VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Automatic data plane testing [electronic resource]

Today's networks require much human intervention to keep them working. Every day network engineers wrestle with router misconfigurations, fiber cuts, faulty interfaces, mislabeled cables, software bugs, intermittent links and a myriad other issues that cause networks to misbehave, or fail completely. Network engineers hunt down bugs using the most rudimentary tools and track down root causes using a combination of accrued wisdom and intuition.We found that many network problems are associated with data plane behaviors, i.e., how the network transports data plane packets. This dissertation discusses the design and implementation of automatic data plane testing tools under various network scenarios. We first present Automatic Test Packet Generation (ATPG), a foundation framework of data plane testing when all data plane information is available and accurate. ATPG reads router configurations and generates a device-independent model. The model is used to generate a minimum set of test packets to (minimally) exercise every link in the network or (maximally) exercise every rule in the network. Test packets are sent periodically, and detected failures trigger a separate mechanism to localize the fault. NetSonar extends ATPG by allowing incomplete or inaccurate data plane information as inputs. Earlier test techniques were either white box (assumes complete forwarding knowledge) or black box (assumes no knowledge). We argue that the former is infeasible in large networks, and the latter is inefficient and incomplete. NetSonar is the first graybox tester for networks and the first tester deployed in a production network. NetSonar uses only coarse forwarding information and does not require knowledge of load balancing hash functions. Finally, we move our focus to data center networks with thousands of switches and millions of forwarding table entries. Data center owners use static analysis tools that examine the topology and forwarding tables to check for loops, black-holes and reachability failures. However, the existing tools do not scale to a large data center network. Moreover, no existing tool addresses the problem of potential false positives when analyzing a network snapshot, when the network state is constantly in flux. We present Libra, a tool for verifying forwarding tables in large data center networks that simplifies ATPG's data plane model to significantly improve verification performance.

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: McKeown Nick primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Katti Sachin advisor. Thesis advisor
Varghese George
Autonomous power control for next-generation wireless computing [electronic resource]

In wireless communication networks, transmit power control (TPC) can significantly improve network performance by reducing interference and improving energy efficiency. In autonomous TPC, each transmitter is responsible for regulating its own power without centralized coordination and without explicit control information exchanged between different links. Autonomous TPC is a particularly important area of research for wireless networks in which centralized control is difficult or impractical - examples of such networks include WiFi, sensor networks, and the emerging Internet of Things. In these networks, the importance of TPC is being magnified by the rapidly increasing density of heterogeneous wireless devices that have limited available energy and processing power. In this dissertation, we use a dynamic programming framework to design low-complexity, fully autonomous TPC algorithms which exhibit promising performance characteristics for both current and next-generation wireless networks. The dynamic programming framework we use is based on a fundamental tradeoff between transmit power and delay; for example, a link faced with high interference is allowed to queue up (delay) packets to be transmitted at a later time, when the interference may be lower. We develop two new classes of autonomous TPC algorithms, and we describe these algorithms' dynamics and show how their nonlinear functional forms can lead to a network behavior called ``induced'' time division multiple access (iTDMA), in which links automatically take turns utilizing the channel without any explicit cross-link coordination. As a result of this behavior, we demonstrate that our algorithms can provide substantial throughput improvements over previous schemes. Additionally, we discuss various problems that arise in implementing our algorithms, such as synchronization and scaling issues, and explain how they can be resolved. The most critical problem we describe is ``locking, '' in which links using our algorithms spontaneously synchronize into inefficient power evolution patterns which compromise network performance. We propose several randomization-based mitigation mechanisms to alleviate this behavior, and we demonstrate that these mechanisms considerably improve our algorithms' performance. Finally, we develop and analyze continuous-time analogs (fluid models) of the discrete-time versions of our algorithms in order to explore the iTDMA behavior further. This analysis provides new insights into the throughput improvements of our algorithms over canonical approaches, particularly in high-interference channels. It also represents a first step toward understanding the complex mathematical stability properties of our algorithms.

