VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Optimal Dam Construction under Climate Change Uncertainty and Anticipated Learning

Large-scale public capital-investment projects are typically evaluated using standard net-present-value (NPV) analysis. Projects with large, up-front investments, such as dams or energy plants, often are irreversible and have uncertain future benefits. If we expect to reduce uncertainty about these future flows over time, introducing the option to delay the project may increase project value and lead to different decisions. This paper evaluates a pending California water storage and conveyance project that would increase the capacity of an existing dam, the value of which depends upon the future climate state. The research uses a dynamic optimization program with two stochastic state variables to analyze decision making. One state variable is the belief about the future climate state, and the other is the level of green-house-gas (GHG) stocks, both of which change in a random manner. The analysis allows for the possibility of learning more about the true state of the future climate as time goes on. The optimal investment policy differs substantially from that proposed by the policy makers involved in the empirical project.

Advisor: Karp, Larry
The POLARBEAR Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Experiment and Anti-Reflection Coatings for Millimeter Wave Observations

New technology has rapidly advanced the field of observational cosmology over the last 30 years. This trend will continue with the development of technologies to measure the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization. The B-mode component of the polarization map will place limits on the energy scale of inflation and the sum of the neutrino masses. This thesis describes the \pb instrument which will measure the CMB polarization anisotropy to unprecedented sensitivity. POLARBEAR-I is currently observing, and an upgraded version, POLARBEAR-II, is planned for the future./nThe first version of the experiment, POLARBEAR-I, is fielding several new technologies for the first time. POLARBEAR-I has high sensitivity due to its detector count. It employs a 1274 detector Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) bolometer array. The bolometers are coupled to a planar array of polarization sensitive antennas. These antennas are lithographed on the same substrate as the TES detectors, allowing on-chip band defining filters between the antenna and detector. The focal plane is composed of seven hexagonal detector modules. This modular scheme can be extended to create larger focal plane arrays in the future. POLARBEAR-I is observing at a single band near 150 GHz, the peak in the CMB blackbody curve./nThe lenslet antenna coupled detector technology, fielding for the first time in POLARBEAR-I, is naturally scalable to larger arrays with multi-chroic pixels. This broadband technology will have higher sensitivity and better capability for astronomical foreground contaminant removal. The antenna geometry can be changed to receive a wider frequency bandwidth. This bandwidth can be broken into multiple frequency bands with the on-chip band defining filters. Each band will be read out by one TES detector. A dual band instrument, \pbtwo, is in development with bands at 90 and 150 GHz./nOne challenge for all CMB polarization measurements is minimization of systematic errors. One source of error is polarized reflections off of the refractive optics inside the receiver. Specifically, the antenna-coupled detector scheme relies on a high dielectric lenslet for each pixel on the focal plane. A large portion of this thesis discusses development of anti-reflection (AR) coatings for the high curvature lenslet surface. The AR coating technologies discussed are also applicable to other optical elements, such as reimaging lenses and half-wave plates. A single layer coating is used on the \pbone lenslet array, and a two layer coating is presented for use in \pbtwo. The two layer coating method can be extended to wider bandwidth AR coatings.

Advisor: Lee, Adrian T
Cooperation, Competition, and Regulation: Constructing Value in French and Italian Wine Markets

In 1976, virtually unknown Californian wine producers shocked the culinary world by beating top French Bordeaux houses at the blind tasting event known as "The Judgment of Paris." The challenge was repeated in 1986 and 2006, with Californian vintners emerging victorious each time. Yet as producers in other countries increasingly meet or surpass French producers in terms of quality, the price differential between French wines and other wines continues to increase. What enables French producers to maintain market price dominance, absent clear qualitative dominance?/nI demonstrate that French wine producers maintain price dominance because the French government made regulations that defined geographic zones, which drove prices up by (1) limiting supply and (2) locating brand value with grape growers. Quality French producers were able to pressure the government for these market protections because of strong political organization among growers and deep levels of compromise across the supply chain, notably between growers and wine merchants./nWhy have some producers secured these market protections, but not others? And why have these regulations worked in France, but achieved mixed results in other contexts? Unlike quality French producers, both the Italian wine market and the French table wine market are characterized by weak levels of vertical supply chain cooperation, which undermines the construction of a protected market space. I argue these different patterns of political organization explain national and sub-national patterns of production and subsequent market outcomes. I then extend my case to the broader luxury market.

