VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Drone Flight and Failure: the United States' Secret Trials, Experiments and Operations in Unmanning, 1936-1973

I examine the precursors to contemporary unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) to ask what is at stake in the designation "unmanned?" The apparent misnomer dissociates technologies and humans, occluding how international interventions, including surveillance, military support, signals intelligence, and targeted killing, are carried out through actions networked between humans and nonhumans. I use a genealogical approach to address how tensions and contradictions articulated by unmanning emerge, using the development, operation and failure of unmanned systems to complicate divisions between human and nonhuman; "us" and the enemy; immersion and distance; military and industry; and above and below./nI identify two phases in the development of remote controlled and unmanned aircraft in the United States: targeting and reconnaissance. Contemporary UCAVs loop together these practices, even as they separate socio-political relations from technical artifacts and their resultant role in geopolitics. In the first period between 1936 and 1944, drone technologies shape and were shaped by targeting. I begin in 1936, when a Navy program to produce remote controlled aircraft was given the code name drone. Drones from the interwar era were developed as targets to train anti-aircraft gunners, even while the technologies also became the first television guided weapons, described as "American Kamikazes," used briefly in World War II. In the second phase between 1956 and 1973, I explore so-called unmanning. This part turns to pilotless reconnaissance aircraft from the Cold War conceived as replacements for manned spy planes after the Francis Powers U-2 incident in 1960, also based on a target plane, the Firebee. These projects were used for over 3000 pilotless flights to collect surveillance over Southeast Asia.

Advisor: Bates, David W.
Thompson, Charis
Price Variation for Colonoscopy in a Commercially Insured Population

Price variation is acceptable in most markets because: 1) higher prices reflect better quality or convenience; 2) the price, and usually the quality, of those goods is generally known to the consumer before that good is purchased, and at the very least after it is purchased; and 3) the "search costs" of discovering the price or quality is reflected in the final price. But these attributes are generally inapplicable to health care, where prices, though widely variable, are non-transparent and do not reflect the quality of medical services. This study investigates the determinants of price and drivers of price variation using adjudicated fee-for-service claims from a large commercial insurer with nearly three quarters market share. The scope of the study was narrowed to diagnostic and therapeutic colonoscopy, a well-defined procedure with substantial price variation. Consistent with both the empirical and theoretical work in the bargaining and price concentration literature, I found a substantial positive relationship between market share and a facility's colonoscopy price relative to the price in the market. I estimated that for every percentage point increase in a system or individual facility's bed share, relative price increases by three to four percentage points; this result was stable across a number of specifications and included controls for facility, system, and county characteristics. Further, I found that an increase in the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI) by 1,000 points was associated with a decrease in the coefficient of variation, a measure of spread, by only 1.6 percentage points. While this effect size was quite small in magnitude, (for comparison, the standard deviation of the coefficient of variation was 0.14), it was robust to the addition of several county-level controls. Colonoscopy is a well-defined procedure whose negotiated price within a given CPT code is highly variable and strongly dependent upon market share. Knowing which "policy lever" to pull to address price variation in the commercial market will require data on more markets and procedures to understand whether price variation is justified; if market share is associated with better quality, then price variation is warranted, but if market share represents only bargaining power, then variation may be unwarranted. The positive relationship between market share and price is of particular policy significance in the current political climate with merger incentives created by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Advisor: Scheffler, Richard M.
Cinema as Environment: The Emergence of German Film Culture

This dissertation explores early twentieth-century German film culture in the context of industrialization and its environmental effects. I argue that efforts to manage the environmental impacts of industrialization on urban space shaped film exhibition, production, and aesthetics./nRapid modernization beginning in the late nineteenth century generated crowded and unsanitary living conditions in German cities. These problems in turn led to a range of responses on the part of public health experts, urban planners, architects, engineers, and others. As a paradigmatic technology of urban modernity, which many viewed as a symptom and agent of industrial blight, cinema became an object of environmental management. Municipal authorities regulated exhibition sites in order to safeguard urban space. Commercial theater operators saw potential profit in creating inviting and temperate spaces distinct from the urban environment outside. Advocates of the German film reform movement saw the image itself as an environmental hazard that placed excessive demands on the viewer's psyche and exposed audiences to undesirable aspects of modern life. Environmental controls were also instituted in film production in order to manage what would appear within the space of the frame./nReformers and artists also worked to identify and exploit the medium's possibilities for promoting health. For the film reform movement, this meant disseminating hygienic knowledge (through educational films) or providing exposure to healthy environments (through nature films). Studio filmmaking privileged an aesthetic of individuation, in which objects in the image--particularly human bodies and faces--could be clearly distinguished from their surroundings. Street films like The Street (1923) and M (1931), moreover, used the studio and the camera to model urban space and render its ecology visible for consumption by film audiences./nOthers saw in film a chance to transgress normative ideals of the relationship between environment and organism. For critics like Béla Balázs, rather than maintaining the organism-environment boundary, the film experience solicited a pleasurable fusion between spectator and image. In Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927), Walter Ruttmann depicted urban space as an inhuman visual ecology accessible only through the perceptual prosthesis of cinema. The political modernism of artists such as László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Gropius, and Erwin Piscator amalgamated transformative and normative visions of the organism-environment relationship. In projects like the poly-cinema and the Total Theater, they hoped to harness the moving image to recalibrate the spectator in a way that re-established human mastery over a mechanized environment.

