VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Post-Soviet Tuvan Throat-Singing (Xöömei) and the Circulation of Nomadic Sensibility

Guttural singing practices in the Sayan-Altai region of south-central Siberia have been historically framed as possessing "nomadic" qualities linked with pastoral population groups indigenous to the region. As these singing practices were incorporated into a genre of national folk music for Tannu Tuva (1921-1944) and the Tuvan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (1961-1991)--and then later reformulated as the centerpiece of an exotic genre of world music--xöömei throat-singing was shaped by contradictory attitudes towards its purportedly nomadic characteristics, which have been essentialized at various times, for multiple reasons, by local and global actors and interest groups. In the post-Soviet era, xöömeizhi (master throat-singers) from the Tuva Republic (now part of Russia) express a revitalized nomadic sensibility through xöömei singing practices, which has come to operate both as an ideology and a disposition for Tuvan traditional music. Drawing on a selective use of history, cultural memory, and natural environments, post-Soviet xöömeizhi construct a nomadic sensibility that is embodied in music and sound-making activities, foregrounded in intercultural exchanges, and circulated as a social disposition.

Advisor: Brinner, Benjamin
Investigation of Organometallic Reaction Mechanism and Rotational Dynamics via Ultrafast Infrared Spectroscopies

Vibrational spectroscopy is a powerful tool for structural characterization. Modern spectroscopy has been used ultrashort laser pulses in infrared region to monitor the structure evolution of species involving in chemical reaction. This spectroscopic technique can give dynamics of chemical reaction in ultrafast timescale, helping us understand the reaction mechanism in great detail. In this thesis, a wide range of ultrafast dynamics in solution triggered via photochemical reactions has been investigated: the photoisomerization mechanism of solar storage molecules (Fulvalene)tetracarbonyldiruthenium, the photo-inactive of analog molecules (Fulvalene)tetracarbonyldiiron, the spin state and reactivity of 14-electron species Fe(CO)3 and the heat transfer from various photochemical reaction to solvent. Finally, the dynamics of molecular rotational diffusion was also investigated to measure the effect of molecular mass on rotational motion of small solute in solution. The trends discovered from these prototypical complexes are expected to be applicable to other organometallics complexes. These results will have a great contribution to the ultrafast spectroscopy as well as the synthesis research community.

Advisor: Harris, Charles B
Nesting the Neglected "R" A Design Study: Writing Instruction within a Prescriptive Literacy Program

Teaching writing has long been neglected as in schools. Findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) indicated that most students have basic writing skills, but cannot write well enough to meet the needs of employers or for college. The writing programs in prescriptive literacy programs, which were adopted to ensure student achievement have not proven to be effective for developing proficient student writers. This design study is an attempt to provide teachers trained to teach in a prescriptive literacy program with the writing content and pedagogical knowledge necessary to engage elementary students in writing as a complex, intellectual activity so that they become proficient writers./nFrom the literature on effective writing instruction and on teacher learning, I developed a theory of action to guide the design. A key feature of the design was to situate teacher learning in the context of a study group led by a facilitator with knowledge about writing instruction. The design emphasized teachers learning from writing themselves, reviewing student work, learning effective strategies and procedures of writing instruction, and developing knowledge through collaborative talk and reflections. Seven teachers, Grades 2 to 5, from a Title I urban school that required teachers follow the script of Open Court Reading (OCR) participated in the study. At the time of this study a window of opportunity had opened up to modify the OCR writing component./nI framed teacher learning in two dimensions--Dimension 1: Instructional Strategies and Procedures, and Dimension 2: Writing as a Process. I investigated the impact of the design and the process of the design's development. Overall teachers' knowledge about writing content increased; their knowledge about writing pedagogy increased to a lesser degree; however their level of growth varied. Moreover growth in the elements of instructional strategies also varied. Growth ranged from 15% for teacher modeling writing and 109% for teacher referring to literature to teach writing strategies. Thus, I found the design basically sound but recommended modifications for future iterations.