Advisor: Vogel, Steven K
Zysman, John
Ultrafast Carrier Dynamics in Nanostructured Materials: From Charge Transfer to Lasing Action

Nanostructured materials have emerged as new building blocks for future innovative devices. The size-tunable properties exhibited across a wide variety of nanostructures, ranging from quantum confinement to optical confinement, can have a direct impact on how efficiently energy is transferred, stored, and utilized. Two distinct types of nanostructured materials in different size regimes are described in this dissertation: Pt-tipped CdSe/CdS nanorods and ZnO tetrapods./nCharge separation dynamics are investigated in Pt-tipped and non-tipped CdSe (quantum dot)/CdS nanorods by ultrafast white light transient absorption spectroscopy. Charge transfer is observed from the CdS and CdSe regions, with evidence for electron transfer to the Pt tip occurring over both sub-ps and sub-100 ps timescales. By exciting the CdSe quantum dot directly at 550 nm and probing the quantum dot directly at 580 nm, electron transfer to the Pt tip is monitored from a local region of the nanorod that is separated from the CdS-Pt interface./nTo investigate the lasing action in nanostructured cavities in detail, single ZnO tetrapod structures are isolated with a home-built confocal microscope and excited with a sub-ps UV pump pulse (267 nm). The lasing thresholds are observed to be in the range of ~50- 200 J/cm2. To characterize the Fabry-Pérot-type cavities further, micro-Raman studies are performed and rate equations for microcavity lasers are numerically solved to investigate the near-threshold lasing dynamics.

Advisor: Leone, Stephen R
Restoring Ecological Function with Invasive Species Management

Mutually beneficial interactions between pollinators and flowering plants represent a critical but threatened component of ecosystem function that can underlie the success of ecological restoration. The management and removal of invasive species may give rise to unanticipated changes in plant-pollinator mutualisms because they can alter the composition and functioning of plant-pollinator interactions in a variety of ways. In an attempt to incorporate a functional framework into invasive species management, we conducted a large-scale manipulative experiment to examine the restoration of the plant-pollinator mutualisms and the pollination of a functionally important endemic tree species, Metrosideros polymorpha, following the removal of a competitively dominant invasive floral visitor and arthropod predator, Vespula pensylvanica. The invasive western yellowjacket wasp, Vespula pensylvanica, is an adept and aggressive nectar thief of the partially self-incompatible and pollen limited M. polymorpha. A management strategy utilizing 0.1% fipronil chicken bait with the addition of heptyl butyrate reduced the abundance of V. pensylvanica by 95 ± 1.2% during the 3 months following treatment and maintained a population reduction of 60.9 ± 3.1% a year after treatment in the managed sites when compared with unmanaged sites. The large-scale management of V. pensylvanica demonstrated that V. pensylvanica through both superior exploitative and interference competition inhibits resource partitioning and displaces native and non-native M. polymorpha pollinators. Correspondingly, the removal of V. pensylvanica resulted in the competitive release and restructuring of the pollinator community and the re-establishment of the plant-pollinator mutualisms and pollination of M. polymorpha. This research elucidates the competitive mechanisms and contrasting implications of introduced species on ecological function and provides a framework from which future invasive species management can preserve ecological function and maintain ecosystem resilience.