Advisor: Kaes, Anton
Steep On/Off Transistors for Future Low Power Electronics

In the last couple decades, the phenomenal growth of mobile electronics is fueling the/ndemand for multi-functional, high performance and ultra-low power integrated circuits./nReduction in Vdd to achieve orders of magnitude reduction of energy consumption is crucial if the promise of many more decades of growth of electronics usage is to be realized. For MOSFETs, Vdd reduction can only be achieved at the expense of speed loss and/or off-state leakage increase because the subthreshold slope is fundamentally limited to 60mV/decade. New transistors with sub-60mV/dec swing allowing Vdd scaling to 0.3V and below are therefore highly desirable./nIn this research, two approaches to achieve transistors with sub-60mV/dec swing are/nexplored. Feedback FET (FBFET) uses positive feedback to induce an abrupt change in current with a small change in the gate voltage. Experimental results show FBFET can achieve less than 2mV/dec swing, with Ion/Ioff ratio larger than six-orders-of-magnitude. Simulation is used to illustrate the operating principle, and to evaluate the potential of FBFET. Another approach is to integrate negative capacitance element onto the gate stack of MOSFETs. The negative capacitance does not change the transport physics, but rather seeks to "amplify" the gate voltage electrostatically to achieve less than 60mV/dec swing. Design considerations and optimizations of Negative Capacitance FET (NCFET) are explored using simulations. Simulation shows the possibility of achieving hysteresis free, sub-30mV/dec operation of NCFET based on an UTBSOI design. The experimental NCFET result of epitaxial ferroelectric thin film on SOI substrate is presented.

Advisor: Hu, Chenming
Salahuddin, Sayeef
Formation and Function of Luminal Lymphatic Valves During Lymphangiogenesis

Lymphatic dysfunction is associated with a wide array of disorders from transplant rejection to cancer metastasis. There are currently few effective treatments for lymphatic diseases. The transparent and easily accessible cornea provides an ideal tissue for lymphatic research because the growth of new lymphatics can be readily induced in a normal, healthy alymphatic cornea. While most studies have focused on preventing lymphangiogenesis (LG) before it is initiated, a new research direction of our lab is to define critical factors involved in lymphatic maturation and regression. This is important because many patients who are in need of lymphatic treatment are already at the middle or late stage of LG. Results from our studies have shown for the first time that luminal valves are formed inside corneal lymphatics as LG proceeds, and this process is mediated by an up-regulation of integrin alpha-9. Moreover, we have defined the peak of valvulogenesis in relation to LG, and the functional relevance of the valves in directing lymph flow. We also show that it is possible to suppress valvulogenesis with anti-integrin alpha-9 treatment in a transplantation model. Lastly, we provide strong evidence that corneal distribution of lymphatic vessels and valves are predominantly localized in the nasal region. Taken together, our studies not only reveal new mechanisms underlying lymphatic maturation but also provide novel therapeutic targets for lymphatic-related diseases occurring inside or outside the eye.

Advisor: Chen, Lu
Hangukinron: The Shape of Korean National Ideology

In my dissertation, entitled "Hangukinron: The Shape of Korean National Ideology," I identify the key socio-historical factors in the formation of a particular, phenomenological form in modern Korean national ideology, outlining the character and mechanics of a specific type of ideological production that typifies the Korean national mode of thought, which peaked in South Korea between the years 1987-1997, from the time right before the 1988 Seoul Olympics and up to the near-collapse of the Korean economy in 1997. This period was the fullest flowering of an ideology called hangukinron: a popular discourse that posits a logical and obvious relationship between the purity of the Korean race/nation/culture (minjok) and that country's high level of economic success, vestiges of which remain quite viable and visible in the present day.

