bibtex undergraduate thesis

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Tips and tools for writing your LaTeX thesis or dissertation in Overleaf, including templates, managing references , and getting started guides.

Managing References

BibTeX is a file format used for lists of references for LaTeX documents. Many citation management tools support the ability to export and import lists of references in .bib format. Some reference management tools can generate BibTeX files of your library or folders for use in your LaTeX documents.

LaTeX on Wikibooks has a Bibliography Management page.

Find list of BibTeX styles available on Overleaf here

View a video tutorial on how to include a bibliography using BibTeX  here

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• Chat in real time with collaborators right within the project

How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX

Writing a thesis or dissertation in LaTeX can be challenging, but the end result is well worth it - nothing looks as good as a LaTeX-produced pdf, and for large documents it's a lot easier than fighting with formatting and cross-referencing in MS Word. Review this video from Overleaf to help you get started writing your thesis in LaTeX, using a standard thesis template from the Overleaf Gallery .

You can upload your own thesis template to the Overleaf Gallery if your university provides a set of LaTeX template files or you may find your university's thesis template already in the Overleaf Gallery.

This video assumes you've used LaTeX before and are familiar with the standard commands (see our other tutorial videos  if not), and focuses on how to work with a large project split over multiple files.

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5-part Guide on How to Write a Thesis in LaTeX

5-part LaTeX Thesis Writing Guide

Part 1: Basic Structure corresponding  video

Part 2: Page Layout corresponding  video

Part 3: Figures, Subfigures and Tables   corresponding video

Part 4: Bibliographies with Biblatex corresponding video

Part 5: Customizing Your Title Page and Abstract corresponding video

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Overleaf for Scholarly Writing & Publication: LaTeX Theses and Dissertations

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• LaTeX Theses and Dissertations

LaTeX Theses and Dissertatons

Tips and tools for writing your LaTeX thesis or dissertation in  Overleaf, including templates, managing references , and getting started guides.

Managing References

BibTeX  is a file format used for lists of references for  LaTeX  documents. Many citation management tools support the ability to export and import lists of references in .bib format. Some reference management tools can generate  BibTeX  files of your library or folders for use in your  LaTeX  documents.

LaTeX on Wikibooks   has a  Bibliography Management  page.

Find list of BibTeX styles available on Overleaf   here

View a video tutorial on how to include a bibliography using BibTeX  here

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Every project you create has a secret link. Just send it to your co-authors, and they can review, comment and edit. Overleaf synchronizes changes from all authors, so everyone always has the latest version. More advanced tools include protected projects and integration with Git.

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Getting Started with Your Thesis or Dissertation

How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX

Writing a thesis or dissertation in LaTeX can be challenging, but the end result is well worth it - nothing looks as good as a LaTeX-produced pdf, and for large documents it's a lot easier than fighting with formatting and cross-referencing in MS Word. Review this video from Overleaf to help you get started writing your thesis in LaTeX, using a standard thesis template from the  Overleaf Gallery .

You can  upload your own thesis template to the Overleaf Gallery   if your university provides a set of LaTeX template files or you may find your university's thesis template already in the Overleaf Gallery.

This video assumes you've used LaTeX before and are familiar with the standard commands (see our other  tutorial videos   if not), and focuses on how to work with a large project split over multiple files.

How to Write your Thesis/Dissertation in LaTeX: A Five-Part Guide

Five-Part LaTeX Thesis/Dissertation  Writing Guide

Part 1: Basic Structure   corresponding  video

Part 2: Page Layout   corresponding  video

Part 3: Figures, Subfigures and Tables   corresponding  video

Part 4: Bibliographies with Biblatex  corresponding  video

Part 5: Customizing Your Title Page and Abstract   corresponding  video

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Link yo ur  ORCiD  account  to your  Overleaf account  via the  ORCID @ CMU Portal

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Cite a Thesis in BIBTEX

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Avoid plagiarism — quickly check for missing citations and check for writing mistakes., is your source credible don’t forget to consider these factors., purpose : reason the source exists.