Advisor: Kremen, Claire
Polymer microfluidic device for high-throughput single-cell encapsulation, lysis, and biological assay

Single cell analysis is the present and future of biological research. It's be-/ncoming clear that sub-populations of cells within a larger group can often be/nthe culprit for diseases or malfunctions. In this work we aim to provide a tool/nthat allows biological researchers to better analyze single cells within cell pop-/nulations by removing the barrier to observing analytes contained within the/ncell's membrane. By providing physical access to the intracellular compounds/nin a single cell, we can analyze individual cells for levels of analytes that were/npreviously only available through bulk measurements of a lysed cell popula-/ntion. The technique is similar to flow cytometry, but we will use droplets as a/nphysical analog to cells in a flow cytometer-type configuration. This distinc-/ntion allows for lysis of a single cell within a droplet and prevents diffusion of/ninternal components outside of the droplet's barrier. Analysis of analyte lev-/nels is accomplished with fluorescence labeling and laser based querying of the/nfluorescence concentration. This work is accomplished through use of a plastic/nmicrofluidic network.

Advisor: Pisano, Albert P
Economies, Moralities, and State Formations in British Colonial India

How is modern power organized? My dissertation explores this question by probing how state, society, and economy became ethically autonomous spheres for colonial administrators. In other words, I ask how officials shifted justifications for their behavior from referring to their immediate peers to the abstract imperatives of markets, the social, and sovereignty./nCorruption scandals were a key cause of this shift. Endemic to the English East India Trading Company's administration in India since its foundation, these scandals generally involved administrative squabbles escalating into appeals to authorities in London. However, while the scandals had a consistent form, the Seven Years War decisively changed their content. The war eroded the insulation protecting the Company's London authorities from Parliament and put a host of new actors who had little knowledge of Indian affairs in a position to influence the Company's behavior. Consequently, when Company officials in India appealed to London, they used the abstract moral language of state, society, and economy to appeal to these new actors for assistance. Moreover, these newly abstract justifications were then used by the succeeding class of senior Company administrators as resources to shape reforms of the Colonial State in India./n/nThe analysis in this dissertation is based on archival research at the India Office Records of the British Library in London and at Cambridge University. It analyzes and compares scandals in each of the Company's three major administrative units in India. In Bengal, the ejection of William Bolts and the impeachment of Warren Hastings generated arguments supporting the state's sovereignty. In the 1790s, Charles Cornwallis deployed these arguments to reform administrative conduct and ratify the development of an extremely powerful state apparatus. In Madras, meanwhile, the Nawab of Arcot's debts scandal precipitated the wholesale reformation of that region's administration in the 1790s and 1800s. Whereas Bengal's development ratified the state, in Madras administrative conflict centered on notions of defending Indian society. Accordingly, Madras officials justified their policy decisions by invoking "society" as an autonomous sphere with its own moral logics. Finally, in Bombay in the 1810s, the impeachment and ejection of a senior civil servant for alleged corruption led to debates in which free market principles were invoked as the foundation for administrative action.

Advisor: Swidler, Ann
A New Model to Construct Ice Stream Surface Elevation Profiles and Calculate Contributions to Sea-Level Rise