Advisor: Hilden, Patricia P
Immigration from Mexico and Local Fiscal Policy in the United States

Prominent social psychological and economic theories link ethnic diversity and low-skilled immigration to reduced provision of public goods. Both the level of ethnic diversity and the presence of low-skilled immigrants have increased dramatically in the United States since the 1960s. Immigration from Mexico has been the largest and most persistent driver of these demographic shifts. This dissertation theorizes and then explores empirically whether and how Mexican immigration has influenced local fiscal policy and related public preferences. Applying a new instrumental variables design, it finds little evidence that Mexican immigration has eroded local government spending on public goods or reduced tax receipts, though there is evidence that it has substantially increased the level of public debt. Subsequent chapters turn to explaining why Mexican immigration did not erode public goods spending as predicted. Leveraging the shock in the rate of naturalization among Mexican immigrants that followed the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act's legalization program, it argues that the acquisition of citizenship by Mexican immigrants helps explain non-negative effects of Mexican immigration on public goods provision and taxation. On the other hand, an analysis of 2006-2012 national survey data reveals that Mexican immigration does induce natives to express less support for public goods spending and taxation and less support for progressive taxation in particular. These findings suggest that while Mexican immigration does erode public support for the provision of public goods, these changes in public opinion do not in turn translate straightforwardly into the policy changes predicted in much of the literature on ethnic diversity and public goods. Finally, there is evidence that Mexican immigration increases mass polarization by heightening constraint between ideological identification, immigration policy preferences, and preferences over budgetary policy.

Advisor: Citrin, Jacob
Waste, Race, and Space: Urban Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in Bayview-Hunters Point

Remediating and redeveloping polluted, industrialized land has emerged as a significant urban growth strategy in U.S. cities since the 1990s. In the same historical moment, the U.S. military has sought to close and transfer hundreds of military bases to cities - part of a process of "shutting down the Cold War". In California, many of these urban military bases were once destinations for African Americans leaving the Jim Crow south during World War II. In the postwar decades, many of the neighborhoods surrounding these military bases have struggled with multiple forms of racism and urban neglect, including health inequalities from toxic urban environments. This study examines the articulation of waste, race, and space in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood of southeast San Francisco, which surrounds the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Once a space of hope and opportunity for black migrants from the south, the shipyard today is understood as an unhealthy, threatening, and sometimes violent site for many long-time Bayview-Hunters Point residents. At the same time, since the 1990s, the shipyard has emerged as a profitable landscape for developers, banks, environmental engineering firms, and a terrain on which social groups in San Francisco imagine and struggle over the future of the city. Through five empirical chapters, I examine the cultural politics of polluted urban land in Bayview-Hunters Point today, focusing on the Hunters Point Shipyard and its neighboring industrial waterfront. At the analytical level, I argue that focusing on the materialities and social relations of waste offers a critical lens onto the urban process.

Advisor: Walker, Richard
Regulation and Recruitment of Human Telomerase

Linear chromosomes lose terminal sequence with every cell division due to incomplete replication by the eukaryotic replisome. Sequence must be added back to DNA ends, called telomeres, in order to deter instability that would occur as loss of end sequence encroached on genic DNA. Human telomeres are elongated by a ribonucleoprotein enzyme called telomerase, composed of the protein, TERT, and the RNA, hTR, which adds telomeric sequence onto DNA ends through reverse transcription off of its internal RNA template. Telomerase ensures indefinite replicative potential through maintenance of these ends, and is thus important for both normal cellular growth, and uncontrolled cell growth observed in most cancers./nRegulation of hTR accumulation is a multi step process involving many protein partners. Defects in the biogenesis pathway lead to reduced levels of hTR and impaired telomere maintenance. I show that the G-quadruplex resolvase DHX36 binds to hTR dependent on hTR's 5' guanosines. The binding occurs through the unique N-terminal domain of DHX36 which has demonstrated specificity for G-quadruplexes. Furthermore, stable accumulation of hTR depends on the presence of the 5' guanosines, implicating DHX36-mediated resolution of the 5' end of hTR in stable accumulation of the RNA./nRecruitment of mature telomerase to its substrate is dependent on the telomere binding protein TPP1. Specifically, it has been shown that the oligonucleotide/oligosaccharide-binding fold (OB) of TPP1 is important for recruitment of telomerase to the telomere. Using directed mutagenesis, I identified a discrete OB fold surface of TERT-TPP1 interaction, later termed the TEL patch. Importantly, the TEL patch is physically distinct from other regions that are essential for binding other shelterin proteins that maintain telomeric integrity and guard against recognition of the telomere end by DNA damage response proteins. Using genetic manipulation of human embryonic stem cells, I determined that the TEL patch is essential for recruitment to the telomere in a cellular system. Furthermore, through a separate residue, L104, TPP1 dictates the responsiveness of telomerase to telomere length. Together, these findings open up new targets for pharmaceutical inhibition of telomerase activity in cancer.

