VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Building an International Administrative Law of Expertise: Law and Science in the International Regulation of Trade, Health, and the Environment

International agreements on issues related to human health and the environment often enlist notions of scientific principles or "science-based" decision making in order to constrain the realm of permissible causal argument within the an area of international law. As a result, parties to these agreements often wage conflicts over what is or is not "scientific," and what kinds of decisions are or are not "based on" science - with important ramifications for the sovereign regulatory rights of the parties. This dissertation explores this process of contesting and constituting epistemic authority in international health and environmental law, and makes a modest attempt to suggest pathways to constructing more broadly legitimate international practices for validating knowledge claims for taking collective international action./nIt does this through a detailed, mixed-method exploration of the practices employed by a number of critical international institutions to structure who is empowered to know, and to govern, in this relatively nascent international regulatory sphere. Through a mixture of negotiation observation, participant interviews, document review, and case law analysis, this dissertation tracks threads of cognitive and legal authority within and between science advisory bodies, domestic and international regulatory bodies, and domestic and international courts. By engaging with actual, as opposed to idealized sources of cognitive and legal authority in international affairs, it seeks to both illuminate the complexities of the relationship between science, sovereignty and the rule of law in global regulation, and to point the way to more broadly accepted practices of knowledge-making and law-making in global regulation./nI have approached this issue in three different ways: an in-depth analysis of the techniques used by two different international adjudicative bodies for evaluating scientific claims; a comparative examination of the expertise-related administrative law of the United States and European Community with an eye to the emergence of international norms; and a detailed examination of the birth of a global agency and the rise of its authoritative discourse of risk analysis. All three of these studies take interdisciplinary approaches to addressing these issues, supplementing legal analysis of key treaties and cases with important insights and analytical techniques from the field of science and technology studies (STS). Each chapter addresses distinct but interrelated issues, and makes a separate contribution to our understanding of the relationship between epistemic and regulatory authority in global governance.

Advisor: Winickoff, David E
Three Essays on Development Economics

This dissertation combines research on three topics in development economics. The first paper estimates the long-term labor performance outcomes for a worker subjected to a negative labor market shock upon entry. The second paper, based on joint work with Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet, examines the political economy of public goods provision through community driven development projects in the context of decentralization . The third paper analyzes household behavior under multiple shocks in rural China./nThe first paper looks at the impact of labor market shocks upon graduation on the education/work decision and on subsequent employment status in Indonesia where the Asian financial crisis hit in 1997/8. The work/education decision affects the selection of samples when estimating the later impact. Therefore we use a dual selection model to correct the sample selection bias due to the decision process. We find evidence of persistent impacts on later labor market outcomes for junior high and senior high school graduates measured as the probability of working in the informal sector or the agricultural sector./nThe second paper identifies the impact of increasing decentralization on community targeting using the unique situation of Zambia's Social Investment Fund (SIF) where the degree of decentralization changed in time and space across districts over the 15 years of program implementation. We find that greater decentralization of SIF's functions to districts that had been deemed to have the necessary level of managerial capacity to deserve decentralization led to more progressive targeting across wards, mildly so at the national level and strongly so within districts. We also observe how local electoral politics gained importance with greater decentralization, with more votes received by the candidate from the majority party in the district council attracting more projects to a ward, and more projects in a ward rewarded by more votes for the councilor from the incumbent party./nThe third paper examines who is more likely to be exposed to shocks, which ex-post coping strategies are employed, and how shocks affect the welfare of Chinese rural households using detailed information on a variety of shocks and household characteristics. We find that an increase in medical expenditures due to health shocks has a negative impact on non-medical expenditures: durable consumption is negatively associated with health shocks in two relatively wealthier provinces; food consumption shows a similar trend among households in the richest province of the sample. Secondly, households who experienced only health shocks have higher medical expenditures than those who experienced both agricultural and health shocks. This suggests that medical insurance schemes in rural China are absent or not functioning well, and that agricultural shocks are also not well-insured.

