VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Locally Appropriate Energy Strategies for the Developing World: A focus on Clean Energy Opportunities in Borneo

This dissertation focuses on an integration of energy modeling tools to explore energy transition pathways for emerging economies. The spate of growth in the global South has led to a global energy transition, evidenced in part by a surge in the development of large scale energy infrastructure projects for the provision of reliable electricity service. The rational of energy security and exigency often usher these large scale projects through to implementation with minimal analysis of costs: social and environmental impact, ecological risk, or opportunity costs of alternative energy transition pathways foregone. Furthermore, development of energy infrastructure is inherently characterized by the involvement of a number of state and non-state actors, with varying interests, objectives and access to authority. Being woven through and into social institutions necessarily impacts the design, control and functionality of infrastructure. In this dissertation I therefore conceptualize energy infrastructure as lying at the intersection, or nexus, of people, the environment and energy security. I argue that energy infrastructure plans and policy should, and can, be informed by each of these fields of influence in order to appropriately satisfy local development needs./nThis case study explores the socio-techno-environmental context of contemporary mega-dam development in northern Borneo. I describe the key actors of an ongoing mega-dam debate and the constellation of their interaction. This highlights the role that information may play in public discourse and lends insight into how inertia in the established system may stymie technological evolution. I then use a combination of power system simulation, ecological modeling and spatial analysis to analyze the potential for, and costs and tradeoffs of, future energy scenarios. In this way I demonstrate reproducible methods that can support energy infrastructure decision making by directly addressing data limitation barriers. I offer a platform for integrated analysis that considers cost perspectives across the nexus. The management of energy transitions is a growing field, critically important to low carbon futures. With the broader implications of my study I hope to contribute to a paradigm shift away from the dominant large-scale energy infrastructure as a means of energy security discourse, to a more encompassing security agenda that considers distributed and localized solutions.

Advisor: Kammen, Daniel
High Efficiency Spectral Analysis and BLAS-3 Randomized QRCP with Low-Rank Approximations

The purpose of this work is to improve stability and performance of selected matrix decompositions in numerical linear algebra. Chapter 1 examines the Locally Optimal Block Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient (LOBPCG) algorithm used to compute eigenvector-eigenvalue pairs for large sparse symmetric matrices or symmetric matrix pencils. Modifications are developed and analyzed to improve both performance and reliability. Numerical experiments demonstrate the final algorithm often operates several times faster than competing versions and succeeds in processing difficult matrices for which other versions fail./nChapters 2 extends the work on symmetric eigenvalue problems by developing an algorithm specialized to resolve eigenpairs in the interior of the spectrum of a symmetric matrix. An new Spectral Target Residual Descent (STRD) algorithm is proposed based on LOBPCG. This algorithm is demonstrated to reduce the number of iterations required to achieve convergence by roughly half. The component subroutines of STRD also have generalized versions to process interior eigenvalues of symmetric matrix pencils./nChapter 3 explores a variation on the QR decomposition with Column Pivoting using randomized-sampling to process pivoting decisions. Randomized QRCP eliminates the leading order of communication by processing column pivots on a much smaller sample matrix. This produces blocks of column pivots that are processed with BLAS-3 operations on the original matrix. Sample update formulations are explored that allow full matrices to be factorized without re-compressing the matrix after each block iteration. Related low-rank factorizations are also developed and compared in numerical experiments. These experiments show approximation quality for structured matrices to be comparable, and often better than, approximations based on QRCP. Furthermore, performance is shown to be nearly as good as QR without pivoting, which is often an order of magnitude faster than QRCP.

Advisor: Gu, Ming
Investigations of the Oxygen Electrode

A third of anthropomorphic greenhouse gas emissions originate from the energy and transportation sectors. Since these emissions contribute to increased pollution and climate change, the development of new energy sources with decreased environmental impact is critical. The use of hydrogen as a fuel is an attractive way to increase energy security and reduce carbon emissions, and hence there is considerable interest in the efficient production and use of hydrogen. The production of hydrogen without the generation of CO2 can be done by the electrolysis of water, and the hydrogen thus generated can be used to provide electrical power via its consumption in a fuel cell. However, both processes suffer from the inefficiency of the electrodes used for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), or water oxidation reaction, and the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). This project has focused on developing a deeper understanding of the factors limiting the catalytic performance of both the oxygen reduction (Part I) and oxygen evolution reactions (Part II).