• Is the point of the information to inform, persuade, teach, or sell?
• Do the authors/publishers make their intentions clear?
• Does the information appear to be fact or opinion?
• Does the point of view seem impartial? Do they identify counter-arguments?

Authority - Author: Source of the information

• Who is the author? What are their credentials or qualifications?
• What makes the author qualified to write on this topic?
• Is there clearly defined contact information for the author?

Authority - Publisher: Source of the information

• Who is the publisher? Is it a non-profit, government agency, or organization? How might this affect their point of view?
• What makes the publisher qualified to generate works on this subject?
• What can the URL tell you about the publisher? For instance, .gov may signify that it is a government agency.

Relevance : Importance of the information to your topic

Currency : timeliness of the information.

• When was the information published? When was it last updated? Does it reflect the most current information available?
• How does your topic fit in with this source’s publication date? Do you need current information to make your point or do older sources work better?

Comprehensiveness

• Does the source present one or multiple viewpoints on your topic?
• Does the source present a large amount of information on the topic? Or is it short and focused?
• Are there any points you feel may have been left out, on purpose or accidentally, that affect its comprehensiveness?
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Guide to Writing Your Thesis in LaTeX

Step 3: verify that everything works.

Now that you have LaTeX, an appropriate editor, and the template files, we will now verify that you have a functioning setup. The way we will verify the setup is to have you generate the thesis from the example files included in the template.

You should not go any further in this guide until you confirm that your setup is correct.

Configure the editor to use pdfLaTeX

Throughout this guide, we will assume that you are using pdfLaTeX to generate your thesis. Some editors default to using LaTeX by default, so before continuing, make sure your editor is set to use pdfLaTeX.

Generating the Thesis

Perform the following steps to generate the pdf version of the example thesis.

• In your editor, open the file thesis.tex and run pdfLaTeX on it.
• Open the file chapter1.tex and run BibTeX on it.
• Open the file thesisbib.tex and run BibTeX on it.
• Select the file thesis.tex and run pdfLaTeX on it twice .
• View the pdf file thesis.pdf .

If the document generated using the unmodified template files looks like this this , you are done. Check the following list to make sure your generated thesis is correct.

• The document should contain exactly six pages.
• There should be no page numbers on the first three pages.
• The fourth page should be numbered iii.
• The fifth and sixth pages should be numbered 1 and 2 respectively.
• The list of references should appear at the end of Chapter 1 on the same page, and contain two entries.
• The two references at the end of the only sentence in chapter 1 should be [1, 2] and not [?, ?].
• The bibliography should be the last page of the thesis and contain three entries. It should also be listed in the table of contents as being page 2.

What is Going on

The first time you run pdfLaTeX, it generates .aux files which contain the information needed to create the bibliography and lists of references, as well as information needed to create the table of contents, list of figures, and list of tables. When you run BibTeX on chapter1.tex it uses the file chapter1.aux to generate the list of references for that chapter. When you run BibTeX on thesisbib.tex it uses the file thesisbib.aux to generate the bibliography. The next time you run pdfLaTeX, it will include the list of references and bibliography, but citations will not be resolved, and the table of contents will be incomplete. The final time you run pdfLaTeX, all references will be resolved and the table of contents will be correct.

BibTeX undergraduate thesis citation?

Robert W. Brewer

Uwe Waldmann

@MastersThesis{Doe:ANS95, type = "Undergraduate Honors Thesis",

school = s-PSU, address = s-PSU:adr, author = "John Doe", title = "Analysis of Neat Stuff using a Super Algorithm",

Robin Fairbairns

>Alternatively, I guess some way of using @misc might suffice, but >it seems hard to get the school and address to be listed >in that format.

