VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Mobiles, Media, and the Agency of Indian Youth

Technologies have been and are being designed to address varied human needs. Of these, the need for physical and economic well-being is typically considered to trump the need for culture, leisure, fun, and entertainment. Research initiatives in the field of Information and Communication Technology and Development (ICTD) have been in motion to address agricultural, educational, and health care needs, among others. The need for entertainment is central even in the lives of the `have-less', my dissertation affirms. Affordable new media technologies play a critical role towards the procurement of entertainment content and the resulting production of culture. Individuals quickly learn to navigate their way around technology, also paving the way for development-friendly outcomes. It is this phenomenon that my dissertation analyzes, as it studies individual agency in the intertwining of culture (society) and new media (technology) within the larger discourse of development./nI use ethnographic methods to investigate the leisure-driven appropriation of the mobile phone by youth from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds in rural, small-town, and urban India. I first analyze the influx of new media and its resulting impact on folk music practices in rural Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Shifting focus to the motivations that drive youth towards mobile consumption of folk and popular media, I examine the unique material affordances of new media technologies and their influence on emerging practices. I use the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) lens to draw particular attention to the notion of agency, both human and material, as I investigate the pirate media actor-network responsible for the widespread dissemination of digital media and technical skills. I then focus on the agency of urban Indian youth that leads them to build further on these skills as they negotiate various linguistic, social, and technological hurdles for engagement with social media towards a new, improved identity for themselves.

Advisor: Parikh, Tapan S
Stress-responsive biosensors for agricultural applications

Plants have internal stress response mechanisms. These mechanisms are activated in response to environmental stimuli. Measuring the activation of these mechanisms directly gives a clearer picture of how an environmental stimulus is actually affecting the stress state of the plant. This information is valuable in an agricultural context because these internal mechanisms are generally upstream of observable physiological manifestations of stress. But measuring the activity of these pathways is often expensive and time-consuming. We will demonstrate an optical biosensor system reporting the activity of a heat- and drought- sensitive gene pathway in Arabidopsis thaliana. The marginal cost per data point of this system is very low, and the rate of data acquisition is faster than the dynamics of the gene pathway, so the biosensor system can easily and quickly detect transient changes in pathway activation, opening a real-time window into the heat- and drought-stress state of the plant. With this real-time information in hand, we proceed to close the loop around the biosensor output using a computer-based feedback policy to maintain a constant biosensor expression level using the temperature in a small greenhouse as our control input. Along the way we will discover that as complicated and unknown as the internal dynamics of this process may be, a mechanistic model is not necessary to design a feedback policy that is robust to biological variability in the plants.

Advisor: Packard, Andrew K
Poolla, Kameshwar
Statistical Methods in Photogrammetry and Image-Lidar Fusion

A primary application of photogrammetry is to process, discriminate and classify optical imagery into 3D objects. Light detection and ranging (lidar) is an active sensor that measures the surfaces of 3D objects as discrete points in a point cloud. From the perspective of 3D objects in a common scene, point clouds and photogrammetry are related. Through this relationship there are numerous photogrammetric applications of lidar./nThis dissertation is concerned with three specific applications of lidar: modeling radiometric properties as a basis for comparison with imagery, estimating camera pose and data fusion. It is partial to the problems of object discrimination and classification, and presents solutions in a statistical context./nA reflectance image is derived from reflectance, shadow and projection models. The reflectance image model is applied to compare the point cloud and imagery. The collinear equations of imaging are reparameterized as an object to image space transformation and estimated using maximum likelihood. Reflectance images are applied to quantify errors in this transformation across multiple images and to study the convergence properties of estimates. Finally, the process of image-lidar fusion is discussed in the context of uncertainty and probability. An estimator is specified for image-lidar fusion, derived from a generalized theory of the process. The estimator is shown to be unbiased and relatively efficient compared to the sample mean.

