Ucla Control Systems Example and Solution

UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Psychological Warfare: Jehovah's Witnesses and The African American Experience

This study explores the psychological warfare Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) engage to recruit African Americans as some studies cite membership as high as 52 percent of JWs U.S. membership demographics. Despite succeeding in recruiting more than their "fair share" of African Americans, there has been little research to account for their success. I posit that JWs' precise understanding and acknowledgment of the African American plight made the organization especially attractive to Black Americans. Utilizing discourse analyses of JWs' literature 1879 through 2014, I offer three emerging themes that reveal JW's outreach strategies. 1. A hope offering Black people a racial paradise 2. A strategy corroborating African Americans' reality of racial oppression and 3. Providing favorable coverage and representation among the Black community.

Multiscale Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of Thermal and Plasma Atomic Layer Deposition: Application to Chamber Design and Process Control

• Zhang, Yichi
• et al.

Facilitated by the increasing importance and demand of semiconductors for the smartphoneand even the automobile industry, thermal atomic layer deposition (ALD) has gained tremendous industrial interest as it offers a way to efficiently deposit thin-films with ultra-high conformity. It is chosen largely due to its superior ability to deliver ultra-conformal dielectric thin-films with high aspect-ratio surface structures, which are encountered more and more often in the novel design of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) in the NAND (Not-And)-type flash memory devices. Based on the traditional thermal ALD method, the plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) allows for lower operating temperature and speeds up the deposition process with the involvement of plasma species. Despite the popularity of these two methods, the development of their operation policies remains a complicated and expensive task, which motivates the construction of an accurate and comprehensive simulation model.

A series of studies have been carried out to elucidate the mechanisms and the conceptof the PEALD process. In particular, process characterization focuses on the development of a first-principles-based three-dimensional, multiscale computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, together with reactor geometry optimizations, of SiO2 thinfilm thermal atomic layer deposition (ALD) using bis(tertiary-butylamino)silane (BTBAS) and ozone as precursors. Also, a comprehensive multiscale computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model incorporating the plasma generation chamber is used in the deposition of HfO2 thin-films utilizing tetrakis(dimethylamido) hafnium (TDMAHf) and O2 plasma as precursors.

Despite the great deal of research effort, ALD and PEALD processes have not been fullycharacterized from the view point of process control. This study aims to use previously developed multiscale CFD simulation model to design and evaluate an optimized control scheme to deal with industrially-relevant disturbances. Specifically, an integrated control scheme using a proportional-integral (PI) controller and a run-to-run (R2R) controller is proposed and evaluated to ensure the deposition of high-quality conformal thin-films. The ALD and PEALD processes under typical disturbances are simulated using the multiscale CFD model, and the integrated controllers are applied in the process domain. Using the controller parameters determined from the open-loop results, the developed integrated PI-R2R controller successfully mitigates the disturbances in the reactor with the combined effort of both controllers.

Worthless

• Li, Elliona
• et al.

Worthless is an opera about a person's internal quest on self-discovery. It takes the main character Paidion through different time periods to confront the sources of her fears – her parents, and ultimately makes her contemplate on her upbringing. This piece was written to bring awareness of mental health issues and how childhood traumas can affect one's personalities and life choices. It is also centered around the dual natures on human-beings and the world around us.

Experimental Investigation of Room Temperature Liquid Metal Dynamic Behavior

• McGuan, Ryan
• et al.

This dissertation consists of a focused study of the low melting point liquid metal known commercially as Galinstan. This metal is notable for being readily liquid at room temperature, being non-toxic, and forming a peculiar oxide layer that is confined to the surface of the liquid. This study consists of four parts. The first is a literature review of the field of flexible and stretchable electronics. The purpose of this review is to assess the state of the field and to make the case for the value of Galinstan as a primary conducting element in the manufacture of these devices. With this case made, the remaining three parts can be sorted into two overarching concepts: experiments designed to produce data relevant to the drop on demand printing of flexible electronics, and to the study of fundamental fluid mechanics phenomenon, often overlapping throughout.