Citation guides

All you need to know about citations

How to cite an undergraduate thesis in MLA

To cite an undergraduate thesis in a reference entry in MLA style 9th edition include the following elements:

• Author(s) name: Give the last name and name as presented in the source (e. g. Watson, John). For two authors, reverse only the first name, followed by ‘and’ and the second name in normal order (e. g. Watson, John, and John Watson). For three or more authors, list the first name followed by et al. (e. g. Watson, John, et al.)
• Thesis title: Titles are italicized when independent. If part of a larger source add quotation marks and do not italize.
• Year of publication: Give the year of publication as presented in the source.
• University: Give the name of the institution.
• Degree: Type of degree.

Here is the basic format for a reference list entry of an undergraduate thesis in MLA style 9th edition:

Author(s) name . Thesis title . Year of publication . University , Degree .

Take a look at our works cited examples that demonstrate the MLA style guidelines in action:

A bachelor thesis with two authors

Parekh, Pooja, and Vitalina Pishchenko . Factors Influencing the Choice of Bank – An International Student Perspective . 2013 . Dalarna U , Bachelor's thesis .

An undergraduate thesis with one author

Baslow, Wadim . The applicability of the Qualitative System Analysis as decision-making tool in public administration by the example of the municipality Ludwigsburg . 2015 . Leuphana U of Lüneburg , Undergraduate thesis .

This citation style guide is based on the MLA Handbook (9 th edition).

More useful guides

• MLA 8th ed. Style Guide: Dissertations, Theses
• MLA, 8th Edition: Master's Thesis or Project
• How do I cite a dissertation in MLA style?

More great BibGuru guides

• Harvard: how to cite a textbook book
• MLA: how to cite a translated book
• Harvard: how to cite an online magazine article

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Information Technology

LaTeX Your Thesis

General thesis tips, about the thesis template, changing headers, using and modifying sections, handling images and tables, landscape orientation, managing paragraph spacing, uploading the thesis template to overleaf, add a collaborator, managing your bibliography, choosing a bibliography style, how to cite a reed thesis, changing the title of your bibliography, fragment your thesis with \include, using labels and references, adding appendices, including full page pdfs.

• Additional Resources - LaTeX Cheat Sheet
• BACK UP YOUR THESIS. Often you will not realize for days or weeks that important paragraph or page is missing. Make recovery as easy as possible by keeping a dated backup of each writing session. Then copy those backups to at least two locations other than your hard drive: your home server, Gmail account, thumb drive, the options are wide and numerous. There is no excuse for not backing up the most important document of your Reed career.
• Start your bibliographic database the day you start reading. Keep it up to date and annotate it, so you know where it came from (library, Summit, ILL, public library, professor), whether you've read it, and where you want to cite it. This will make the writing process less frustrating and creating the bibliography seamless.
• Think of thesis formatting as a form of productive procrastination. Please don't put it off until the last week.
• BACK UP. No, seriously. It's not "if" your hard drive fails, it's "when." Not to scare you or anything, but it's a good habit, like buckling your seat belt or not leaving your laptop unattended. You really don't want to wish you had taken that small precaution.
• Keep the editable original of each graphic you want to include in your thesis in one folder. Later you may need to change a graphic quickly and having the editable original makes it easy. For graphs, keep the original Excel/JMP/Stata document, not a PDF. For photographs, keep a high resolution copy (such as a tiff). For drawings and illustrations, keep the original Illustrator document.
• Use the timesaving benefits of LaTeX from the first day. Cross references can refer to tables, graphics, and chapters so you do not have to update references as your thesis changes. Use comments to make notes about what needs to added or changed.
• Enjoy the experience! And get some sleep, food and relaxation on occasion. Hundreds of people did this before you; you can do this too.

The thesis template, available for download here , contains two main files of importance: Reedthesis.cls and Thesis.tex . (As you noticed, there are many other files in the folder. For more information about all the files LaTeX creates, see our article on the subject. ) Reedthesis.cls is a document class like article or book, and so must be defined in the preamble (see the section about document classes for more info ). Additionally, since the average installation (even Reed's) does not include Reedthesis.cls, you will have to bring the file wherever you want to work on your thesis.