Advisor: Biging, Gregory S.
The Power Structure and Its Political Consequences

Chapter one develops a dynamic model to investigate the paradox of the Chinese state-society relations before and after the reform. By assuming that citizens and the government are both forward looking and protestors in the CCP regime have to pay the durable cost, the model generates several findings. First, the model identifies an increasing number of protests in a transition economy because the decentralized reform has induced such significant changes as the weakened central authority, released social control and increased distributable income. Second, a low level of social unrests is found in both stationary and non-stationary equilibrium in a central planning economy. Third, the model demonstrates the strong capability of a command economy in administrating economic crisis. Finally, the future tendency of the Chinese state-society relations depends on the re-strengthening of central authority and the techniques that the center will apply to respond the mass incidents./nChapter two develops the Crowford and Sobel's cheap talk model (1982) and Hoff and Stiglitz's model of anarchy of demand for the rule of law (2004), and investigates the significance of peasants' rebellions on Chinese dynastic stability and the large variance in the duration of reign within the dynastic cycle. I contend that dynastic stability is determined by the initial land distribution and the center-local relationship in the Central Autocratic System. As the center cannot constrain the local corruption, the portion of peasant proprietors and thus dynastic stability has a tendency of decreasing over time. In addition, the patterns of dynastic longevity are shaped by the type of preceding wars before the dynasty was built./nVery few researches focus on the role of judicial system in determining the level of corruption. Employing a formal model with empirical analyses, Chapter three incorporate economic factors with political constraints to investigate the different roles of democracy and judicial independence in determining the level of bureaucrats' corruption across countries. Empirically, the instrumental variable (IV) approach is applied to resolve the endogeneity problems. The evidence indicates that different levels of corruption across countries are significantly influenced by the degrees of judicial independence. To fight corruption successfully, I contend that the judiciary, as a hard institutional constraint to resist bureaucratic corruption, has to be independent from the government.

Advisor: Roland, Gérard
Sensationalism, Cinema and the Popular Press in Mexico and Brazil, 1905-1930

This dissertation examines the role of new visual reproduction technologies in forging public cultures of sensationalized violence in two rapidly modernizing nations on the periphery of industrial capitalism. I trace parallel developments in the production and reception of silent crime and adventure film in Brazil's First Republic and in revolutionary and post-revolutionary Mexico, at a moment when industrialization and urbanization were reshaping daily experience without eliminating profound social inequalities. Re-evaluating critical frameworks premised on cinema's relationship to the experience of modernity in the industrialized U.S. and Western Europe, I argue that these early twentieth-century cultures of popular sensationalism signal the degree to which public life in Mexico and Brazil has been conditioned by violence and social exclusion linked to legacies of neo-colonial power./nIn the first half of the dissertation, I examine cinematic re-enactments of real-life crimes filmed in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Mexico City between 1908 and 1919. Combining an emphasis on location shooting with melodramatic tropes inherited from popular literature and theater, these true-crime films grapple with representational problems at the heart of the cinematic medium: its potential for both documentation and dramatization and its indeterminate relationship to topical events. Incorporating analysis of locally produced crime serials, I focus on the dynamics of unequal cultural exchange between Mexico and Brazil and industrialized nations, particularly France and the United States, which acted as exporters of cultural products. Addressing the economic polarization of metropolitan centers and rural areas, the latter half of the dissertation analyzes fiction features produced outside the two countries' principal cities in the 1920s, where economic development lagged behind that of urban centers. These productions drew on the conventions of imported serial films and westerns (particularly location shooting and dynamic action sequences) to display local landscapes even as they asserted mastery over cinematic technology's viscerally thrilling effects. In constructing violence and risk as markers of local modernity, early Mexican and Brazilian crime and adventure films rendered spectacularly visible the social tensions of national modernization projects.

Advisor: Whissel, Kristen
Essays on Financial Risk Taking and Embedded Heuristics

This dissertation investigates the relationship between the use of financial risk taking and the complex mathematical models used to quantify risks. In the first essay, laboratory experiments demonstrate that students who have taken courses in finance and economics take more risk when they are exposed to complex mathematical models, even when these models do not provide more information. Furthermore, students who have a strong belief in the power of risk quantification to produce accurate assessments of future events are more likely to take more risk when it is accompanies by complex quantitative models. The second essay uses data on U.S. banks from 1994-2007 and investigates popular claims that innovative risk measures, such as value at risk (VAR) resulted in greater risk seeking by banks prior to the financial crisis. It theorizes that as formal risk assessment models, such as the risk models used by banks, become institutionalized within organizations, a model's abstract representation of reality becomes reified and treated as though it is real and complete. This results in organizationally-embedded decision-making heuristics that shape how choices are made within the firm. For risk models, this meant that when banks encouraged the use of risk models, they generated an implicit belief that these models represented accurate assessments of future outcomes. This reduced uncertainty about future outcomes and led to greater risk taking.

Advisor: Staw, Barry
Sibling Relationship Predictors of Academic Achievement in Adolescents

