VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Rapid Onset Impulsive Loading: Three Dynamical Case Studies

In this dissertation I present research undertaken on three dynamical systems, which I/nterm ‘case-studies’. The most interesting dynamics in these systems were largely precipitated/nby abbreviated periods where impulsive loading dominated./nThe first case-study features an impulsively-loaded wave energy converter (WEC) for/nwhich mass modulation schemes have been proposed which take advantage of the ambient/nwater motion. Experimental results for a pair of passively and impulsively initiated/nschemes are presented and one of them is shown to be effective in increasing the energy/nharvesting potential of a WEC; numerical analysis of the model also shows the potential/nbenefits of the mass-modulation scheme and, moreover, validates the benefits of harnessing/nimpulsively applied fluid pressures which are often neglected in the design of a WEC./nThe second case-study examines the accidental untying of a shoelace while walking. In/nthis case-study, I discuss the series of events that lead to a shoelace knot becoming untied./nSlow-motion video footage and a series of experiments show the failure of the knot happens/nin a matter of seconds, often without warning, and is catastrophic. Controlled experiments/nshow that increasing inertial effects of the swinging laces leads to increased rate of knot/nuntying, that the directions of the impact and swing influence the rate of failure, and that the/nknot structure has a profound influence on a knot’s tendency to untie under cyclic impact/nloading./nThe final case-study concerns the ground-up development of prototyping techniques for/na soft-robot modeled after the common caterpillar. I sought to suggest an analysis path for/nrapid prototyping of a SMA based, caterpillar inspired soft-robot to undergo undulatory/nmotion. Analysis of the kinematics and dynamics of the caterpillar are structured through/nsimple models which yield estimates of forces and energetics that would be extremely/ndifficult to determine directly, in addition to suggestions for open-loop motion patterns./nSimultaneously, simple experiments and optical tracking of SMA segments were performed/nto yield properties input directly into a robust numerical solver used to simulate a prototype/nsoft-robot’s undulatory motion and reveal facets leading to the success or failure of its/nmotion.

Advisor: O'Reilly, Oliver M
Disease and Difference in Three Platonic Dialogues: Gorgias, Phaedo, and Timaeus

This study traces a persistent connection between the image of disease and the concept of difference in Plato’s Gorgias, Phaedo, and Timaeus. Whether the disease occurs in the body, soul, city, or cosmos, it always signals an unassimilated difference that is critical to the argument. I argue that Plato represents—and induces—diseases of difference in order to produce philosophers, skilled in the art of differentiation. Because his dialogues intensify rather than cure difference, his philosophy is better characterized as a “higher pathology” than a form of therapy./nAn introductory section on Sophist lays out the main features of the concept of difference-in-itself and concisely presents its connection to disease. The main chapters examine the relationship in different realms. In the first chapter, the problem is moral and political: in the Gorgias, rhetoric is a corrupting force, while philosophy purifies the city and soul by drawing distinctions. In the second chapter on Phaedo, the problem is epistemological: if we correctly interpret the illness of misology, as the despair caused by the inability to consistently distinguish truth and falsity, we can resolve the mystery of Socrates’ cryptic last words (“We owe a cock to Asclepius; pay the debt and do not neglect it”). In the third chapter on Timaeus, Plato treats diseases of the soul, the body, and the cosmos itself. There, the correlation between disease and difference actually helps humans situate themselves in the vast universe—for in both cases, proper differentiation is the key to a healthy, well-constructed life./nMy emphasis on Plato’s theory of difference counters the traditional focus on his theory of Forms. Elucidating the link between the concept of difference and the experience of disease has broader impact for the ageless question of how we should live our lives. In Plato’s system, neither disease nor difference is a wholly negative element to be eradicated. Instead, difference and disease, in their proper proportions, are responsible for the fullness of the world and the emergence of the philosophical subject.

Advisor: Naddaff, Ramona
Ferrari, G.R.F.
Non-Equilibrium Electronic Structure of Cuprate Superconductors

Ever since high-temperature cuprate superconductors were discovered in 1986, they have been a source of many mysteries and controversies among scientists. The biggest mystery is the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity. While it is known that electrons bind together in Cooper pairs, it is not known why. A second mystery is the origin of the pseudogap, a state that exists above the superconducting critical temperature. To address these problems, experimentalists have been looking for new techniques to provide new perspectives./nIn this dissertation, we study cuprate superconductors using the recently-developed technique of time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (TARPES). This technique uses infrared laser pulses to excite materials out of equilibrium, and to probe their electronic structure. TARPES has matured to the point that we understand the technique, but have not fully explored the scientific possibilities. This work seeks to push the boundaries by finding and characterizing unusual phenomena in the TARPES data, and developing frameworks to understand them. In the process, we address the central mysteries of cuprate superconductors./nIn Chapter 1, we outline the theory of conventional superconductors, including many technical details of electron-boson coupling. We then discuss cuprate superconductors, establishing the basic properties of their electronic structure and related controversies. In Chapter 2, we briefly discuss our experimental technique and what it measures. We also review the literature of TARPES studies on cuprates. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 describe three different studies on cuprates, each looking at a different phenomenon. Chapter 3 looks at the chemical potential, and finds a connection to the pseudogap state. Chapter 4 looks at the buildup time of non-equilibrium quasiparticles, and finds a connection to the stimulated recombination of Cooper pairs. Chapter 5 looks at the signatures of electron-boson coupling, and proposes a way to determine if it contributes to Cooper pairing. In Chapter 6, we briefly summarize the main findings and offer some concluding remarks.