The thesis template folder also contains bonus materials you may find helpful, such as an array of bibliography style files (.bst) that can support an undergraduate thesis citation and files already modified to work with a psychology major's specific needs. So make sure that you have the latest version of the thesis template and read through the thesis.tex file for more complete overview of the template's contents.

Common Queries

While the content of your thesis is certainly much more important than the appearance, a nicely typeset thesis will be more pleasant to look upon ten years from now. We have collected nearly every query for the last few years so you can make the changes you want and get back to revising your latest chapter. That typo on the first page will bug you even more than the headers once the thesis is bound and in the library. Most of these answers are links that lead to other pages in our LaTeX documentation because they fit well elsewhere and this page would be much too long if we decided to be redundant.

If you don't like how your headers appear, you can change them. That is, they are modifiable in LaTeX, but your adviser or the library might not like the change. But people change how they look all the time (usually to have the name of the chapter in small caps and without the title of the current \section), so the advanced LaTeX page has a few ways to go about tweaking the headers .

When using Reedthesis.cls, you will use \chapter{ optional title here } to denote the beginning of a new chapter (obviously) while \section{ title } and \subsection{ title } will subdivide those chapters. You do not need to use \subsection if you don't wish to, but \section will probably prove very useful to break up your chapters.

If you don't like the automatic numbering of \chapter, \section and \subsection, you can easily eliminate the numbering by adding an asterix to the command ( \chapter*{ title }, \section*{ title } , etc.), but then the section won't show up in the Table of Contents. To learn how to make sure these show up in the ToC, and to learn more about sectioning commands in general, check out the advanced LaTeX page .

In order to add an image in LaTeX, you must use the package graphicx and place the image ( \includegraphics{ imagename } ) inside the figure environment. Be sure to give a caption if necessary, but remember that LaTeX will add the "Figure x.x" to your caption on the typeset document. For more information on handling images, including the answers to our most common questions, see our graphics documentation . To make your life easier, I highly suggest that you read the section on using references and labels .

Like figures, tables also need to be in a float environment such as tabular or longtable . For an introduction to tables or to learn how to do more complex table formatting, see our documentation on tables . To learn how to change their position, numbering or presentation, the graphics documentation covers the same material. You may have to replace figure with table wherever appropriate, but the commands are basically the same. Feel free to stop by the CUS desk or try Google if you get lost!

When you have a table or figure that is too wide for your page, you will need to rotate your page to be in landscape rather than portrait orientation. To avoid rotating your headers and footers as well, use the package lscape (for more information on packages, see the advanced LaTeX section ) and enclose whatever needs to be rotated in the landscape environment:

\begin{landscape} \begin{figure}[htbp] \caption{A Really Wide Figure} \includegraphics{panoramicimage} \label{pan} \end{figure} \end{landscape}

This will keep the headers and page numbers in the portrait orientation, but rotate your figure or table as well as the appropriate caption. You do not want to use the package Portland ; this rotates the headers and footers as well, and the registrar will probably not accept such a setup.

The line breaking and spacing algorithms of LaTeX are not always successful. Sometimes the space between paragraphs is inconsistent from page to page, or even within the same page. If this happens to you, try ignoring it for a bit and continue to write your paper. Often the addition of a new subsection or just more words will be reorganized into a more pleasing arrangement.

But don't add unnecessary bulk to your thesis just to make it look good. Try putting this in the preamble: \setlength{\parskip}{0pt} . This sets the inter-paragraph spacing to 0 pts. You could also tell LaTeX that it can be more permissive when placing page breaks by putting \allowdisplaybreaks or \raggedbottom in the preamble. If none of these solutions work and you don't want to add more content to your finished chapter, bring your .tex file to the CUS desk and we shall see what we can do.

Using Overleaf

Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor that allows one to use LaTeX software without downloading or configuring. It has a variety of templates, but can also be used to make changes on our thesis template. 