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Bambos Nicholas primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Osgood Brad advisor. Thesis advisor
Singh Jatinder
The Barbou of Limoges [electronic resource] : gender, family, and work in France, 1566-1786

Over a continuous span of two hundred and twenty years members of the Barbou family in early modern Limoges, France maintained a livre de raison, or family journal, that both documented and helped to transmit a fascinatingly idiosyncratic family culture. Their work as printers, a cornerstone of their identity even as they gained noble status, earned them fabulous wealth and a prominent status in their industry thanks to their cultivation of multiple patrons, their reliance on widows to continue their husbands' work, and their creation of a family-run satellite workshop in Paris. When it came time to spend that wealth Barbou parents invested in land and offices to increase their social standing but never lost their focus on the world of work. Connections to both spheres allowed them to find elite husbands for their daughters and wealthy wives for their sons—a hypergamous marriage pattern that was only possible because of their commitment to sharing the patrimony among all of their children rather than practicing the strict primogeniture of many other ambitious families of the time. As sibling groups rose through the social hierarchy together they cemented their alliances through spiritual kinship, choosing godparents from among both parents' relatives and favoring horizontal relationships above all else. Throughout their history the Barbou benefitted from the geographical patterns that shaped their culture; from the important contributions of the many strong widows who guided the family's course; and from the liminal social position that enabled a wider variety of choices through the lack of strong ties to their community. Studying such a unique family supplies a counterexample for numerous historiographical generalizations and provides a glimpse of what was possible in early modern France.

Keywords: History.
Advisor: Findlen Paula primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Kollmann Nancy Shields
Stokes Laura
Baroque states [electronic resource] : television and theatricality in contemporary Latin America

This dissertation analyses four media events in contemporary Latin American politics: (1) the collapse of Alberto Fujimori's administration in Peru following the vladivideos scandal, (2) the role of television in the failed coup against Hugo Chávez, (3) the recording and broadcasting of Ingrid Betancourt's military rescue in Colombia as part of Operación Jaque and (4) in Guatemala, the posthumous video testimony of murdered lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg. Through these case studies I argue that an emergent televisual paradigm has developed in the region in the 21st century, one that deploys theatricality, video and television as political tools and which draws on aesthetics proper to the colonial and postcolonial baroque political culture of Latin America.

Keywords: Theater and Performance Studies.
Advisor: Jakovljević Branislav primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Hansen Thomas Blom
Menon Jisha
Taylor Diana
Bats to Bedside: Diversity and prevalence of Bartonella in Costa Rican bats and bat flies reveals potential for disease spillover

Identifying natural reservoirs and vectors for pathogens is central to understanding how animal diseases spill over into human populations. The human and animal disease-causing bacteria of the genus Bartonella often rely on a mammalian host and arthropod vector, and it has been suggested that bats and bat flies could fulfill these roles. Comparing the prevalence and genetic similarity of Bartonella spp. in Costa Rican bats and the bat flies parasitizing them, I found that Bartonella spp. were more prevalent in bat flies than in bats, 52.7% and 31.8% respectively, and that these Bartonella were diverse and sometimes shared between bats and bat flies. Phylogenetic analysis further revealed that some Bartonella identified in bats and bat flies were similar to strains known to infect humans and other mammals. The high prevalence and sharing of Bartonella in bat flies and bats supports a role for bat flies as a potential vector for Bartonella and other pathogens, while the genetic diversity and similarity to known species suggests that Bartonella could spill over from bats and bat flies into humans and animals sharing the landscape.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
bats
bat flies
Bartonella
Costa Rica
disease
ecology
evolution
Thesis
Advisor: Hadly Elizabeth
Tompkins Lucy
Falkow Stanley
Beamlet-based treatment plan optimization in external beam radiation therapy [electronic resource]

External beam radiation therapy is one of the most widely used therapeutic methods for treating patients. In this modality, prior to the actual treatment, machine delivery parameters are optimized based on a patient model derived from the pre-treatment CT images. The goal of treatment planning is to maximize the dose to the planning target volume (PTV), while sparing the critical organs. A number of treatment techniques have been developed to meet the clinical demands. In reality, however, these techniques suffer from a series of problems and the performance of currently available plan optimization and dose delivery techniques is sub-optimal - the treatment plans out of the optimization algorithms are often not clinically sensible. Hence, considerable effort may be required to plan a patient's treatment, seriously hindering the optimal and efficient use of the radiation therapy. This thesis presents efficient and effective fluence-map optimizing techniques to demonstrate the improvement in either plan quality or delivery efficiency in static field and (continuous) rotational arc treatment schemes. To attain the objective above, new mathematical models and beam configurations are employed in the center of the treatment planning and its optimizing process. Of note, the demonstrations of our proposed methods or strategies proceed in two directions: (1) improving the delivery efficiency without damaging the plan quality, and (2) enhancing the plan quality, while maintaining the similar delivery efficiency of the existing methods.