Sea-level rise is a problem that affects regions worldwide - from the marshlands of the San Francisco Bay Area to the farmlands in coastal Bangladesh. Three-dimensional ice sheet models are the principle tools to evaluate mass loss from ice sheets that contribute to sea-level rise. We recognize that given the current limitations in representing the full extent of dynamical processes that affect ice sheet mass loss in 3-D ice sheet models, we cannot make reliable forecasts of sea-level rise from melting polar land ice. Thus, we take a completely different approach to gaining insight about the potential effects of climate change-induced perturbations on ice sheets./nWe build a flowline model that resolves the fast-flowing portions of ice sheets (i.e., ice streams). We express the dynamics along the flowline with (a) vertical shear deformation, (b) horizontal shear deformation, and (c) basal slip. Knowledge accumulated from prior force balance analyses performed on some polar ice streams allows us to form relations between (a) and (c), and between (a) and (c) combined and (b). Based on these relationships, we numerically construct surface elevation profiles along flowlines centered on ten select ice streams in Greenland and Antarctica, by prescribing three climate change-induced perturbations: grounding line retreat, ice stream widening, and surface mass balance increase. Comparing these constructed profiles to the current observed ones allows us to quantify the effect of these perturbations on the various characteristics that these ten ice streams possess./nPine Island Glacier, which flows over a long overdeepening, will lose more than half of its stored ice volume that is contributable to sea-level rise before it reaches a possible steady state. Recovery Ice Stream, with its slippery base, long stretch of streaming-flow, and longest flowline among those we examined, loses the most mass (812 km3/km width). Jutulstraumen, which has little room to widen and a short stretch of streaming-flow, experiences more mass gain due to surface mass balance increase than mass loss due to grounding line retreat and widening. The broad range of ice streams and their diverse responses to prescribed perturbations is a convincing message that an accurate assessment of the contribution of ice sheets to future sea-level rise can only be obtained by raising the resolution of models to resolve the fast-flowing features and looking at their mass changes individually over time.

Advisor: Cuffey, Kurt
Disgust: Deficits in Behavioral Variant Frontotemporal Dementia and Correlates in the Brain

Disgust is an emotion that is important for basic survival, in addition to having social and moral implications. Disgust reactivity appears to be significantly impaired in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), a neurodegenerative disease that selectively affects areas of the brain that are crucial for proper emotional functioning. Caregivers have reported that some bvFTD patients pick up garbage, drink beverages found on the street, and eat out of trashcans. Recent findings from our laboratory were consistent with these anecdotal reports, and demonstrated that patients with bvFTD showed deficits in their behavioral, physiological, and self-reported responses to a disgusting stimulus (Eckart, Sturm, Miller, & Levenson, 2012). The present study sought to build upon these findings. In this study, bvFTD patients and neurologically healthy control participants had their emotional facial behavior, physiology, and self-reported emotional experience measured while viewing a disgust-eliciting film. In order to determine whether disgust was potentially a uniquely compromised emotion in this population, participants' responses to a sadness-eliciting film were also examined. In addition, the present study utilized a neurologically varied sample of participants to explore (across diagnoses) the relationship between disgust reactivity and the insula, a region of the brain thought to be important for disgust responding (e.g., Adolphs, Tranel, & Damasio, 2003). The specificity of this disgust-insula relationship was examined by also testing the associations between the insula and participants' sad film responses and the associations between additional brain regions and participants' disgust film responses./nResults supported the hypothesis of a specific disgust deficit in bvFTD. BvFTD patients exhibited diminished disgust reactivity in behavioral, physiological, and experiential domains (with the most robust deficit found in physiology), yet these patients did not differ from healthy controls in their responses to sad stimuli, suggesting that the observed disgust deficit cannot be explained by a general blunting of negative emotions. In terms of brain-behavior relationships across the neurologically varied sample, results were overall in line with expectations. Lower insular volume significantly predicted smaller disgust film responses in behavioral and experiential domains, and predicted less somatic activity in response to disgusting stimuli. The present study also found that lower insular volume was partially related to diminished sad film responses, but no additional brain regions were associated with disgust film responses. These findings suggest that the insula may be important in some ways for all emotions (Craig, 2009), but may be particularly important in disgust. The present study expands on past work, sheds light on the neural correlates of disgust, and provides additional information about areas of preserved and compromised functioning in bvFTD.