Advisor: Bell, Alexis T
Hemispheric Asymmetry and Multisensory Learning Impact Visual Perceptual Selection

When visual input is consistent with multiple perceptual interpretations (e.g., the Necker cube), these interpretations compete for conscious awareness. The process of determining which interpretation will be dominant at a given time is known as perceptual selection. We study this process using binocular rivalry, a bistable phenomenon in which incompatible images presented separately to the two eyes result in perceptual alternation between the two images over time./nIn one study, we showed that a well-established asymmetry in spatial frequency processing between the brain’s two hemispheres applies to perceptual selection. Specifically, a lower spatial frequency grating was more likely to be selected when it was presented in the left visual field (right hemisphere) than in the right visual field (left hemisphere), while a higher spatial frequency grating showed the opposite pattern of results. Surprisingly, this asymmetry persisted for the entire duration of a continuously presented pair of static rivaling stimuli (30 seconds), which is the first demonstration that hemispheric differences in spatial frequency processing continue long after stimulus onset./nIn another study, we found that very recently formed audio-visual associations influence perceptual selection. Here, we used a brief (8-minute) crossmodal statistical learning paradigm to expose subjects to arbitrary, consistent pairings of images and sounds. In a subsequent binocular rivalry test, we found that a given image was more likely to be perceived when it was presented with a sound that had been consistently paired with it during exposure than when presented with previously unpaired sounds. Our results indicate that the audio-visual associations formed during the brief exposure period influenced subsequent visual competition and that this effect of learning was largely implicit, or unconscious./nTogether, these results demonstrate an unconscious influence of complex perceptual mechanisms on perceptual selection, the process by which we form conscious representations of ambiguous sensory input.

Advisor: Silver, Michael A
Banks, Martin S
Living Laboratories: Remapping the Legacy of Experiments in American Empire

Living Laboratories traces the gendered racialization of U.S. empire’s colonial expansion from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, as well as women of color feminist texts of the late-twentieth century that reframe these legacies for our present. Each chapter focuses on what I call a “living laboratory,” a transnational site of state-sanctioned medical experimentation on populations regarded as bearers of disease. By examining the laws that precede invasive public health measures, I show how these living laboratories within and beyond the United States' national territorial borders circulate interconnected regimes of control. Central to my genealogical remapping of experiments in American empire are the narrated experiences of those not fully recognizable in the annals of history. By reading multi-genre literary works in relation to the juridical and scientific archive, Living Laboratories recovers agential subjects through an alternative grid of intelligibility. In doing so, I emphasize the distinctly embodied subjectivities that emerge from wounded flesh, pursuing a critique of what it means to be human from the literally and figuratively dismembered perspectives of writers Gayl Jones, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Aurora Levíns Morales.

Advisor: Feldman, Keith P
As I ride the late night freeways (2014-15) For soprano and orchestra

As I ride the late night freeways is a work for soprano and orchestra. The music is a setting of Census, a poem by Cathy Park Hong written specifically for this project. The score engages the notion of California freeway driving to suggest compositional processes and musical parameters to unify the musical work. Ideas derived from the parametric aesthetic provide a significant “streamlining” influence, echoed in the development of musical processes that take a variety of forms: from harmonic and textural elaborations drawn from the analysis of car sounds to a poetic suggestion of aerodynamism given by the algorithmic shaping of musical gestures and by the smooth morphing of one musical gesture into the next.

Advisor: Campion, Edmund
Affinity-mediated protein modification and recovery

As one of the core building blocks of life, proteins play a central role in our efforts to understand, control, and engineer the natural world. Chemical modification of proteins facilitates these efforts by allowing manipulation of protein properties and creation of new materials. A variety of methods for the modification of proteins exist, and collectively these methods have enabled the synthesis of drugs, the study of biological systems, and the creation of new materials. Unfortunately the exquisite control provided by many of these methods does not extend to oligomeric proteins, which are found ubiquitously in nature. These proteins often have symmetries and structures that make them particularly appealing for use in materials science and pharmaceutical applications, yet their multivalency makes their controlled modification difficult. This thesis describes the development of a method for protein modification in which control over the number of modification sites is exerted through noncovalent interactions. This method is able to control the level of modification of both monomeric and small oligomeric proteins. Further development revealed that this method also discriminates between different modification sites, such that it could be used to site-specifically modify proteins or monitor bioconjugation reactions. Finally, the principles used in the construction of these bioconjugation strategies were applied to the recovery of enzymes from industrial reactions.

