http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/uci_etd/rss Recent eScholarship items from UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Sun, 30 Aug 2026 05:55:25 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5663d2vb Proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) offer the opportunity to observe the interactions of fundamental particles at very high energy scales. The high collision rate and large number of final state particles produced per collision imply that the datasets produced by detectors such as the ATLAS experiment are large and high dimensional. The complexity of these datasets calls for the use of novel data analysis techniques which can exploit all of the available information to illuminate known interactions and search for new ones. This thesis presents applications of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to improve the physics results of the ATLAS experiment. It centers on a full-phase-space measurement of the Z+jets production cross section at the LHC, where the cross section is measured differential in the kinematics of every final state charged particle through the use of an AI-based unfolding algorithm. This is the first such measurement performed at the... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5663d2vb Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Greif, Kevin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fb38871 Bright Shadows is a three-part short-story collection that explores emotional conflicts and thematic issues arising out of contemporary spiritual questions. Carl Jung’s notion of the “shadow self” is the thematic foundation of all three stories, which all differ in genre, voice, and style, but are ultimately connected by an underlying question. This isn’t an intellectual question, but rather an emotional curiosity that is felt more than thought. What are the darkest parts of ourselves that we can access? How do these parts clash when they surface up into the daylight world? These are succinct ways of putting what Bright Shadows grapples with, but they aren’t complete. These stories arise out of struggles with addiction, time spent in rehab, and encounters with violence; however, these stories also chart the path through our darker struggles. They follow along with my own study of story structure at UCI, and story structure, I hope this collection shows, is the structure... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fb38871 Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Buczinsky, Zachary https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4qj4f96b Recent industrialisation across Asia has produced increased air pollution emissions, altering the chemistry of reactive greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the troposphere. We compute the additional loss of methane (L-CH4) and net production of ozone (P-O3) attributable to urban and industrial emissions from South Korea during the May-June Korea-US Air quality (KORUS-AQ) mission. We build a three-stage hybrid modelling system (HMS) equipped with detailed chemical mechanisms to simulate the full life-cycle of emissions over several months (Chapter 3). The first stage processes the fresh emissions in the well-mixed boundary layer over terrestrial South Korea. The model fields of O3, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides are compared with surface observation data, which are interpolated and gridded in Chapter 2 to match the model discretisation. The second stage integrates the chemistry of the transboundary pollution plumes transported offshore, and the final stage disperses the residual pollutants.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4qj4f96b Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Wilson, Calum Patrick https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1p06x09x Cohort studies of aging-related diseases often produce event-time data that are subject to left-truncation, since participants enroll after some baseline age while being free of the disease of interest, in addition to right-censoring due to variable follow-up. This dissertation develops a suite of semiparametric methods, organized around a two-part conditional modeling framework, for drawing valid inference from such data and for quantifying healthspan (the portion of life spent in good health) as an endpoint in aging research. The first project proposes a semiparametric sieve likelihood approach for fitting a linear regression model to a response subject to both left-truncation and right-censoring; the resulting estimators are shown to be consistent, asymptotically normal, and semi parametrically efficient, and the method is illustrated on data from the Canadian Study of Health and Aging and The 90+ Study. The second project introduces the Golden Health Index (GHI), the expected... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1p06x09x Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Matthews, Spencer https://escholarship.org/uc/item/05j2m78q Alvin Ailey’s Cry is a modern dance masterwork of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre’s Repertory that has been performed many times since its 1971 premiere. What makes Ailey’s Cry so impactful to contemporary audiences is the cornerstone of this inquiry. This thesis explored Alvin Ailey’s Cry and its interpretation from various perspectives that led to the creation of my own choreography entitled Weathered. Along with experts’ analyses, I examined how audiences respond to Cry and integrated their insights into the development of a new choreographic work. My methodology utilized reception theory and a survey to uncover the moments deemed most impactful by voluntary respondents. These survey findings went on to serve as data points to inform my choreographical choices. I included two dancers plus myself to create three solos that built upon the themes that resonated widely through kinesthetic empathy entwined with the lens of their own lived experiences. I concluded that Ailey’s... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/05j2m78q Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Logan, Tyra Janae https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8gx8t5td Two-phase boiling is a highly effective heat transfer mechanism for high-power thermal management systems, but its performance is governed by complex, transient, and spatially distributed liquid–vapor interfacial dynamics. Conventional measurements such as temperature, pressure, and flow rate provide valuable system-level information, yet they do not directly resolve the bubble-scale and interface-scale processes that control heat transfer degradation, critical heat flux, flow instability, and regime transition. This dissertation develops a vision-based and event-based framework for characterizing, modeling, and diagnosing flow boiling heat transfer by transforming visual data streams into physically meaningful representations of interfacial behavior.First, a flow boiling experimental platform is developed to enable high-speed visualization under controlled thermal and hydrodynamic conditions. Building on this platform, a vision-based bubble digitization framework is established... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8gx8t5td Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Chang, Sanghyeon https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4w34f29n What happens when refusing to fight a war is framed not as a moral stand but as a betrayal of masculinity itself? This dissertation examines how Russian men who left after the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine are constructed as both political and gendered failures. While exile is often understood as a legal or geographic condition, I argue that in the Russian context, it also operates as a tool of gender discipline. Through state media, propaganda, and popular discourse, Russian men in exile are portrayed not simply as conscientious objectors but as morally deviant, feminized, and queer-coded figures who have forfeited their claims to societal and state-recognized masculinity. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, participant observation, and media analysis, this project introduces the concept of the politics of gendered death: a media-driven process through which narratives, satire, and viral circulation recode refusal to participate in state-defined masculinity and war-making... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4w34f29n Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Gasviani, Gvantsa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0r73x0hb Transgender and non-binary rights have emerged as one of the most rapidly evolving and politically contested areas of contemporary human rights, yet they remain comparatively understudied and are frequently subsumed within broader LGBTQ+ scholarship. Unlike many rights claims centered on equal access to existing institutions, transgender rights require states to reconsider the administrative and legal systems through which citizenship, identity, and personhood are recognized, making them a distinctive lens for examining institutional change. Latin America provides a particularly important setting for this analysis, having experienced some of the world's most significant advances in legal gender recognition alongside persistent violence, uneven public support, and growing political contestation. This dissertation examines how transgender and non-binary rights become institutionalized across legal, social, and political domains in Latin America. I argue that rights institutionalization... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0r73x0hb Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Garcia, Andrea Linette https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9g89h8jx This paper reconstructs a triangulated intellectual and institutional circuit linking Berlin, Tokyo, and Calcutta between 1871 and 1914, arguing that a German-derived repertoire of national economic coordination traveled across imperial and colonial contexts as a portable anti-colonial resource. It introduces the analytical category Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (“economic community”) to name what German political economy offered late-developing and subordinated societies: an economy imagined not as a neutral field of exchange but as a nationally organised, communally grounded, and administratively coordinated order. Rooted in Friedrich List and the German Historical School, this model fused economic coordination with a moralised rhetoric of national belonging and was rendered portable through university networks, constitutional templates, military advisory missions, and the prestige of German administrative science.The paper advances three correctives to existing scholarship. Against... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9g89h8jx Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Vig, Daniel David https://escholarship.org/uc/item/98k717kd Adolescence is a sensitive period for development of addiction-relevant brain circuits that regulate cognition, drug reinforcement, and motivation. These processes must be carefully balanced to guide adaptive behavior, yet they are particularly vulnerable to disruption during development. Cannabis is one of the most commonly used illicit substances among adolescents, and early-life exposure to Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is associated with an increased risk for psychiatric disorders and later-life substance use. However, the mechanisms by which adolescent THC (AdoTHC) exposure produces persistent alterations across cognitive and motivational domains remain incompletely understood.Here, I explore whether AdoTHC exposure persistently alters brain circuitry and subsequent behavior across three domains: cognition, drug reinforcement, and motivation. Using a suite of behavioral paradigms assessing decision-making, drug reinforcement, and motivation in rats, combined with cell-type... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/98k717kd Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Martinez, Maricela Xochil https://escholarship.org/uc/item/70k487g4 Neuroinflammation is increasingly recognized as a key contributor to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), yet the mechanisms linking systemic immune processes to brain structure and cognition remain poorly understood. This dissertation proposes that white matter (WM) microstructure represents a critical intermediate phenotype through which neuroinflammation influences neural circuit integrity and cognitive decline. To test this framework, this work utilized advanced diffusion MRI, specifically Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI), to characterize biologically meaningful features of WM microstructure within medial temporal lobe pathways. This dissertation first evaluated whether NODDI, a multi-shell, multi-compartment model, provided greater sensitivity to AD-related changes compared to traditional diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The findings established that advanced diffusion-derived metrics offer enhanced sensitivity to AD pathology and cognitive function while... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/70k487g4 Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Parker, Dana https://escholarship.org/uc/item/41p753dx Natural disasters disproportionately affect older adult populations, who consistently account for a majority of disaster-related mortality. While prior research has emphasized the role of risk perception in motivating preparedness behaviors, less attention has been given to how psychosocial and structural factors shape these processes among aging populations. This dissertation addresses this gap by examining how risk perception, loneliness, and structural vulnerability interact to influence disaster preparedness among older adults in Japan. Guided by the Protective Action Decision Model, this research extends existing theoretical frameworks through the development of the Japanese Older Adult Preparedness Model (JOAPM), which integrates psychosocial and structural dimensions into traditional models of protective action. This approach conceptualizes preparedness as an emergent process shaped not only by cognitive evaluation, but also by social relationships and environmental... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/41p753dx Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Fukurai, Mihoka https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0b35t7sd This thesis aims to address three main objectives: to better understand when, and how BPI holds in permutation models and in symmetric extensions; to develop a unifying relationship between variants of the Halpern-Läuchli theorem and BPI in symmetric extensions; to develop and expose simple dynamical perspectives on BPI in models without choice. Our approach to these questions is to introduce a characterization program, where we aim to provide conditions that are equivalent to BPI in permutation models and in symmetric extensions. By reproving known results, reworking known proofs, and proving new ones, we show how each of these characterizing properties offer novel perspectives on BPI, and how they address the three objectives listed above.The case of BPI in permutation models is studied in chapter 3. This work reproves and extends several results from [Bla87], [KPT05], and [Bla11]. These characterization theorems, and the proofs we offer to relate them, can be seen as simpler,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0b35t7sd Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ransom, Brian https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9w5966qx This research addresses the problem of cognitive asymmetry and the exclusion of popular knowledge in the Global South by examining the diachronic and material evolution of the editorial production of the Instituto Centroamericano de la Extensión de la Cultura (ICECU) and the Fundación Escuela para Todos over six decades (1966–2026). The study analyzes its emblematic publications: the Almanaque ICECU, the Libro Almanaque Escuela para Todos, and the current Libro Escuela para Todos. The central problem lies in unraveling how an informal education media device—initially conceived at the height of the Cold War’s developmentalist boom—managed to mutate its material architecture and discursive framework to resist extractive market dynamics, thereby becoming an interface for epistemic justice and sovereignty for subaltern communities in both rural and urban areas. To address this inquiry, a mixed-method research design was implemented, encompassing descriptive, analytical, and historical-diachronic... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9w5966qx Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Proctor, Anny Gysiellen https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6613m1b8 This dissertation seeks to untangle how armed conflict exacerbates infectious disease risk through physical, environmental, social, and geographic factors. Across multiple conflict settings, I analyze how conflict intensity impacts cholera and cutaneous leishmaniasis risk in conjunction with relevant environmental factors, as well as suggest an additional tool for measuring conflict's effects on the built environment. I do this by 1) assessing the association between violent conflict events and cholera in Yemen, 2) exploring Earth observation tools for measuring conflict intensity and infrastructure recovery in Yemen and Ukraine, 3) analyzing how environmental and conflict-related factors modify leishmaniasis risk at an ecological scale, and 4) quantifying cutaneous leishmaniasis surveillance gaps in northern Syria. Together, this work provides insights on how armed conflict actively shapes infectious disease dynamics. It also presents a viable tool for measuring conflict intensity... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6613m1b8 Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Tarnas, Maia C. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/40d7w6zz Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia impacting almost 7 million people in the United States with cases projected to increase over 13 million by 2050. Numerous large genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have repeatedly identified AD risk genes associated with immunity and specifically expressed in myeloid cells, implicating neuroimmune processes and neuroinflammation as a major factor of AD etiology. Microbial infection has been broadly explored as a mechanism through which both genetic and environmental contributions interact together to influence AD risk and neuropathology. Pathogenic microbes that invade the CNS can cause significant neuroinflammation through CNS-resident immune cells and infiltration of peripheral immune cells such as monocyte/macrophages and T cells. Recent epidemiological studies using human datasets have demonstrated several viral pathogens tightly associated with different neurological diseases, while the strongest association... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/40d7w6zz Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Javonillo, Dominic Ibarra https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5r0015wc Rates of food insecurity in the military, which are higher than those in comparable communities, remain an ongoing issue. Adolescents with military parents may also struggle to cope with frequent moves and parental deployments. Using a state-wide database that included children of military personnel, we measured the association between skipping breakfast on the day of the survey and mental health screening data scores. Over 43% of students in our sample reported skipping breakfast. These students reported higher mean, median, and 90th percentile stress level scores (μ = 10.9, M50 = 10, M90=19) than the students who did not skip breakfast (μ = 9.4, M50 = 8, M90=16). Groups with increased levels of high distress (>90th percentile) included students who skipped breakfast (17.3%), females (14.4%), gender minorities (36.3%), American Indian/Alaska Native (16.0%), and Hispanic/LatinX students (13.1%). Logistic regression showed that skipping breakfast increased a student’s odds of... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5r0015wc Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Hollis-Perry, Karine Monique https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0fc389qf This thesis is dedicated to studying the quantitative regularity of measures produced by actions of random dynamical systems and to applying these geometric estimates to products of random matrices. First, we consider smooth random dynamical systems defined by a distribution with a finite moment of the norm of the differential, and prove that under suitable non-degeneracy conditions any stationary measure must be Hölder continuous. This result is a vast generalization of the classical statement on Hölder continuity of stationary measures of random walks on linear groups. Second, we extend this framework to rougher settings by considering Lipschitz and Hölder continuous random dynamical systems defined by a distribution with a finite logarithmic moment, proving that under suitable non-degeneracy conditions every stationary measure must be log-Hölder continuous. Finally, we leverage these regularization properties to prove a Central Limit Theorem for non-stationary random products... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0fc389qf Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Monakov, Grigorii https://escholarship.org/uc/item/22k293r3 Flow Matching has limited ability in achieving one-step generation due to its reliance on learned curved trajectories. Previous studies have attempted to address this limitation by either modifying the coupling distribution to prevent interpolant intersections or introducing consistency and mean-velocity modeling to promote straight trajectory learning. However, these approaches often suffer from discrete approximation errors, training instability, and convergence difficulties. To tackle these issues, in the present work, we propose Straight Variational Flow Matching (S-VFM), which integrates a variational latent code representing the ``generation overview'' into the Flow Matching framework. S-VFM explicitly enforces trajectory straightness, ideally producing linear generation paths. The proposed method achieves competitive performance across three challenge benchmarks and demonstrates advantages in both training and inference efficiency compared with existing methods. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/22k293r3 Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ma, Chenrui https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3nk3v85n One of the oldest and most recalcitrant questions in philosophy is whether free will and moral responsibility could exist in a deterministic universe. In recent years, empirical work has revealed that people’s intuitions about this question show a robust, yet puzzling, pattern. In this dissertation, I explain the pattern of intuitions human beings have about compatibilism and argue that this pattern reveals deep features of our representational architecture. My dissertation shows why we have the intuitions about compatibilism we do, how our species came to be so cognitively configured, and why philosophers want to (but cannot) argue their way out of the intuitions furnished by our representational structures. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3nk3v85n Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Gibson, True https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4jj8p42h Background: The immune response to acute psychosocial stress involves coordinated activity across multiple biological compartments, including barrier tissues that serve as the immune system’s first line of defense. While blood-based markers of the inflammatory stress response are well-characterized, less is known about how barrier tissue defenses like those in the oral cavity respond to acute psychosocial stress among adolescents. Understanding the salivary immune response to acute psychosocial stress may provide insight into stress-related disease processes and early signs of immune dysregulation among adolescents.Method: Adolescents (N=94, Mage=13.87, SDage=1.55, 43.62% female) completed the Trier Social Stress Test for Children. Saliva was collected immediately before and 20-, 30-, 45-, 60-, and 90-minutes post-stress initiation; blood was collected immediately before and 60- and 90-minutes post-stress initiation. Inflammatory biomarkers measured included C-reactive protein... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4jj8p42h Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Antici, Ellie https://escholarship.org/uc/item/28n7h9b5 Research consistently highlights that early familial influences play a critical role in shaping individual perceptions and attitudes toward mental illness. Intergenerationally transmitted beliefs can profoundly impact the development of stigma, symptom concealment, perceptions of legitimacy, and willingness to engage with mental health services. Despite this, few tools exist to systematically assess the broad range of familial mental illness perceptions across generations. The present study addresses this gap by developing and validating the Intergenerational Perceptions of Mental Illness Scale – Individual Scale (IPMIS-I), a novel self-report measure designed to assess both individuals’ positive and negative perceptions. Initial item development was guided by seven core themes identified in the literature, and the scale was tested across three undergraduate samples (total N = 696) at the University of California, Irvine. An exploratory factor analysis (n = 300) revealed a four-factor... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/28n7h9b5 Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Hegwood, Ceouna https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5pt7b0bc This thesis began with a question that emerged from my own artistic and personal experience: How have both my Asian and American identity shaped who I am as a dancer, choreographer, and artist? Even though I am an adoptee, I have rarely questioned the stability of my identity on my own. Instead, other people have prompted that inquiry, asking whether I wished to know my “origin story” or find my birth parents. These questions revealed how identity is often understood through assumptions about lineage, cultural authenticity, and biological connection. I grew up constantly navigating between American and Chinese cultural environments. As a result, my identity shifts depending on context – where I am, who I am with, and how I am perceived by others. This project asks what it means to understand identity when belonging is not fixed. I propose that identity is not something to be recovered or resolved, but something continually negotiated through history, context, and movement. Through... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5pt7b0bc Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Cook, Ashley Cecilia Siyuan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42p79680 Both Sides, Now: An Embodied Inquiry into Identity, In-Betweenness, and Belonging explores artistic identity, cultural displacement, and belonging through choreography, autoethnography, and embodied research. Accompanied by the choreographic work Both Sides, Now, this thesis examines how my experiences as a Taiwanese-born dancer living and working in the United States have shaped my artistic practice and understanding of identity. Drawing from my background in Chinese classical dance, ballet, and modern dance, this research investigates how multiple training systems and cultural contexts coexist within the body and contribute to experiences of in-betweenness. Autoethnography, reflective writing, interviews, and choreographic research are used to explore themes of migration, cultural translation, identity, and belonging. A description of the choreographic process positions it as a form of embodied inquiry, using movement to examine the experience of existing between cultures, places,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42p79680 Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Chiang, Haihua https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0kw5h4pk This dissertation studies the prominent symbolic function of stage properties in the dramaturgy and politics of Shakespeare’s English and Roman history plays. It argues that Shakespeare crafts a visual landscape on stage that further complicates political readings of the genre. Rather than solely attending to what can be found in historical sources and static documents, this dissertation turns scholarly attention back to the live event of the drama to examine what is seen on stage. “Visible Bullets” argues that stage properties are deployed deliberately and subversively throughout the history plays, and this use may prompt audiences and readers to (re)consider theatricality on stage, as well as the role and impact of theatricality in power and politics. “Visible Bullets” combines dramaturgical and New Historicist methods to study the visible political landscape of Shakespeare’s history plays both in the early modern period and in our time. This research methodology is described... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0kw5h4pk Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Parise, Emily Catherine https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ck4s0t3 When supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of massive galaxies actively accrete material, they power the luminous sources known as active galactic nuclei (AGN). Through the energy released by this accretion, the AGN interacts with the gas in its surroundings across a wide range of spatial scales. On scales of several kiloparsecs, the narrow-line region (NLR) traces gas in the host galaxy that has been photoionized by the AGN, and its kinematics encode the influence of the central engine. At even larger scales, Lyα emission traces the cool gas in the circumgalactic medium (CGM), which constitutes the reservoir that fuels SMBH growth and star formation. Historically, imaging and long-slit spectroscopic observations have provided complementary views of AGN environments, with the former revealing the spatial distribution of the gas, and the later yielding spatially resolved kinematics along a single direction.Integral field spectroscopy (IFS) simultaneously provides spatial... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ck4s0t3 Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Remigio, Raymond https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4jt6m27d This dissertation proposes the Andean principle of Yanantin (the complementarity of opposite forces) as both a methodological framework and a lived epistemological position for the practice of Integrative Arts in contemporary transmedia opera. Through philosophical reflection, ethno-archaeo-musicological research, and the creation and performance of POEM-RITE: The Primeval Poet, it argues that Indigenous knowledge systems constitute academies in their own right that recognize other-than-human beings in nature as active participants in the production of knowledge. Identifying these contrasts between Indigenous and Western epistemologies opens the field for the application of Yanantin as a creative and scholarly methodology, one grounded in the author's own formation as both an academic artist and carrier of Indigenous ceremonial traditions.The sequence of the first three chapters, presented as a WHY/WHAT/HOW framework, explaining the development process of OEM-RITE: The Primeval... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4jt6m27d Thu, 9 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 CAVERO FARFAN, FABRICIO https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s87p0bh The primary sources of inspiration for this short story are George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman; Gear, Hill, and Liendo’s Working Through Narcissism: Treating Its Sadomasochistic Structure; Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality; Franz Kafka’s Letter to His Father; René Girard’s The Scapegoat; Alex Johnson’s translation of the Diamond Sūtra; the fixed-point theorems of John Forbes Nash Jr.; Jianzhi Sengcan’s “Xinxin Ming”; Heinz Kohut’s “The Two Analyses of Mr. Z”; Leo Tolstoy’s essays on nonviolence and non-activity; William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn’s theory of object relations and the moral defense; Karl J. Friston’s work on the free energy principle and active inference; Silvan Solomon Tomkin’s work on script theory; and Peter Fonagy’s work on mentalization. As with Man and Superman, this story is intended as both comedy and philosophy, and it is tantamount to propaganda for a particular view of human existence: the view that the Self is a hallucination imposed... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s87p0bh Thu, 9 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Comerci, John Thomas https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2303t3mh Establishing a clear timeline of events is legally critical in child maltreatment cases, yet temporal questions can be particularly confusing for child witnesses. "When" questions are inherently ambiguous in that they can request either simultaneous or sequential information, whereas other temporal terms (before, after, while, during, as, first, last, then) carry a clear referent. Despite the potential for misunderstanding, the prevalence of ambiguous "when" questions in legal proceedings and their effects on children's responses have received little empirical attention. The present study examined attorney use of temporal questions in courtroom transcripts involving 60 child witnesses aged 4 to 12 years. Questions were coded for category, format, and children's responses. Generalized linear mixed models examined how question category and format predicted children's responses. Non-ambiguous temporal term questions were most frequent (51%), followed by anchored "when" questions... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2303t3mh Thu, 9 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lundon, Georgia M https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1qj3852d A recurring challenge to combatting the significant problem of commercial sex trafficking, especially of minors, lies in identifying actual victims. Public campaigns have increased awareness of the occurrence of trafficking, but the depiction of victims often invoke stereotypes that fail to match characteristics known to be associated with experiences of trafficking, such as high levels of mistrust of authorities, prior victimization, delinquent histories, and uncooperativeness. We examined the extent to which the latter characteristics (i.e., delinquency and uncooperativeness) impact the general public’s ability to identify minor victims of trafficking and to whom the public attributes responsibility when such characteristics are present. A total of 425 adults read vignettes alluding to trafficking that varied references to delinquency (present vs. absent) and cooperation (high vs. low) of a minor victim and rendered decisions about what happened and who is to blame. When minors... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1qj3852d Thu, 9 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Kim, Sarah Calista https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0574q9v9 The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the convergence and divergence among meta-aspects of positive emotion measures drawn from Affect Valuation Theory, Emotion Goals, Prioritizing Positivity, and Valuing Happiness. Meta-aspects of positive emotion include how people idealize, desire, prioritize, aspire for, or are concerned about how intensely or frequently they feel positive emotion. Across two studies, this dissertation tested whether scores show convergent or divergent associations with one another, with a broad nomological network of affective science criteria, and with self-reported health-related quality of life.Study 1 examined the convergence and divergence of meta-aspects of happiness measures across two large samples: university students and online survey participants. The focal measures were the moderate-arousal positive affect subscale of the Affect Valuation Index, the happiness subscale of an Emotion Goals Measure, the Prioritizing Positivity Scale, and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0574q9v9 Thu, 9 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Martin, Logan Trevor https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dc7f3tg This thesis examines how Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen uses visual doublings and spatial layering to engage with the uncanny legacies of Japanese imperialism in his site-specific video installation, Hotel Aporia. Originally commissioned for the 2019 Aichi Triennale and installed within the historic ryokan Kiraku-tei in Toyota City, this work assembles a cast of Japanese intellectuals and cultural makers connected to the Japanese Empire, including Kiraku-tei’s landlady, the Kamikaze Kusanagi Unit, Kyoto School philosophers, cartoonist Ryūichi Yokoyama, and filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu. Through fragmented voices, blurred faces, overlapping projections, and visceral sounds and vibrations, Ho transforms the ryokan into a spectral infrastructure where viewers encounter the contradictions and repressions embedded within postwar memory. Drawing on theories of the uncanny by Ernst Jentch and Sigmund Freud, alongside Ignacio Adriasola’s concept of “the uncanniness of the double,” this thesis... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dc7f3tg Wed, 8 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 McCants, Myra Mariana https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7473n5wd The Harlem Renaissance was a brief yet vibrant period in American history marked by transformative developments across artistic and cultural fields. Spanning the aftermath of Reconstruction to the beginning of the Second World War, this research examines the work of four women sculptors: Edmonia Lewis, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and Augusta Savage. While scholarship on the Harlem Renaissance has often centered literature, music, and painting, this study foregrounds sculpture as a critical yet underexamined medium for understanding the movement’s visual and ideological dimensions.My research adopts an interdisciplinary methodology that combines feminist art history, iconological interpretation, perceptual theory, and material analysis. Drawing on feminist critiques of the canon, this approach challenges the historical exclusion of women artists, particularly African American and Indigenous women. Iconological methods allow for a contextual reading of symbolic... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7473n5wd Wed, 8 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Smith, Kelly Ann https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63j7t0xt The hand-on-wrist gesture (χεῖρ’ ἐπὶ καρπῷ or cheir’ epi karpōi) has appeared in many contexts in ancient Greek arts and literature. Generally depicting a scene including a man grabbing at the wrist of a woman seemingly taking control by force. The many examples that are explored here, follow the nuances of its appearance in each different context, and how each one unsettles the possibility of there being any clear overarching answer for what the gesture symbolizes. Instead, this paper traces the different usages of the hand-on-wrist gesture starting from the first visual example on the “Abduction Krater” and early Greek literary examples, where it appears in multiple contexts, to its reappearance about 300 years later in the fifth century BCE in Athens. Unlike its earlier uses, its reappearances in the fifth century BCE are seemingly starkly confined to specific, gendered spaces and contexts for usage. First it appears in the male-oriented symposium in the tondo of some kylikes.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63j7t0xt Wed, 8 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Casebolt, Amelia Gehret https://escholarship.org/uc/item/448053x4 The grave stele of Myttion has been a point of contention among a multitude of authors. This paper aims to investigate the various proposals that have been made in regard to Myttion’s identity on the basis of her unusual “foreign” dress. Within this paper I will be looking at interpretations posited by Balbina Bäbler, Bonnie Kingsley, Walther Amelung, Tulia Linders, and Janet Grossman. Considering all of these interpretations I will point out that the conclusions made about Myttion’s identity do not include further investigation through the funerary art context, and as such should be rendered inconclusive. My research begins by establishing a common ground by which foreignness and identity have been seen within ancient Greek and Persian art. Following this, a discussion of the importance of analyzing grave stelai within the lens of a funerary art context is put forward through the brief analysis of the Torso of a Male Statue in Persian Attire. After establishing this basis of... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/448053x4 Wed, 8 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Haskill, Elizabeth https://escholarship.org/uc/item/21q9m519 “Living Carcerality: Black Panther Women and the Experience of Confinement” examines how systems of surveillance and control shape the lives of Black women through racialized monitoring, spatial control, and narrative regulation. Framed through settler colonialism as an enduring structure of domination that organizes land and epistemology, this study investigates how Black Panther women navigate forms of carceral power that extend beyond prison walls, structuring mobility, social relations, and political subjectivity through differential forms of regulation and state repression.This interdisciplinary project brings together Carceral Studies, Settler colonialism, and Black women’s biography to examine carcerality as an ongoing structure of social and political life. Carceral Studies theorizes the expansion of punishment and oversight beyond the penal institution, where governance is organized through discipline and control. Black Feminist Thought centers Black life, gendered experience,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/21q9m519 Wed, 8 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Placide, Nilah Regina https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0bv5x3zb This thesis examines the fifteenth-century De Sphaera manuscript, attributed to the workshop of Cristoforo de Predis and produced within the courtly environment of the Sforza court in Milan. Although based on Johannes de Sacrobosco’s widely circulated Sphaera mundi, the manuscript departs from the practical and pedagogical functions traditionally associated with astronomical texts, transforming cosmological knowledge into a richly illuminated visual program centered on planetary imagery and the “Children of the Planets.” Through an analysis of the manuscript’s iconography, structure, and historical context, this study argues that the De Sphaera functioned less as a technical astrological instrument than as a flexible courtly object through which ideas of cosmic order, dynastic identity, and social hierarchy could be articulated.Particular attention is paid to the manuscript’s later association with the marriage of Anna Sforza and Alfonso d’Este and its movement from Milan to Ferrara... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0bv5x3zb Wed, 8 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Bradford, Amiri Janae https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7qm9k97g Genetic variation influences gene expression and contributes to differences in immune phenotype, but how genetic background shapes immune-cell composition and transcriptional state across diverse mouse models remains incompletely understood. Murine peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) provide an accessible system for investigating genotype-associated variation across major immune populations. In this study, I use single-cell transcriptomic data from eight genetically diverse mouse strains and four corresponding F1 progeny to annotate PBMC cell types, compare cellular composition across genotypes, and identify strain-associated differences in immune gene expression.This analysis recovered major circulating immune populations, including B cells, naïve T cells, T cells, regulatory T cells, NK cells, plasmacytoid dendritic cells, classical and nonclassical monocytes, macrophage-like cells, neutrophils, and RBC- or megakaryocyte-associated populations. PBMC composition varied... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7qm9k97g Mon, 6 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Duffield, Margaret Jane https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8pg9g6tw This dissertation examines unequal protection in California drinking-water governance under the Safe Drinking Water Act. It asks how formally uniform regulatory standards translate into uneven protection when exposure risk, compliance recovery, and enforcement responsiveness are mediated by community water system capacity and regulatory implementation. Using statewide administrative, regulatory, water-quality, and birth-record data, the study links California births to community water system nitrate monitoring from 2011 to 2022, models time to recorded return to compliance for Safe Drinking Water Act violations, and estimates changes in quarterly compliance progress around each system’s first formal enforcement action. The birth-outcome analysis finds a consistent positive association between pregnancy-average nitrate exposure and preterm birth across continuous, categorical, and threshold specifications, while low birthweight associations are weaker and more specification-dependent.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8pg9g6tw Fri, 3 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Bing, Qi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76086554 Community colleges are designed to expand access to higher education, serving students who might otherwise be excluded from traditional four-year pathways. In the post-COVID era, online learning has endured as a central feature of higher education, further expanding access for time-constrained and place-bound students. Simultaneously, it has created less structured environments that can place greater responsibility on students to manage their own learning. This dissertation examines a central paradox: how does inequality persist even as access expands?The first chapter opens the black box of transfer decision-making by examining how students form intentions, expectations, and strategies under uncertainty. While aspirations and confidence are consistently high, access to transfer-related knowledge and communication networks varies systematically based on students’ social and economic positionality. The second chapter positions asynchronous learning as a labor-education tradeoff.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76086554 Fri, 3 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ledezma, Gala Merari https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3230461c Reaction mechanisms and chemical reactivity are governed by high-dimensional potential energy surfaces (PESs). Exploring these surfaces is essential for discovering novel molecules and reaction pathways, yet exhaustive PES exploration becomes computationally prohibitive with each additional atom in a reaction system. Stoichiometry-preserving reaction networks (RNs) provide a tractable discrete representation of chemical space that enables systematic PES exploration. In this representation, nodes correspond to molecular collections of fixed stoichiometry and edges represent stoichiometry-preserving transformations. This dissertation investigates the structural properties of RNs and develops methods for more efficient pathway searching and targeted PES exploration within the open-source colibri2 software package. Comparative analysis of RNs against generative network models reveals that RNs closely resemble low-dimensional regular lattices with a small degree of random edge... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3230461c Fri, 3 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Stulajter, Miko Milano https://escholarship.org/uc/item/92k8b7p9 Text embedding inversion reconstructs source text from fixed-dimensional vector representations, posing an underappreciated privacy threat to systems that store embeddings in lieu of raw text. Prior work demonstrated inversion of GTR-base and OpenAI’s text-embedding-ada-002 but left open whether newer commercial embedding APIs are more or less vulnerable to the same attack, and whether the attack’s fidelity transfers to content categories beyond the in-distribution web passages on which the inverter was trained. This thesis addresses both gaps. The first contribution is a multi-API extension of the opensource vec2text codebase of Morris et al. that supports OpenAI’s text-embedding-3-small (1536 dimensions) and Mistral’s mistral-embed (1024 dimensions) as drop-in embedders alongside the original GTR-base, with five targeted code changes: dimension-agnostic projection layers in both the inverter and corrector models, two new API client functions with batched inference and rate-limit-aware... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/92k8b7p9 Thu, 2 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Elaasar, Kareem https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6pn4w31x This thesis addresses wildfire spread prediction through two complementary contributions: dataset curation and stochastic cellular automata (SCA) modeling. First, it introduces PyroStack, an event-based dataset designed to support wildfire analysis across diverse ecosystems in the contiguous United States and Alaska. PyroStack combines satellite fire observations with meteorological, vegetation, fuel, and topographic data into a unified spatiotemporal dataset covering nearly 7,000 wildfires. Spatial resolutions range from 30m to 9km, with hourly temporal granularity for environmental covariates and 12-hour fire progression observations. With this, the dataset enables consistent initialization and evaluation of wildfire spread models. Second, we develop an SCA framework for modeling and predicting wildfire spread using PyroStack. The approach represents wildfire dynamics on a two-dimensional lattice with discrete burn states and probabilistic transition rules that incorporate both... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6pn4w31x Thu, 2 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Kondur, Arya Rashmi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5x82x358 Multi Agent Path Finding (MAPF) algorithms are designed to compute collision-free paths for multiple agents in large scale environments. An example of these environments is the mining industry, in which multiple autonomous robots navigate narrow corridors to coordinate the extraction and crushing of ore in underground mines. While MAPF algorithms are efficient and can generate optimal solutions, they have not replaced industry-standard greedy algorithms because most MAPF formulations are single-shot and rely on static goal assignments, limiting the ability to dynamically allocate tasks based on agent state. In this thesis, we present a lifelong variant of ITA-CBS, a conflict-based target-assignment and path-finding algorithm. We develop a grid-based simulation of mining tunnels to accurately test the efficacy of the algorithm. We demonstrate the necessary additions to ITA-CBS to make it function in a lifelong mining simulation. We evaluate the effectiveness of the algorithm by... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5x82x358 Thu, 2 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Dalla Tor, Gabriel Andres https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5ws575jx CPython is the main implementation of Python and an important runtime for software such as web services, automation, and artificial intelligence and machine-learning tools. Its experimental Tier 2 just-in-time (JIT) compiler, introduced in Python 3.13 through PEP 744, adds a new optimization layer to the interpreter. The JIT traces frequently executed code paths as micro-operations (UOPs) and lowers those traces to native machine code. Because the JIT only activates on hot execution paths and depends on the assumptions built by the Tier 1 adaptive interpreter, it creates a testing surface that is more stateful and less directly covered by traditional interpreter tests. For this reason, JIT-specific testing and verification are necessary.This thesis presents a coverage-guided fuzzing campaign against the CPython 3.15 Tier 2 JIT using lafleur, an evolutionary fuzzer that tracks stateful UOP-edge coverage and applies JIT-aware abstract syntax tree (AST) mutations. This work makes... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5ws575jx Thu, 2 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Sahib, Hameed Anwar https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5qf8v09v Modern software engineering is increasingly defined by the interactions that enable developers to collaborate and innovate at scale. As software systems grow in complexity, developers face constant task switching among coding, reviewing, debugging, and communication activities. Each interruption forces a loss of focus and incurs the cognitive cost of reconstructing prior context. Among the most frequent and disruptive sources of interruption are notifications, which demand rapid judgments about whether they are relevant enough to warrant attention. Prior studies estimate that such interruptions can consume up to twenty percent of a developer’s working time, yet research on their contextual relevance has been constrained by the absence of open, reproducible datasets that link notifications to real development workflows. This thesis introduces DevScenario, an open dataset of one thousand developer scenarios constructed from public GitHub repositories. Each scenario models a developer’s... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5qf8v09v Thu, 2 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Chen, Justin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5cj9z0nf Background: The circadian rhythm controls the expression of drug metabolism genes (DMGs) in peripheral tissues such as the liver and kidney, two key organs involved in drug metabolism and clearance. Studies demonstrate, in humans and mice alike, that the rhythmic expression of DMGs can modulate the efficacy of drug therapies. However, these studies are often performed in complex bulk tissues, lack cell type resolution, and do not examine how genetic background may affect the metabolism-circadian relationship. This investigation examines the single-cell DMG expression signatures across six Zeitgeber time (ZT) points in two chronotypically distinct mice. This will allow us to characterize how unique endogenous circadian programs might shape the drug-metabolic profile differences. Chronotype-specific differences in DMG expression will help physicians develop more robust time-of-day recommendations for therapeutic interventions.Methods: A multi-tissue cell type-resolved gene expression... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5cj9z0nf Thu, 2 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Hall, Andrew Christian https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2w34c5x7 Introduction: Vitiligo is an autoimmune disorder characterized by depigmented patches of skin surrounded by normal skin that affects 0.5-2% of the global population. Currently, there are no entirely effective and long-term treatments available as many treatments rely solely on suppression of the immune response pathways. Additionally, consensus on treatment course has yet to be established, and there is extensive variability in treatment response within the same individual. This project aims to identify microscopic differences in melanocyte characteristics that may be influencing patchy repigmentation patterns commonly seen in stable vitiligo patients.Methods: Eight participants ages 24-76 were enrolled in this prospective study who were partially responsive to daily use of topical JAK inhibitor (JAKi) and received twice weekly narrowband UVB (nbUVB) phototherapy for at least 6 months. Patients who were pregnant, breastfeeding, or had an adhesive allergy were excluded. Punch tissue... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2w34c5x7 Thu, 2 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Gibson, Lilly Christina https://escholarship.org/uc/item/25k6v8bc Vision-Language Models (VLMs) are increasingly used by blind and low-vision (BLV) people to identify products in everyday life, yet producing error-free captions under real-world image conditions remains an open challenge. Under these conditions, models often produce descriptions that include uncertain language, and as errors are difficult to verify non-visually, how models communicate uncertainty in their output matters as much as whether they are accurate. Hedging language, expressions such as “likely,” “appears to be,” and “possibly”, is a natural way uncertainty manifests in VLM output, but whether VLMs hedge in ways that are actually aligned — whether models express uncertainty where they are likely wrong and withhold it where they are likely right — is unknown. In this thesis, I investigate (1) the extent to which four VLMs (GPT-4.1, Gemini-2.5 Flash, LLama-90B 3.2, and Molmo72B) produce hedging language in product captions, and (2) whether hedging co-occurs with caption... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/25k6v8bc Thu, 2 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Morgan, Dwayne https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1z03v9r2 Autofluorescence spectroscopy is a label-free optical technique for detecting intrinsic fluorescence signals from endogenous molecules in biological systems. Metabolic cofactors such as nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH), flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD), and porphyrin-related compounds are important contributors to biological autofluorescence and are closely associated with cellular metabolism, redox state, and biomedical optical analysis. However, direct interpretation of autofluorescence spectra remains challenging because multiple fluorophores may emit in overlapping spectral regions and their fluorescence responses can be strongly affected by experimental conditions.This study established a fluorescence spectroscopy system based on fiber optic structure for measuring solution based NADH, NADPH, FAD, and porphyrin emission spectra under controlled conditions. This system initially used three reference fluorescent... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1z03v9r2 Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Dang, Bohao https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8gf11710 Classical molecular dynamics force fields exist because the molecular Schrödinger equation, while well defined, cannot be evaluated at the system sizes and time scales required for biomolecular simulation. Replacing the Born–Oppenheimer potential energy surface with an empirical analytic functional form reduces the computational cost to approximately O(N) to O(N log N), but this efficiency comes at the price of reduced fidelity to the underlying quantum-mechanical interaction. The conventional nonbonded model, composed of a point-charge Coulomb term and a Lennard–Jones 12–6 term, has powered four decades of biomolecular molecular dynamics. However, it is not a physically natural decomposition. It captures only the long-range portion of permanent electrostatics, omits induction or electronic polarization entirely, and folds Pauli exchange repulsion and dispersion into a single two-parameter function that diverges as r^-12 at short range. This r^-12 singularity has no quantum-mechanical... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8gf11710 Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Huang, Zhen https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5w16866r Photonics is the science of generating, controlling, and manipulating light, and underpins technologies ranging from telecommunications and semiconductor manufacturing to biomedical imaging, chemical sensing, and consumer displays. As optical devices continue to shrink toward the nanoscale, conventional design approaches increasingly struggle with the complexity of light-matter interactions, the large number of possible material and geometric parameters, and the computational cost of full-wave electromagnetic simulations. These challenges have motivated the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a new paradigm for nanophotonic design.This dissertation explores how deep learning and generative AI can be used to solve inverse problems in nanophotonics. Rather than relying solely on parameter sweeps, or slow, iterative trial-and-error optimization, the approaches developed in this work take advantage of data-driven AI models to accelerate photonic materials discovery, improve... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5w16866r Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Dang, David Kim https://escholarship.org/uc/item/12k2d84q The rapid evolution of next-generation wireless communication systems and high density phased array integrations demands ultra-compact and highly energy-efficient receiver front ends operating in the millimeter-wave spectrum. A critical bottleneck in these systems is the design of the low-noise amplifier, where designers face fundamental trade-offs between achieving a low noise figure, maintaining high power gain, minimizing power consumption, and reducing the silicon footprint. Traditional inductive degeneration architectures often suffer from severe gain bandwidth limitations and consume excessively large core areas, rendering them sub-optimal for advanced high-frequency applications. To address these intrinsic limitations, this research proposes the systematic design, theoretical analysis, and physical implementation of a novel V-band low-noise amplifier (LNA) in the 22-nanometer Fully Depleted Silicon on Insulator (SOI) process technology. The proposed architecture employs... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/12k2d84q Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Yang, Chengyu https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80d710dw Prenatal screening tests were developed to identify pregnancies that may be at risk for potential fetal abnormalities and chromosomal aneuploidies. These screenings, which are not diagnostic in nature, have evolved from previous analyte-based methods to more advanced techniques, such as cell-free DNA (cfDNA) screening. For patients who screen positive, additional follow-up diagnostic testing is recommended to confirm the screening results. An additional consideration with prenatal diagnostic testing is its invasive nature and the associated risk of miscarriage. While cfDNA offers improved sensitivity and specificity, lowering the false-positive rates, the impact of this programmatic shift on patient decision-making regarding invasive diagnostic testing has not been fully characterized. The California Prenatal Screening Program, established in 1986, aims to enhance infant health outcomes by conducting prenatal screening for all Californians who opt into the program. On September... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80d710dw Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Fonseca, Eilen https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6067d3sd Genetic testing has expanded in both the clinical and direct-to-consumer (DTC) settings, offering information that may guide disease risk assessment, prevention and treatment, and provide information about ancestry and personal traits. Awareness and utilization of genetic testing have increased over time, but there have been historically demonstrated disparities across different socioeconomic demographic groups. Initiatives to reduce disparities are ongoing to establish greater equity in healthcare. This study examined 19,619 responses from the Health Information National Trend Surveys (HINTS) from 2013 to 2024. Awareness of genetic testing (2013, 2020, and 2022 surveys) and evolution of genetic testing utilization (2013, 2020, 2022, and 2024 surveys) were assessed using seven socioeconomic demographic factors: age, sex, college graduation status, income relative to the federal poverty line (FPL), survey language, underrepresented minority (URM) status, and urbanicity.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6067d3sd Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ramos, Vianna Isabella https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5s08x543 Lynch syndrome is a common hereditary cancer syndrome and is associated with an increased risk of colorectal, endometrial, and additional malignancies. Universal tumor screening utilizing mismatch repair immunohistochemistry (MMR IHC) and/or microsatellite instability (MSI) testing has been widely recommended to improve identification of individuals at risk for Lynch syndrome. This retrospective study evaluated tumor-based Lynch syndrome screening, genetic counseling referrals, and germline genetic testing rates among patients diagnosed with colorectal or endometrial cancer at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center from 2015 to 2023. Pathology data were obtained through the Experimental Tissue Resource team and supplemented by manual electronic medical record review. Pathology reports and electronic medical records were reviewed to identify MMR IHC results, MSI testing, reflex molecular testing, genetic counseling referrals, and germline genetic testing outcomes.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5s08x543 Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Cox, Chakeira https://escholarship.org/uc/item/03f9j8t0 The usage of genetic panel testing to evaluate multiple genes at once has become ubiquitous with the increasing accessibility of next-generation sequencing technology. In the cancer genetics specialty, multigene panel testing has allowed cancer patients to receive genetic testing for multiple hereditary cancer (HC) syndromes. It is possible to receive pathogenic (P) or likely pathogenic (LP) variant results unrelated to a patient’s personal or family history of cancer; in this study, these results are referred to as secondary findings (SFs). Recent studies on SFs in HC gene panel testing yield a range of 0.56-1.8% of all test results being SFs (Henn et al., 2019; Horiuchi et al., 2021; Nambot et al., 2021). However, many of the published studies on SFs in HC gene panel testing use criteria that have not been well-defined to determine SF status. The goal of this study was to determine the frequency of SFs at one high-risk cancer genetics clinic and to further characterize all SFs... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/03f9j8t0 Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Wendm, Seffir https://escholarship.org/uc/item/55z9r7k8 The aviation industry is faced with overcoming the dual challenges of achieving net-zero emissions goals while meeting increasingly stringent community noise requirements. Electrification of aircraft propulsion systems presents a pathway toward more sustainable aviation, while enabling technologies associated with unconventional propulsion architectures introduce additional acoustic considerations that must be evaluated during conceptual aircraft design. This thesis presents an integrated aircraft acoustics modeling methodology developed within the OpenMDAO, Aviary, and Dymos multidisciplinary design, analysis, and optimization (MDAO) environments to enable trajectory-dependent acoustic assessment of future air transport concepts.Semi-empirical propulsion and airframe noise methodologies are incorporated within the framework, including fan, jet, core, open rotor, flap, slat, and landing gear noise models. Additional acoustic effects associated with unconventional propulsion configurations,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/55z9r7k8 Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Hassanandani, Hanshita Soni https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2qv1m6r0 Humans are social creatures, as are many other species. Behavioral ecologists have proposed that specific domains of survival threats – mortality threat (e.g., predation risk) and resource scarcity – lead to divergent effects on grouping behavior among a wide range of nonhuman species: organisms tend to gather under mortality threat but disperse under resource scarcity. However, social psychologists have not yet examined whether similar processes operate in humans. To fill this gap, five studies examined how ecological threats shape two psychological indicators of how broad (or narrow) one’s social group is: trust radius and group identity. One potential underlying mechanism was also explored: the link between large-scale belonging and overall life satisfaction. Studies 1 through 3 provide survey-based evidence showing that chronic perceptions of mortality threat generally broaden one’s ingroup boundaries, whereas chronic perceptions of resource scarcity narrow them. Study 4... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2qv1m6r0 Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Choi, Minyoung https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1v62b16x This work investigates the ex-situ through-plane thermal conductivity of sintered titanium porous transport layers (PTLs) used in proton exchange membrane (PEM) water electrolyzers. Accurate PTL thermal conductivity measurements are important for improving electrolyzer thermal models, since temperature gradients can influence efficiency, degradation, and long-term performance. A custom steady-state heat-flux apparatus was used to measure thermal resistance as a function of stacked sample thickness. Effective thermal conductivity was determined from the inverse slope of the thermal resistance versus thickness relationship, while the y-intercept was used to evaluate apparent thermal contact resistance.The experimental method was first evaluated using polyetheretherketone (PEEK) and a commercial thermal interface pad. PEEK was measured at 0.47±0.0280. Wm-1K-1, which was higher than its reported value of 0.25 Wm-1K-1, suggesting sensitivity to contact resistance and other setup-related... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1v62b16x Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Carhee, Stanley https://escholarship.org/uc/item/13w477kx Free-space optical communication (FSOC) is a promising wireless technology for high-capacity backhaul and x-haul networks because it offers large optical bandwidth, narrow beam divergence, license-free operation, and compatibility with fiber-optic communication components. However, long-distance horizontal terrestrial FSOC links remain challenging because the optical beam propagates through the lower atmosphere over the entire path, where turbulence, beam wander, scintillation, weather attenuation, and pointing error can cause received-power fluctuation, deep fading, and link outage.This thesis presents the design, deployment, and experimental characterization of a long-distance terrestrial FSOC system using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) optical-networking components. The AraOptical Phase I system was deployed as a 10.15 km horizontal single-input single-output (SISO) link in Ames, Iowa, as part of the NSF-PAWR ARA wireless living lab. The system integrates DWDM SFP+ transceivers,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/13w477kx Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Li, Xun https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8043n67j This thesis studies oscillatory behavior in electrically small antenna equivalent circuits using synthesized negative capacitance or inductance. Because electrically small antennas usually have large capacitive reactance and small radiation resistance, conventional passive matching is strongly bandwidth-limited. This work analyzes negative inductance and capacitance compensation in both parallel and series circuit topologies and the instability created by that. Laplace-domain characteristic equations are derived to predict the oscillatory conditions, and Keysight Advanced Design System (ADS) circuit simulations are used to verify the impedance response, transient waveform, and frequency spectrum. Two topologies are studied. For the parallel topology, the theoretical roots occur near 30 MHz and 34.79 MHz. For the series topology, a high-Q design method is used to obtain com- ponent values near 30 MHz. The simulation results show that negative impedance synthesis can compensate... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8043n67j Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Yan, Junqi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t25171w Electrostatic interactions are fundamental determinants of biomolecular structure, dynamics, and function, influencing a wide range of biological processes, including protein–ligand binding, enzymatic catalysis, and nucleic acid regulation. The Poisson–Boltzmann (PB) equation provides a physically grounded framework for modeling these interactions in implicit solvent, but the PB pipeline as a whole faces three persistent bottlenecks. First, constructing the molecular surface that defines the dielectric interface is computationally expensive and sensitive to grid discretization. Second, solving the PB equation on large biomolecular systems remains costly, and existing solver implementations are fragmented across legacy codebases that cannot fully exploit modern heterogeneous hardware. Third, the upstream force-field parameters that every PB calculation consumes, particularly for the next generation of polarizable models, are difficult to calibrate using traditional analytical fitting... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7t25171w Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Wu, Yongxian https://escholarship.org/uc/item/57m11025 In an increasing number of applications, designers have access to multiple computer models which typically have different levels of fidelity and cost. Traditionally, designers calibrate these models one at a time against some high-fidelity data (e.g., experiments) before using them for downstream design tasks. In this paper, we question this tradition and assess the potential of jointly calibrating an arbitrary number of computer models that simulate the same underlying physical phenomenon. To this end, we develop a probabilistic framework that is founded on customized neural networks (NNs) that are devised to calibrate multiple computer models. In our approach, we (1) consider the fact that most computer models are multi-response and that the number and nature of calibration parameters may change across the models, (2) learn a unique probability distribution for each calibration parameter of each computer model, (3) develop a loss function that enables our NN to emulate all data... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/57m11025 Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Johnson, Tyler Reese https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43x5h3ph Robot exploration of unknown and potentially treacherous domains, such as that performed by the Mars Exploration Rovers, has enabled humans to gather information on places on which we know little. Two challenges when deploying robots in unknown environments over long time scales are ensuring safety and efficiently managing battery life. In this thesis, we address these critical challenges by introducing a novel framework that enables robots to safely and persistently explore previously unknown environments. The PEAR (Persist Exploration through Energy-Aware Robots) framework, uses control Lyapunov and barrier function constraints to ensure longevity, while minimizing deviation from a nominal control input, with the overall control law solved via a quadratic program. The nominal control input is derived from an information map that guides the robot towards information-rich areas of the environment. The robots awareness of its battery life enables persistent exploration by guaranteeing... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43x5h3ph Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Morales, Diana Laura https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3zr2m47r As Urban Air Mobility (UAM) systems scale toward high-density operations, managing autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) traffic requires control frameworks that are both computationally scalable and safety-critical. This paper presents a principled optimal control-theoretic foundation for routing in UAM networks governed by a stochastic origin-destination demand matrix, in which each UAV's destination is resampled upon arrival according to real-world demand patterns. We model the network as a destination-conditioned Continuous-Time Markov Chain (CTMC) with a first-passage routing structure, capturing stochastic transitions between queueing, service, and flight states. To ensure scalability, we employ a mean-field fluid approximation and derive the underlying system dynamics as a set of coupled ordinary differential equations that explicitly account for the resampling mechanism. A key contribution of this work is the formal proof of the positive invariance of the queue-free... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3zr2m47r Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ahmed, Nameer Fawwaz https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2mt8q8b1 Accurate automated segmentation of neonatal brain tissues, white matter, gray matter, and cerebrospinal fluid, is fundamental to quantifying early brain development and predicting long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes in preterm and term infants. The rapid morphological changes occurring between 28 and 42 weeks postmenstrual age present substantial challenges, including low signal-to-noise ratios, evolving tissue contrast, and progressive cortical gyrification. The optimal training strategy for handling this morphological variability has remained an open question.This study systematically compared three training paradigms for neonatal brain MRI segmentation using the LiviaNet 3D convolutional neural network on a curated subset of the Developing Human Connectome Project dataset comprising 111 subjects across 36, 40, and 42 weeks postmenstrual age. Method 1 employed three independent age-specific specialist models, each trained and tested within their respective cohort. Method 2... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2mt8q8b1 Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Truong, Thien Chi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2f0121x0 Pneumatic 3D-nanomaterial printing, a prominent additive manufacturing technique, excels in processing advanced materials like MXene, crucial for applications in nano-energy, flexible electronics, and sensors. A key challenge in this domain is optimizing process parameters, including applied pressure, ink concentration, nozzle diameter, and printing velocity, to achieve uniform, high-quality prints with the desired filament diameter. Traditional trial-and-error methods often result in significant material waste and time consumption. To address this, our study introduces a comprehensive pipeline that initially assesses whether the selected process parameters yield uniform, high-quality MXene prints. Subsequently, it employs a Physics-Guided Artificial Neural Network (PGANN) to predict the filament diameter based on these parameters, integrating fundamental physical principles of the printing process with experimental data. Our findings demonstrate that using an XGBoost classifier,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2f0121x0 Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ghandehari, Anita https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0c07411k Background: Proprioception is essential for motor control and recovery and can be improved through training, particularly with performance feedback. Currently, the neural mechanisms underlying proprioceptive learning and recalibration are poorly understood. Event-related desynchronization (ERD), manifested as beta-band (12-24Hz) suppression before movement, has been implicated as a neural marker of top-down somatosensory processing. Clarifying how beta-band activity reflects proprioceptive evaluation and feedback-driven adjustment may provide novel biomarkers of proprioceptive processing that could inform future motor learning and rehabilitation protocols.Objective: To characterize beta-band neural processing associated with proprioceptive estimation of facilitated movement during a robotic finger-crossing task (“Crisscross”) and how task engagement and performance feedback modulates beta suppression across movement speeds and task demands. Methods: Twenty-four healthy adults... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0c07411k Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 HAYES, Hunter Inday https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5rw3z3c7 Remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) enables non-contact cardiovascular monitoring by recovering physiological pulse signals directly from facial videos. Although recent deep learning and signal-processing approaches have demonstrated increasingly competitive heart-rate estimation performance, robust physiological waveform recovery under unconstrained motion and pose variation remains a significant challenge. Existing methods frequently emphasize aggregate cardiac frequency estimation while overlooking the preservation of detailed physiological waveform structure and the spatial reliability degradation induced by head movement. This thesis investigates remote physiological estimation from two complementary perspectives. First, the spectral and harmonic structure of remotely recovered physiological signals is analyzed to study the extent to which pulse-wave morphology can be reconstructed from facial videos. A harmonic representation framework is introduced to characterize... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5rw3z3c7 Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Tata, Prasanth https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2724j0cw An analysis of noise mechanisms in active current-commutating down-conversion mixers is presented, which is based on a unified analytical framework that captures the statistical co-dependence of thermal and flicker noise sources across distinct switching transitions, device conduction phases, and varied loading conditions. This study accurately characterizes the memory effect and noise-correlation components induced by capacitive loading, revealing a track-and-hold behavior that differentiates single-balanced and double-balanced topologies beyond conventional common-mode rejection. Furthermore, the impact of local-oscillator (LO) transition times on edge phase noise is rigorously modeled as a dynamic competition between local zero-crossing sensitivity and waveform-dependent noise folding. As will be discussed, notwithstanding its comprehensive scope, the proposed approach yields a closed-form insights into multi-source noise translation, which simplifies to major prior models... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2724j0cw Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Liang, Qixiong https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7ts0f7m5 Waste management systems are increasingly expected to satisfy environmental, climate, and resource recovery objectives, yet engineering analyses remain constrained by limited empirical characterization of facility operations and infrastructure networks. Although regulatory databases contain extensive information on material flows, they generally do not report the operational activity responsible for energy consumption and emissions, forcing many inventories to rely on representative facilities or generalized emission factors. This dissertation develops an engineering framework for estimating the energy consumption and emissions of California's post-collection waste management system by integrating empirical facility classification, statewide transportation network modeling, and facility activity estimation. The analysis demonstrates that administrative facility categories frequently obscure substantial operational heterogeneity and therefore provide an inadequate basis for... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7ts0f7m5 Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Casebolt, Brian Thomas https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9sf3g02t Obstructive sleep apnea is a sleeping disorder characterized by intermittent reductions in blood oxygen levels, known as intermittent hypoxia. Intermittent hypoxia has been linked to upregulation of certain hypoxia induced proteins such as endothelin-1 and hypoxia-inducible factor-1α. These proteins have been linked to a variety of detrimental health effects that are associated with obstructive sleep apnea; however, little is known about their subcellular localization. This study investigates the subcellular localization of endothelin-1 and hypoxiainducible factor-1α in human microvascular endothelial cells. These endothelial cells were seeded onto a coverslip that was exposed to 4 hours of intermittent hypoxia, sustained hypoxia, or normoxia by utilizing a gas-controlled chamber and incubator. Coverslips were fixed we paraformaldehyde, immunostained, and imaged to obtain ten fields of view. Cellpose segmentation software was utilized in each field of view to create binary masks... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9sf3g02t Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Cole, Andrew Thomas https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8wx5h1mv Parkinson’s disease pathology is often associated with the brain, as aggregates of the protein ?-synuclein accumulate in the substantia nigra and lead to neurodegeneration and the characteristic motor symptoms of this disease. However, aggregates of ?-synuclein are also detected in the gastrointestinal tract years before motor symptom onset, supporting the hypothesis that Parkinson’s disease pathology may originate in the gut and propagate to the brain via the vagus nerve. Enteroendocrine cells (specialized epithelial cells) are uniquely positioned at the interface of the gut lumen and the nervous system and are thought to be the source of ?-synuclein in the gut. Previous work in our lab identified a gut bacterial-mediated mechanism of ?-synuclein aggregation in which iron’s interaction with the catechol motif of dopamine plays a central role. Here, we investigate the catechol–iron interaction using a library of diet-associated compounds designed to further elucidate the mechanism... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8wx5h1mv Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Connolly, Gabrielle Anne https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xh4z7td Enzymes are highly efficient biological catalysts, yet their instability outside native environments limits their practical implementation in industrial and technological applications. As such, immobilization within porous materials has emerged as a promising strategy to enhance enzyme stability, recyclability, and catalytic performance. Specifically, among these materials, metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) provide a uniquely tunable platform due to their controllable porosity, crystallinity, and chemical functionality. Despite growing interest in enzyme@MOF (E@MOF) systems, fundamental structure–function relationships governing enzyme encapsulation, crystallization pathways, and spatial distribution remain poorly understood.This dissertation investigates the formation mechanisms and internal architecture of enzyme-encapsulated MOFs through systematic control of synthetic parameters and the application of advanced cryogenic electron microscopy techniques. First, the role of ligand... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xh4z7td Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Olivas, Elisa Merced https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76h7c1sk The construction sector is a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollution, motivating increased interest in transitioning from diesel-powered to zero-emission construction equipment. Among available alternatives, battery-electric machinery has emerged as a promising solution due to its potential to reduce emissions, noise, and operating costs. However, the economic feasibility of such a transition remains uncertain, particularly given the high upfront costs of electric equipment and the challenges associated with charging infrastructure. This thesis evaluates the economic viability of electrifying off-road construction vehicles, specifically wheel loaders and excavators, through a comprehensive Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) framework. The analysis incorporates capital costs, energy and maintenance expenses, infrastructure requirements, and monetized environmental externalities, including carbon dioxide (CO₂), particulate matter (PM₂.₅),... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76h7c1sk Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Kafashan, Shakib https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6833m9kt Substance use among adolescents is both a public health concern and a frequent point of contact within the legal system, yet the institutions that respond to this problem often operate according to different priorities, definitions of success, and pathways into treatment. This dissertation examines how legal and medical systems uniquely address youth substance use through two complementary studies focused on treatment efficacy, harm reduction, and the consequences of institutional influence within systems of care. Study 1 evaluated the Orange County Juvenile Recovery Court (JRC), a specialty treatment court intended to reduce substance use and recidivism among justice-involved youth in Southern California. Using linked retrospective court, arrest, and drug testing data, Study 1 compared JRC graduates, terminal non-completers, and eligible non-enrollees on legal outcomes, substance use trajectories, sobriety, and treatment retention using descriptive analyses, adjusted logistic... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6833m9kt Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Riano, Nicholas https://escholarship.org/uc/item/49n274zs Live suspension cells are difficult to image because they are not naturally immobilized and may drift during acquisition. A novel Arrayed-Droplet Optical Projection Tomography (ADOPT) platform could potentially address this challenge by encapsulating cells in droplets and using oil-flow-induced microvortices to rotate the cells for multi-angle imaging. This thesis evaluated an ADOPT-based imaging platform using the ZOT Trap as the primary cell trapping and imaging microfluidic device. For the conventional workflow, pressure-controlled droplets were generated and loaded into the ZOT Trap. Then, they were exposed to oil perfusion to induce cell rotation. Selected single cell droplets were then imaged using brightfield and fluorescence microscopy. K562 cells and CD28-activated CD8+ T cells were imaged with this workflow. This thesis also explored a preliminary One-step Imaging approach as a simplified modification of the ADOPT system. This approach attempted to bypass the droplet... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/49n274zs Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Zhang, Zhikai https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4853d1sd Bayesianism aims to provide a unified normative theory of belief and rational decision. However, there has been a concern among Bayesians that the theory makes implausibly strong assumptions about agents’ cognitive power. How can Bayesianism be normative for agents like us, if we have no hope of satisfying its basic assumptions? This dissertation provides a mathematical and philosophical foundation for the emerging field of computable Bayesianism. The field aims to reformulate classical Bayesianism via techniques from computable analysis. I first show that the field is philosophically productive, shedding new light on classical Bayesian problems; I then provide foundational theorems that ground its most basic concepts—computable probability, computable utility, and algorithmic randomness—in the philosophical framework of subjective Bayesianism. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4853d1sd Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lopez-Wild, Josiah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1p02p85z Multi-robot systems face the challenge of efficiently allocating heterogeneous resources to missions with varying requirements and importance. The collaborative task allocation problem seeks optimally divide a set of heterogeneous robots into collaborative teams each assigned to a specific task. The task allocation problem is complicated by collaborative interactions between robots where teams of robots develop emergent capabilities that enable them to complete tasks that would be inefficient or impossible for individual robots. To address these challenges, we present an iterative clustering algorithm for collaborative task allocation in heterogeneous multi-robot systems. This approach partitions the computationally intractable global optimization problem into smaller, tractable subproblems by iteratively forming clusters of robots and tasks, then optimizing assignments within each cluster. By ensuring robots remain clustered with their currently assigned tasks, we guarantee monotonic... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1p02p85z Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Martin, David Ryan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1mh5v6xh In recent decades, Japan has witnessed a striking proliferation of women performing original rock music, particularly within technically demanding genres such as hard rock, heavy metal, and progressive rock. This development stands in contrast to long-standing patterns in Western rock traditions, where women have more frequently been positioned as vocalists and have remained comparatively underrepresented as instrumentalists in guitar, bass, and drum roles. The central problem addressed in this dissertation is how and why this divergence has emerged, and what it reveals about broader assumptions regarding gender, technical authority, and the ways rock music is perceived and evaluated. This study employs a mixed methodological approach combining historical research, cultural analysis, and detailed musical analysis. Chapters 1 and 2 trace the historical trajectories of female instrumentalists in Western and Japanese rock, drawing on existing scholarship, interviews, and primary... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1mh5v6xh Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Jellison, Kevin Trevor https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0hz3522n As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become increasingly integrated into high-stakes domains such as healthcare, law, and education, the primary challenge of these systems is no longer algorithmic performance alone, but rather the quality of human-AI collaboration. This dissertation examines how humans rely on AI recommendations under varying conditions of uncertainty, transparency, feedback, and decision-space complexity through a noisy-image classification framework spanning four experimental studies. Chapter 2 investigates whether participants blindly follow AI advice in a concurrent decision-making paradigm when paired with varying levels of AI performance. The findings demonstrate that individuals do not passively follow AI recommendations; instead, they engage in adaptive reliance strategies that balance AI input against their own metacognitive confidence. Chapter 3 examines the effect of AI interface transparency on joint human-AI performance by manipulating the presentation... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0hz3522n Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Tejeda Lemus, Heliodoro https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0639q5n2 Although the effects of sleep on cognitive functioning and mental health are frequently studied, the day-to-day impact of sleep on behavior is less understood. This is particularly true when it comes to the effects of sleep on the antisocial behavior of young people who are justice-involved. Utilizing a multi-method ecological momentary assessment design (EMA), this dissertation identifies subjective (daily diaries) and objective (OURA ring) sleep problems over a two-week period in a sample of 46 male young adults (age 18-25) who were recently charged with a felony for the first time. Mixed-effects models were used to assess the between- and within-person effects of sleep on offending behavior, aggression, and substance use. Daily-level descriptive suggest that youth are getting too few hours of sleep with too much variability in their sleep schedule, and relatively low levels of subjective sleep quality overall. While objective measures of sleep did not predict any outcomes,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0639q5n2 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Sbeglia, Colleen https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9cs980kt This dissertation examines why and how data-centric technologies remain central to public governance, particularly in U.S. municipal contexts, despite repeated failures to realize their intended goals. While prior research often attributes this persistence to technological optimism or gaps between design and implementation, this study asks how such approaches continue to be pursued through everyday organizational decision-making and sense-making. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research across a city planning department, a technology firm contracting with state governments, and a place-based nonprofit, I trace how diverse actors—including public officials, corporate engineers, and nonprofit practitioners—seek to make public institutions more equitable and accountable through improvements to data practices and information systems, and how they interpret and respond to the challenges they encounter. The findings show that data-centric approaches endure not simply... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9cs980kt Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lee, Seolha https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8d988619 Visual media plays a central role in journalism, public safety, legal evidence, and everyday communication. Yet advances in deepfakes, generative AI, and media editing have eroded trust in what cameras record. This dissertation argues that restoring trust in visual content requires moving beyond post-hoc detection toward preventative, system-level authenticity guarantees that span capture, processing, and consumption. It presents three systems that address complementary weaknesses in modern visual media pipelines.First, Vronicle provides fine-grained provenance for videos captured on mobile devices. By combining trusted execution environments (TEEs) with cryptographic provenance and fixed-function post-processing units, it enables a consumer to verify both the source camera and the exact sequence of post-processing filters applied to a video. Second, ProvCam strengthens the root of trust (RoT) at capture time. It introduces a camera module with a small self-contained trusted computing... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8d988619 Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Liu, Yuxin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/822062mx Nitrogenase is a metalloenzyme that catalyzes the reduction of atmospheric nitrogen (N2) to ammonia (NH3). The Molybdenum (Mo) nitrogenase consists of the Fe protein (NifH), which serves as a dedicated electron (e-) donor, and MoFe protein (NifDK) which houses the catalytic active site. Its active-site cofactor, [MoFe7S9C-R-homocitrate] (M-cluster), is assembled ex situ by a suite of nitrogen-fixing (nif) proteins, with biosynthesis proceeding through a defined sequence of steps: formation of [Fe4S4] clusters by NifS and NifU; conversion of two [Fe4S4] units into the [Fe8S9C] cluster (L-cluster) by NifB; insertion of Mo and homocitrate onto the L-cluster, by NifH, on the NifEN scaffold; and final delivery of the mature M-cluster to NifDK. Only diazotrophic microorganisms, like Azotobacter vinelandii (A. vinelandii), can express Mo-nitrogenase, owing to their full suite of specialized genes, metal-cluster assembly machinery, and protective physiological systems needed to build... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/822062mx Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Quechol, Robert https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5xn14141 Reliable robot learning requires agents that can learn from rich sensory inputs while remaining robust, safe, and verifiable in real-world environments. This thesis studies this challenge through the lens of structured interfaces: explicit boundaries between learned policies and external sources of visual guidance, formal safety constraints, and foundation-model reasoning. Rather than relying on a monolithic policy to implicitly discover all relevant structure, the works in this thesis introduce interfaces that guide what the policy learns, constrain how it acts, and separate the components that must be verified.This thesis develops structured interfaces in three complementary directions: (1) task-relevant reconstruction with segmentation masks and segmentation foundation models to learn robust representations for visual control under distractions, (2) realizable continuous-space shields that are verified offline and deployed at runtime to enforce safety, and (3) a modular architecture... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5xn14141 Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Kim, Kyungmin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4bb8q1v9 Autonomous operation of robots and sensors in remote, unknown environments require a rigorous interdisciplinary approach bridging computer science, mathematics, and engineering. A central challenge in deploying full autonomy stacks is managing the cyclic flow of data from raw acquisition to intermediate perception and final predictions. While deep neural networks (DNN) enable advanced perception and logic, they are computationally demanding and static in nature. This clashes with the resource demands of remote systems which are constrained by embedded processors, lightweight sensors, and limited energy reservoirs. Dynamic DNNs (DDNN) provide great promise in mitigating this bottleneck by enabling runtime branching and scaling, but they often lack context awareness. Presented are end-to-end methodologies and applications focused on the development of adaptive DDNNs (ADDNN), which are demonstrated in novel frameworks to augment perception and navigation pipelines with the ability... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4bb8q1v9 Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Johnsen, Timothy Kevin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tk3r3hv The aim of this thesis is to study the dimension properties of the spectra of Sturmian Hamiltonians, and how this quantity depends on the coupling constant and frequency, of the associated operator.We first study the asymptotics of such dimensions and show that for bounded-type Sturmian Hamiltonians, the dimension of its spectrum tends to one as the coupling constant tends to zero. The argument relies on the so-called trace map formalism.We then make some progress towards a standing conjecture posed by Bellissard in the 1980s which states that the dimension of the spectrum of a Sturmian Hamiltonian almost-surely does not depend on the frequency. While this is known to be true under large coupling assumptions, the techniques are not yet refined to handle this conjecture in the small coupling regime. If one instead uses the trace map formalism techniques, then a strategy to handle this conjecture in full, relies on investigating the regularity of stable laminations of nonstationary... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tk3r3hv Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Luna, Alexandro https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19r3d8tb Decision support applications across domains as varied as healthcare, building management, key performance indicator evaluation, and supply chain optimization rely on complex aggregate queries computed over sensitive data to inform high-stakes decisions. Differential privacy provides a formal foundation for protecting individual data while releasing aggregate statistics, but its standard privacy-first formulation, which fixes a privacy budget and maximizes accuracy under that constraint, is poorly suited to decision support: the analyst issuing such a query already knows what accuracy is needed for the decision to be sound, and the goal is to confirm that level of accuracy at the lowest possible privacy cost. A utility-first paradigm addresses this need but, in its current form, is limited to one-shot answering of simple queries by isolated mechanisms, offering no answer to how complex queries should be composed, how interactive analyst sessions should accumulate privacy across... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19r3d8tb Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lahjouji, Nada https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0tr0v041 Spatial transformation abilities, including object-based transformations and perspective taking, support everyday reasoning and success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. However, their behavioral organization, structural neural correlates, and predictability from brain anatomy remain incompletely understood. This dissertation addresses these questions through three studies integrating behavioral modeling, structural neuroimaging, and data-efficient machine learning. The first study examined whether object-based transformation and perspective-taking abilities reflect shared or distinct cognitive constructs and whether they relate to brain structure. Participants completed tasks assessing mental rotation, paper folding, spatial orientation, road map performance, and immersive viewpoint transformation. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a two-factor model in which object-based transformation and perspective-taking abilities were highly related but partially... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0tr0v041 Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 rashidi, Marjan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0q05c9wr Microglia mediated chronic neuroinflammation is a key characteristic of age-associated neurodegenerative diseases. In response to environmental cues, microglia adopt various phenotypes to resolve inflammation. During chronic neuroinflammation, microglia are primed to a pro-inflammatory state which results in cytokine accumulation and neuronal loss. Regulator of G-protein Signaling 10 (RGS10) is a GTPase activating protein (GAP) and has been studied for its neuroprotective role in microglia. RGS10 expression is suppressed in response to inflammation and aging. RGS10 loss in lipopolysaccharide stimulated microglia has shown an increase in microglial burden, cytokine expression and neuronal loss. Conversely, overexpression of RGS10 results in lower cytokine expression and protection against inflammation. While the role of RGS10 has been established in the context of inflammation, the mechanisms through which RGS10 provides a protective role are yet unknown. Additionally, we lack... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0q05c9wr Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Talele, Shwetal Rajendra https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9s12n0mg This dissertation studies the dynamical complexity of learning Nash equilibria in structured classes of games and related constrained optimization problems. A central goal in algorithmic game theory and multi-agent learning is to understand when natural learning dynamics converge efficiently to equilibrium, and when favorable structure still leaves fundamental quantitative barriers. The dissertation contributes to both sides of this question: it gives an efficient learning algorithm for rank-1 bimatrix games, proves exponential lower bounds for classical learning dynamics in potential games, and shows that follow-the-regularized-leader can fail to converge even asymptotically in constrained optimization.The first part focuses on rank-1 bimatrix games, a natural class that strictly extends zero-sum games while retaining exploitable algebraic structure. Although rank-1 games fall outside the standard monotone frameworks used to analyze first-order methods, I show that one can still... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9s12n0mg Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Patris, Nikolas https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9n72h43z This dissertation investigates the potential of proactive activity management for demand-responsive mobility (DRM) services by incorporating travel-activity patterns (TAPs) into a vehicle routing model, focusing on the temporal flexibility of activities. Based on a literature review on operational strategies, service quality, and evaluation methodologies for DRM systems, Chapter 2 identifies research gaps as well as three research questions, namely, how to consider activities in planning and operating a DRM system, how to manage activities for efficient DRM operation, and how to acquire and use information on activities.To answer the identified questions, Chapter 3 first formulates the activity-based pick-up and drop-off problem (ABPDP) that is sensitive to passengers’ activity durations. It also develops a heuristic solution algorithm to handle inter-route constraints. Computational experiments with simulated TAPs verify the solution algorithm and suggest an activity management... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9n72h43z Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Yamada, Kotaro https://escholarship.org/uc/item/71w496fk This dissertation studies decisions and prices in markets for long-lived capital. Two chapters address the replacement-timing problem for durable assets, first as a theoretical exercise and then as an empirical implementation on water-infrastructure data. The third chapter studies how a local policy shock capitalizes into the prices of the long-lived asset called housing. The shared technical concern is intertemporal: each chapter handles a problem that plays out over horizons of two to five decades, where standard tools either fail at the relevant parameter values or require careful adaptation.Chapter 2 develops the dynamic-horizon (DH) replacement rule for durable assets whose maintenance costs rise with age. The rule compares the cost of operating an incumbent asset from age ? to 2? against the cost of replacing now and operating a new asset from age 0 to ?. Under mild regularity conditions on the maintenance trajectory, the DH condition has a unique solution and a closed form... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/71w496fk Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Westrich, Benjamin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g8930p6 While scholarly efforts to diagnose the erosion of democratic norms in digital spaces have largely centered on software and algorithmic design, the role of physical hardware in structuring these environments remains underexplored. This dissertation addresses this gap by investigating how the hardware layers of digital networks shape—and constrain—the democratic habits and commitments of their users. Contemporary digital networks predominantly operate on a server-client model that structurally transforms users into "clients" reliant on platform services, rather than "citizens" capable of autonomous digital participation. I adopt a Deweyan framework of democracy to argue that the capture of digital networks by centralized hardware configuration erodes the essential skills and habits required for digital citizenship. I critique the "clientelist relation" in contemporary networks and demonstrate how it habitually and materially undermines the digital agency of users. I synthesize... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g8930p6 Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ku, Jackie Chuan Yin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cs017sp Electrospray thrusters are a class of electric propulsion devices that eject charged particles (droplets, ions, or a mixture of both) from the surface of a conducting liquid subjected to an intense electric field. Their inherent scalability, broad thrust and specific impulse range, efficiency, and controllability make them attractive candidates for next-generation spacecraft propulsion, particularly for small satellites. This dissertation presents an experimental and theoretical investigation of ionic liquid electrosprays using tapered fused-silica capillary emitters with tip diameters ranging from 15-50 micrometers and four ionic liquids, spanning the full transition from droplet-dominated to ion-dominated emission. The work is organized around two interconnected themes: how emitter geometry sets the operating envelope, and what fundamental physics governs the transition regime and limits propulsive performance. An unexpected and pronounced dependence of the minimum... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6cs017sp Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Caballero i Pérez, Manel https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5tz7g1hm Proprioceptive deficits of the upper extremity affect approximately half of stroke survivors and are associated with poorer upper extremity functional outcomes yet remain one of the most underassessed and undertreated domains in stroke rehabilitation. Existing clinical assessments of proprioception are qualitative, coarse, and insensitive to subtle deficits, limiting their utility for both research and rehabilitation. Thumb proprioception in particular remains poorly understood, despite the thumb's central role in hand function and its oversized somatosensory cortical representation. This dissertation addresses these gaps through three interconnected themes: advancing the quantitative assessment and understanding of thumb proprioception using robotics technology, characterizing the broader clinical and technological context for proprioceptive rehabilitation, and translating a laboratory-based assessment paradigm into a clinically feasible robotic rehabilitation device.The first... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5tz7g1hm Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Garcia Fernandez, Luis https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5sx4m6x8 This dissertation examines how major political and economic shocks affected religious institutions in nineteenth-century France. Using newly collected archival data on clergy supply, I study how the French Revolution reshaped the geographic distribution of religious supply and how clergy presence affected the provision and take-up of primary education during a period of major schooling expansion and reform. I also use survey data to analyze whether long-run state support towards the church generated persistent differences in religious identity and practices. These studies highlight the distinction between the supply side of religious institutions and demand side preferences, providing new evidence on the relationship between institutional change, religiosity, and human capital.Previous literature documents a data gap for measures of religiosity in nineteenth-century France that reflect the broader population. Chapter 1 contributes to closing that gap by introducing a novel dataset... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5sx4m6x8 Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Williams, Joanna https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5k35f78r Defining the cell fate transitions required for lineage commitment often require early transcriptional checkpoints to efficiently guide and improve progenitor derivation and terminal differentiation from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). Skeletal muscle progenitor cells (SMPCs) are often identified by factors expressed by a diverse number of progenitors. Analysis of several myogenic factors in human embryos and early hPSC differentiations found SIX1+PAX3+ co-expression was most indictive of myogenesis. Using dCas9-KRAB hPSCs, we demonstrate that early inhibition of SIX1 alone significantly decreased PAX3 expression, reduced PAX7+ SMPCs, and myotubes later in differentiation. Emergence of SIX1+PAX3+ precursors can be improved by manipulating seeding density, monitoring metabolic secretion and altering the concentration of CHIR99021. To better understand SIX1 expression, we compared directed differentiations to fetal progenitors and adult satellite cells by bulk RNA-seq and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5k35f78r Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Jaime, Olga