http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/ucr_etd/rss Recent eScholarship items from UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Sat, 16 May 2026 21:44:10 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4rh145bh University students may recognize signs and symptoms of autism in themselves and may choose to seek a diagnosis in adulthood as executive planning and social demands become increasingly difficult. Autism presents with an increased rate of psychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression (Jadav & Bal, 2022), with rates of co-occurrence being especially high for autistic university students. Concerningly, autistic individuals are five times more likely to attempt suicide than neurotypical individuals (Santomauro et al., 2024). These poor mental health outcomes can lead to a substantial negative impact on quality of life (Mason et al., 2019), especially when unaddressed. These results, thus, point to a need to screen for co-occurring psychiatric conditions in autistic adults and to provide mental health supports. This study will analyze the rates of co-occurring anxiety and depression in university students who are seeking an autism diagnosis. Additionally, this study will... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4rh145bh Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Touati, Sarah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6rq393kw Populations residing, working, or attending schools near major highways experience elevated exposure to particulate matter (PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀), leading to increased health risks. Traffic-related particulate pollution arises from both vehicle exhaust and non-exhaust sources, including resuspended road dust, and is strongly influenced by roadway design and near-road mitigation strategies. This dissertation develops and evaluates a comprehensive modeling framework to quantify highway-generated particulate matter and to assess the effectiveness of vegetation barriers as a near-road air quality mitigation measure.The first component addresses particulate emissions from paved roads, with emphasis on the limitations of commonly used empirical emission factor models. A mobile measurement platform was developed to quantify road surface silt loading and particulate concentrations on high-traffic highways without disrupting traffic flow. Using these measurements, the performance of existing... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6rq393kw Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Saeidi, Amir https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6mh4f3dg Window queries are important analytical tools for ordered data in modern data management systems, yet existing approaches (like SQL OVER or XQuery windowing) are lacking when it comes to expressing and processing window queries over large datasets in a parallel and efficient manner.This dissertation introduces WindowBy, a new SQL++ windowing construct that provides an intuitive way to express window queries. It unifies the strengths of SQL OVER and XQuery windowing while extending them with richer and more intuitive semantics. WindowBy supports fixed-length, fixed-duration, content-based, and LABEL-based window definitions within a single expressive syntax. As window query expressiveness increases, efficient evaluation becomes substantially more challenging—particularly in distributed environments where windows may span partition boundaries. In today’s large-scale data environments, efficient and scalable window processing is more essential than ever.To address these challenges,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6mh4f3dg Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Fang, James https://escholarship.org/uc/item/03j1w4mk Achieving secure wireless communication without pre-shared keys is a fundamental challenge, especially when eavesdroppers possess a significant channel advantage. Conventional physical-layer security (PLS) schemes, such as the standard single-trip wiretap channel (ST-WTC) model, inherently fail to provide a positive secrecy rate when the eavesdropper's channel strictly dominates the legitimate link. To overcome this bottleneck, a round-trip protocol known as secret-message transmission by echoing encrypted probes (STEEP) has been developed. STEEP can deliver a positive secrecy rate even when eavesdropping channels are much stronger than those between users, subject to sufficient asymmetric power allocations. This thesis investigates the optimization of the STEEP protocol over multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and multiple-input multiple-output multiple-eavesdropper (MIMOME) channels. Specifically, we formulate a secrecy rate maximization problem to jointly optimize the... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/03j1w4mk Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Yu, Dinglin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9s94r2jd Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability and autism, is marked by cognitive rigidity and atypical sensory responses. Predictive processing models propose that higher-order cortical regions generate expectations about sensory inputs and adjust behavior when predictions are violated. Here, we tested these computations in Fmr1 KO mice using a whisker-based sequence-learning task with wide-field calcium imaging. Wild-type (WT) mice learned to anticipate a patterned air-puff sequence linked to reward and adapted their responses to unexpected changes. In contrast, Fmr1 KO mice showed impaired flexibility and failed to adjust to sequence violations. Imaging revealed enhanced frontal and somatosensory cortical activation in WT mice during learned sequences, while Fmr1 KO mice exhibited weaker sensory responses and disrupted frontal dynamics. These findings identify a specific cortical mechanism, frontal–sensory decoupling that underlies predictive... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9s94r2jd Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Garcia, Dominic Anthony https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9p16947n Unlike the original Kitaev honeycomb model, where each spin interacts with three nearest neighbors through ??, ??, and ?? interactions determined by bond orientation, the Kitaev-type models considered here relax this strict orientation dependence while still requiring each spin to participate in all three interaction types. Despite this generalization, all Kitaev-type models remain exactly solvable, for example via the Jordan--Wigner transformation. A natural question arises: Which Kitaev-type model has the lowest ground-state energy? Using reflection-positivity arguments, we show that the Kekulé--Kitaev model, distinguished by its high degree of reflection symmetry, attains the lowest ground-state energy across the entire parameter space. In addition, we rigorously determine the ground-state flux sector for the Kitaev and Kekulé--Kitaev models for arbitrary couplings, thereby extending Lieb's flux theorem to anisotropic couplings in the Kitaev model. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9p16947n Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Wang, Shixiong https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8gz7k6fp Timely, safe propagation of patch in the Linux kernel is a challenge with direct security consequences for the vast upstream–downstream ecosystem. This thesis presents an integrated program of work spanning measurement, machine learning, and automated validation to reduce windows of vulnerability without sacrificing stability. First, we deliver the large-scale, comparative characterization of patch porting practices across different Linux distributions. We formalize core metrics—patch delay, porting rate, and bug inheritance ratio—and quantify the trade-offs among group-porting from LTS, targeted cherry-picks, and (minor/major) rebases. We also assess the practical impact of hinting tags (e.g., fixes tag, cc stable tags) and identify process gaps that systematically slow the adoption of critical patches. Then, we introduce DUALLM, a dual-model pipeline for fine-grained security-patch classification with a focus on high-impact memory-safety bugs (use-after-free and out-of-bounds).... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8gz7k6fp Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Li, Xingyu https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7p24t80v Robotic control policies and Embodied AI models struggle to match the robust, generalizable performance of large language models. Among other reasons, data quantity and diversity remain a major bottleneck. Simulation environments are used to bypass the resource-intensive nature of real-world task demonstrations and data collection and are purposefully designed to be as close to the real-world task as possible. This research proposes that by intentionally distorting physics parameters, making them less realistic, we can extract richer spatial signals from simulation with minimal architectural changes. We demonstrate that zero-gravity training can create a more information-rich training environment for widely used tabletop manipulation tasks. By varying the gravity on the primary object, we force the policy to engage in 3D dynamics for tasks previously confined to the 2D tabletop. To manage object flyaway at first contact, we introduce selective containment volumes (virtual... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7p24t80v Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Amin, R M Asif https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dx2125w Concolic execution is widely used to explore input-dependent programs, but the differences between source-level and binary-level concolic execution remain unclear. This thesis presents a controlled study in an asynchronous concolic framework. To control the condition, we replace Marco’s source-level execution front end of the framework with the binary engine SymFit while keeping the solver and scheduler unchanged. This design isolates execution level abstraction effects and can directly compare exploration behavior. Our results show that binary-level execution generates significantly larger and more complex constraints due to instruction-level lifting, leading to an increase in solver cost and rapid CSTG expansion without coverage grows accordingly. We further introduce a module-aware constraint filtering mechanism to control library-generated predicates and quantify their impact on solving efficiency. These findings indicate that abstraction level fundamentally determines constraint... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dx2125w Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Li, Tao https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dp5h3q7 Drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) affects millions of individuals worldwide who continue to experience recurrent and often debilitating seizures despite optimal pharmacological therapy. Electrical neuromodulation offers a means of influencing seizure dynamics, yet current clinical systems remain largely reactive and rely on empirically tuned stimulation parameters. A principled closed-loop framework grounded in prediction, subject-specific modeling, and formal stability analysis remains an open challenge. This dissertation develops a principled control-theoretic approach to closed-loop seizure suppression. We first investigate multiscale seizure forecasting using long-term intracranial EEG recordings from human subjects. By explicitly modeling the temporal evolution of seizure-relevant features and estimated risk through autoregressive and nonlinear dynamical models, we demonstrate substantial improvements in pseudo-prospective forecasting performance across patients, including... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7dp5h3q7 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Acharya, Gagan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k72d91p This dissertation examines the protracted “unsettlement” of working-class Southeast Asian refugees in California, with a focus on political institutions and actors. Through archival research and participant observation, I show that such unsettlement — sustained through the intertwining welfare, carceral, and immigration enforcement systems that maintain the threat of removal — has kept working-class Southeast Asian refugees in a continuous state of legal, political, and social liminality tied closely with the underlying threat of exclusion and expulsion. However, such liminality has also created opportunities for group identity and consciousness formation, as group similarities are made more salient and further politicized. I argue that this shared liminality enabled the emergence of “Southeast Asian refugee” as a shared panethnic identity among refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, beginning with refugee resettlement programs in the late twentieth century and persisting... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k72d91p Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Do, Mai Nguyen https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k2239bq The study of quarks and gluons, the most fundamental constituents of matter, offers intriguing insights into physics. These particles are confined within nucleons, making it impossible to observe them individually. Instead, scientists employ statistical observables to analyze the collective behavior of particles produced in heavy-ion collisions. One key observable is anisotropic flow---the azimuthal anisotropy in particle emission arising from collective expansion driven by pressure gradients in the collision zone. Additionally, ongoing investigations are being conducted into the formation of light nuclei in these collisions, with various theoretical and experimental approaches, including coalescence, fragmentation, and thermal models, being explored. This research utilizes data from the Beam Energy Scan-II (BES-II) and the fixed-target program at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), specifically through the STAR (Solenoid Tracker At RHIC) experiment. Here, flow measurements... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k2239bq Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Chen, Ding https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5x2399kr Ensuring efficient and verifiable performance of Autonomous Driving Systems (ADS) is crucial for their widespread deployment in real-world applications. While ADS have recently achieved significant improvement by both academia and industry, optimizing their runtime performance remains a challenging problem. This is primarily because multiple sensing and processing chains with complex dependencies need to be coordinated while efficiently utilizing modern multi-core platforms with predictable performance guarantees. The use of middleware frameworks, such as Robot Operating System (ROS), further complicates this problem due to additional abstractions and runtime behavior. This dissertation focuses on improving real-time scheduling and timing optimization of ADS software stacks, represented as Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) on multi-core platforms. The first part addresses the limitations of ROS 2, one of the most widely used open-source middleware frameworks for ADS and intelligent... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5x2399kr Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Sobhani, Hoora https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5jv8f5px Transnational Internet performance is an important indication of a country’s level of infrastructure investment, globalization, and openness. We conduct a large-scale measurement study of transnational Internet performance in and out of 29 countries and regions, and find six countries that have surprisingly low performance. Five of them are African countries and the last is mainland China, a significant outlier with major discrepancies between downstream and upstream performance. We then conduct a comprehensive investigation of the unusual transnational Internet performance of mainland China, which we refer to as the “Great Bottleneck of China”. Our results show that this type of bottleneck is widespread, affecting 79% of the receiver–sender pairs we measured. More than 70% of the pairs suffer from extremely slow speed (less than 1 Mbps) for more than 5 hours every day. In most tests the bottleneck appeared to be located deep inside China, suggesting poor network infrastructure... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5jv8f5px Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Zhu, Pengxiong https://escholarship.org/uc/item/50b070t1 Z-type ligands have emerged as a powerful tool for the stabilization of electron-rich metal centers, enabling unprecedented catalytic reaction mechanisms. Work in the Harman lab focuses on utilizing 9,10-dihydro-9,10- diboraanthracene as a platform for ligand design, employing its dual-site σacceptor capability, along with the inherent two-electron redox properties of diboraanthracene. With the strategy of including σ-donor substituents such as phosphines to facilitate the coordination of transition metals and maximizing metal-borane interactions, unique transition metal complexes capable of multielectron redox chemistry have been explored and subsequently shown capable in terms of the activation of small molecules (e.g. CO2, H+ , N2). The most notable example of these being a diphosphine-diboraanthracene, “B2P2”, which exhibits coordination of a range of transition metals. Observations of these systems has shown that the inclusion of transition metal centers modify the redox... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/50b070t1 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Farias, Phillip https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4hg962pw Photomechanical molecular crystals provide a promising route for converting light into mechanical work, but predicting their response properties a priori requires detailed insight into how molecular packing and intermolecular forces evolve during a photochemical reaction. A topochemical replacement framework enables this prediction directly using computational chemical methods. In this work, I examine the structural and energetic factors that govern photomechanical behavior across several representative and experimentally relevant systems. Diarylethene crystals illustrate the central role of packing, with changes in crystal packing altering the maximum work density up to 40‑fold. The largest work outputs arise from highly anisotropic deformations, revealing key packing motifs that produce large photomechanical responses. Molecular modification also shapes photomechanical performance, as shown in a series of 9‑anthracene carboxylic acid derivatives. We find that large, bulky halogens... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4hg962pw Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Perry, Cody https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4g300440 Hybridization can profoundly reshape genetic diversity, physiological function, and adaptive potential, particularly in organisms introduced into novel environments. In the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera), human-mediated dispersal and secondary contact between African- and European-derived lineages have produced hybrid populations whose functional consequences remain incompletely understood. This dissertation integrates population genomics, reproductive proteomics, and experimental physiology to test how hybrid ancestry influences genomic architecture, male reproductive biology, and thermal stress resilience in Californian honey bees.Chapter 1 analyzes whole-genome sequencing of 30 Californian workers (15 SoCal, 15 NorCal) alongside 202 globally distributed genomes. SoCal bees exhibit elevated nucleotide diversity relative to NorCal stocks (mean π = 3.67 × 10⁻³ ± 1.33 × 10⁻³ SD vs. 2.68 × 10⁻³ ± 1.12 × 10⁻³ SD). Inbreeding coefficients differ significantly among populations... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4g300440 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Allen, Chris https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43f727jm Traumatic brain injury (TBI) induces rapid neuronal activation and longer-lasting molecular alterations that contribute to brain circuit dysfunction and increased network excitability. The hippocampal dentate gyrus is particularly vulnerable to injury-induced remodeling due to its central role in regulating excitatory input to the hippocampus. While acute neuronal activation and cell death following TBI are well established, the transcriptional mechanisms that link injury to persistent circuit dysfunction remain incompletely understood.In this thesis, I investigated molecular and cellular responses to concussive brain injury using a combination of immunohistochemistry, spatial RNA detection in a murine model of lateral Fluid Percussion Injury (FPI) in vivo, and RNA sequencing following concussive injury of human stem cell–derived forebrain organoids in vitro. Acute neuronal activation was assessed using c-Fos immunostaining one-hour post-injury and identified an increase in c-Fos–positive... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43f727jm Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Taitano-Johnson, Christopher https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hd3q64w Gothic criticism in recent decades has rejected the validity of the term “Gothic nostalgia,” arguing that the Gothic is incapable of accurately representing historical truth about a distant era. The definition of nostalgia, which connotes a sense of loss and longing, indicates that “Gothic nostalgia” is an affective approach that does not seek to represent history, but rather to reenact it. This dissertation argues that Gothic historiography revolves around transhistorical inter affectivity between the present and the past. Historical representations are not objects to be judged from a detached historical perspective. Rather, they are products of a moralizing impulse, uncanny longing, and idealization, reflecting how the present can be emotionally shaped by and reenact the past through mechanisms of historical affect. Drawing on the influence of the discourse of sensibility on the Gothic, as well as the “affective turn” in recent philosophy of history, this study focuses on three... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3hd3q64w Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Hao, Kin Fai https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3dm33491 Annotinolides A and B are pentacyclic, 7,8-seco-lycopodane–derived alkaloids featuring an 8,5-lactone motif, first isolated from the club moss Lycopodium annotinum in 2016. Their isolation enabled the evaluation of their biological activity, leading to the discovery of their ability to inhibit amyloid-β aggregation. Amyloid-β aggregation has been implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Owing to the low yields obtained from natural isolation, this work sought to develop an efficient and robust synthetic route capable of providing sufficient quantities of these natural products for comprehensive biological evaluation. These synthetic studies resulted in a unifying strategy centered on the design and synthesis of a common intermediate, enabling access to a broad range of lycopodine-like alkaloids. Synthetic efforts toward both target molecules are described, along with the remaining challenges that must be addressed to complete their total syntheses. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3dm33491 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Manasi, Roni https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3668t0gs Thermal transport in quantum materials is governed not only by electrons but also by charge-neutral excitations, including phonons and spin excitations. Building on this perspective, this dissertation develops microstructure engineering frameworks in which structural features—including grain boundaries, crystallographic texture, and domain walls —are deliberately tailored to tune quasiparticle mean free paths and thereby control heat conduction. Through systematic thermal-property measurements combined with controlled synthesis and processing, we identify practical “structural knobs” for modulating phonon- and spin-mediated heat transport in representative quantum materials.First, we quantify how grain boundaries limit magnon heat transport in nanostructured La2CuO4. By preparing high-quality nanostructures and consolidating them into dense bulks with controlled grain sizes, we observe a clear size effect: as the average grain size decreases from 2.9 μm to 560 nm, the room-temperature... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3668t0gs Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Guo, Shucheng https://escholarship.org/uc/item/35q4f2zt Epilepsy, one of the most prevalent neurological disorders, is marked by unprovoked, recurrent seizures. Current therapies often lead to neurocognitive side effects and pharmacoresistance, highlighting the need for alternative, non-neuronal treatment strategies. The volume-regulated anion channel (VRAC), composed of the essential subunit LRRC8A, is a swell-activated channel that facilitates regulatory volume decrease via effluxion of anions and osmolytes like chloride and glutamate. VRAC has recently emerged as a potential modulator of neuroexcitation. This dissertation investigates (1) the cell-type specific contribution of the VRACs to seizures and epilepsy, and (2) the relationship between seizure activity and astrocytic volume changes. Using the intrahippocampal kainic acid (IHKA) murine model of temporal lobe epilepsy, I found that LRRC8A expression increased 7 days post-IHKA by Western blot, and 14 days post-IHKA by immunohistochemistry—predominantly in GFAP+ astrocytes,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/35q4f2zt Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ghouli, Manolia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/35q306wt Approximately 8.7 million eukaryotic species exist on Earth, yet only a small fraction have been fully sequenced. Although sequencing costs continue to decline, de novo genome assembly remains challenging, requiring substantial expertise, computational resources, and time. From a computational standpoint, these challenges arise from the highly repetitive nature of eukaryotic genomes, short read lengths, uneven or ultra-deep sequencing coverage, sequencing errors, and chimeric reads. Despite decades of algorithmic advances, modern assemblers still struggle with highly repetitive regions that often harbor important functional and regulatory elements. The difficulty of producing complete assemblies is underscored by the 20-year effort required to resolve the final 8% of the human genome.In this dissertation, we leverage single-copy k-mers (hereafter unikmers) for accurate read anchoring, overlap detection, and read partitioning in de novo genome assembly using highly accurate PacBio... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/35q306wt Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Chakravarty, Sakshar https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2pg3k509 The Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture is driving a fundamental shift in mobile network infrastructure, disaggregating traditional monolithic base stations into separate components — Centralized Unit (CU), Distributed Unit (DU), and Radio Unit (RU) — many of which are virtualized and deployed on general-purpose servers. While this disaggregation enables flexibility and cost reduction, it also introduces new failure risks: components that once resided in purpose-built, tightly integrated hardware are now running as software processes on commodity servers, making them susceptible to hardware failures (disk, memory, power) and software faults (crashes, state corruption, bugs). Among these components, the DU poses a particular challenge for fault tolerance: it operates under sub-millisecond real-time scheduling deadlines while maintaining a large number of internal state variables across multiple protocol layers, making traditional full-state checkpoint and recovery approaches... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2pg3k509 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Chen, Yi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fj9r4r0 Environmental adaptation is a critical component for the survival of plant species. Understanding how genetic diversity is purged and preserved during evolution and the types of traits which contribute to fitness increases over large time spans helps clarify the relationships between genotypic and phenotypic variance. Throughout this dissertation I use the Composite Cross II evolution experiment in barley to explore the process of evolution to novel environments over the course of nearly a century and connect genotype with phenotype. The seed bank of this population provides unprecedented access to the story of evolution in a valuable model crop species. In Chapter 1 I show how the connection between flowering time and fecundity depends upon environmental factors. In Chapter 2 I expand the scope to explore additional physical, developmental traits that contribute to competitive ability in the experiment. In Chapter 3 I explore how genetic diversity stored in the population helps... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fj9r4r0 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Marzolino, Jill https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2bh104zn This dissertation addresses the challenge of real-time spatial thermal and power modeling for modern processors and advanced chiplet-based systems. Accurate prediction of spatial temperature distributions is critical for thermal management, reliability analysis, and system-level optimization. This dissertation presents several contributions toward efficient and scalable thermal modeling. First, a measurement methodology and dataset construction framework is developed to collect spatial thermal data from commercial processors. Second, a transformer-based neural architecture is proposed to enable real-time spatial thermal prediction with high accuracy. Third, spatial power characterization techniques are introduced to model the relationship between workload behavior and spatial power distribution. Finally, a fast thermal modeling framework is developed for advanced integration technologies such as 2.5D and 3D chiplet systems. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2bh104zn Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lu, Jincong https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20w8d6q2 Concerns over current rates of obesity and eating disorders warrant investigations of brain circuits controlling feeding. Three related studies examined roles of GABAergic and glutamatergic receptors in feeding in the lateral septum (LS), the septohypothalamic nuclei (SHy), and the lateral hypothalamus (LH).The first one tested whether Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors in the LS modulate intake. Using microinjections, activation of LS GABAA receptors with muscimol and GABAB receptors with baclofen produced robust, dose-dependent feeding, while GABA receptor antagonists blocked these effects. In addition, Picrotoxin administered at the onset of the dark phase—when rats naturally eat more—reduced spontaneously occurring nocturnal feeding, whereas 2-OH saclofen did not. These results indicate that activation of LS GABAA and GABAB receptors strongly stimulates feeding and suggest endogenous LS GABA acting at GABAA receptors contributes to naturally occurring nocturnal feeding.The... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20w8d6q2 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Gabriella, Ivett https://escholarship.org/uc/item/135541p3 This dissertation investigates the intracommunity socioeconomic dynamics of a large-scale lithic industry at Took’ Witz, a hinterland community near the ancient Maya city of El Palmar, Mexico. Through a multifaceted research program involving lidar analysis, pedestrian surveys, and excavations, in conjunction with artifact and chemical residue analyses, this research explores how household participation in craft specialization influenced social inequality during the Classic period (AD 250-950). Results reveal that the residents of Took’ Witz produced millions of chert bifaces to support regional intensive agriculture. Comparative analysis of three plazuelas revealed division of labor within the lithic industry. The West Plazuela engaged in intensive late-stage biface finishing, the South Plazuela focused on raw material procurement and early-stage reduction, and the East Plazuela maintained minimal involvement, producing lithic tools likely for immediate household use. These... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/135541p3 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Sullivan, Kelsey Jean https://escholarship.org/uc/item/02f840d3 Influenza A and B viruses remain significant threats to global public health. Both virus types cause seasonal epidemics, but Influenza A virus also has the potential to cause pandemics. It is crucial to understand the interactions between these viruses and their host cells to develop novel antiviral strategies. Viral nucleoprotein (NP) plays a central role in the influenza life cycle and is essential for genome replication and transcription. APEX2 proximity labeling-based mass spectrometry is a powerful technique that enables the identification of transient and weak protein-protein interactions in living cells, offering distinct advantages over traditional methods. Despite this, there appears to be a limited number of direct studies specifically focused on this application. Here, we apply the APEX2 proximity labeling system, using a fusion APEX2-NP protein to label NP interacting proteins. Three proteins belonging to the DEAD-box family of RNA helicases were identified. Knockdown... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/02f840d3 Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Guzman, Carlos Alberto https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4hd3c9mh This thesis reexamines the agentes in rebus from their emergence under Diocletian to their activities in the sixth century, arguing that their traditional portrayal as a secret police force is overstated. Drawing on legal codes, letters, and narrative sources, it reconstructs their core functions as couriers, inspectors, and administrative enforcers operating within the imperial bureaucracy. While occasional involvement in coercive actions occurred, their role was primarily bureaucratic and overt. The study traces their evolution alongside the shifting needs of the state, including their increasing involvement in ecclesiastical affairs during the fifth and sixth centuries, when they enforced church councils, transmitted papal correspondence, and monitored religious compliance. By analyzing both the literary exaggerations that shaped their image and the broader administrative structures they inhabited, this thesis presents the agentes in rebus not as shadowy operatives, but as... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4hd3c9mh Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Guerrero, Robert https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7h05n0xr Real-world vision systems must cope with unseen categories, noisy data, and rare classes with limited training samples. These conditions inflate the predictive uncertainty of the machine learning model and can lead to brittle, over-confident decisions. This dissertation confronts those challenges head-on, unifying three studies under the goal of making computer-vision models more aware of, and resilient to, what they do not know.The first study tackles few-shot open-set recognition (FSOSR), where only a handful of labeled examples describe “known” classes and novel/out-of-distribution categories may appear at test time. To address this problem we introduce a first of a kind reconstruction guided meta-learning framework called ReFOCS: Reconstructing Exemplar-based Few-shot Open-set ClaSsifer. ReFOCS learns how to learn to distinguish between in-distribution and out-of-distribution samples by reconstructing canonical ideograms of the known classes called exemplars. Such a reconstruction... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7h05n0xr Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Nag, Sayak https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5tp3h0gk Laser-cooled molecules offer powerful new opportunities in precision measurement, quantum simulation, and controlled chemistry; however, their complex internal structure poses substantial challenges for achieving efficient optical cycling, slowing, and trapping. Aluminum monochloride (AlCl) is a promising candidate for laser cooling due to its favorable electronic structure and relatively diagonal Franck–Condon factors, yet several key spectroscopic and technical hurdles must be addressed before it can be brought to ultracold temperatures.In this dissertation, we report significant progress toward the slowing and trapping of AlCl. We first perform high-resolution hyperfine-resolved spectroscopy of the A¹Π–X¹Σ⁺ transition using a cryogenic buffer-gas beam. From these measurements, we extract the hyperfine constants of the A¹Π state and validate them through comparison with theoretical calculations, providing essential parameters for designing an efficient optical cycling and slowing... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5tp3h0gk Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Liu, Li-Ren https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ck0k808 Modern data centers run microservices and serverless functions with microsecond-scale service times and highly variable workloads, creating challenges that traditional system management approaches cannot adequately address. This dissertation presents a new paradigm for system management runtimes based on Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF), where observability, metrics collection, and control decisions all operate within kernel space to achieve unprecedented responsiveness while maintaining quality of service awareness. We make three core contributions. First, we demonstrate kernel-level observability through eBPF system call monitoring that characterizes application behavior with minimal overhead. Second, we introduce an eBPF library that extracts accurate per-request latency metrics without application instrumentation, achieving low overhead while completely eliminating the need for client-side feedback. Third, we implement power management control logic in kernel space,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ck0k808 Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Rezvani, Mohammadreza https://escholarship.org/uc/item/98v3z7bk Animal locomotor performance impacts fitness. Hence, the properties of the various tissues that power this behavior are of particular interest as variation and plasticity in their morphology and physiology can impact performance across environments, over an individual’s lifetime, and between species over evolutionary time. My dissertations examines how muscle and tendon can on an intra-generational timescale, and how the properties of these tissues may allow organisms to enhance performance in various environments.Chapter 1 investigated the effect of training on phenotypic plasticity in growing mice. Muscle and tendon morphology have functional implications on the metabolic cost of locomotion and endurance performance. Muscle and tendon are considered to be plastic in some respects, but not others. We determined the extent of remodeling possible as result of early-life exercise when plasticity is likely to be highest. Muscle and tendon architecture were examined in mice assigned... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/98v3z7bk Thu, 5 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Cobos, Anthony https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3mj8g2tp The interaction of oscillatory flows with deformable or confined boundaries gives rise to nonlinear steady streaming and rectified flows, which underpin many physiological and microfluidic applications. This dissertation presents three complementary investigations into such nonlinear flow phenomena: (i) a three-dimensional streaming theory around obstacles in Hele–Shaw microchannels, (ii) elasto-inertial rectification of oscillatory flow in slender elastic tubes, and (iii) passive control of particle transport via flexible hairy substrates. The first study examines three-dimensional inertial streaming generated around a cylindrical obstacle embedded in shallow microchannels. Using an asymptotic lubrication framework for small channel aspect ratios, a depth-resolved streaming velocity profile is derived, revealing multiple reversals in flow direction across the channel height. Experiments in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microchannels validate these predictions, confirming... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3mj8g2tp Thu, 5 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Zhang, Xirui https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9tv240dn Systemic inflammation is a key driver of respiratory failure in clinical conditions such as sepsis, yet the specific neural mechanisms underlying respiratory decompensation remain poorly understood. While metabolic suppression (hypothermia) often confounds respiratory studies in rodent models, we aimed to determine if inflammation directly impairs the central neural control of breathing independent of metabolic state. Adult male and female C57BL/6J mice were injected with Lipopolysaccharide (LPS, 1 mg/kg) or saline. Twenty-four hours post-injection, ventilatory responses to acute Hypoxia (10% O2) and Hypercapnia (5% CO2) were measured using whole-body plethysmography. LPS induced significant weight loss in both sexes, confirming systemic inflammation, but did not induce hypothermia at the time of testing, ruling out metabolic depression. Male LPS mice exhibited a significant failure of the Hypoxic Ventilatory Response (HVR), characterized by a ~40% reduction in minute ventilation... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9tv240dn Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Munoz, Alberto https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9t19n148 This study investigates transcription initiation and nucleosome occupancy in Phytophthora infestans, a destructive plant pathogen best known as the causal agent of late blight disease in potatoes and tomatoes. This organism represents a serious threat to global agriculture, and understanding its genome organization and transcriptional regulation is crucial for effective disease control strategies. The life cycle of P. infestans includes several distinct developmental stages, mycelial growth, sporulation, release of zoospores, and subsequent germination of cysts, that enable rapid propagation and infection of host tissue. Each stage involves complex gene regulation. Transcriptional fluctuations are critical to P. infestans adaptability and pathogenicity.To study gene expression dynamics across the life cycle, we employed 5-prime MACE sequencing. This approach provides the precise locations of transcription start sites and allows us to distinguish sense and antisense transcription... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9t19n148 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Boyd, Amy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/854401sr The Internet increasingly supports latency-sensitive applications such as video conferencing, online gaming, and cloud services. However, the excessive queuing delay caused by unmanaged or oversized buffers, commonly referred to as Bufferbloat, continues to degrade end-to-end performance. This problem is especially prevalent in last-mile devices such as home gateways and cellular base stations, where Active Queue Management (AQM) solutions are often absent or disabled. Although AQM schemes such as RED, PIE, and CoDel have been developed to address bufferbloat, their deployment requires direct modification of the bottleneck device, a barrier that has hindered widespread adoption.This thesis introduces Unbloat, a system that mitigates bufferbloat using a new approach called Remote Queue Management (RQM). Unlike conventional AQM, which operates at the congested router, RQM operates on a pre-bottleneck node that monitors RTT trends. By continuously monitoring round-trip time (RTT)... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/854401sr Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Patel, Harsh https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xq524kc Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most common and lethal form of pancreatic cancer, accounts for over 7% of all cancer deaths and kills more than 90% of patients afflicted. Current chemotherapies slow its progression but are not curative, largely due to the dense stroma surrounding the tumors. This stroma, rich in fibroblasts, immune cells, and extracellular matrix components, creates a barrier to effective chemotherapeutic delivery. Among potential therapeutic strategies, stromal modulation has gained interest. However, this is hindered by the lack of accessible models for stromal and tumor co-culture. To address this, we developed three-dimensional PDAC cultures of tumor and stromal populations. To model the tumor cells, we used PANC-1 and BxPC-3 primary tumor PDAC cell lines. We co-cultured these cell lines with HMEC1 endothelial cells and NIH3T3 fibroblasts in a collagen type I matrix in PDMS molds, providing a robust and accessible model. We tested representative... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7xq524kc Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Tirado, Grace Sophia https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7vq4j0b0 Even after what he considered the devastation of his logicist program, Gottlob Frege never stopped insisting on the importance of his begriffsschrift, the logico-mathematical writing system he devised to carry out that program. In contrast to most scholarship, this dissertation proceeds under the assumption that Frege had good philosophical reasons for his insistence. Being expansive and articulated along two dimensions, the graphically idiosyncratic signs belonging to Frege’s begriffsschrift have met with everything from polite bemusement to derision. I uncover and explain the rationale Frege had for designing his begriffsschrift to look the way it does, and I show his rationale not only to be plausible and interesting but to be consequential both for understanding Frege’s philosophy as a whole and for understanding the role of written signs in logic and mathematics generally. The architecture of Frege’s rationale is this: Frege designed his writing system with a view to a certain... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7vq4j0b0 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Walker, Eric Dane https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7sp8b6h6 Citrus production is threatened by complex, graft-transmissible viral pathogens that often occur in mixed infections, complicating quarantine diagnostics and bioindexing assays. This dissertation investigates how environmental light quality and virus-virus interactions influence symptom expression, host physiology, and transcriptomic responses in sensitive citrus indicator hosts. Supplemental red-enriched light intensified visible viral symptoms in multiple citrus indicators without negatively affecting growth, suggesting that enhanced symptom expression is not due to light stress but to light-mediated modulation of host defense pathways. Two mixed infection pathosystems, CTV – CVEV and CVEV – CYVaV were examined under controlled red:blue light spectra and standard greenhouse conditions to elucidate both environmental and biological drivers of disease outcomes. Physiological profiling of mixed infections revealed that CTV – CVEV exhibits early CTV-associated synergism and delayed... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7sp8b6h6 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Comstock, Stacey https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7r54d5cp The common green bottle blow fly, Lucilia sericata (Meigen), is frequently used in forensic and biological research due to its predictable development cycle. Previous entomotoxicological research has demonstrated that drugs can alter blow fly development and necrobiome dynamics. In this study, caffeine exposure influenced L. sericata survival, developmental timing, and female morphology. Experiments were conducted first to optimize a drug delivery system that would be used to assess the effects of caffeine on L. sericata. Larvae were reared on liver agar containing three caffeine concentration treatments: control (0 mg/L caffeine), low (3.4 mg/L), and high (13.59 mg/L). Developmental rate, adult survival, pupal eclosion, and adult female morphometrics, including dry weight, wing length, wing width, and tibia length, were recorded. Results indicated that high caffeine exposure accelerated larval development, producing adults in a shorter timeframe than control or low caffeine treatments.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7r54d5cp Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lemus Portillo, Karla Maria https://escholarship.org/uc/item/79n4b508 To enhance performance and efficiency, modern computing systems increasingly adopt heterogeneous architectures that integrate specialized accelerators, such as graphics processing units (GPUs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and tensor processing units (TPUs). While these accelerators provide substantial speedups for compute-intensive workloads, including machine learning and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) applications, they diverge significantly from traditional CPU-based designs and introduce new security challenges. This dissertation investigates these emerging risks across two complementary tracks of heterogeneous computing: low-power AR/VR systems at the edge and high-performance GPU infrastructures in the cloud.The first track focuses on power-efficient systems, specifically AR/VR devices. I demonstrate attacks that exploit motion sensors and performance counters to infer sensitive user behaviors such as virtual keystrokes and real-world context, including... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/79n4b508 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Zhang, Yicheng https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6xk7m2tp College enrollment in the United States has grown over time, but early college persistence has remained stagnant, which signals persistent gaps in college readiness and limits the benefits of postsecondary expansion. This study treats 12-month persistence as a practical indicator of college readiness and develops a machine learning framework that uses high school administrative data to predict which students will sustain their postsecondary enrollment. The analysis links 387,524 student records from 150 high schools at 20 public school districts in Riverside County, California, to National Student Clearinghouse data for six graduation cohorts from 2010 to 2019, and extracted a total of 2000 features from demographics, enrollment, program participation, behavior, academic achievement, and postsecondary choices datasets.This study applies seven supervised learning algorithms, two cross-validation schemes, and three class balancing strategies. The models are compared across feature subsets,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6xk7m2tp Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Li, Yiwang https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6vd8s4qw Climate change has intensified over recent decades and is projected to continue warming globally (Food and Agriculture Organization et al., 2021). This not only increases the frequency of extreme weather events but also raises baseline ambient temperatures (Food and Agriculture Organization et al., 2021; Zhao et al., 2017). Plants can be sensitive to these changes, having evolved under cooler temperature conditions than those anticipated under current climate projections (Rosenzweig et al. 2014). Developmental processes can be disrupted, affecting agronomically important traits such as fruit quality and yield (Lou et al. 2025; Li et al. 2025). As a result, significant crop losses are anticipated. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6vd8s4qw Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Gilmour, Sabrina M https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6jr5k1z8 This dissertation argues for a new approach to the evidence for magic to shift the conversation from Pan-Mediterranean and empire-wide arguments to local and regional differences based on a cultural economy. The “economy of magic” approach examines extant evidence with provenance alongside recorded rituals from literature to elicit ideas about the local approach to commodities, producers, consumers, beliefs, and purposes utilized in the production and consumption of magic objects within a specific locale and region. Examining known evidence from cities within a specific region (province for this dissertation) provides the regional and local context for magic where differences can be established between locations in the region and other regions applying the same approach. Previous works with similar approaches either did not use enough evidence or locations to examine still led to Pan-Mediterranean conclusions. The economy of magic approach considers differences in linguistics,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6jr5k1z8 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 D'Amato, Michael A https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6jj4b20s Owing to its limited chemical stability, the human genome is vulnerable to damage by exogenous and endogenous factors, giving rise to DNA damage. A major form of this damage is DNA alkylation, with alkyl phosphotriesters (alkyl-PTEs) being particularly significant due to their high formation frequency and resistance to repair in mammalian cells. However, the occurrence and biological consequences of these lesions remain poorly unexplored.In Chapter 2, we describe the synthesis of a dithiane-protected pyridyloxobutyl (POB) alcohol and its coupling to a thymidine phosphoramidite, which was incorporated into oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) using solid-phase synthesis to construct ODNs harboring the site-specific POB-PTE lesion in both RP and SP configurations. These protected ODNs were subsequently converted into pyridyl hydroxybutyl-PTE (PHB-PTE) ODNs and characterized by LC-MS/MS. These substrates will serve as valuable tools for future studies aimed at investigating the impact of... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6jj4b20s Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Clabaugh, Garrit https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g74c37z Out-loud self-talk (OLST)—self-directed speech not intended for interpersonal communication—is a frequent yet understudied behavior that provides a unique window into individuals’ internal cognitive and emotional processes. Despite its prevalence in everyday life, OLST has often been misunderstood or pathologized in popular discourse and overlooked in empirical research. This dissertation addresses key theoretical and methodological gaps by examining OLST through a multi-method, multi-phase approach that includes survey, perception-based, and naturalistic observational data.In the first phase, self-report data from a large and diverse sample were used to explore how individuals perceive their own OLST, how they judge others who frequently engage in it, and how these perceptions relate to demographic and psychological factors. Participants also evaluated a series of everyday speech scenarios to help empirically refine what qualifies as OLST. These findings informed the development... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6g74c37z Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Spahr, Chandler Marie https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69t434hh Dyspnea is the subjective sensation of breathing discomfort. It is prevalent in patients with chronic and critical illness and associated with poor clinical outcomes and long-term psychological trauma. The multidimensional nature of dyspnea and individual variation in its presentation make identification difficult, particularly in non-communicative patients. To address this critical need, I aimed to (1) better understand the factors contributing to individual variation in dyspnea severity by identifying its physiological and psychological drivers, and (2) produce a novel tool for monitoring dyspnea based on noninvasive biomarker inputs. I recruited healthy adults and administered demographic and psychological evaluations to evaluate their health, anxiety levels and interoceptive awareness traits. I then induced dyspnea using a semi-rebreathing, forced end-tidal system to control arterial partial pressures of oxygen and carbon dioxide while collecting self-reported dyspnea scores... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69t434hh Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Mkrtchyan, Karapet Gary https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69j3b9p9 Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) are soil surface aggregates prominent in some of the harshest climates on earth, composed of a diverse community of cyanobacteria, algae, bryophytes, lichen, microfungi, and other organisms. These organisms have been suggested to form a symbiotic network across kingdoms, in which cyanobacteria serve as the primary producers and key aggregators of the crust. Although the diversity and ecological contributions of bacteria within biocrusts have received attention, fungal communities are often overlooked. In the first chapter of my thesis, I identified novel associations between biocrust mosses and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), providing evidence of intracellular colonization by Glomeromycotina and revealing distinct fungal communities compared to adjacent bare soils. Diversity of Glomeromycotina was also shown to vary significantly across sites with varying aridity, independent of host species identity. These results have significant implications... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/69j3b9p9 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Kelly, Kian Holden https://escholarship.org/uc/item/65s101fg This dissertation documents a research study on a pedagogical experience in the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language, grounded in Critical Sociocultural Linguistic Literacy (CriSoLL) framework (Holguín Mendoza, 2022; Holguín Mendoza & Sánchez Walker, 2024) and in the original contribution Emotividad Experiencial / Embodied Emotional Experience, to systematize students’ experiences connecting theory, praxis, and affective dimensions (see Jara, 1994; Mejía, 2008). Emotividad Experiencial humanizes research and strengthens linguistic agency, the capacity of speakers to make conscious and strategic language choices that acknowledge their social, political, and historical implications. This classroom-based was carried out in an advanced university course in Spanish linguistics at a university on the West Coast of the United States. The course on the linguistics of Spanish in the U.S. innovatively incorporated a sociolinguistic analysis of legal language in real U.S. court... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/65s101fg Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Jimenez, Maria Teresa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/62d895b0 My dissertation “Following the Way: Worlding Connections in Contemporary Cambodian Performance” examines how Cambodian performers express ongoing issues and personal experiences with LGBTQIA+ discrimination, globalization, diaspora, and social change. Drawing from year-long ethnographic fieldwork from 2022 to 2023, I apply creative and embodied approaches from music, dance, and performance studies and my training as a Cambodian classical musician and dancer to my analysis of contemporary Cambodian performance. I discuss different staged contemporary Cambodian performances by Cambodian and Cambodian diasporic artists in relation to questions around identity, cosmopolitan formations, displacement, and worldmaking. I engage with the word sahasamay, meaning contemporary, as an opportunity for creative experimentation in the Cambodian performing arts. As a concept, sahasamay involves a reinventing of Cambodian space, time, and identity by interrogating aesthetic practices of rupture... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/62d895b0 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Zheng, Allan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/61j2p7ph Over the past couple decades, the number of viral outbreaks have greatly increased on a global scale, resulting in millions of deaths per year. As international travel continues to grow, the risk of outbreak multiplies as travel promotes the spread of infectious diseases. With the viral activity magnifying, there is an urgent need to identify disease in a quick and inexpensive manner. Point-of-care devices that provide real-time data allow for swift detection of diseases where the infected can then quarantine themselves or receive treatment to prevent the rapid spread of infection. In this study, a device designed for viral detection is proposed. The nano digital chip (Nano-dChip) is able to detect viral RNA in 30 minutes for less than half a dollar per chip. Unlike PCR, which can take hours, the study demonstrates how the Nano-dChip can use RT-LAMP to reduce reaction time to only half an hour but is still sensitive and specific. Not only does it significantly decrease the amount... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/61j2p7ph Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Luu, Natalie https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5mf8v9nj Despite being regularly cited as perhaps the largest and most consequential traditional order of sādhus in India, the Rāmānandī sampradāy has received relatively little scholarly attention. The Rāmānandīs trace their lineage to the 14th-15th century Vaiṣṇava saint Rāmānandī, who is said to have broken from the Śrī sampradāy of Rāmānuja and founded his own sect centered in Varanasi, amassing around a dozen prominent disciples. While Rāmānandī religiosity is generally centered around devotion (bhakti) to the divine couple Sītā-Rām (i.e., Rāmcandra, the protagonist of the Rāmāyaṇa narrative, and his wife Sītā), Peter van der Veer argues that understanding them exclusively as a ‘bhakti sect’ “hinders the correct interpretation of the present nature of this group and its internal divisions, as well of its evolution over time.”1 Indeed, tracing the origins, development, and current state of the Rāmānandī sampradāy leads one down a rich and variegated path, incorporating practices and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5mf8v9nj Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Hill, Hunter John https://escholarship.org/uc/item/52d0f9q5 A fundamental question in ecology asks why the world remains green despite herbivores consuming plants. Bottom-up control by the “plant defense” hypothesis suggests that plants protect themselves by mechanisms such as producing dietary toxins that keep their predators in check. However, natural enemies may evolve mechanisms to tolerate and even sequester these plant toxins, to their benefit, disturbing the trophic cascade, and reducing bottom-up control. One example of this mechanism are cardiac glycosides (CGs), toxic steroids produced by milkweeds (Asclepias spp.), are sequestered by specialized herbivores such as monarch caterpillars and milkweed bugs, providing potent chemical defense against their natural enemies.This dissertation investigates the “green world” hypothesis, and how top-down control through the evolution of toxin resistance in natural enemies can restore trophic cascades and shape multi-trophic interactions. The molecular focus is on the Na⁺/K⁺-ATPase (NKA),... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/52d0f9q5 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Achi, Perla https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4xv079m1 A comprehensive description of thermal transport at nanometer to submicron length scales remains incomplete because of gaps in our understanding of interfacial, thin-film, and ballistic heat flow. Time-domain thermoreflectance (TDTR), time-resolved magneto-optic Kerr effect (TR-MOKE), and laser-flash TDTR provide access to thermal transport on the length scales where phonons govern heat flow. In this dissertation, I use these tools to test models for heat flow in semiconductor thin-films and at metal/semiconductor interfaces.My work on nitride metal/semiconductor interfaces tests the conventional view that vibrational similarity is required for high interface conductance, G. I show that high G does not require vibrational similarity by measuring TiN and HfN interfaces with group IV and group III–V semiconductors. Across these systems, I find that G is determined by the phonon properties of the vibrationally softer material and by the interfacial structure. Temperature-dependent... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4xv079m1 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Khan, Samreen https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4wv6f1f4 The rapid advancement of fifth-generation (5G) and beyond wireless networks has imposed stringent performance, reliability, and integration requirements on millimeter-wave (mmWave) radio frequency front-end modules (RF FEMs). Among the critical components, the RF switch plays a pivotal role in ensuring broadband operation, high isolation, and compact integration. This dissertation presents a comprehensive study on the design, optimization, and protection of a 38 GHz traveling-wave single-pole double-throw (SPDT) switch implemented in a 45 nm partially depleted silicon-on-insulator (PD-SOI) process. The proposed traveling-wave architecture achieves ultra-broadband performance from DC to 40 GHz, demonstrating a measured insertion loss of 1.6 dB and isolation exceeding 30 dB at 38 GHz.To enhance device robustness, an RFIC–ESD co-design methodology is developed that integrates high-frequency L-shaped resonant ESD protection structures directly into the switch topology. This approach... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4wv6f1f4 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Hao, Weiquan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4n96w9pn ‘Early German romanticism’ (Frühromantik) broadly classifies the disparate but prolific philosophical and literary movement in and around Jena, Berlin, Heidelberg, and Tübingen in 1797-1802. One of its primary forms of writing was the fragment: aphorisms, poetic fragments, and very brief essays. They were most immediately received as being without philosophical value. However, they were written intentionally, and functioned as a vessel to experiment with the implications of key philosophical themes at the time, such as the nature of self-consciousness, identity, and language. In this sense, the romantic fragment gave the critical philosophies of Kant and Fichte expression. The guiding question of Kant’s critical project was after all about the relation between the different contexts of normativity in which we move. Our conception is always of a systematic whole of experience of which we have only a fragmentary but fundamentally normative grasp in what we do. The grasp that we... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4n96w9pn Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Sarkar, Shamoni https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ct4b4k0 San Fernando’s Pico Court, a citrus work camp formerly situated in present-day Mission Hills in the San Fernando Valley (the Valley), existed near the San Fernando Mission, the Andrés Pico Adobe house, and the San Fernando Pioneer Cemetery. These sites are significant to Valley development and historical memory, yet the narratives of one of the largest work camps in the Valley is missing. This master’s thesis seeks to fill this gap in the historical literature and public memory by using the work site as a case study to confront the silences and omissions regarding the experiences and public acknowledgement of ethnic Mexicans in the region. This project examines Pico Court as a representative site for understanding labor and community building, whose demolition symbolically and physically removed this history from view. By tracing the history of the work camp, I aim to confront the dominance of pioneer-driven narratives and restore and re-center the multi-faceted experiences and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ct4b4k0 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Herrera, Daisy Robles https://escholarship.org/uc/item/47z687sv European honey bees (Apis mellifera) are pollinators, equating to a worth of $34 billion annually in the United States (Jordan et al., 2021). Honey bees are subject to infection by many pathogens, including Varroa destructor and deformed wing virus (DWV). Finding ways to protect bees against these pathogens is essential. One way to do this is to explore traits in bees that enable them to survive without human management. In the US, most bees are domesticated and bred commercially, but there are also feral bee populations living unmanaged in many locations. One of these populations is in Southern California. These bees contain genetics from African (A), Western European (M), Eastern European (C), Middle Eastern (O), and Arabian Peninsula and Eastern African (Y) backgrounds, and they survive without humans treating them for diseases or pests. This could be mediated by traits for a stronger immune response to pathogens and parasites. To explore this, I compared the immune responses... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/47z687sv Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Burnham, Emilia Lynn Marie https://escholarship.org/uc/item/44r4m97t Ensuring security in wireless communication systems is becoming increasingly challenging as adversaries gain access to powerful computational resources capable of compromising traditional encryption methods. This challenge is especially critical for modern applications such as real-time artificial intelligence and virtual reality, which demand ultra-low latency and cannot tolerate the overhead of conventional cryptographic protocols. As a complementary solution, physical-layer security (PLS) offers information-theoretic guarantees that do not rely on assumptions about the adversary’s computational capabilities. This thesis investigates a novel PLS framework called Secret-message Transmission by Echoing Encrypted Probes (STEEP). The first part of the thesis critically examines prior work in PLS, identifying a key limitation: most existing methods fail to maintain secrecy when the eavesdropper possesses more antennas than the legitimate nodes. This motivates the introduction... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/44r4m97t Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Rahman, Md Saydur https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43v6b861 This dissertation examines the design of dynamic supply chain contracts under evolving productivity driven by learning-by-doing, a prevalent phenomenon in agricultural and industrial contexts. Across three essays, I investigate how private information, competition risks, and demand uncertainty jointly influence optimal contracting decisions and the distribution of surplus among supply chain partners.The first essay studies a coffee bean supply chain where a farmer’s productivity evolves privately through learning-by-doing over time. I characterize the optimal dynamic contract under asymmetric information and highlight the strategic role of productivity learning in shaping information rents. The findings show that dynamic contracts dominate static contracts for both farmers and buyers, while also revealing a novel distortion: higher learning rates may incentivize buyers to reduce farmers’ production levels to mitigate information advantages.The second essay extends the dynamic... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43v6b861 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Zolghadr, Mohammad https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42m488b8 Heterogeneous energetic materials such as nanothermites, self-propagating high-temperature synthesis composites, and solid propellants exhibit high energy density but limited controllability once ignition begins. This dissertation investigates how external electromagnetic fields, engineered heat feedback pathways, and nanoscale reaction kinetics can be integrated to achieve predictive and tunable control of ignition, propagation, and reaction mechanisms in these materials. Using a multidisciplinary approach that combines direct writing manufacturing, microwave antenna design, high-speed visible pyrometry, infrared thermography, finite element modeling, and in-situ transmission electron microscopy, the research advances both mechanism understanding and practical control of energetic systems. Chapters 3-6 demonstrate that microwave energy, when coupled with embedded receiving antenna, enables remote ignition and dynamic modulation of local burn rate. A metal wire embedded during... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42m488b8 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Shi, Keren https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3t45c64b Hydraulic fracturing is a common method for stimulating hydrocarbon-rich reservoirs, though its effectiveness can diminish over time due to the closure of fractures and depletion of the reservoir. Re-fracturing offers a potential solution to regain well productivity. The success and implementation of re-fracturing treatments, however, are significantly affected by poroelastic effects, which involve the interaction of fluid flow and solid deformation that can influence stress changes, fracture growth, and recovery of production. This dissertation systematically explores hydraulic fracturing, stress redistribution, and initiation of re-fractures using both poroelastic finite element (FEM) and extended finite element (X-FEM) models. Stress redistribution induced by production is then examined through dimensionless parameters. Results prove that poroelastic effects create stress reversal regions that strongly depend on stress deviator and poroelastic parameters Biot’s... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3t45c64b Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Huang, Tianxiang https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s2412ch Forests, which cover approximately one third of land globally and provide countless ecosystems services, are under serious threat by anthropogenic climate change. Already, warming temperatures and shifting precipitation regimes have driven widespread distributional shifts, altered growth dynamics, and even mortality, fundamentally restructuring communities and altering their composition and function. To fully understand the consequences of these changes and more accurately predict species responses, a more nuanced understanding about how abiotic and biotic factors influence growth and survival across scales and life stages is necessary. In this dissertation, I examine how ontogenetic niche differences between the adult and juvenile life can be linked to functional trait differences (chapter 1), the timing and magnitude of climate sensitivity shifts along a habitat suitability gradient (chapter 2), and weather variability and neighborhood interact to mediate intra-annual radial... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s2412ch Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 McCann, Erin https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3j99v7db Advances in sequencing and computational methods have transformed biology into a data-driven discipline capable of resolving evolutionary and ecological processes across multiple scales. This dissertation integrates tool development, comparative genomics, and microbial ecology to explore how bioinformatics can reveal evolutionary relationships, reproductive mechanisms, and ecosystem dynamics. In Chapter 1, I developed Phyling, a fast and memory-efficient pipeline for phylogenomic reconstruction directly from genomic and proteomic data. Phyling identifies single-copy orthologs using Hidden Markov Model searches against curated marker sets, then constructs species trees using consensus or concatenation approaches. Its checkpoint system allows incremental updates without reprocessing, enabling scalable and reproducible phylogenetic analysis. Chapter 2 applies comparative genomics to investigate the evolution of mating-type (MAT) loci in Rhodotorula yeasts. Whole-proteome... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3j99v7db Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Tsai, Cheng-Hung https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3c11w9kg With the rapid adoption of GPUs in artificial intelligence data centers and high performance research, it has become increasingly important for researchers to have accurate and reliable GPU power monitoring. Power consumption is crucial for understanding the performance, energy efficiency, and temperature of GPU workloads. AMD’s ROCm System Management Interface (rocm-smi), which is a library of tools to manage and monitor AMD graphics processing units (GPUs), aims to give researchers insight into their GPU’s behavior. In this thesis, we discuss our analysis of rocm-smi’s ability to capture power, which shows that rocm-smi has high polling speeds, but consistently underestimates true GPU power consumption. We also considered how the arithmetic intensity of a workload affects the results of power measurement. In response, we have developed a predictive model that corrects the under reported GPU power given by rocm-smi. This study provides in- sight into the characteristic of AMD’s... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3c11w9kg Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Yonemoto, Christopher https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3b8311qq Understanding GPU memory hierarchy is essential for achieving high performance in scientific and machine learning workloads. This thesis analyzes memory latency on AMD Instinct™ MI300A, MI300X, and MI250X GPUs using a fine-grained pointer chasing microbenchmark. We characterize the scalar L1 (sL1), L2, AMD Infinity Cache™ (MALL), and HBM, revealing clear latency levels and architectural differences. The MI300A and MI300X, based on the AMD CDNA™ 3 architecture, show similar behavior, while the MI250X (AMD CDNA™ 2) differs due to the absence of a MALL. Compute partitioning has negligible impact on latency, but NUMA Partitioning per Socket (NPS) reduces latency by up to 1.42× in MALL and 1.31× in HBM. Notably, we find that NPS4 not only partitions the HBM stacks but also divides the 256 MB MALL into four 64 MB slices. We further analyze Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) behavior under varying parallelism levels and identify conditions where MALL latency rises. These findings provide... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3b8311qq Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Tee, Andrew https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2wx4684h This paper applies modern causal inference methods to examine how institutional structures, policy environments, and contextual conditions shape behavioral responses in policing, corrections, and consumer markets. The first chapter investigates how law enforcement behavior shifts in the aftermath of police-shooting fatalities by combining tens of millions of traffic stop records with fatal encounters timing data. The second chapter analyzes whether reducing communication barriers improves safety outcomes for incarcerated individuals by leveraging the 2014 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandate to cap prison phone rates. The third chapter provides the first national assessment of heterogeneity in gasoline price elasticity across U.S. states by examining newly developed state-level elasticity estimates in conjunction with data on state environments, road infrastructure, and population characteristics.In Chapter 1, I analyze traffic stop and search patterns following lethal... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2wx4684h Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ford, David Michael https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2vc2h10z Traditional cell culture is routinely performed under static conditions. While this benefits from simplicity, there are several limitations. First, in vivo cells are exposed to a wide range of fluidic cues. Second, lack of fluid transport can lead to regional depletion of nutrients, especially in 3D cultures, resulting in cell death. While the vast majority of cultures are performed under static conditions, researchers use perfusion in specialist culture systems. In cell biology research, peristaltic and syringe pumps are commonly used, however they present large upfront costs and can be unwieldy to incorporate into a sterile environment. While incorporating microfluidic systems can mitigate the scale of the culture requirements, they only work on small cultures and are not broadly available to nonspecialist labs. With an increase in organoid and organotypic research, there is a need for higher flow rates pumps that are amenable to long-term sterile cultures. Recently, several... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2vc2h10z Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Saldana, Josue https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2s8726ps The death of a parent during childhood and adolescence represents a significant life stressor with potential long-term implications for mental health. How one responds to the difficult loss of a parent may vary as a function of contextual factors, including who passed away (i.e., mother versus father) and when they passed away (e.g., infancy versus adolescence). In addition, the loss of a parent is a family process that has the potential to strain the relationship between the child and the surviving parent, yet the quality of this relationship plays a critical role in promoting healthy adaptation. Most research on this front, however, focuses on the immediate aftermath of the loss or provides limited presentations of long-term effects, leaving the trajectories of bereaved youth an understudied phenomenon. Utilizing data from a sample of bereaved youth (N = 264) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the current dissertation aimed to examine trajectories... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2s8726ps Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Perez, Erick Vladimir https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2rv065fc This dissertation explores the motivations and lived experiences of Latina parent-students enrolled in community college mathematics courses, centering on how cultural, familial, and structural factors shape their academic journeys. Using qualitative methods grounded in counter-storytelling, testimonios were collected from twelve Latina mothers navigating higher education while raising children. The study is framed by Chicana/Latina feminism, Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit), and motivation theory to examine how participants make meaning of their persistence in academic spaces not designed for them. While traditional motivation theory emphasizes intrinsic and extrinsic drivers, the findings reveal a distinct form of motivation described as homenaje, a culturally rooted sense of duty to honor familial sacrifice, reclaim educational space, and create a better future for the next generation. Homenaje emerged as a complex and emotionally charged force that blends personal ambition... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2rv065fc Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Hernandez, Vanessa https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2qp294vd Beneficial gut microbes encode diverse regulatory systems that allow them to compete in the mammalian gut by rapidly responding to dietary and environmental changes. Among these nutrients, inorganic phosphate (Pi, PO43-) is essential for cellular physiology and can contribute to gut dysbiosis. Despite the prevalence of Bacteroidota species in the human gut, how they respond to phosphate stress is not well understood. Here, we characterized the growth and transcriptional response of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron to varying phosphate availability. We confirmed the presence of the two-component regulatory system PhoBR, identified conserved PhoB binding sites (Pho boxes), and characterized transcriptomic rearrangements of the Pho regulon under phosphate-limiting conditions. Comparative genomic analyses revealed variable conservation of this regulon across related Bacteroidota species, highlighting its importance for gut survival and competition. Another regulatory system is trans-encoded... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2qp294vd Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Crago, David Andrew https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2pf8b0kg Though nanotechnology has been with us for nearly two millennia, actual knowledge on how to manipulate engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) and its advancement as a field of science was not possible until a few decades ago. With nanotechnology’s recent integration in society, much of the research that has developed from the field focuses on biomedical applications. Much less studied is understanding how these nanoscale objects could impact plants which is crucial for achieving a future that maximizes nanoscience in agriculture. Chapter 1 is an introduction to the knowledge gaps we have on how ENMs interact with plants as well as discussion of the lack of representation nanotechnology has at a higher education level. Broader impacts for studying how ENMs impact plants and methods to enhance nanotechnology education in higher education institutions would demonstrate which nanomaterials can be used as nanofertilizers, nanopesticides, nanosensors, and soil conditioners and expand the field... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2pf8b0kg Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Castillo, Christopher https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2kp8q3dp Antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials offer exciting opportunities for spintronic applications, yet the absence of net magnetization fundamentally hinders both the manipulation and detection of their order parameter, the Néel vector, compared to the ferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic counterparts. The coupling between electric and magnetic orders, known as the magnetoelectric effect, provides a promising route to control and detect the Néel vector electrically.In my dissertation, I present studies on heterostructures based on magnetoelectric antiferromagnets, including Cr₂O₃ and the two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals material MnPS₃. In Cr₂O₃, we investigate the electrical detection of the Néel vector across the spin-flop transition in adjacent Pt layers, enabling a clear separation of multiple spin transport contributions. We further demonstrate electrical control of the Néel vector through linear magnetoelectric coupling, realizing an analog of electrical read/write operations in a... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2kp8q3dp Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Liao, Wei-Cheng https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26w2t182 This dissertation employed exploratory mixed methods research to examine the labor site conditions, experiences, and migration patterns of international NCAA Division I men’s basketball players. Using a combinatory theoretical framework grounded in both racial capitalism and neo-racism, the study sought to understand how an international athlete’s social location impacted their movement into, within, and through DI competition. Given the NCAA’s long history of cartel labor practices- particularly toward Black athletes in revenue-generating sports, as well as basketball’s growth as a major global enterprise steeped in postcolonial relationships between states, Black international athletes were found uniquely vulnerable to exploitation in US college sports. The first phase of the study engaged in critical discourse analysis to uncover athletics interests’ racial capitalist and neo-racist perspectives toward Black international athletes. In addition, the CDA revealed that NCAA institutions... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/26w2t182 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Davidson, Eric Matthew https://escholarship.org/uc/item/24z3t54j This thesis consists of two parts.In the first part of this work, we constructed a stochastic computational model based on the Gillespie algorithm to investigate cooperative effects in transcription factor binding to cis-regulatory elements located in gene promoter regions. We simulated various types of cooperativity, transcription factor concentrations, and numbers of transcription factor binding sites. Our results show that locally acting cooperativity produces a system that is more robust to changes in the number of binding sites compared with globally acting cooperativity. We also found that cooperativity that promotes transcription factor unbinding confers greater robustness than cooperativity that prevents transcription factor unbinding. When only monomers introduce cooperativity into the system, the binding state of the cis-elements is most affected at lower transcription factor concentrations, whereas dimer-mediated cooperativity has a greater impact at higher transcription... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/24z3t54j Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Yang, Jiadong https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2474t2hk Microplastics are ubiquitous contaminants ranging from 1 micron to 5 millimeters, yet the lack of standardized collection protocols impacts data harmonization and comparative analysis across different waterways. To address this critical gap, this study aimed to develop a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for microplastic collection in river stormflow conditions, specifically focusing on applications for the state of California. The methodology involved testing multiple sampling techniques—from surface grabs to sophisticated suspended sediment net sampling—using an experimental flume to create stormflow conditions in a river. The flume experiments employed a mass-based analysis approach, comparing the performance of samplers using three polymer types with varying densities across controlled variables, including depths, velocities, and sampling orientations. Common flow meters were also assessed for efficiency and accuracy under various hydrologic conditions.Key findings indicate... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2474t2hk Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Johnson, Haley https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kc5r2bk This thesis advances several foundational theoretical frameworks for understanding the assembly and disassembly of viral protein shells, or capsids. We first present essential virology and thermodynamic background along with a geometric and mathematical description of capsid architecture. We then derive the free energy of a capsid in solution and develop a kinetic framework that describes how different capsid species evolve toward equilibrium, drawing connections to relaxational dynamics and phase-transition theory. In the second part, we extend extend the relaxational theory of capsid assembly to describe the competition between multiple capsid species. In the third part, we extend classical nucleation theory by modeling the rim of a partially assembled capsid as a fluctuating interface. Using complementary discrete and continuum approaches, we show that rim fluctuations renormalize the effective line tension, which can either lower or raise the nucleation barrier. These results... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kc5r2bk Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Clark, Alexander Bryan https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1fw3r7c2 The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, coupled with the rising penetration of renewable generation, poses significant challenges to forecasting system load, renewable output, electricity prices, and managing operational risk for system operators and market participants. This thesis presents an integrated framework that couples machine learning–based probabilistic weather forecasts with load and renewable generation models, alongside a high-resolution electricity market simulator, to efficiently generate an ensemble of day-ahead forecasts of system demand, renewable generation and electricity prices. A case study on the 14,606-bus Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) system during a heat wave reveals substantial deviations across ensemble members, including peak temperature variability of ±6◦F , wind generation differences of up to 4GW, load fluctuations of up to 3GW, and electricity price deviations exceeding 70%. These results underscore the magnitude... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1fw3r7c2 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Brown, Joseph https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1c32x4gp This dissertation analyzes the function of music and ritual in Umbanda temples, commonly referred to as “casas” (Engl. houses), among immigrant communities in the United States. A highly syncretic Afro-Brazilian religion that includes elements of Candomblé, French Spiritism, Catholicism, and Indigenous spirituality, Umbanda is now found all over the world, with significant variations in its ritual practices and cultural meanings. Through an exploration of Umbanda’s history and development in Brazil, followed by a series of focused ethnographic case studies in distinct locations outside of the religion’s “home” country, this dissertation positions Umbanda as a space of cultural production and healing that contributes to the ethnic, social and spiritual consciousness of Brazilian and Latinx immigrant communities in North America. Through semiotic and ethnographic analysis, I examine how these groups of immigrants negotiate ideas of modernity and citizenship in diverse urban spaces,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1c32x4gp Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Nobre, Mariangela https://escholarship.org/uc/item/15x7x866 This work aims to examine the imperial cult under Tiberius through the available textual evidence. The main argument is that Tiberius was able to establish and maintain the precedent for the proper upkeep of the imperial cult by the Pontifex Maximus, utilizing the structural framework established by Augustus. The secondary argument is that Tiberius made a distinction between the worship of the living members of the imperial family and the deified. By building on the work of Kelly Shannon-Henderson’s Knowledge of Religion in Tacitus’ Annals, this work looks at Tiberius and his religious contributions against the bias of the primary author accounts of Tacitus, Suetonius, Valerius Maximus, Velleius Paterculus, and Dio Cassius, while also incorporating the coinage from the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. The coinage incorporated includes depictions of Livia as Pax, the Altar of the Three Gauls at Lugdunum, and inscriptions of Tiberius’ official title as Pontifex Maximus. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/15x7x866 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Marcoccia, Tony https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1516m7t3 Oomycetes are a class of fungal-like filamentous eukaryotes in the clade Stramenopila, along with diatoms and brown algae. Phytophthora is a genus of oomycetes whose species cause devastating plant diseases, such as soybean root rot attributed to Phytophthora sojae and late blight in potatoes and tomatoes attributed to Phytophthora infestans. Phytophthora species have complex life cycles and disseminate via spores that spread by wind and water or overwinter in soil. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms governing pathogenicity and development in these economically and ecologically relevant organisms is essential for devising effective control strategies. Molecular genetic tools, particularly CRISPR-Cas systems, have enabled studies of gene function in Phytophthora species including P. sojae and P. infestans. Despite the promise of CRISPR, a Cas12a-based editing system recently developed for P. infestans has exhibited low efficiency and would benefit from further optimization.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1516m7t3 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Mendoza, Carl Skyler https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1329d139 During live speech perception listeners not only hear the talker but can also see the talker’s face as they articulate segments and syllables. Speech literature shows that seeing articulations of a talker can enhance understanding of heard speech for all individuals regardless of their hearing abilities (e.g., Bernstein et al., 2004; Rouger et al., 2007; Zheng & Samuel, 2019). Although all individuals benefit from visual speech to some extent, the degree of its use varies across individuals. This variability has been demonstrated within the clinical realm of cochlear implantation. While having strong visual speech skills prior to implantation has shown to be beneficial for implant usage in some patients (i.e., post-lingually deafened), it has also shown to be detrimental to others (i.e., prelingually deafened). Given these findings, it is important to develop a brief questionnaire to quickly assess individuals’ use of visual speech in clinical settings, to tailor the most... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1329d139 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Zadoorian, Serena https://escholarship.org/uc/item/128645qv Particle-based representations are widely used in computer graphics for simulating fluid behavior, motivating the need for reliable reconstruction of continuous surfaces from discrete samples. We present a novel network-based approach for reconstructing signed distance functions from fluid particles. The method uses a weighting kernel to transfer particles to a regular grid, which forms the input to a convolutional neural network. We propose a regression-based regularization to reduce surface noise without penalizing high-curvature features. The reconstruction exhibits improved spatial surface smoothness and temporal coherence compared with existing state of the art surface reconstruction methods. The method is insensitive to particle sampling density and robustly handles thin features, isolated particles, and sharp edges.In addition, we introduce a set of targeted optimizations for feature extraction and network inference that dramatically reduce reconstruction cost without degrading... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/128645qv Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Zhao, Chen https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1024f8p5 The growing energy demand of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems has become a major challenge for building energy management, particularly in regions with large day–night temperature fluctuations such as Southern California. This thesis investigates the use of phase change materials (PCMs) in residential building envelopes to stabilize indoor temperature and improve energy efficiency through a combined numerical and experimental approach.The simulation study employed EnergyPlus to model the energy consumption of residential homes equipped with paraffin-based PCMs in Southern California, a region characterized by extremely high summer temperatures and pronounced diurnal variations. Two computational approaches—the Basic Method and the Hysteresis Method—were used to evaluate the effects of PCM position, melting point, thickness, and thermal conductivity on building energy savings. The results showed that, the optimized melting point of PCM for Riverside and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1024f8p5 Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Chan, Yiu https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0r04r74g Graphs are a fundamental abstraction for representing complex relationships in unstructured data, powering analytics in domains such as social networks, bioinformatics, transportation systems, and web infrastructures. However, as real-world graphs evolve over time—continuously adding and removing vertices and edges—traditional static graph systems fail to meet the demands of temporal analytics, where queries must be evaluated efficiently across sequences of graph snapshots. This dissertation addresses the scalability and efficiency challenges in evolving graph analytics by developing a suite of algorithmic and architectural innovations that jointly optimize data reuse, temporal consistency, and concurrent query execution. The first contribution, MEGA (Microarchitecture for Evolving Graph Analytics), introduces the first hardware accelerator designed for multi-snapshot graph processing. MEGA builds on the CommonGraph abstraction, which eliminates costly edge deletions by... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0r04r74g Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Gao, Chao https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0p51p91j Bias Temperature Instability (BTI) is a dominant aging mechanism in advanced CMOS technologies that degrades transistor threshold voltage (Vth), carrier mobility (µ), and other related circuit parameters over time. While extensive research has explored BTI’s impact on timing and delay, aging-aware designs effects on total power consumption remain under-studied. In this study, we present a comprehensive evaluation of BTI aging across three widely used circuits —ARM Cortex-M0, a RISC-V processor, and a dual-port RAM—using degradation-aware 45 nm standard-cell libraries calibrated for a worst case 10-year aging scenario at 130°C and Vdd=1.2V. We integrate aging-aware synthesis, placement, and sign-off power analysis (using Synopsys Design Compiler, Cadence Innovus, Synopsys PrimeTime and PrimePower) to compare four design scenarios: No-aging aware design operated without aging effects(Unaware− NoAge), No-aging aware design operated under aging conditions(Unaware−Age), Aging aware... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0p51p91j Wed, 4 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Ankat, Arya Sunil https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63p671sc The Standard Model of particle physics and standard cosmology are two widely accepted frameworks that describe the observable universe, from elementary particles to large-scale cosmological structures. Despite their success, they cannot explain the nature of dark matter, which constitutes approximately 27 percent of the energy content and 85 percent of the mass content of the universe. Terrestrial experiments, including direct detection and collider searches, have so far been unsuccessful in detecting any dark matter signals. While these experiments have placed strong constraints on the particle nature of dark matter, the parameter space they probe remains limited. This is where astrophysical observations become important, as they can explore a much wider parameter space for particle dark matter. In this study, we use compact astrophysical objects including neutron stars, supermassive black holes, and exoplanets to test predictions of several well-motivated dark matter models,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63p671sc Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Phoroutan-Mehr, Mehrdad https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6p2685sb The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many aspects of life for families, especially with school closures and the successive attempts to reopen classrooms. All families of school-aged children were faced with a set of challenges including education as well as economic, safety, and mental health challenges. School closures had an impact on all students, but particular interest was given to students with disabilities, including autism, that are more vulnerable therefore more likely to have negative outcomes. Interestingly, some research has indicated a sliver of unintended positive aspects of the pandemic across individuals. This study aimed to identify what was most positive and challenging for families, as well as look at differences between families of SEN students and students with autism. This study examined caregiver’s open-ended responses to two questions: 1) what the biggest challenge for you and your family is right now and 2) what the most positive aspect is for you and your... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6p2685sb Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 McAvoy, Hayley https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0jv51584 Despite increased calls to diversify the teaching profession to reflect the growing demographics and needs of students of Color in schools, teacher education programs and K-12 schools fail to seriously acknowledge and confront the racialized factors that contribute to the high rates of teachers of Color being pushed out of the profession, particularly as novices. Consequently, there is a need to shift away from surface-level discussions about recruitment to actively work towards sustaining teachers of Color, both during and beyond their early years in the profession. As “anti-woke” bans against the teaching of race, racism, and identity in K-12 schools continue to spread across the U.S., teachers of Color must be equipped with forms of racial literacy that not only give them the language to identify racism and racialization, but offer them the frameworks, tools, and skills to resist and disrupt racism and sustainably teach from a critical praxis. Rooted in frameworks of... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0jv51584 Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Ott, Corinna Desiree https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8x1924cr A central focus of modern spintronics and magnetism is to achieve energy-efficient electrical control over magnetic dynamics. Topological materials have recently attracted growing attention in the spintronics community due to their large charge-to-spin conversion efficiency and unconventional electrical responses. Here, using semiclassical wave-packet theory, we develop a unified description of both charge and magnetic responses in magnetic topological systems, expressed through distinct Berry curvatures. In this framework, an applied electric field generates a spin-orbit torque (SOT) that drives ultrafast magnetic dynamics. Reciprocally, the magnetization motion pumps an adiabatic charge current, an effect known as the topological Thouless pump. We apply our formalism in three representative systems: (i) a ferromagnet-topological-insulator-ferromagnet heterostructure; (ii) the intrinsic magnetic topological insulator MnBi2Te4 and (iii) two-dimensional transition metal trichalcogenides... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8x1924cr Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Tang, Junyu https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6r00q3sb Human driven pollution poses escalating threats to ecological systems. Contaminants of emerging concerns (CECs) from treated wastewater and agricultural chemicals disrupt microbial communities and influence host health. Some native bees, whose microbiomes are shaped by environmental exposure, serve as valuable models for understanding how CECs and agricultural pollution alter ecological interactions. In this dissertation I investigate how urban wastewater and agricultural chemicals shape bee-associated microbiomes and pathogen susceptibility. I conducted 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, analyzed multiplex polymerase chain reactions, multivariate statistics, spatial analyses, and infection modeling to examine how bee ecology mediates exposure risk and biological outcomes.In chapter 1, I assess the impact of treated wastewater on microbial communities in two bee taxa with contrasting nesting ecologies: ground nesting Halictus ligatus and wood cavity nesting Ceratina species. I... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6r00q3sb Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Ngor, Lyna https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dn3t1m7 All Bad Things is a multi-movement autotheoretical thesis that weaves together personal narrative, visual culture, and critical theory to examine how bodies, images, and architectures endure under late capitalist acceleration. Beginning with a phenomenological account of growing up amid the neoliberal transformation of post-socialist China, the text explores photography as both tactical practice and disciplinary structure, revealing how image ecologies shape labor and visibility. A 2,100-mile solo drive becomes a site of ethnographic reflection on endurance, transition, and the volatile threshold between territory and exhaustion. Through reflections on failed buildings, ritual scarcity, and infrastructural breakdown, the work theorizes entropy not only as a physical state but also as an existential condition. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6dn3t1m7 Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Wang, Ruoxi https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4kz216n4 Green hydrogen production demands electrocatalysts that are efficient, durable, and composed of earth-abundant elements, particularly under device-relevant current densities (≥10²–10³ mA cm⁻²). This dissertation advances transition-metal borides (TMBs) as a tunable, platinum-free catalyst family by developing synthesis–structure–property relationships at the nanoparticle scale. First, I introduce an Sn/SnCl₂ redox–flux route that leverages Sn–B immiscibility to access phase-controlled, crystalline nanoparticles with clean surfaces and well-defined chemistries. Using this platform, I demonstrate vanadium-stabilized molybdenum monoboride (V₀.₃Mo₀.₇B) nanoparticles (30–60 nm) that outperform commercial 20 % Pt/C at industrially relevant current density: η₁₀₀₀ = 0.452 V for V₀.₃Mo₀.₇B vs 0.837 V for Pt/C in 0.5 M H₂SO₄, with 97 % activity retention after ~28 h at ~1000 mA cm⁻². Kinetic and transport analyses (Tafel, C_dl-derived ECSA, and EIS) reveal higher accessible active-site... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4kz216n4 Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Kim, Sang Bum https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36x580b0 Recent advances in Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have sparked significant interest in developing learning-based sensing applications on embedded edge devices. These efforts, however, are challenged by adapting to unforeseen conditions in open-world environments and by the practical limitations of low-cost sensors in the field. This dissertation presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of resource-constrained edge systems that address these challenges through time-series sensing, scheduling, and classification.First, we present OpenSense, an open-world time-series sensing framework for performing inference and incremental classification on an embedded edge device, eliminating reliance on powerful cloud servers. To create time for on-device updates without missing events and to reduce sensing and communication overhead, we introduce two dynamic sensor-scheduling techniques: (i) a class-level period assignment scheduler that selects an appropriate sensing period... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36x580b0 Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Bukhari, Abdulrahman Ismail I https://escholarship.org/uc/item/252027f5 Norovirus is a leading cause of acute gastroenteritis, especially among vulnerable populations such as young children, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals. Its high transmissibility and low infectious dose highlight the need for rapid, sensitive diagnostics. Traditional methods like RT-qPCR are limited by long processing times, the need for skilled personnel, and reduced sensitivity for low viral loads. To address these limitations, Ke Du’s lab developed a microfluidic platform, the nano-dChip, which employs loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) for specific, rapid detection of norovirus. The chip contains 1,040 wells for digital quantification of viral RNA within 30 minutes. This thesis evaluates the nano-dChip’s ability to detect two genomic sequences of norovirus GII.4, the most prevalent genotype, and compares its specificity to a commercially available silicon-based digital PCR chip. Preliminary data suggest that the nano-dChip produces a fluorescence gradient... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/252027f5 Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Ruiz-Garcia, Esmeralda https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9s29s7pv Large language models (LLMs) have rapidly advanced in capability but pose significant challenges for deployment, particularly under tight latency constraints and limited hardware resources. This dissertation presents three systems for adaptive scheduling and resource management, each addressing a critical layer of complexity in vectorizing LLM inference and retraining. In the first part of the dissertation, I tackle the unpredictability of autoregressive decoding latency induced by input uncertainty. By quantifying correlations between input queries and response length, our scheduler dynamically prioritizes and consolidates inference workloads—further leveraging CPU offloading when beneficial, which reduces average response time and improves throughput during heavy traffic periods.In the second part of the dissertation, I extend the ecosystem to multi-GPU, distributed settings, enabling colocated inference and retraining. Through offline profiling, execution prediction,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9s29s7pv Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Li, Yufei https://escholarship.org/uc/item/98m4t37q Null pointer exceptions (NPEs) and tainted data flows remain among the most pervasive and critical classes of bugs in modern software systems, particularly in languages like Java. Type-based static analysis offers powerful tools to eliminate these errors at compile time. However, widespread adoption of such tools in industry has been hindered by the substantial annotation burden they impose on developers. This proposal presents a series of techniques that bridge this gap, enabling scalable and practical adoption of type-based analyses in real-world codebases. First, we introduce an automated inference system that efficiently infers nullability type qualifiers by leveraging the underlying type checker as a black-box oracle. Our tool dramatically reduces the number of reported NPE warnings and has been deployed at scale in industrial settings. We then investigate how to rigorously evaluate such inference tools, identifying key biases in prior evaluation methodologies and proposing... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/98m4t37q Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Karimipour, Nima https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9486t79h Flavins in the form of flavin mononucleotide (FMN) and flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) are utilized by all three domains of life. The versatility of the flavin cofactor allows for many complicated reductive and oxidative reactions to occur within the cell. Being able to transfer one or two electrons at a time is advantageous when used for metabolic pathway. Many redox-active enzymes function via a ping-pong mechanism allowing for the reductive and the oxidative half-reactions to be studied separately to characterize the observed rate of electron transfer within the enzyme. This present work focuses on the kinetic and mechanistic characterization of two distinct types of flavoprotein, the cytosolic formate dehydrogenase (FdsDABG) from Cupriavidus necator and the NAD+-dependent NADPH:ferredoxin oxidoreductases NfnI and NfnII from Pyroccocus furiosus. Both types of systems are thought to have either been present in the last universal common ancestor (LUCA). The C. necator FdsDABG... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9486t79h Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Ortiz, Steve