Advisor: Mintrop, Heinrich
Meiotic Double-Strand Break Formation in C. elegans

For most eukaryotes, recombination between homologous chromosomes during meiosis is an essential aspect of sexual reproduction. Meiotic recombination is initiated by programmed double-strand breaks (DSBs) in the DNA, which have the potential to induce mutations if not efficiently repaired. The focus of the work presented here is to better understand the mechanisms that govern the initiation of recombination and regulate the formation of DSBs. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans was used as a model system for these studies. Here I describe the identification of a novel gene, dsb-1, that is required for DSB formation in C. elegans. Through analysis of DSB-1 I illuminate two important regulatory pathways that control the initiation of meiotic recombination and regulate DSB number./nThe first regulatory pathway presented in this work is the crossover assurance checkpoint, which promotes crossover recombination events on all chromosome pairs to ensure successful meiosis. Under the crossover assurance checkpoint, DSB formation is prolonged when one or more homologous chromosome pair fails to form a crossover precursor. This increase in meiotic recombination initiation events gives cells additional opportunities to produce the crossovers necessary for proper chromosome segregation./nI also present evidence for a separate regulatory pathway that functions to limit the number of DSBs. I describe a negative feedback loop that is mediated by DNA-damage response kinases ATM and ATR and acts though DSB-1 to down-regulate DSB formation. This regulatory pathway permits the formation of a limited number of meiotic DSBs, while preventing excess DSB levels. Furthermore, my results demonstrate the resilience of meiotic cells in tolerating excess levels of meiotic DSBs without negative consequences for genomic integrity or crossover regulation./nThe work presented here provides important insights into the regulation of meiotic recombination initiation. Although the regulatory pathways described here were identified in C. elegans, recent studies suggest that similar regulatory pathways are likely to be conserved in other organisms. Therefore this work is important not only for understanding DSB regulation in C. elegans, but may also shed light on the regulation of meiotic DSBs in other eukaryotic organisms.

Advisor: Dernburg, Abby
Numerical algebraic geometry for maximum likelihood estimation

Numerical algebraic geometry provides numerical descriptions of solution sets of polynomial systems of equations in several unknown. Such sets are called algebraic varieties./nIn algebraic statistics, a statistical model is associated to an algebraic variety to study its geometric structure./nThis thesis contains my work at UC Berkeley that uses numerical algebraic geometry for the algebraic statistics problem of maximum likelihood estimation./nIn Chapter 2 we study the maximum likelihood estimation problem on manifolds of matrices with bounded rank. These represent mixtures of distributions of two independent discrete random variables. We determine the maximum likelihood degree for a range of determinantal varieties, and we apply numerical algebraic geometry to compute all critical points of their likelihood functions./nIn Chapter 3 we prove a bijection between critical points of the likelihood function on the complex variety of matrices of rank r and critical points on the complex variety of matrices of corank r-1./nFrom the perspective of statistics, we show that maximum likelihood estimation for matrices of rank r is the same problem as minimum likelihood estimation for matrices of corank r-1,/nand vice versa./nIn Chapter 4, a description of the maximum likelihood estimation problem in terms of dual varieties and conormal varieties is given. With this description, we define the dual likelihood equations. We show how solving these dual likelihood equations give solutions to the maximum likelihood estimation problem without having the defining equations of the model itself./nIn Chapter 5,/ndiscrete algebraic statistical models are considered and solutions to the likelihood equations when the data contain zeros are studied./nFocusing on sampling and model zeros, we show that the solutions of the likelihood equations in these cases are contained in a previously studied variety, the likelihood correspondence. The number of solutions give a lower bound on the ML degree, and the problem of finding critical points to the likelihood function can be partitioned into computationally easier problems involving sampling and model zeros./nIn Chapter 6/nthe Macaulay2 package Bertini.m2 is introduced./nMacaulay2 is a software system designed to support research in algebraic geometry, and Bertini is a popular software system for numerical algebraic geometry./nThe package Bertini.m2 provides an interface to Bertini via Macaulay2.