Advisor: Janvry, Alain de
Sadoulet, Elisabeth
Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom: Mulattoes in English Colonial North America and the Early United States Republic

This project investigates people of mixed African, European, and sometimes Native American ancestry, commonly referred to as "mulattoes," in English colonial North America and the early United States republic. This research deconstructs nascent African American stratification by examining various types of privilege that allowed people of mixed heritage to experience upward social mobility, with a special focus on access to freedom from slavery and servitude in the colonies and states of the southeast Atlantic Coast. Additionally, this work provides a framework for understanding U.S. mixed-race ideologies by following the trajectory of how people of mixed descent and their families viewed themselves and how they were perceived by the broader societies in which they lived. This study contributes to historiographical and contemporary discussions associated with mixed-heritage peoples, ideas of racial mixture, "whiteness," and African American identity.

Advisor: Martin, Waldo E.
Exploring New Directions in Terahertz and X-ray Spectroscopy

The terahertz region (30-200 cm-1) of the electromagnetic spectrum has historically been extremely difficult to work in due to the lack of suitable powerful light sources and limited detector sensitivity. Since the development of modern synchrotron light sources, soft X-ray spectroscopy (100-1000 eV) has no such issues regarding intensity of the light sources, but the fact that nearly all materials absorb soft X-rays has severely limited the application of spectroscopy to liquid samples in this region. In this dissertation, I describe a several new technical developments in both terahertz and X-ray spectroscopy,/nand their application for the study of water clusters and ion-pairing in aqueous electrolytes./nIn Chapter 2, the compatibility of two new terahertz sources, Schottky diode frequency multiplier chains and quantum cascade lasers, with the Berkeley Thz spectrometer, is investigated. With the multiplier chain source, new transitions of the methane-D2O dimer have been measured and compared with calculations. The goal of this work is to ultimately develop a more accurate potential surface for modeling of methane clathrates./nChapter 3 presents a study of ion pairing by Near Edge X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (NEXAFS) spectroscopy and DFT calculations, starting with a comparison between ammonium chloride and ammonium sulfate solutions. A spectral fingerprint with/nsensitivity to the cation-anion distance and orientations is identified based on the electronic structure analysis. The resulting ion-pairing tendency is in accord with the "Law of Matching Water Affinities". Subsequently, the counterintuitive formation of like-charge guanidinium-guanidinium contact ion pairs in water is evidenced and characterized./nThe difference in escape depths of ions and electrons from condensed phase samples could ideally yield surface-bulk contrast via the total ion yield (TIY) versus total electron yield (TEY) detection of X-ray absorption spectra. To examine this potential surface/nsensitivity, the TIY and TEY spectra of aqueous salt solutions with different known surface affinities have been recorded and are discussed in detail in Chapter 4. Two new detection schemes, "downstream" and "upstream" detection, have been tested, aiming for the elimination of vapor signal interferences and possibly another surface-sensitive probe.

Advisor: Saykally, Richard J
Semantics and Pragmatics of Spatial Reference

In order for a robot to collaborate with a human to achieve a goal, the robot should be able to communicate by interpreting and generating natural language utterances. Past work has represented the meaning of natural language in terms of a given database of facts or a simple simulated environment, which simplifies the interpretation or generation process. However, the real world contains a richness and complexity missing from simple virtual environments. Databases present a distilled set of logical relations, whereas the relations in the physical world are more vague and challenging to discern./nIn this thesis, we relax these restrictions by presenting models that interpret and generate utterances in a physical environment. We present a compositional model for interpreting utterances that uses a learned model of lexical semantics to ground linguistic terms into the physical world. We also present a model for generating utterances that are both informative and unambiguous. To address the challenges of communicating about a physical world, our system perceives the environment with computer vision in order to recognize objects and determine relations. We focus on the domain of spatial relations and present a novel probabilistic model that is capable of discerning the spatial relations that are present in a physical scene. We establish the functionality of our system by deploying it on a robotic platform that interacts with a human to manipulate objects in a physical environment.