Advisor: Francis, Matthew B
The Dynamics of the Professional Self: Findings from Law School and Early Law Careers

The empirical literature on U.S. legal education suggests that learning to “think like a lawyer” requires students to bifurcate personal values and the professional self. Legal scholars perennially debate whether this bifurcation results in an alienated and “bleached out” professionalism or a relatively benign sacrifice of personal preferences in favor of the client-centered principle of “neutral partisanship.” This dissertation brings these normative and empirical perspectives into conversation through an exploratory microdynamic study of lawyers’ professional identity formation at an elite law school. Drawing on 153 longitudinal interviews, a novel identity mapping method, and ethnographic observations, I examine how law students conceive of their emerging professional selves relative to other roles in their lives, how these conceptions change over the course of legal education, and how this empirical analysis may alter normative debates on professional socialization.

Advisor: Morrill, Calvin
Manipulating Supramolecular Nanocomposite Self-Assembly via Entropy Modulation

A grand challenge in materials science is to create materials with complex, rationally designed structures and functionalities. Self-assembly is a promising route to fabricate these materials with nano-scale precision, and efficiency in terms of cost and time. Nanocomposites comprised of block copolymer (BCP)-based supramolecules and nanoparticles (NPs) represent a promising platform to access nanostructures of various structures, chemistries, and functionalities. The thermodynamic landscape, and thus self-assembly behavior, of these supramolecular nanocomposites is dominated by entropic factors. While entropy is often considered a detrimental factor that prevents the formation of ordered phases and the co-assembly of BCPs and NPs, it can also be harnessed to stabilize nanostructures that are not accessible to traditional BCPs. This dissertation will focus on controlling the self-assembly of supramolecular nanocomposites by manipulating the entropy in these systems./nIn bulk and thin films of supramolecular nanocomposites, self-assembly is governed by a balance between NP translational entropy and supramolecule chain conformational entropy. By systematically varying the NP size within these systems, this entropic balance can be perturbed, leading to a change in NP spatial distribution within the nanocomposite and the stabilization of cubic and anisotropic microphases that are unique from traditional BCP morphologies, as confirmed by TEM, TEM tomography, and small angle X-ray scattering techniques./nGeometrically confining supramolecular nanocomposites into cylindrical pores introduces boundary conditions that impose additional entropic frustration to the composite system, leading to exotic nanostructures such as NP stacked rings and single and double helices. The single helical structures are also demonstrated, via dark field scattering and finite integration technique simulations, to possess strong chiral plasmonic properties due to the chiral arrangement of NPs and strong plasmonic interparticle coupling./nFinally, replacing alkyl side groups of the supramolecules with liquid crystalline side groups further increases chain rigidity and presents another avenue towards entropic modulation. These modified supramolecules and their associated nanocomposites are thoroughly investigated for their self-assembly behavior. It is observed that the liquid crystalline small molecule side chains introduce hierarchical smectic ordering and thermally triggered, non-reversible order-order transitions to the supramolecular nanocomposite./nThese studies demonstrate entropic modulation in supramolecular nanocomposites to be an important tool in creating uniquely structured and functional materials with potential applications in memory storage, energy transport, and metamaterials.

Advisor: Xu, Ting
The Association Between Insomnia-related Sleep Disruptions and Cognitive Dysfunction during the Inter-episode Phase of Bipolar Disorder

Sleep disturbance and cognitive dysfunction are two key domains of impairment during the inter-episode phase of bipolar disorder. Despite considerable evidence demonstrating the importance of sleep for cognition in healthy and sleep-disordered samples, this link has been minimally examined in bipolar disorder. Thus, the present study tested the association between insomnia-related sleep disruptions and cognitive functioning during inter-episode bipolar disorder. Forty-seven participants with bipolar disorder and a comorbid insomnia diagnosis (BD-INSOMNIA) and 19 participants with bipolar disorder without sleep disturbance in the last six months (BD-CONTROL) participated in the study. Two domains of cognitive functioning were assessed: working memory and verbal learning. Insomnia-related sleep disruptions were assessed both categorically (i.e., insomnia diagnosis) and dimensionally (i.e., total wake time, sleep duration, and sleep duration variability). Hierarchical linear regressions, adjusting for participant age, demonstrated that insomnia diagnosis did not have an independent or interactive effect on cognition. However, regardless of insomnia diagnosis, greater total wake time predicted poorer working memory performance and greater sleep duration variability predicted poorer working memory and verbal learning performance. Further, following sleep treatment, a reduction in total wake time predicted improved working memory performance and a reduction in sleep duration variability predicted improved verbal learning performance. These findings raise the possibility that sleep disturbance may be one mechanism underlying cognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorder and highlight the importance of treating sleep disturbance in bipolar disorder.