Advisor: Sturmfels, Bernd
Bounds on the Energy Consumption of Computational Kernels

As computing devices evolve with successive technology generations, many machines target either the mobile or high-performance computing/datacenter environments. In both of these form factors, energy consumption often represents the limiting factor on hardware and software efficiency. On mobile devices, limitations in battery technology may reduce possible hardware capability due to a tight energy budget. On the other hand, large machines such as datacenters and supercomputers have budgets directly related to energy consumption and small improvements in energy efficiency can significantly reduce operating costs. Such challenges have influenced research upon the impact of applications, operating and runtime systems upon energy consumption. Until recently, little consideration was given to the potential energy efficiency of algorithms themselves./nA dominant idea within the high-performance computing (HPC) community is that applications can be decomposed into a set of key computational problems, called kernels. Via automatic performance tuning and new algorithms for many kernels, researchers have successfully demonstrated performance improvements on a wide variety of machines. Motivated by the large and increasingly growing dominant cost (in time and energy) of moving data, algorithmic improvements have been attained by proving lower bounds on the data movement required to solve a computational problem, and then developing communication-optimal algorithms that attain these bounds./nThis thesis extends previous research on communication bounds and computational kernels by presenting bounds on the energy consumption of a large class of algorithms. These bounds apply to sequential, distributed parallel and heterogeneous machine models and we detail methods to further extend these models to larger classes of machines. We argue that the energy consumption of computational kernels is usually predictable and can be modeled via linear models with a handful of terms. Thus, these energy models (and the accompanying bounds) may apply to many HPC applications when used in composition./nGiven energy bounds, we analyze the implications of such results under additional constraints, such as an upper bound on runtime, and also suggest directions for future research that may aid future development of a hardware/software co-tuning process. Further, we present a new model of energy efficiency, Cityscape, that allows hardware designers to quickly target areas for improvement in hardware attributes. We believe that combining our bounds with other models of energy consumption may provide a useful method for such co-tuning; i.e. to enable algorithm and hardware architects to develop provably energy-optimal algorithms on customized hardware platforms.

Advisor: Demmel, James W
Extremal Problems in Analysis

In this thesis, we consider a selection of extremal problems which arise in mathematical analysis. The problems themselves come from a variety of fields of mathematics including the theory of functional equations, discrete geometry and harmonic analysis./nIn the second chapter, we study the Cauchy-Pexider functional equation
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and some variations, where $x,y$ are restricted to lie on a submanifold of a real Euclidean space. Our main result gives sufficient geometric conditions so that when this equation is satisfied for $x,y$ lying on some hypersurface the solutions are essentially unique and extend to exponentially affine functions on the entire Euclidean space./nIn the third chapter, we briefly describe the Erd\H{o}s distance problem which underlies much of the motivation for the problems studied in the third and fourth chapters. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to improving the lower bound for distinct distance subsets of finite sets in the plane, sphere and hyperbolic plane. More precisely, we show that given a finite subset $P$ of the Euclidean plane, the sphere or the hyperbolic plane, there exists a subset $Q\subset P$ of cardinality
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such that all the distances between pairs of points in $Q$ (measured in the standard metric for each space) are distinct./nIn the fourth chapter, we study distinct distances on algebraic curves embedded in real Euclidean space. We show that $N$ points on a real algebraic curve of degree $n$ in $\reals^d$ always determine $\gtrsim_{n,d}N^{1+\frac{1}{4}}$ distinct distances, unless the curve is a straight line or the closed geodesic of a flat torus. In the latter case, there are arrangements of $N$ points which determine $\lesssim N$ distinct distances. Our method may be applied to other quantities of interest to obtain analogous exponent gaps. An important step in the proof involves understanding the structural rigidity of certain frameworks on curves./nIn the fifth chapter, we characterize the near-extremizers of Young's convolution inequality for discrete, torsion-free groups. Using our result, we also characterize the near-extremizers of the Hausdorff-Young inequality for $\integers^d$.