Advisor: Klein, Dan
Electrochemical Behavior of Bipolar Membranes

The rate of recombination of ions in a weak-electrolyte solution is often controlled by the rate at which the ions collide with one another. The rate of collision has been previously treated in the literature, resulting in a classic expression for the rate constant. A derivation is presented here employing the methodology of Onsager and Fuoss. This methodology makes use of a distribution function to track the relative average positions of the two reactants. The reactants are assumed to undergo movement that follows a Nernst-Planck Equation for the migration and diffusion components of the flux. The potential of interaction of the ions is assumed to be a coulomb potential screened by an ion cloud formed by a supporting electrolyte. The resulting expression for the rate constant is the same as that of Debye./nThe dissociation of weak electrolytes is increased by an applied electric field. Lars Onsager's classic treatment of this increase in dissociation determines the effect of an applied electric field upon the movement of a pair of ions formed by dissociation. To obtain an analytic expression, Onsager approximates that the pair of ions form a chemical bond when they are at a separation distance of zero. This approximation is poor when long chemical bonds are involved, such as the dissociation of an electrolyte occurring via charge transport along a hydrogen-bond wire./nHere, the work of Onsager is extended to the case of dissociation via long chemical bonds. For bond lengths greater than zero, the results predict the recombination rate constant of a collision-controlled reaction will increase with an applied electric field. Additionally, results predict that the dissociation of a weak electrolyte will increase with an applied electric field. The increase in dissociation is predicted to vary by orders of magnitude with small changes in the length of the chemical bond./nA 1-d continuum model of a bipolar membrane is shown. The model accounts for the diffusion and migration of species, electrostatics, and chemical reaction. The bipolar membrane model is seen to rectify current and undergo breakdown. This is the first model to use a model of water splitting at large electric fields to predict the breakdown of the junction. A layer of weak base is included in the junction of the membrane as a catalyst layer. Model results show agreement with published experimental results. The effect of the catalyst layer is seen to be negligible. The ineffectiveness of the catalyst is attributed to the greater increase in water dissociation due to the electric field than by the catalyst mechanism. Results are shown for a bipolar membrane immersed in a neutral pH solution as well as a bipolar membrane separating a solution with a pH of 2 from a solution with a pH of 12.

Advisor: Newman, John
The asymptotics of ECH capacities and absolute gradings on Floer homologies

Embedded contact homology (ECH) capacities were defined by Hutchings and provide a family of obstructions to embeddings of four-dimensional symplectic manifolds. In Part I of this thesis, we prove that for a four-dimensional Liouville domain with all ECH capacities finite, the asymptotics of the ECH capacities recover the symplectic volume. This was joint work with Daniel Cristofaro-Gardiner and Michael Hutchings. In Part II of this thesis, we construct topological absolute gradings in Heegaard Floer homology and bordered Floer homology that satify all of the expected properties. This was joint work with Yang Huang. We also show that the isomorphism between Heegaard Floer homology and ECH preserves the absolute gradings.

Advisor: Hutchings, Michael
Adaptive Local Loop Shaping and Inverse-based Youla-Kucera Parameterization with Application to Precision Control

In this dissertation we discuss loop-shaping algorithms that bring enhanced servo performance at multiple local frequency regions. These local loop shaping (LLS) algorithms are motivated by several new demands in practical control systems such as hard disk drives in information storage industry, wafer scanners in semiconductor manufacturing, active steering in automotive vehicles, and active suspension in structural vibration rejection. We will examine how knowledge about the disturbance/reference characteristics can be utilized, both offline and online, to customize the servo system for meeting the control challenges./nAlong the way, we investigate several design concepts and methodologies. First, in Youla-Kucera (YK) parameterization--the parameterization of all stabilizing linear controllers--we develop plant factorizations based on selective model inversion, which safely inverts a (possibly nonminimum-phase) plant dynamics, using H infinity minimization and pole/zero modulation. This allows us to obtain a simplified YK algorithm with strong design and tuning intuitions in practical servo. Also, with selective model inversion, it becomes quite approachable to control the waterbed effect, the result of Bode's Integral Formula in fundamental limitations of linear control design. This is achieved by utilizing add-on pole/zero placement and convex-optimization approaches to minimize the disturbance amplification in the sensitivity function, which enables the obtaining of several algorithms for enhanced repetitive control and vibration rejection./nIn the third part of the dissertation, we investigate adaptive formulations to achieve online identification of the disturbance characteristics. We study the application of infinite-impulse-response (IIR) filters in YK parameterization, which brings benefits such as minimum-parameter adaptation and better convergence under noisy adaptation environments. We also provide an optimization-based approach to address the problem of robust strict positive real transfer functions, an essential requirement in adaptive control and system identification./nThe discussed algorithms are then extended from the control of SISO to MISO (multi-input-single-output) plants, where we formulate a decoupled disturbance observer for estimating the equivalent input disturbance for different actuators in a MISO system./nSimulation and experimental results are obtained on the four classes of systems discussed at the beginning of this abstract. Parts of the results are performed on benchmark problems, and compared with the algorithms of peer researchers under extensive test conditions.