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Xing Lei primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Candès Emmanuel J. (Emmanuel Jean) advisor. Thesis advisor
Pauly John (John M.) advisor. Thesis advisor
Between social cause and industrial commodity [electronic resource] : the development of a market for biodiesel in the United States

This dissertation examines how commercial industry proponents and a grassroots production movement collaborated in the development of a market for biodiesel in the United States between 1992 and 2012. I draw on institutional and social movement theory to suggest how the exigencies of stabilizing a new market compel collaboration even in the presence of ideological differences. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and archival data on the grassroots biodiesel movement and the commercial biodiesel industry, my analysis shows how the industry and the movement initially sought different forms of institutional legitimacy that reflected their contrasting goals for market development. In the face of constraints from the institutional environment, the movement and industry pooled their legitimacy to support the development of a unified biodiesel market, resulting in a social order that does not exhibit the patterns of partitioning or contestation that prior research might predict.

Keywords: Management Science and Engineering.
Advisor: Barley Stephen R. primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Hinds Pamela advisor. Thesis advisor
Powell Walter W. advisor. Thesis advisor
Biased expectations in times of predicament [electronic resource] : essays on help-seeking and indecision

This dissertation examines the accuracy of behavioral and attitudinal expectations in times of predicament. The first two chapters use experimental research methods to study people's predictions when they are in need of tangible favors. Specifically, chapter one explores help-seekers' expectations of receiving assistance from someone who has refused to provide aid in the past. Based on findings from four social-psychological studies, this chapter argues that help-seekers underestimate the likelihood of receiving help in this situation. This underestimation is driven by help-seekers' failure to appreciate the discomfort of refusing to provide help not only once, but twice, as well as their assumption that a person who has refused to help once is invariably an unhelpful person. Chapter two investigates the quality of help that help-seekers' expect, conditional on receiving help. Four additional studies find that help-seekers underestimate the effort that helpers put into their assistance. Once again, the psychological mechanism driving this bias appears to be help-seekers' failure to appreciate helpers' discomfort. The final chapter of this dissertation is a conceptual work examining people's expectations while struggling in a state of indecision. What behaviors and functions do people expect while distressed by a decision they do not know how to make? This chapter argues that decision-makers are unduly pessimistic about indecision, seeing it primarily as a disquieting pathology of choice. This is due, in part, to the strength of cultural and cognitive norms surrounding decision-making and results in decision-makers failing to see indecision's potential as an arena for identity formation.

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: March James G. primary advisor. Thesis advisor
McFarland Daniel (Daniel A.) primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Cohen Geoffrey L. (Geoffrey Lawrence) advisor. Thesis advisor
Flynn Francis J. advisor. Thesis advisor
A bi-directional negative feedback loop govern the orientation of planar polarity in the drosophila wing [electronic resource]

Epithelial cells sometimes display polarity along the axis orthogonal to the apicobasal axis -- a phenomenon referred to as planar cell polarity (PCP). This polarization biases organization of the cytoskeleton, and is required for a range of fundamental processes including, but not limited to, oriented cell division, polarized function of cilia, and the control of collective cell migration events during development. Consequently, deregulation or dysfunction of PCP genes has been linked to disorders including deafness as a result of misorientation of inner ear cells, neural tube closure defects because of a failure to execute convergent & extension, and tumor invasiveness. Despite having identified some of the key proteins required to achieve PCP, much is still unknown about their molecular functions. Evolutionarily conserved proteins, known as the core PCP proteins, are distributed asymmetrically within wing epithelial cells and form complexes within the proximal or distal cortical domains. Here, we demonstrate that these diametrically opposed complexes participate in a bi-directional negative feedback loop that simultaneously produces their asymmetric distribution within cells and reinforces the orientation of polarity to neighbors by transmitting polarity information intercellularly. We found that one of the core PCP proteins, Prickle (Pk), is important for negative feedback as it is required to mediate the exclusion of distal and proximal complexes from the plasma membrane during acquisition of asymmetry. Moreover, we found that the level of Pk is regulated by the Cullin1 (Cul1)/SkpA/Supernumerary limbs (Slimb) E3 ubiquitin ligase complex. Our observations lead us to believe that loss of, or excess, Pk perturbs PCP signaling through the disruption of feedback. Ultimately, these results highlight an underlying molecular mechanism for the generation of planar polarity. Finally, the approaches presented in this monograph can further help elucidate the molecular functions of the other core PCP proteins.