• Download the LaTeX template .zip file from the Thesis Templates section at downloads.reed.edu
• Go to overleaf.com and create an account. We recommend using personal credentials so you don’t lose any data after graduation. Note: If you have a subscription through Reed you’ll have to use your Reed credentials instead

• Select template .zip file from your computer and click Upload  if prompted.
• Using the template is the same as with any LaTeX compiler  
• Thesis edits should be made to thesis.tex, and a live version can be viewed by clicking Recompile . You can also upload your own .bib file to your project instead of using the example prelim.bib .

You can add your adviser as a collaborator so they may leave comments on your work as you go. Without a subscription you can have a single collaborator, with a student subscription you can have up to 6. If you are interested in joining our pilot subscription program, inquire by emailing [email protected] .

• Open your project.

Bibliographies

Unless you are doing a creative writing thesis, you will read way too much for your thesis. As a result, your bibliography will be ridiculously long. Thankfully, there is this great program called BibTeX that will typeset your bibliography for you. For more general information on using BibTeX to create your bibliography, as well as choosing a bibliography format and using a bibliography manager, see our BibTeX documentation .

While it is possible to create a bibliography manually , and there are reasons to do so, your senior year will be made a bit easier if you take advantage of BibTeX's automation . We strongly suggest that you use an application such as JabRef or BibDesk , both of which have documentation on the BibTex page. 

The BibTeX page has the following advice for creating your bibliography in BibTeX, but I thought it was worth repeating here:

• Like with thesis formatting, the sooner you start compiling your bibliography for something as large as thesis, the better. Typing in source after source is mind-numbing enough; do you really want to do it for hours on end in late April? Think of it as procrastination.
• When you have more than one author or editor, you need to separate each author's name by the word and .
• The cite key (a citation's label) needs to be unique from the other entries.
• Bibliographies made using BibTeX (whether manually or using a manager) accept LaTeX markup, so you can italicize and add symbols as necessary.
• To force capitalization in an article title or where all lowercase is generally used, bracket the capital letter in curly braces.
• You can add a Reed Thesis citation option. In fact, your bibliography style (.bst) may already have the option. See the thesis template for more details.

If you know what bibliography style you need to be using (Chicago or MLA, for example), then you should check out the available bibliography styles on the page about BibTeX styles . If your discipline varies with regard to preferred bibliography style, ask your adviser which format or journal you should use, then check out the BibTeX style page for a Reed edition, or CTAN.org for most other styles. 

A normal bibliography style (.bst) has formats for a PhD thesis and a Master's thesis, but no preset format for an undergraduate thesis. In your .bib file, use the Phd. thesis entry type, and in the optional type field, enter "Reed thesis" or "Undergraduate thesis" and that will be displayed instead of "Phd.thesis".

The default bibliography title is just "Bibliography," but if you want to change this, LaTeX gives you an easy way to do so. Here is an example of a bibliography renamed to "Works Cited." Note the placement after the command \backmatter and before the commands that make the bibliography ( \bibliographystyle and \bibliography ).

\backmatter \renewcommand{\bibname}{ Works Cited } \bibliographystyle{plain} \bibliography{thesis}

Special Topics In Thesis: Tricks to Make Life Easier

Thesis may be scary, but putting it together doesn't have to be. A number of recent alumni answered a call for recommendations to the next crop of seniors; here are the computer related gems.

Your thesis is big, or at least it will be soon enough. Instead of typing everything into the thesis template, you can have separate files for each chapter and then include them in the thesis template. To learn more about using the commands \include and \input , see the appropriate section in the advanced LaTeX documentation.