Advisor: Levenson, Robert
From the Law to the Market: the Campaign of the U'wa Indigenous People in Colombia (1995-2010)

This dissertation uses the campaign of Colombia's Uwa indigenous people against oil extraction in their land as a case study to understand the impact of the state, the law and the market over the tactics and scale of social movements. It studies how the campaign shifted away from litigation, expanded its scale transnationally and started using the tools available in the global market economy to prevent oil exploration in the Uwa land. The dissertation suggests the need to understand social movement tactics as a complex, multidimensional phenomenon in order to capture the relation between activism and multiple institutions. Finally, it also provides a framework to understand the relation between different tactics and institutions that helps to explain the roles of economic, political, and legal factors in providing the resources and opportunities for tactical innovation and transnational activism.

Advisor: Feeley, Malcolm M
Morrill, Calvin
French Africans in Ojibwe Country: Negotiating Marriage, Identity and Race, 1780-1890

This project explores changing constructions of identity for African Americans and Native Americans in the Western Great Lakes region from 1780-1890. I focus on the Bonga family, whose lineage in the region begins with the French-speaking African slaves Jean and Marie Jeanne Bonga. Their descendants intermarried with Ojibwe Indians, worked in the fur trade, participated in treaty negotiations between the Ojibwe and the U.S. government, and struggled to preserve Ojibwe autonomy in the face of assimilation policies./nFrench Africans in Ojibwe Country analyzes how the Bongas' racial identities changed over four generations. Enmeshed in a network of Ojibwe kin ties, yet differentiated from their Ojibwe kin by their status as a family of mixed-ancestry fur traders, the Bongas gained political and social influence in both Indian and white circles. In addition to their social and legal status as Indians, at various times the labels "white," "negro," "half-breed," and "mulatto" were also applied to them. I investigate the social, cultural and political meanings of these fluctuations, situating them within the region's history of cultural contact. By comparing the Bongas' experiences to the incorporation of African Americans into Indian families in the southeast, I forefront the contrasting fluidity of the northern categories of identity. I ask, How did fur trade culture, Ojibwe culture, and intermarriage practices contribute to this regional fluidity? Which factors in the late nineteenth century led to a burgeoning tension between competing notions of race and identity, and had a direct and startling impact on the Bongas' lives? And finally, How were the Bongas' leadership roles related to their ability to manipulate the fluid nature of identity and to exercise agency as they navigated often clashing and changing notions of race, culture and gender?

Advisor: Biolsi, Thomas
Screening-engineered Field-effect Photovoltaics and Synthesis, Characterization, and Applications of Carbon-based and Related Nanomaterials

Carbon nanomaterials, and especially graphene (a 2D carbon allotrope), possess unique electronic, optical, and mechanical properties and allow access to both new physical phenomena and reinventions of familiar technologies. In the first part of this thesis (chapter 2), the low carrier density and high conductivity of graphene are used to repurpose the electric field effect (used for many decades in transistors) into a universally-applicable doping method for electrically-contacted semiconductors. This method, referred to as "screening-engineered field-effect photovoltaics" as the electric field doping is enabled by a carefully-designed poorly-screening electrode (e.g. graphene), is shown to open up many new low-cost and abundant semiconductors for use in high efficiency solar cells. We extend this method beyond ultrathin materials such as graphene and show that 1D nanowire electrodes made of any material also allow penetration of applied electric fields. The next part of this thesis (chapter 3) focuses on the fundamental properties of graphene -- its structure, synthesis, characterization, and manipulation -- and on using graphene as a building block for other nanostructures: grafold, graphene sandwiches and veils, and graphritos. In chapter 4, various graphene electronics are constructed and tested. Graphene field-effect transistors (FETs) and p-n junctions are fabricated to study the influence of the substrate on graphene carrier mobility and doping. Graphene nanoribbons and grafold FETs are made to investigate the effects of additional confinement on electronic transport. Chapter 5 summarizes synthesis methods and additional experiments with other nanomaterials, including dichalcogenides and chalcogenides (magnesium diboride, gallium selenide, and tin sulfide), carbon nanomaterials (carbon nanotubes and graphene), and copper oxide. Additional measurement and fabrication methods are discussed in appendix A.

Advisor: Zettl, Alex K