During adolescence older siblings who are close in age may serve as examples to emulate or become different from. Key features of the sibling relationship that may promote similar sibling outcomes include sibling intimacy, older sibling support, younger sibling image of the older sibling, and self-reported social learning and differentiation. The goal of this dissertation was first to (a) examine whether older sibling support represents a single or multiple factors and then to (b) investigate which aspects of the sibling relationship predict younger siblings' membership in one of four achievement groups. Data was collected from 288 younger siblings (YS) in ninth and tenth grade. Participants reported their own and their older sibling's (OS) grades and completed measures of sibling intimacy, OS support for YS academic plans, YS image of OS, social learning, and differentiation. They also completed demographic and family data including family cohesion and parent expectations of achievement. First, factor analysis results indicated that OS support for YS academic plans represented four distinct factors: Encouragement, Goal Setting, OS Academic Engagement, and Involvement. Second, four sibling achievement groups were created based on a median split of grades in order to determine which of these factors as well as other sibling relationship variables best predicted younger siblings' achievement in the context of their older sibling's achievement: OS high-YS high (HH), OS high-YS low (HL), OS low-YS high (LH), and OS low-YS low (LL). Discriminant analyses indicated that younger siblings were most often correctly classified (55% correct) into their corresponding achievement group when GPA rather than a global rating of grades was used as a measure of academic achievement. The strongest predictor of YS achievement was OS academic engagement, followed by parent expectations of achievement and differentiation. Classification was most accurate (81%) when older siblings were high achievers and when parent expectations of achievement were not low and most inaccurate (37-46%) when older siblings were low achievers. These results provide evidence that older siblings' academic engagement is a key aspect of older sibling support that relates to younger siblings' academic achievement and highlight the importance of both sibling and family variables in influencing younger siblings' achievement. Given that the sibling relationship is both nested within a family and has distinct influences, future research should use a multilevel approach with data from multiple informants in order to distinguish between family, parent, and sibling influences and examine the relative contributions of each of these relationships.

Advisor: Holloway, Susan D
Mapping and Identification of the RXopJ4 Resistance Gene and the Search for New Sources of Durable Resistance to Bacterial Spot Disease of Tomato

Bacterial spot of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a devastating disease that severely limits yields in important tomato-­growing regions, including the southeastern United States, where the predominant bacterial spot pathogen species is Xanthomonas perforans. Attempts to control the disease with antibiotics and copper-­based pesticides have led to the selection of bacterial strains that are resistant to these treatments. Therefore, we turn to genetic sources of resistance as a sustainable path to reduce crop losses to bacterial spot disease./nThis work describes the fine mapping and identification of the RXopJ4 disease resistance locus from the wild tomato relative Solanum pennellii LA716. RXopJ4 resistance depends on recognition of the X. perforans type III effector protein XopJ4. We developed a collection of fourteen molecular markers to map on a segregating F2 population from a cross between the susceptible parent S. lycopersicum FL8000 and the resistant parent RXopJ4 8000 OC7. In the F2 population, a 190-­kb segment on chromosome 6 cosegregated with resistance. This fine mapping enabled the identification of three RXopJ4 candidate genes, all of which encode putative intracellular serine-­threonine protein kinases. Transient coexpression of the XopJ4 effector with each kinase revealed a promising RXopJ4 candidate gene that triggered a hypersensitive response (HR) in Nicotiana benthamiana. Mutations in both XopJ4 and RXopJ4 identified conserved residues required for recognition and the induction of a hypersensitive cell death phenotype. Homozygous transgenic tomato plants containing the RXopJ4 candidate gene have been constructed and will soon be evaluated for disease resistance./nIn addition, we undertook a genomic survey of fourteen X. perforans field isolates from all five fresh market tomato production zones of Florida, revealing a preliminary set of core type III effectors common to all isolates. We used this set of core effectors to inform a search for new sources of resistance to bacterial spot disease and identified accessions of Nicotiana and Solanum americanum that recognize core X. perforans effectors. Finally, we performed disease assays on 224 wild tomato accessions and found nine potential sources of bacterial spot disease resistance.

Advisor: Staskawicz, Brian J
Innate immune responses to soluble factors from Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Pseudomonas aeruginosa are gram-negative bacteria that colonize the human airway./nThey are of great clinical importance, especially for patients with the genetic disorder Cystic/nFibrosis, a disease characterized by persistent infection and hyper-inflammation in the airways/n(Hoiby et al., 1977). The innate immune response to P. aeruginosa in airway cells consists of/nfluid secretion driven by the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane conductance Regulator (CFTR) and/nthe release of inflammatory cytokines for the recruitment of phagocytes. The present work/naddresses the role of two secreted products from P. aeruginosa and their effects on these/nprocesses. Flagellin, the protein monomer of the P. aeruginosa flagellum, has been previously/nshown to induce cytokine secretion through Toll-Like Receptor 5 (TLR5) (Zhang et al., 2005)/nand to activate CFTR-mediated secretion through an unknown mechanism (Illek et al., 2008). In/nthe present study I attempted to discover the signaling pathway mediating CFTR secretion from/nflagellin. Though this work did not yield a definitive pathway, many possibilities were explored/nand the response to flagellin was better characterized than in previous work. In addition to my/nstudy of flagellin, I also studied the effects of a P. aeruginosa quorum-sensing signaling/nmolecule, N-(3-Oxododecanoyl)-L-homoserine lactone (HSL-C12), on inflammatory signaling/nin mammalian cells. Previous work has characterized the response to HSL-C12 as either pro- or/nanti-inflammatory depending on the system used and the measurements taken (Telford et al.,/n1998, Smith et al., 2001, Smith et al., 2002, Kravchenko et al., 2006, Jahoor et al., 2008,/nKravchenko et al., 2008). In my study I utilized both gene expression and cytokine secretion/nmeasurements to determine that HSL-C12 has anti-inflammatory characteristics in short/ntreatments but pro-inflammatory characteristics in longer treatments and that both of these/nphenotypes stem from an inhibition of host protein synthesis. Together with what is already/nknown about P. aeruginosa infection, my data helps to paint a picture of how secreted factors/naffect the course of infection and inflammatory response to P. aeruginosa in the human airway.