If you've made a table or figure, you have probably noticed the command \label{default} . If you want to refer to that table or figure elsewhere in your document, you need only to write \ref{default} and your typeset document will replace that ref with the number of the item. But you can refer to more than just tables and figures with ease:

• For figures and tables, the label command should be inserted right after the \caption .
• For equations or lists, the label command should be within the environment as a whole.
• For chapters or sections, it will refer to the first preceding section title, whether it is a subsection, section, or chapter.
• If you want the page number of the reference, use the \pageref{ marker } command. If you want just the reference, use the \ref{ marker } command. For correct spacing, you may wish to precede the reference commands with a tilde (~) if you are using the reference in a sentence or text.
• You will need to typeset your document at least twice to see cross-references reflect any changes. You will know that you need to typeset again if you see question marks where there should be references.

To add an appendix to your thesis, find \appendix towards the end of your thesis template. Right after the \appendix , it should have another \chapter command, in which you can specify the name of your appendix. This is what the template has:

\appendix \chapter{The First Appendix} \chapter{The Second Appendix, For Fun}

You can either write directly in the template as if the appendix is just another chapter, or stick an external document in using \input (for .tex documents only, see the documentation on this ) or \includegraphics (for PDFs and other formats, see below). Your appendices will appear in the Table of Contents as Appendix A: Appendix Name (the second appendix will be Appendix B, and so on). The appendix itself will have both Appendix A and the appendix title on separate lines.

If you want to remove the "appendix" part of your appendix title or otherwise modify how that part of the title is displayed, remove \appendix from your thesis, thus making your appendices into normal chapters. You then need to keep the appendix from being numbered as "Chapter # ", so make the following modifications to your document:

Original: \appendix \chapter{The First Appendix} To make the appendix named Appendix: The First Appendix, change the above to: \chapter*{Appendix: The First Appendix} \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Appendix: The First Appendix} \chaptermark{Appendix} \markboth{Appendix}{Appendix}

The \chapter* creates an unnumbered chapter and \addcontentsline adds the chapter to the Table of Contents with the title you specify. The commands \chaptermark and \markboth handle the headers. For more on modifying chapter names, look at the documentation on sectioning . To learn more about changing headers, read the Headers In a Thesis section.

Music Majors: There are two LaTeX related routes to typesetting music, MusicTeX and LilyPond. However, past music seniors have struggled to incorporate the files from both programs into their theses. The official CUS recommendation is to use Finale to typeset your music, then export the sheet music to PDF. (See this page to learn how to create pdfs in a program such as Finale.) Using \includepdf (with the package PDFPages ) is a great way to add them. PDFPages is a powerful and flexible way to include multi-page PDF files in your LaTeX document. Example: \includepdf[pages=1-8 offset=15 -15,scale=.80, frame=true,pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}}]{Orlando.pdf}

Additional Resources

For a quick LaTeX Cheat Sheet, please visit https://www.stdout.org/~winston/latex/ .

Guide to BibTeX Type PhdThesis

BibTeX is a reference management tool that is commonly used in LaTeX documents. The “phdthesis” BibTeX type is used for PhD dissertations or theses. In this guide, we will explain the required and optional fields for the “phdthesis” BibTeX type.

Need a simple solution for managing your BibTeX entries? Explore CiteDrive!

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Required Fields

The “phdthesis” BibTeX type requires the following fields:

• author : The author of the thesis.
• title : The title of the thesis.
• school : The name of the institution that awarded the degree.
• year : The year the degree was awarded.

Optional Fields

In addition to the required fields, the “phdthesis” BibTeX type also has a number of optional fields that can be used to provide additional information. These fields include:

• type : The type of the thesis, such as “PhD thesis” or “Master’s thesis”.
• address : The location of the institution.
• month : The month the thesis was submitted.
• note : Any additional information about the thesis.

Here is an example of how to use the “phdthesis” BibTeX type:

In this example, the BibTeX entry defines a PhD thesis authored by John Smith titled “An Analysis of Example”. The degree was awarded in 2022 by the University of Example, and the thesis was submitted in June in Example City, CA. The type of the thesis is specified as “PhD thesis”, and a note is included that provides a URL for the thesis.