Advisor: Christ, Michael
Moduli of Elliptic Curves via Twisted Stable Maps

Abramovich, Corti and Vistoli have studied modular compactifications of stacks of curves equipped with abelian level structures arising as substacks of the stack of twisted stable maps into the classifying stack of a finite group, provided the order of the group is invertible on the base scheme. Recently Abramovich, Olsson and Vistoli extended the notion of twisted stable maps to allow arbitrary base schemes, where the target is a tame stack, not necessarily Deligne-Mumford./nIn this dissertation, we use this extended notion of twisted stable maps to extend the results of Abramovich, Corti and Vistoli to the case of elliptic curves with level structures over arbitrary base schemes. We prove that we recover the compactified Katz-Mazur regular models, with a natural moduli interpretation in terms of level structures on Picard schemes of twisted curves. Additionally, we study the interactions of the different such moduli stacks contained in a stack of twisted stable maps in characteristics dividing the level.

Advisor: Olsson, Martin
Capturing the Impact of Riverine Nutrient Delivery on Coastal Ocean Biogeochemistry

Rivers smaller than the Amazon tend to be excluded from earth system modeling efforts. Does it matter? Do sub-grid-scale rivers have significant impacts on offshore primary productivity? Using the Eel River in northern California, the river with the largest sediment yield per drainage area in the continental United States, as a test case, this question is explored using two approaches. First, a data-driven analysis of relevant time series taken on land, by buoy, and from space, demonstrates very little evidence of direct impact of Eel River discharge on contemporaneous coastal ocean primary productivity - but to the extent that that evidence exists, it seems to occur during years of greatest river discharge. To further analyze mechanistic drivers, a coupled mesoscale modeling framework unifying ocean, watershed and atmospheric representations is formulated and run in hindcast over the 2002-2010 period. Monthly average climatologies, interannual variabilities, and event-driven analysis of each year's largest river discharge are all examined for evidence of a river-ocean connection expressed through primary production. Storm event-generated turbulence appears to dominate the primary productivity during the winter months. The impact of the river seems to be largely independent of nutrient load, because its dissolved nitrate is less than that of the coastal ocean. There is no evidence that riverine delivery of gradually bioavailable detritus has a significant effect. Although a sufficiently super-nitrous river shows the ability to sustain a plume-nutrient-driven-bloom even at periods of extremely low flow, this is not currently a realistic scenario for the Eel River. The possibility remains that another micronutrient not studied in the modeling framework, such as iron, could be important to this system.

Advisor: Powell, Thomas M
Getz, Wayne
Gallium(III)-Catalyzed Cycloisomerization Approach Toward C20-Diterpenoid Alkaloids

This dissertation discusses our gallium(III)-catalyzed cycloisomerization approach toward the hetidine and hetisine-type diterpenoid alkaloids. The first chapter presents the background of the gallium(III)-catalyzed cycloisomerization reaction. The initial reports for the skeletal rearrangements of 1,6-enyned will be presented and the expansion of the substrate scope to include indenyl alkynes to provide cycloheptadiene products will be discussed. The chapter will conclude with the application of the indenyl alkyne cycloisomerization reaction to the synthesis of several icetexane diterpenoids./nThe second chapter focuses on the structure and classification of the C20- diterpenoid alkaloids. The biological activity of selected alkaloids will be discussed. Several approached toward the hetidine and hetisine cores will also be presented along with the two completed total syntheses of the hetisine-type diterpenoid alkaloid nominine./nChapter three presents our approach toward the hetidine core using the gallium(III)- catalyzed cycloisomerization strategy. Our retrosynthetic analysis of a key-intermediate resembling the hetidine core, that we proposed could be used to access both hetidine and hetisine-type natural products, will be discussed. Synthesis of the cycloisomerization substrate will be presented along with the elaboration of the resulting cycloheptadiene to an intermediate similar to that used by Gin and Peese in their synthesis of nominine. Finally, an oxidative dearomatization approach toward the [2.2.2] bicycle and completion of the hetidine core will be presented./nThe final chapter discusses the elaboration of the hetidine core to dihydronavirine A in an attempt to access the hetidine-type natural product navirine A. An interesting C-C bond cleaving reaction, which provides the atisine core from the hetidine core, was also explored.