Advisor: Collins, Kathleen
SCHOOL CAPACITY AND OVERLOAD REVIEW (S.C.O.R.E): MEASURING SCHOOL CAPACITY TO MAXIMIZE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

Schools exist in a perpetual state of transformation and change. They modify and adjust their practices, systems and structures to meet the demands required of them and to impact the educational outcomes of students. The resulting demand on teachers' time, energy, skill, and knowledge is unmatched, contributing to what is referenced in the school reform literature as overloading. Overloaded schools operate beyond their existing capacity and fail to produce improved student outcomes. The School Capacity and Overload Review (SCORE) is a design dissertation aiming to capture the conditions of overload that may exist within schools./nThe School Capacity and Overload Review (SCORE) was developed to assist school leaders in identifying the presence of overload in their schools, and importantly, to ascertain if fundamental aspects of human capital --teachers' time, personal energy, or ability to acquire and capitalize on new knowledge and skills --have been compromised.The findings of the SCORE may help uncover school improvement overload, or prevent it from happening in the future. This design study has an action research orientation with two primary research elements: assessment of the design impact and investigation of the design process.

Advisor: Trujillo, Tina M
Quantum Trajectories of a Superconducting Qubit

In quantum mechanics, the process of measurement is intrinsically probabilistic. As a result, continuously monitoring a quantum system will randomly perturb its natural unitary evolution. An accurate measurement record documents this stochastic evolution and can be used to reconstruct the quantum trajectory of the system state in a single experimental iteration. We use weak measurements to track the individual quantum trajectories of a superconducting qubit that evolves under the competing influences of continuous weak measurement and Rabi drive. We analyze large ensembles of such trajectories to examine their characteristics and determine their statistical properties. For example, by considering only the subset of trajectories that evolve between any chosen initial and final states, we can deduce the most probable path through quantum state space. Our investigation reveals the rich interplay between measurement dynamics, typically associated with wavefunction collapse, and unitary evolution. Our results provide insight into the dynamics of open quantum systems and may enable new methods of quantum state tomography, quantum state steering through measurement, and active quantum control.

Advisor: Siddiqi, Irfan
Plasticity in the Auditory Pathway

The auditory pathway has a remarkable ability to change its response based on sound experiences. Plasticity also occurs as an adaptive response following injury to the auditory pathway, such as in hearing loss. My doctoral work aims to improve our understanding of plasticity in the auditory system during normal development, and in cases of trauma or disease./nFirst, I studied the tonotopic map of the primary auditory cortex and inferior colliculus in juvenile rats that underwent passive exposure to a single frequency pure tone pip during the auditory critical period. Previously it has been shown that such acoustic exposure leads to an enlarged representation of the exposure frequency in primary auditory cortex. However, whether this change originated in cortex or also present in an upstream auditory nucleus remained unclear. I addressed this question by comparing the tonotopic representations of inferior colliculus and primary auditory cortex and showed that enlarged frequency representation is observed only in the primary auditory cortex but not in the inferior colliculus./nSecond, I investigated adult plasticity following hearing loss. It has been hypothesized that a reorganization of auditory cortex underlies perceptual problems that develop after hearing loss. In particular, perception of a phantom sound, or tinnitus, has been associated with abnormal tonotopic representation in the auditory cortex. Using a mouse behavioral model of tinnitus, I have shown that tonotopic map reorganization is likely a consequence of hearing loss, and is not sufficient to induce tinnitus by itself. Further, I have provided evidence that changes in the Glutamate Decarboxylase 65 expression level may be involved in the etiology of tinnitus.

Advisor: Bao, Shaowen
Detection and Polarization of Nuclear and Electron Spins using Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy is one of the most powerful spectroscopic tools for obtaining detailed information about molecular structure. It has also served as a remarkable tool for exploring interesting quantum phenomena in large spin ensembles. In this dissertation, we present investigations of the optically detected magnetic resonance of the NV- center, a point defect in diamond that has gained notoriety in the magnetic resonance community due to its interesting and useful spin properties. In the past few years, the NV- center has been used as a gyroscope, a magnetic sensor for investigating thin superconducting films and most recently, as a magnetometer for nanoscale magnetic resonance measurements. In this work, we explore the optically detected magnetic resonance of the NV- center in a number of different contexts. In chapter 5 and 6 we investigate the coherence lifetime of the NV- center and discover a novel method for probing nuclear quadrupolar interactions in the solid state. In chapter 7 we obtain detailed chemical information about defect centers neighboring the NV- center via observation of cross-relaxation effects. In chapter 8 we find a method to sensitively control the polarization of nuclear spins neighboring the NV$^-$ center in the diamond lattice. And in chapters 9 and 10 we use an ensemble of NV$^-$ centers to probe small magnetic fields external to the diamond lattice.

Advisor: Pines, Alexander