The first study involves the use of tensiometry to measure the effective surface tension, as well as explore the wetting behavior of the liquid metal on glass. For measuring the surface tension, we developed a novel technique that combines principles of both the Wilhelmy plate method, but with a rod modification, with the Du No�y ring method. After measuring the surface tension, we studied the wetting behavior of the metal, namely the dynamic contact angle and found the advancing contact angle (θ??), receding contact angle (θ??), and the contact angle hysteresis θ??−θ??.

Next, we performed droplet impact experiments of liquid metal on glass substrate. Utilizing the wetting information from the tensiometry experiments, we were able to develop a novel model for impact driven spreading of liquid metal on glass for Weber numbers ranging from 10 to 205. This model shows new scaling behavior as compared to other droplet impact models and we compare and contrast these models of impact. This model is also predictive and would serve to modulate voxel size in additive manufacturing operations with Galinstan.

The final set of experiments were of partially coalescing liquid metal droplets in 1 M NaOH. These droplets were observed to bounce on the liquid metal interface and reach different heights as they coalesced into smaller and smaller droplets. We developed a first order model based on the Stokes approximation for droplets in a viscous fluid which we refined with a improved numerical model which was more valid for the range of Reynolds numbers tested.

Efficiency and Fairness in the Allocation of Indivisible Goods

• Ikudo, Akina
• et al.

This dissertation studies the efficient and fair allocation of indivisible goods without monetary transfer. It is a collection of three papers and uses school-choice programs as a motivating example. I provide theoretical results that can guide the design of new allocation systems as well as tools that can be used to enhance existing systems.

In Chapter 1, I analyze how information disclosure affects social welfare using a stylized model. In my model, the utility of agents consists of a vertical "quality" component and a horizontal "idiosyncratic taste" component. The exact qualities of the objects are unknown to the agents, and the social planner seeks an information-disclosure policy that will maximize the total utility. The results show that (1) the optimal disclosure policy hides small differences in quality and reveals large differences in quality, (2) more information is disclosed when the valuations of the quality are heterogeneous, and (3) the Immediate Acceptance mechanism is more conducive for information disclosure than the Deferred Acceptance mechanism.

In Chapter 2, I study the collocation of groups of students in school-choice programs. In particular, I examine when and how stochastic assignment matrices can be decomposed into lotteries over deterministic assignments subject to collocation constraints. I first show that---regardless of the number of pairs of twins in the student body---twin collocation can be maintained in a decomposition if one extra seat can be added to each school. I then propose a decomposition algorithm based on Column Generation that can incorporate a wide variety of constraints including collocation constraints.

In Chapter 3, I propose a new notion of fairness that combines the concept of rank values and the maximin principle. An assignment is rank-egalitarian undominated (REU) if there is no other assignment that is equally or more egalitarian for any set of rank values. I show that each REU assignment can be generated as a solution to a linear programming problem that maximizes the weighted sum of expected rank values of the worst-off agents. I also provide an algorithm that generates special subsets of REU assignments that are practically important.

Cardiomyocyte Regeneration and the Potential Role of Neonatal Systemic Factors

• Nguyen, Ngoc
• et al.

There are tremendous health and financial burdens attributed to cardiovascular disease. The most common type, known as ischemic heart disease, is due to plaque buildup within the coronary arteries that supply the myocardium with oxygen and nutrients. Reduction or blockage of blood flow can lead to irreversible loss of cardiomyocytes, the main building blocks of the heart, with estimates placing that loss to upward of a billion cells. Despite medical therapy, the majority of patients eventually progress to heart failure, in which the main challenge for the development of therapeutic strategies is the limited regenerative ability of the adult mammalian heart. Our dissertation takes a multi-faceted approach in understanding cardiac regeneration and exploring whether neonatal systemic factors could be the gateway to a new therapy for ischemic heart disease. We report the development of a multi-colored mouse reporter system that enables deeper understanding of the cellular mechanisms driving early cardiac tissue formation. We apply a bioengineering approach to develop biodegradable and biocompatible nanoparticles as a new tool for clonal expansion analysis of cardiac cells. And lastly, we examined the proteomic profile of neonatal plasma in order to identify potential "pro-youthful" factors that may prevent irreversible myocardial damage. We hope that our body of work pushes forward the field of cardiac regeneration and sets the stage for the development of therapeutic interventions to prevent the progression to heart failure after an acute myocardial infarction.