Advisor: Sarpong, Richmond
A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Central Naga

This dissertation presents a preliminary reconstruction of the phonology and lexicon (268 items) of Proto-Central Naga (PCN), the putative ancestor of a group of Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily in Nagaland, a state in northeast India: Ao, Lotha, Sangtam, and Yimchungrü. Also reconstructed in the process is the phonology and lexicon (386 items) of Proto-Ao (PAo), the intermediate ancestor of the Ao lects. Teleo-reconstructions of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (PTB) are drawn upon to examine the sound changes that took place in the development from PTB to the Central Naga languages./nChapter I (Introduction) provides background information on the Central Naga languages and discusses the history of scholarship on this group. The conventions and linguistic sources used throughout this work are also presented./nChapter II (Proto-Ao) reconstructs the phonology and lexicon of Proto-Ao, the intermediate ancestor of the Ao branch of Central Naga. It presents the phonology of standard Chungli Ao, Mangmetong Mongsen Ao, and Proto-Ao, followed by reconstructions of PAo onsets and rimes based on 386 cognate sets. The reconstructibility of the PAo tone system is also explored, and the chapter is concluded with a discussion of the PTB>PAo and PAo>Ao sound changes proposed./nChapter III (Proto-Central Naga) reconstructs the phonology and lexicon of Proto-Central Naga. It presents the phonology of Lotha, Sangtam, Yimchungrü, and Proto-Central Naga, followed by reconstructions of PCN rimes and onsets based on 268 cognate sets, with an intervening discussion of the prefixes. The chapter is concluded with a discussion of the PTB>PCN and PCN>CN sound changes proposed./nChapter IV (Conclusion) examines the place of the Central Naga group within the Tibeto-Burman family based on a study of shared phonological innovations. The dissertation is then concluded with a discussion of future directions in diachronic research on the CN languages./nSeven appendices are provided (A-G): three indices of the sound changes proposed for PTB>PCN (Appendix A), PCN>CN languages (Appendix B), and PAo>Ao lects (Appendix C); two sets of charts summarizing the PTB>PCN>CN (Appendix D) and PTB>PAo>Ao (Appendix E) sound changes; and two indices of PAo (Appendix F) and PCN (Appendix G) reconstructions, alphabetized by proto-gloss.

Advisor: Matisoff, James A.
Readout Circuits for Frequency-Modulated Gyroscopes

In recent years, MEMS gyroscopes have become nearly omnipresent. From their origins in automotive stability control systems, these sensors have migrated to a diverse range of applications, including image stabilization in cameras and motion tracking in video games and fitness monitors. A key application for MEMS gyroscopes is pedestrian navigation, which can help provide always-on location in portable devices while minimizing power consumption and infrastructure requirements. While modern smartphones have all of the necessary sensors for inertial navigation, their performance is not sufficient for this application. Consumer-grade MEMS gyroscopes are typically rate-grade devices, and generally have poor bias stability and scale factor accuracy. In addition, their power consumption tends to be too high to enable always-on operation without significantly impacting battery life./nThis work describes the first frequency-output MEMS gyroscope to achieve <7 ppm scale factor accuracy and <6 deg/hr bias stability with a 3.24 sq. mm transducer. By implementing continuous-time mode reversal in an FM gyro, the rate signal is modulated away from DC, making the system insensitive to the resonant frequency of the transducer. The scale factor is almost entirely ratiometric, depending primarily on the mechanical angular gain factor of the transducer and the accuracy of the timing reference. Scale factor sensitivity to variations in quality factor, electro-mechanical coupling coefficients, and circuit drift is significantly reduced compared to conventional open-loop and force-rebalance operating modes. Low-power frequency-to-digital converters enable a gyroscope with 91 dB of dynamic range and an estimated power consumption below 150 uW per axis.

Advisor: Boser, Bernhard E