Advisor: Harvey, Allison G.
Programmed Moves: Race and Embodiment in Fighting and Dancing Videogames

Programmed Moves examines the intertwined history and transnational circulation of two major videogame genres, martial arts fighting games and rhythm dancing games. Fighting and dancing games both emerge from Asia, and they both foreground the body. They strip down bodily movement into elemental actions like stepping, kicking, leaping, and tapping, and make these the form and content of the game. I argue that fighting and dancing games point to a key dynamic in videogame play: the programming of the body into the algorithmic logic of the game, a logic that increasingly organizes the informatic structure of everyday work and leisure in a globally interconnected information economy. Games make bodily habituation to new forms of digital technology both intelligible and pleasurable by investing players in familiar racial, sexual, and national identifications./nProgrammed Moves explores how the bodily mastery cultivated in fighting and dancing videogames relies on and reproduces figurations of gendered and racialized technological mastery. The first half focuses on fighting games, beginning with how the earliest martial arts videogames emerge in the 1980s with the rise of Japan as a global economic power and game industry giant. I proceed in the next chapter to examine how videogames featuring transnational kung fu star Bruce Lee ambivalently figure Asian/Asian-American masculinity. In the second half of my dissertation, the focus shifts to dancing games. I critique how dance games that discard traditional game controllers in favor of full-body interfaces propel players into racialized physical motion. I end by showing how mobile, touchscreen rhythm games for the iPhone both recall and disavow the Chinese female factory laborers who touch each device before it is offered up for western consumption. My investigation of how racial difference becomes embodied in gameplay goes beyond critiques of racial stereotypes to understand how videogames produce politically urgent racial formations through actions and processes rather than just images. Programmed Moves thus points to the connections between technological and racial coding in videogames.

Advisor: Williams, Linda
Indivisible Characteristics of Recursively Enumerable Sets

A split of an r.e. set A is a pair of disjoint r.e. sets whose union is A. We investigate information theoretic properties of r.e. sets and properties of their enumerations, and whether these properties are preserved under splittings. The first part is involved with dynamic notions. An r.e. set is speedable if for every computable function, there exists a finite algorithm enumerating membership faster, by the desired computable factor, on infinitely many integers. Remmel (1986) asked whether every speedable set could be split into two speedable sets. Jahn published a proof, answering their question positively. However, his proof was seen to be incorrect and we construct a speedable set that cannot be split into speedable sets, answering their question negatively. We also prove additional splitting results related to speedability./nThe second part is involved with effectively closed sets. We introduce the notion of being recursively avoiding and prove several results.

Advisor: Harrington, Leo A
Slaman, Theodore A
Ideologies of Pure Abstraction

This dissertation presents a history of the development of abstract art in the 1920s and 1930s, the period of its expansion and consolidation as an identifiable movement and practice of art. I argue that the emergence of the category of abstract art in the 1920s is grounded in a voluntaristic impulse to remake the world. I argue that the consolidation of abstract art as a movement emerged out of the Parisian reception of a new Soviet art practice that contained a political impetus that was subsequently obscured as this moment passed. The occultation of this historical context laid the groundwork for the postwar “multiplication” of the meanings of abstraction, and the later tendency to associate its early programmatic aspirations with a more apolitical mysticism./nAbstraction has a long and varied history as both a conceptual-aesthetic practice and as an ideal. In the first chapter, I provide a conceptual overview of the terms used by abstract artists and their contemporaries, as well as provide a historicization of the meaning of pure abstraction in terms of the relationship of modernism to its own eighteenth century beginnings and antiquity. The second chapter focuses on the “Soviet moment” of pure abstraction by looking at the Soviet contributions—primarily Konstantin Melnikov’s pavilion—to the 1925 Exposition International des Arts Décoratifs et Modernes in Paris and their enthusiastic reception. The third chapter continues the examination of pure abstraction but in the context of the Parisian art world. It begins with an examination of the L’Art d’Au’jourd’hui exhibit of December 1925 and the two paintings Mondrian contributed to it. I seek to demonstrate that while Mondrian’s practice cannot be assimilated to the revolutionary aesthetics of the previous chapter, it was, nevertheless fundamentally connected to a certain vision of capitalism as a problem of everyday life. I argue that it is within the historical context of a dialectic between a “Soviet moment” and a Parisian experience of daily life that the rise and fall of pure abstraction should be understood. In the final chapter, I present the work of Jean Hélion, a young, committed French painter, whose trajectory from geometric to figural abstraction provides an understanding of the aesthetic and political impasses, as well as defeats, of the period, a case that casts an unsettling light on the entire adventure of pure abstraction.

Advisor: Davis, Whitney