V2 to V1 are shown through detailed semantic investigation to be disqualified as SVCs, because they do not exhibit the expected entailments. This is surprising because they superficially resemble proto-typical SVCs. The syntactic and semantic analysis of these constructions leads to the hypothesis that true SVCs must have a relation of complementation between the verbs, while adjoined or coordinated constructions cannot be considered SVCs.

Advisor: Michael, Lev D
High Contrast Grating for Optical Sensing

Integrated optoelectronics has seen its rapid development in the past decades. It has been expanded to many emerging applications beyond optical communication, including environmental sensing, healthcare and remote sensing, etc. This revolutionary progress greatly benefits from device level innovation./nHigh contrast gratings (HCG) is an emerging element in integrated optoelectronics. Compared to the other elements, HCG has a very rich properties and design flexibility. Two most extraordinary properties of HCG are broadband reflectivity and high quality factor resonance, which are highly desired to solve current challenges in the aforementioned applications./nIn this dissertation, we will explore the physical origins of the extraordinary features of HCG, and discuss its applications in optical sensing. Various device innovation for optical sensing, such as HCG slow light hollow-core waveguide for gas sensing, HCG resonator for bio-medical sensing, flexible surface plasma sensor , fast optical phase array and HCG-graphene spatial light modulator for remoting sensing are demonstrated with HCG as the enabling elements. With this breadth of functionality, HCG demonstrate itself as a promising platform for integrated optical sensing.

Advisor: Chang-Hasnain, Connie
Becoming Language Professionals: Identity Work and Pedagogical Decisions by Secondary School L2 Teachers of Spanish and French

This dissertation examines the ways in which three focal high school teachers of second language (L2) French and Spanish in California construct and enact their professional identities as multilingual subjects with diverse linguistic repertoires. By drawing from multiple disciplines, including sociolinguistics, psychology, and education, I examine how social and biographical factors influence language learning and teaching and also how language instructors participate in the construction of the social contexts of language acquisition. Specifically, I explore how L2 teachers of French and Spanish negotiate the impact of social structures on their language use and instruction, including their formal training, personal experiences in the target languages and cultures, and professional responsibilities in highly structured educational institutions. The dissertation concludes with several implications for theory and practice. Building on those, I propose that language teachers’ support networks¬—academic, pre-service, and in-service—incorporate foreign language teachers’ linguistic histories and beliefs about language learning into formal opportunities for professional reflection and dialogue.

Advisor: Kern, Richard