Advisor: Lanzara, Alessandra
Novel Processing Schemes for Material Systems on Amorphous and Flexible Substrates

With the rise of the Internet of Things (IOT), demand for novel devices and sensors for a variety of applications has exploded, and as a result, there is a need for the development of new processing schemes and materials systems to accommodate the expanding needs of these applications. In particular,/nChapter 2 explores the growth of III-V semiconductors with quality approaching that of epitaxial thin films directly onto amorphous substrates using a new growth mode known as template liquid phase (TLP) crystal growth. The fundamental theory and limitations of TLP growth are explored and the toolboxes necessary for enabling this method to be widely used such as in-situ doping and growth of ternary III-V compounds are demonstrated. Proof of concept demonstrations of multilayer growth for 3D integration, transistors and phototransistors for electronic and optoelectronic integration, and transfer onto plastic for flexible applications are shown./nChapter 3 extends the concept of using liquid metals to the field of flexible and deformable electronics. As an analogy to solid state electronics, where materials with varying electronic properties (metallic, semiconducting, insulating, etc) are connected together to form functional devices, the concept of “liquid state electronics” is introduced. Liquids, being able to conform to any shape, can enable electronic devices which can sustain extremely large amounts of deformation. By using microchannels to prevent intermixing, liquid-liquid heterojunctions composed of liquid metal (InGaSn) as the interconnect and ionic liquids as sensors are demonstrated./nChapter 4 focuses on the usage of solution processed carbon nanotubes for enabling high-performing flexible electronic devices. First, a method for n-type doping of carbon nanotubes for CMOS applications is introduce using fixed charge in silicon nitride films. An extension of this doping method to other materials systems, in particular 2D WSe2 is demonstrated as well. The usage of carbon nanotubes in printed electronics for enabling large scale, high throughput, flexible electronics manufacturing is explored, with >97% pixel yield in a 20×20 active matrix backplane array being achieved. A proof of concept demonstration of tactile pressure mapping using the printed nanotube active matrix backplane is shown as a potential application of such devices.

Advisor: Javey, Ali
Chinatown Urbanism: Architecture, Migrancy, and Modernity in East Asia

This dissertation examines transnational spaces of Chinatowns as a point of departure to reflect upon the production of architecture and urbanism on a global scale. More specifically, I trace the genealogy of “Chinatown” in East Asia—how a Chinatown has evolved into a distinct urban type, how it has been created as a discrete category which seems to exhibit inherent propensities, and how it has been mobilized to forge a different kind of space of governance. Contrary to the popular conception of architecture as a material form grounded and fixed in a particular locale, architecture and the built environment have often been the product of moving ideas and practices that migrate across different cultural and geographic contexts. It is also important to note that such traveling of ideas and practices is mediated by human and non-human actors alike, ranging from architects, planners, and researchers to materials, ideas, and images. While illuminating how different modes of global connectivity have enabled practices to build and govern new urban space to travel, this dissertation sheds light on the underexplored role of affect and sentiment as integral to the mobility of built form./nThis dissertation identifies three important historical shifts shaping and reshaping Chinatowns in East Asia: 1) the opening of East Asian ports to foreign trade and commerce in the late nineteenth century; 2) the onset of the Cold War upon the collapse of the Japanese empire; and 3) China’s (re)opening to global capitalism in post-Cold War East Asia. Drawing from a combined methodology of archival research and ethnography, my analytical focus is primarily placed on how people, things, and affects become circulated at new historical junctures, how people feel while encountering with novel spaces and objects, and how things come into play when people try to make sense of their places in a changing world. I argue that the global production and circulation of affects, closely associated with the geopolitical context in which they take place, have played a significant role in governing Chinese space and subjectivity, making Chinatown as a distinct urban “type”—a self-contained entity imagined to represent a different space of governance. I further contend that it is also the capacity of affect to propel action that enables Chinese residents to question the static meanings attached to their spaces, bring in materials and ideas from elsewhere, and thus redefine the idea of Chinatown.