Living in the Shadow of Deportation: How Immigration Enforcement Maintains Latinx Commitment to Progressive Politics

• Roman, Marcel
• et al.

Across a number of politically relevant domains, Latinx immigrants and their co-ethnics hold progressive attitudes and preferences relative to Anglo whites despite countervailing pressure to assimilate to Anglo political standards. This dissertation includes three papers that explain the puzzle of relative political progressivism among Latinxs by highlighting the role of an increasingly threatening interior immigration enforcement context after the implementation of Clinton-era immigration restrictions. I posit many Latinx immigrants and their co-ethnics experience a \textit{generalized sense of illegality}, that is, a palpable fear of deportability. I theorize a generalized sense of illegality is motivated by 1) the increasing societal integration of undocumented immigrants, 2) an increasingly restrictive immigration enforcement context, and 3) the development of an ethnicized illegality attached to Latinx ethnic group members. I then demonstrate a sense of illegality maintains Latinx progressivism despite countervailing conservative forces. Chapter 1 demonstrates perceptibly threatening immigration enforcement contexts undercut well-established patterns of attitudinal convergence with Anglo whites on immigration policy preferences. Chapter 2 forwards a Dynamic Theory of Threat Solution Ownership to explain how the threat of deportation motivates support for Democratic candidates among Latinxs and partisan defection among Republican Latinxs specifically. Chapter 3 offers a theoretical framework to understand how the threat of deportation may motivate pro-Black political attitudes among non-Black Latinxs despite the perceptible lack of commonality in exposure to immigration enforcement.

A Data-Driven Framework for Regional Assessment of Seismically Vulnerable Buildings

• Chen, Peng-Yu
• et al.

The urban region's seismic resilience is being actively studied in recent years as a measure for risk mitigation, where the identification of seismically vulnerable buildings and the assessment of their performance play indispensable roles. However, it is a labor-intensive and computationally expensive task to evaluate tens of thousands of buildings in a region because the identification requires professional judgment at a site and the seismic assessment demands comprehensive modeling depending on structure-specific data. Nevertheless, it is feasible with the aid of advanced development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and computer technology. In this study, a data-driven framework including two pipelines that focus on soft-story buildings and non-ductile reinforced concrete frames is proposed.

The first pipeline focuses on identifying soft-story buildings in the city of Santa Monica (California) through 3D point clouds and convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Although prior studies showed promising results in detecting soft-story buildings based on well-selected street-view images, false predictions are common when it is applied to real-world data. To address this issue, the pipeline implements point-cloud data where spatial information is available to segment building points and extract density features for training deep learning models and identifying soft-story buildings. The transfer learning (TL) technique is adopted to avoid overfitting in deep neural networks, and the parameters within the pipeline are investigated for optimal performance. The results illustrate the potential applicability of the pipeline for developing pre-and post-event countermeasures.

The second pipeline focuses on another seismically vulnerable building, namely, the non-ductile reinforced concrete building (NDRCB). Prior studies indicated around 1,500 NDRCBs in Los Angeles that are urgently waiting for detailed assessment and mandatory retrofit or demolition if necessary. Because the fulfillment of these ordinances will last for decades, the potential risk of major losses will persist. To this end, an automatic method that harvests building information from IoT and imagery data generates archetypal models, conducts probabilistic seismic assessment, and estimates the losses for NDRCB frames is hence developed. The accuracy of the data harvesting module using deep CNNs is validated with the existing inventory data. The archetypal frames are developed based on the era-specific representative code and are validated through nonlinear static and nonlinear dynamic analyses of previously investigated NDRCBs. State-of-the-practice loss estimation methodologies including HAZUS and FEMA P-58 are adopted in the pipeline for constructing damage fragility functions and corresponding losses. The regional application focuses on intensity-based assessment for thousands of individual buildings instead of a scenario-based assessment. The outcomes of expected losses and repair/reconstruction time emphasize the vulnerability of NDRCBs in Los Angeles, and the presented pipeline is believed to bridge the gaps between property owners, engineers, and decision-makers.