Keywords: Developmental Biology.
Advisor: Axelrod Jeffrey (Jeffrey David)
Fuller Margaret
Nusse Roel
Simon Michael (Biology professor) advisor. Thesis advisor
Bilingual and cross-lingual learning of sequence models with bitext [electronic resource]

Information extraction technologies such as detecting the names of people and places in natural language texts are becoming ever more prevalent, as the amount of unstructured text data grows exponentially. Tremendous progress has been made in the past decade in learning supervised sequence models for such tasks, and current state-of-the-art results are in the lower 90s in term of F1 score, for resource-rich languages like English and widely-studied datasets such as the CoNLL newswire corpus. However, the performance of existing supervised methods lag by a significant margin when evaluated for non-English languages, new datasets, and domains other than newswire. Furthermore, for resource-poor languages where there is often little or no annotated training data, neither supervised nor existing unsupervised methods tend to work well. This thesis describes a series of models and experiments in response to these challenges in three specific areas. Firstly, we address the problem of balancing between feature weight undertraining and overtraining in learning log-linear models. We explore the use of two novel regularization techniques--a mixed L2L1 norm in a product of experts ensemble, and an adaptive regularization with feature noising--to show that they can be very effective in improving system performance. Secondly, we challenge the conventional wisdom of employing a linear architecture and sparse discrete feature representation for sequence labeling tasks, and closely examine the connection and tradeoff between a linear versus nonlinear architecture, as well as a discrete versus continuous feature representation. We show that a nonlinear architecture enjoys a significant advantage over linear architecture when used with continuous feature vectors, but does not seem to offer benefits over traditional sparse features. Lastly, we explore methods that leverage readily available unlabeled parallel text from translation as a rich source of constraints for learning bilingual models that transfer knowledge from English to resource-poor languages. We formalize the model as loopy Markov Random Fields, and propose a suite of approximate inference methods for decoding. Evaluated on standard test sets for five non-English languages, our semi-supervised models yield significant improvements over the state-of-the-art results for all five languages. We further propose a cross-lingual projection method that is capable of learning sequence models for languages where there are no annotated resources at all. Our method projects model posteriors from English to the foreign side over word alignments on bitext, and handles missing and noisy labels via expectation regularization. Learned with no annotated data at all, our model attains the same accuracy as supervised models trained with thousands of labeled examples.

Advisor: Manning Christopher D. primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Jurafsky Dan
Liang Percy advisor. Thesis advisor
The binding problem and the perception of multiple stimuli [electronic resource]

A long-standing assertion from the binding problem is that human vision is limited to identifying only a single stimulus at a time. We test the veracity of this claim in a series of experiments and simulations. We focus in particular on illusory conjunctions (ICs), a phenomenon that has provided support for single-object capacity limits. We find that studies on ICs have conflated to distinct phenomena which we term proximal and distal ICs. Proximal ICs occur between neighboring, peripheral stimuli, and we present evidence that they may be driven by shared or similar mechanisms to crowding. Unlike proximal ICs, distal ICs can occur between distant stimuli but seem to require brief stimulus durations and a competing task. We investigate claims that the competing task drives ICs either through mnemonic errors or through the manipulation of spatial attention, as FIT, a single-object capacity theory, would predict. We find support for neither claim. Instead, attention to and encoding of the competing task stimuli appears to cast a 'shadow' over nearby regions such that IC-susceptible stimuli appearing within those regions become more vulnerable to interference even from distant distractors. In neither phenomenon do we find support for a general inability to process multiple objects in parallel. We further tested claims of a single-object capacity limit with neural network simulations trained to identify abstract representations of stimuli. We found that a range of networks could identify two stimuli in parallel with high accuracy. Despite arguments by von der Malsburg (1999), these networks did not require a mechanism for oscillations and used only weighted summation with a sigmoid filter. Using these networks, we were able to simulate errors similar to crowding and proximal ICs as well as deficits in the identification of multiple stimuli after parietal lesions, a key piece of evidence supporting FIT. These empirical and modeling results demonstrate that it is possible to solve the binding problem without limiting perception to a single stimulus at a time.

Keywords: Psychology.
Advisor: McClelland James L. primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Wagner Anthony David advisor. Thesis advisor
Wandell Brian A. advisor. Thesis advisor