Advisor: AlSayyad, Nezar
Passive Revolution on the World Stage: The Political Origins of Climate Change

This study builds on but challenges conventional theories of climate change by advancing a different way of analyzing climate politics. Starting out from the assumption that climate change can only be addressed by radically reforming or superseding capitalism, it draws from interview data, observation notes, and historical material to investigate why the world’s governments have not managed to pass stronger, more effective international agreements and domestic measures in response to what many now consider the greatest threat facing the international community./nBuilding on Gramsci’s concept of “passive revolution” by examining the micro-dynamics of class struggles on the world stage, it argues that our failure to make more progress in addressing climate change has been the consequence of successful “passive revolution” on the world stage: Faced with more organized subaltern groups demanding radical changes to address climate change and other global environmental problems, a particular fraction of the dominant classes came together to push for limited reforms in order to disorganize the subaltern groups, contain the threat of radical change, and reconstruct their hegemony. Faced with this passive revolution, the subaltern groups fragmented instead of becoming even more organized, thus failing to sustain their mobilization for radical change. But, faced with this failed revolution, the dominant classes too splintered instead of consolidating, thus also failing to sustain their mobilization for limited reforms. With both subaltern groups and dominant classes disorganized, the more conservative elites succeeded in blocking reforms, and weak and ineffective neoliberal “solutions” prevailed as global society’s dominant response to climate change./nInvestigating how “passive revolution” could have failed in the past, the study sheds light on how we could make more progress in addressing climate change and other global problems.

Advisor: Burawoy, Michael
Application of two dimensional and high surface area materials in energy conversion and storage devices

The work presented in this thesis aims to emphasize the power of two dimensional (2D) and high surface area material integration into energy harvesting and storage devices by introducing new techniques and devices. The techniques and device architectures are unique and encourage new ways of thinking in experimental condensed matter physics, material growth, and synthesis, while providing new perspectives to science and engineering./nThis thesis consists of three parts: Part I introduces two dimensional and high surface area materials. Part II focuses on energy harvesting devices and the demonstration of different solar cell architectures with integration of graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), and graphene aerogel (GA). In Part III, various energy storage device architectures are introduced for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) and lithium air batteries (Li-air) by incorporating different high surface area materials: boron nitride aerogels (BNAG), boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs), or graphene aerogels (GA). Additional measurements, supplementary figures, and detailed fabrication methods are discussed in the appendix.

Advisor: Zettl, Alex
Spaces of Empire

This project is an attempt to offer a genealogy of Empire from a different perspective, with different possibilities for resemblance and familiarity, to seek an order not in sequence in an effort to destabalize long-held causal narratives of empire(s). Beginning with/nthe Romans, I am interested in an “experiential” historicism that wants to articulate what historical subjects thought they were doing as empire as a social and political construct was coming into being. To such an end, I examine distinct imperial Roman building/npractices—their devices to tell the time, their cities both at home/nand abroad, their roads, and their maps—as well as the metaphorical language surrounding them. Jumping ahead to the British imperial novel, both early and late, I trace the evolution and devolution of these edifices and metaphors in order to show the ways in which empire abstracts and aestheticizes itself both conceptually and in practice. Finally, I use a combination of the concrete and metaphorized world of empire under the Romans, and its abstraction and aestheticization under the British, to argue for the current/nmanifestation of imperial “space” in the digital realm, which was envisioned early on through imperial metaphors and practices. In/nthis way, I argue against conceptions of the digital as a “new” space, free from the overarching logic of Empire, and eventually seek to find a road out towards political and imaginative alternatives.

Advisor: Francois, Anne-Lise
Numerical methods for the Landau-Lifshitz equation in micromagnetics : the mimetic finite difference method and the mass-lumped finite element method

Micromagnetics is a continuum theory describing magnetization patterns inside ferromagnetic media. The dynamics of a ferromagnetic material are governed by the Landau-Lifshitz equation. This equation is highly nonlinear, has a non-convex constraint, has several equivalent forms, and involves solving an auxiliary problem in the infinite domain, which pose interesting challenges in developing numerical methods. In this thesis, we first present a low order mimetic finite difference method for the Landau-Lifshitz equation, that works on general polytopal meshes on general geometries, preserves non-convex constraint, is energy (exchange) decreasing, requires only a linear solver at each time step and is easily applicable to the limiting cases. Secondly, we present a high order mimetic finite difference method for the Landau-Lifshitz equation which is third order in space and second order in time. In fact, it can be arbitrarily high order in space. This method works on general polytopal meshes, and preserves the non-convex constraint in a certain sense. Lastly, we present a new class of convergent mass-lumped finite element methods to solve a weak formulation of the Landau-Lifshitz equation. The scheme preserves a non-convex constraint, requires only a linear solver at each time step and is easily applicable to the limiting cases. We provide a rigorous convergence proof that the numerical solution of our finite element method for the Landau-Lifshitz equation converges weakly to a weak solution of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation.