This research demonstrates how advanced data mining techniques and data-driven approaches can aid to solve civil engineering problems. While the framework currently focuses on soft-story and non-ductile frame buildings, it is expected to be extended in-depth and breadth in the future. That is, more detailed models and other seismically vulnerable infrastructures can be included.

Characterizing Gray Matter Atrophy and Preservation in Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis

• Meyer, Cassandra
• et al.

Gray matter (GM) atrophy is considered one of the best predictors of disability accumulation in multiple sclerosis (MS) yet the mechanisms underlying its progression are poorly understood. Currently, there are no directly neuroprotective therapies in MS that can halt the progression of GM atrophy. While GM atrophy has been established in the most commonly used mouse model for MS, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), there is a lack of studies directly investigating associated pathologies of GM atrophy and methods of sparing GM volume. The projects in this dissertation were designed with the goal of characterizing changes in GM volume and associated pathology. In the second chapter, I investigated baseline sex differences in the C57BL/6 mouse brain. This was an important step in establishing the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to identify differences in GM volume. Moreover, it highlighted the importance of performing experimental analyses within sex as we determined that differences exist in the brain in healthy mice. In the third chapter, I sought to utilize VBM to localize atrophy in vivo in a chronic mouse model of EAE and to identify the spatial relationship between downstream axonal damage in the spinal cord and gray matter loss. I found substantial GM volume loss throughout the brain particularly within the cortex, caudoputamen, and thalamus during EAE. Further, I found axonal damage in the spinal cord was negatively correlated to GM volume in motor and sensorimotor regions of the cerebral cortex. In the fourth chapter, I describe a network of pathology associated with GM atrophy that is disrupted by estriol treatment. I further identified ligation of ERbeta as method of inducing remyelination in GM. Lastly, in chapter five, I used VBM to identify sex differences in GM atrophy during EAE. Using voxel-wise regression analysis I found a sex-specific relationship between disability and GM atrophy in the somatosensory cortex in males. I further found evidence of increased neuronal loss and increased axonal transection in males with EAE compared to their healthy controls than females with EAE compared to their healthy controls. Localizing atrophy and related pathology will allow for us to investigate the molecular underpinnings of GM volume loss and potentially lead to the development of better neuroprotective therapies for patients with MS

Ultrasound and Fungi Mediated Degradation of Model Emerging Contaminants: Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances & Nitrotriazolone

• Kalra, Shashank Singh
• et al.