Advisor: Machen, Terry
Guidance of Cardiovascular Tissue Regeneration via Novel Synthetic & Natural Matrix Approaches

Cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of mortality in many countries. Devices such as stents, vascular grafts, and heart valves have been developed to treat such diseases. However, many of these devices fail due to thrombotic complications. Recently, the fields of cardiovascular tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have begun to focus on treatments that not only replace diseased tissue, but also aid in the recovery and growth of new healthy tissue. Providing the appropriate matrix for tissue growth is essential to achieving effective tissue engineering solutions. Natural matrix materials can be advantageous as they have high biocompatibility, and are most similar to the native extracellular environment. Additionally, synthetic matrix materials may also provide advantages, since they are easily customizable and provide scalability./nThis dissertation will discuss work aimed to guide cardiovascular tissue regeneration, using both synthetic and natural approaches. Since non-thrombogenicity is a key concern, a comprehensive review of nonthrombogenic approaches in cardiovascular bioengineering will be presented first. Next, a novel approach, known as in situ vascular tissue engineering is presented and explored as a treatment for replacing clogged blood vessels. Specifically, we investigated the efficacy of small-diameter vascular grafts composed of electrospun nano-to-microscale fibers with immobilized heparin and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Finally, we discuss the development and efficacy of a naturally derived, injectable amniotic membrane scaffold for treatment of myocardial infarction.

Advisor: Li, Song
Design Techniques for Fully Integrated Switched-Capacitor Voltage Regulators

As parallelism increases the number of cores integrated onto a chip, there is a clear need for fully integrated DC-DC converters to enable efficient on-die power management. Due to the availability of high density and low series resistance capacitors in existing CMOS processes, switched-capacitor DC-DC converters have recently gained significant interest as a cost-effective means of enabling such power management functionality./nIn this thesis, described are design techniques to implement fully integrated switched-capacitor DC-DC converters with high power density and efficiency. The area required by a fully integrated switched-capacitor DC-DC converter in order to deliver a certain level of power to the load has direct implications on both cost and efficiency, and hence in Chapter 2 a methodology is presented to predict and minimize the losses of such a converter operating at a given power density. Chapter 3 further introduces gate driver and level shifter circuit design strategies to enable topology reconfiguration and hence efficient generation of a wider range of output voltages. In order to demonstrate the possibility of replacing all off-chip PMICs, Chapter 4 presents a battery-connected switched-capacitor DC-DC converter that is able to convert the wide input voltage range from Li-ion battery to an output regulated at ~1V using cascode switches and intermediate voltage rails. The SC converter in Chapter 4 also employs a fast control loop to regulate the output with sub-ns response times./nMeasured results from the converters presented in Chapters 3 and 4 match with the analytical prediction and, thus, confirm the design methodology presented in Chapter 2. The 32nm SOI prototype presented in Chapter 3 achieves ~80% efficiency at a power density of ~0.5-1W/mm2 for a 2:1 step-down converter operating from a 2V input and utilizing only standard MOS capacitors. Reconfiguration of the converter's topology enables it to maintain greater than 70% efficiency for most of the output voltage range from 0.7V to ~1.15V. The 65nm Bulk CMOS prototype discussed in Chapter 4 also utilizes only standard MOS capacitors to regulate the output voltage at ~1V from a ~2.9V-4V input. It achieves ~73% efficiency at 0.19 W/mm2 output power density and maintain efficiency above 72% over the whole range of target power density. The sub-ns response control loop maintains <76 mV voltage droop out of a 1V regulated output under a full load step of 0 → 0.253 A/mm2 in 50ps./nGiven that these results were achieved in a standard CMOS process with no modifications or additions, they illustrate that fully integrated switched-capacitor converters are indeed a promising candidate for low-cost but efficient power management on a per-core or per-functional unit basis. They can possibly replace all the off-chip PMICs and passive components and free up significant PCB area to be used to implement new functions on next-generation mobile devices.

Advisor: Alon, Elad
Sanders, Seth R.