Advisor: Tomizuka, Masayoshi
Wood's Method -- a Method for Fitting Leslie Matrices from Age-Sex Population Data, with some Practical Applications

This dissertation is dedicated to an exploration of "Wood's Method" -- a novel approach to/nfitting demographic transition matrices to age and sex population count data./nDemographic transition matrices, otherwise known as "Leslie matrices," are extensively/nused to forecast population by age, sex, and other characteristics. Our implementation of/nWood's Method simplifies the creation of age and sex population forecasts greatly by/nreducing the amount of data necessary to create a demographic transition matrix./nFurthermore, the method can be used to infer a demographic component of change (one of/nmigration, fertility, or mortality) if the other two components are specified./nIn Chapter One, we introduce Wood's Method, as well as showing some illustrative/nexamples. In Chapter Two, we evaluate the accuracy of Wood's Method by crossvalidating/nage and sex specific forecasts for 3,120 US counties. In Chapter Three, we/npresent a simpler, alternative derivation of Wood's Method with an extensive example and/nshow some extensions to the method made possible by this new formulation. In Chapter/nFour, we use the method to examine migration rates at the US County level and show/nimportant results regarding clustering of migration. Each chapters is independent of the/nothers, but should be read in order./nTo our knowledge, this is the first time Wood's Method has been used for forecasting/nhuman populations. We hope to show its viability as a forecasting and analysis method/nand sketch directions for further research.

Advisor: Wachter, Kenneth
Spatially Modulated Structures in Convective Systems

This dissertation focuses on the study of spatially modulated structures in pattern forming systems. The work is motivated by recent interest in spatially localized states observed in convective systems. Weakly nonlinear analysis is applied to derive the modulation equations and systematic studies, both analytical and numerical, are then performed on the simplified equations. The following is a summary of this work:/nWeakly Subcritical Patterns/nThe transition from subcritical to supercritical periodic patterns is described by the one-dimensional cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau equation with cubic nonlinear gradient terms. The coefficients are real indicating that the system is spatially reversible. Properties of the equation such as well-posedness, gradient structure, and bifurcation behavior depend significantly on the coefficients of the cubic nonlinear gradient terms. In this system, periodic patterns may in turn become unstable through one of two different mechanisms, an Eckhaus instability or an oscillatory instability. Dynamics and bifurcations near the instability thresholds are analyzed. Among the stationary solutions, the front solution which connects the zero state to a spatially periodic state plays the most important role. The location of the front in the parameter $\mu$ is treated as a Maxwell point. The spatially modulated solutions which bifurcate from the periodic solutions demonstrate protosnaking behavior near this point. These results are used to shed light on both variational and non-variational systems exhibiting homoclinic snaking./nLocalized Patterns in Rotating Convection and Magnetoconvection/nIn two-dimensional rotating convection and magnetoconvection, the formation of spatially localized patterns is strongly affected by the interaction between convection and a large scale mode: zonal velocity in rotating convection and magnetic flux in magnetoconvection. A nonlocal fifth order Ginzburg-Landau theory is developed to describe the localization near a codimension-two point. The study of the fifth-order Ginzburg-Landau theory gives us better understanding of the appearance of spatially modulated solutions and their subsequent bifurcation behavior. These results are used to explain the properties of spatially localized convectons in the full convection problem. The effect of boundary conditions is also analyzed which shows how the bifurcation picture is modified in the presence of mixed boundary conditions./nExact Solutions of the Cubic-Quintic Swift-Hohenberg Equation/nMeromorphic exact solutions of the cubic-quintic Swift-Hohenberg equation are studied and a one-parameter family of real exact solutions is derived. The solutions are of two types, differing in their symmetry properties, and are connected via an exact heteroclinic solution. These exact solutions are used as initial conditions for numerical continuation which shows that some of these lie on secondary branches while others fall on isolas. The approach substantially enhances our understanding of the solution space of this equation.

Advisor: Knobloch, Edgar