Advisor: Wilkening, Jon
Framing Bosnia: The Politics of Architecture and City Building in the Austro-Hungarian Administration of Bosnia, and Hercegovina, 1878-1903

Abstract/nFraming Bosnia:/nThe Politics of Architecture and City Building in the/nAustro-Hungarian Administration of Bosnia, and/nHercegovina,/n1878-1903/nby/nZahra Kadkani-Schmitt/nDoctor of Philosophy in Architecture/nUniversity of California, Berkeley/nProfessor Nezar AlSayyad, Chair/nThe Berlin Treaty of 1878 granted the Habsburg Monarchy the right to occupy and administer the two provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina with the ultimate goal of integrating these lands into the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By looking at the architectural and urban projects of the occupying power through a critical historical lenses, this dissertation examines the Austro-Hungarian administration’s attempts to frame and re-order these formerly Ottoman lands as a modern Central European space, between 1878 and 1903. I argue that from the very beginning of the occupation, the notion of culture and cultural policies as manifested in the built environment were perceived as the most effective and preferable political tool for facilitating a fast integration of these territories into the Empire./nUsing a wide range of archival documents and other sources in German and Serbo-Croatian, this study delineates the process of the Habsburg Empire’s integration of Bosnia and Hercegovina into their lands through the work of architectural and urban modernization projects. The first part of the dissertation analyses the initial spatial endeavors of the military administration between 1878 and 1882, which ranged from mapping to regulating and ordering these former Ottoman territories, that were deployed in cementing the modern infrastructure of the Austro-Hungarian plan of change. This section of the study explores why the early regulatory phase of the administration was deemed as the prerequisite for a future modernization and subsequent integration of these lands. The second half of the study shifts to considerations of a series of urban and architectural projects of the civil administration, between 1882 and 1903, that were intended to create an imperial bond between these newly acquired lands and the Habsburg monarchy. Throughout this part of the discussion, a special emphasis is given to the questions of how and why certain aesthetic values and architectural styles were generated by the Austro-Hungarian cultural policies in order to foster the process of integration./nThe goal of this study is to shed light on the question of how the advance of certain aesthetic programs, architectural languages and spatial transformations were meant to help the occupying power to achieve their greater political goal of ‘civilizing mission’ in Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Advisor: AlSayyad, Nezar
What’s in a Face? Rethinking the Greek Portrait through Hellenistic Glyptic

In Poetics (1448b), Aristotle describes two kinds of pleasure drawn from contemplating portraits. The viewer can either enjoy the image (the mental representation of something else) or the picture (the object of contemplation in itself). Two millennia later, the dichotomy still resonates in the study of ancient Greek portraiture and its origins. Scholars have often been more interested in the “who” (the image) rather than in the “what is in a face” (the picture). Instead of focusing on the traditional, well-studied corpora of marble and bronze sculpture and coins, the present study uses glyptic (the art of gem carving) to challenge the current understanding of Hellenistic portraiture./nThe idiosyncrasies of engraved portraits, particularly their focus on the face and absence of identifying inscriptions, problematize the methods of traditional scholarship. Indeed, the modern obsession with recognizing historical figures, often through empirical—and unsystematic—comparison with identified portraits and biographical readings, risks a potentially anachronistic understanding of Greek portraiture, centered on the mimetic and psychological preoccupations of the genre in Western art. Rather the ancient practice should be understood as a complex cultural phenomenon deeply informed by context. The first step towards a better understanding is to embrace the entirety of the corpus of material evidence with an awareness of historiographical biases that do not mirror ancient thought./nThe present study adopts new approaches from a variety of disciplines from cultural anthropology to cognitive neuroscience and proposes a new set of methods to study Hellenistic engraved portraits. First, the thorny question of identification and its methods is tackled with a re-evaluation of the use of coins as comparanda to identify engraved portraits of rulers. Proposed guidelines, tested on a case study, are based on a better understanding of numismatic practices and the concept of typology and its applicability across periods and media./nThe subsequent three chapters shift the focus from the image to the picture. The first addresses three formal characteristics of engraved portraiture, ie., its scale, format, and perspective, to shed light on the Greek conception of the face as it relates to the individual. The next chapter opens with a discussion of the emergence of cameo carving as a sign of growing interest in the materiality and visibility of engraved portraits in the Hellenistic period. It illustrates how an embodied approach to miniatures as objects of personal adornment unveils strategies of identity construction. The final chapter looks at the socio-economic use of seals. The agentive role of engraved portraits is reconstructed through a study and network analysis of sealings discovered in Egypt and Iraq.

Advisor: Stewart, Andrew F.