Water resources are increasingly being impacted by chemicals of emerging concern like per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) and nitrotriazolone (NTO). PFASs can be found in virtually all consumer and industrial applications that require non-stick or fire-resistant properties. Use of aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) containing PFASs at the fire training sites and munition constituents like NTO at the munition testing ranges can also introduce these chemicals into the environment. Munition constituents and PFASs are also expected to co-occur on military training sites due to the use of AFFF for extinguishing fires caused by munitions use and firefighting training. Physicochemical treatment strategies may be needed for quick degradation of more recalcitrant chemicals, like PFASs, while biological treatment strategies, being less cost- and energy-intensive, may be more suited for the treatment of large dilute plumes of groundwater and soil at impacted sites. Nevertheless, there is a critical need to develop effective biological as well as abiotic technologies for the degradation of these contaminant classes in various environmental settings. This research investigated the application of ultrasound for the destruction of PFASs as an example of abiotic treatment technology whereas ligninolytic fungi and fungal enzymes were considered representative agents for biodegradation of NTO.Firstly, a comprehensive review of the treatment of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) by current wastewater treatment plants was conducted by estimating their detection in treated effluents and surface runoffs throughout the world with respect to water recycling and reuse. This work also discussed the advantages of various destructive technologies for the treatment of PFASs as the current treatment plants were found to be ineffective in PFAS removal. The sorption of PFASs was found to be the determining factor of their fate and transport in the natural environment as well as wastewater treatment plants. A review of current analytical methods for the detection of PFAS along with PFAS toxicity studies was also presented. Secondly, the treatment of PFASs by high-frequency ultrasound using a custom-built bench-scale reactor was investigated in various matrices and mixtures, including aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF), Investigation derived waste (IDW), and groundwater. Important parameters for designing and operating an ultrasonic reactor for the degradation of PFASs were discussed. The study revealed that salts and surfactants affect the air-water partitioning coefficients of PFASs and their availability at the ultrasonic cavities, thereby affecting the degradation rates. Near-stoichiometric defluorination of hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA or GenX) and 6:2 fluorotelomer sulfonamidoalkyl betaine (6:2 FTAB) by ultrasound was demonstrated in laboratory studies. The degradation of PFASs was found to generally follow pseudo-first-order kinetics with degradation rates of sulfonates and short-chain PFASs being lower than those of carboxylates and long-chain PFASs in deionized (DI) water. However, the rates were 30% to 60% higher in groundwater with low total dissolved solids (TDS) than in deionized water, while the rates were generally repressed in the high TDS groundwater. 33 PFASs were degraded by ultrasound in AFFF spiked deionized water and the degradation rates of sulfonates were 40% to 60% higher compared to the 24Mix spiked DI water. The treatment of concentrated, high-TDS IDW resulted in significant mineralization of 41 PFASs, consuming 3 kWh.g-1 - 76 kWh.g-1. Biological-sonolysis and electrochemical-sonolysis treatment trains are also discussed. Thirdly, the learnings of the lab-scale study on the destruction of PFASs by ultrasound were leveraged for designing a field-scale reactor and testing it for the treatment of AFFF impacted groundwater. The ultrasonic treatment of high salinity groundwater demonstrated successful degradation of 15 PFASs (>90%) and 11 PFAS precursors, with 11 PFASs and 7 TOPs degraded to < 70 ng.L-1. No disinfection byproducts or short-chain intermediates were detected during 8 h ultrasonic treatment in all six tested conditions. The energy consumed during 8 h of sonication was 28.01 � 0.47 kWh. The EEO estimated was 599.51 � 52.54 kWh.m-3.order-1 , 797.25 � 42.16 kWh.m-3.order-1, and 699.43 � 3.30 kWh.m-3.order-1 for the treatment of 54 L, 33 L , and 22 L groundwater, respectively. Fourthly, packaging of Trametes versicolor derived laccase enzyme in vault nanoparticles was performed to investigate the applicability of vault-packaged laccase in bioremediation. Three isozymes were expressed by T. versicolor in the Tisma medium out of the five identified isozymes. The activity of the packaged enzyme was retained by using a long Glycine-Serine linker between laccase and INT peptide, along with the addition of 500 �M CuCl2 in the Spodoptera frugiperda (Sf9) insect cell culture expressing the fusion protein. The vault-packaged enzyme (VMLDGI) successfully catalyzed the transformation of 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS), guaiacol, catechol, 1-naphthol, and 2,6- dichlorohydroquinone. VMLDGI also removed 60% NTO at 5 U.L-1 laccase activity in presence of 1-Hydroxybenzotriazole (HBT). In contrast, the degradation of NTO by unpackaged laccase at the same activity was insignificant. Finally, biotransformation of NTO by ligninolytic fungi, T. versicolor and Phanerochaete chrysosporium, and their extracellularly secreted enzymes, laccase and manganese peroxidase (MnP), was investigated with implications on stormwater biofilter design. Both fungi demonstrated at least 85% removal of NTO within 96 h in batch reactors. About 40% NTO removal by P. chrysosporium was due to biosorption while T. versicolor demonstrated no biosorption of NTO. MnP demonstrated no removal of NTO while the laccase + HBT system was able to degrade 90% NTO in 48 h. This implies that only a subset of environmental fungi and their enzymes are capable of biodegrading munition constituents such as NTO. This research will be important for further developing the ultrasonic treatment technology for industrial applicability in the treatment of various chemicals, including PFASs. This work is also valuable for further developing the technology of ligninolytic fungi-mediated biodegradation of munition constituents and other emerging environmental contaminants.

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University of California, Los Angeles
Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA  90095
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martinjbrennan@library.ucla.edu

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