The Effect of Time Perception on Affect

Timing and time perception is essential to humans, whose lives and biology are organized around clocks. From the simple give-and-take of conversation to understanding cause and effect, individuals rely on accurate time perception to successfully complete tasks and organize their lives. However, accurate time perception is vulnerable to all manner of influence, from both internal and external sources, including affect. A robust body of literature suggests that negative affect is positively associated with time dilation, or subjective lengthening of time, whereas positive affect is positively associated with time constriction, or subjective shortening of time. Collectively, these are known as time distortion, which has been preliminarily linked to increased impairment in anxiety, depression, and BPD. However, this literature features two key limitations. First, researchers have mostly examined time perception as an objective measure, through the use of measures such as the temporal bisection tasks, which limits our understanding of the subjective experience of time distortion and how it may contribute to psychopathology. Second, across studies, time perception is most often studied as an outcome, rather than examining the role of time perception in predicting affective change, i.e., contextualizing the role of time distortion in clinically-relevant research questions. The current project aimed to address these gaps in the literature through two studies which examined (1) the roles of brief affect and time perception manipulations on affective change and subjective time perception in an online study (Study 1) and (2) the effect of a longer time perception manipulation on affective change during an in-person experimental protocol (Study 2).

Across studies, participants included a community-based sample of U.S. adults over age 18 and two separate undergraduate samples recruited from introductory psychology courses at Purdue University. In Study 1, the final sample size exceeded 750 and was comprised of community-based and undergraduate participants. Online participants reported on dispositional levels of clinical measures [e.g., rumination, borderline personality disorder (BPD) features] and then completed an experimental protocol with brief mood and time perception manipulations while repeatedly reporting on their negative affect. Results suggested that the time perception manipulation was not effective, but that across the protocol, negative affect rose and positive affect decreased. Further, participants reported overall that time seemed to be passing by slower than usual during the protocol. These findings informed the design of Study 2, which lengthened the time perception manipulation and eliminated the mood induction component in order to address the more basic question of whether time perception manipulation influences mood, particularly during neutral cognitive tasks.

One hundred and twenty-seven undergraduate participants completed Study 2. As in Study 1, participants filled out self-report surveys about dispositional symptoms of psychopathology (e.g., rumination, emotion dysregulation, and symptoms associated with BPD, depression, and anxiety) before completing an experimental protocol which included a manipulated clock (accelerated or control clock), three runs of a modified Erkisen flanker task, and repeated measures of negative and positive affect. Primary results suggested that the time perception manipulation was successful but that the influence of time distortion was more nuanced than hypothesized. Specifically, individuals with elevated clinical symptoms exhibited lower rating of negative and positive affect levels in the accelerated clock condition, compared to individuals endorsing low symptoms, who reported higher positive affect and higher negative affect in the accelerated clock condition.

Altogether, the results across studies highlight the complexity of time perception in influencing affect and help provide foundational information regarding the empirical convergence between cognitive and clinical phenomena.

Degree Type

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Psychological Sciences

Campus location

• West Lafayette

Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair

Additional committee member 2, additional committee member 3, additional committee member 4, usage metrics.

• Clinical psychology

Extensible Rule Language for Query Optimizer

Sicheng pan, eecs department, university of california, berkeley, technical report no. ucb/eecs-2024-140, may 21, 2024, http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/techrpts/2024/eecs-2024-140.pdf.

A query optimizer searches for an efficient query plan within the space of its alternatives using a search algorithm. The scope of the search space used to be defined as part of the search algorithm, but the need to incorporate new optimization techniques constantly reshapes the search space, and this brings development challenges to correctly maintain the search algorithm while supporting the new optimization techniques.

The extensible query optimizer architecture is proposed to address this challenge by isolating the definition of search space from the search algorithm. Within this architecture, developers implement independent rewrite rules that describe equivalence relations among query plans, and the search space for the query optimizer is implicitly defined by the transitive closure of these equivalence relations. An extensible query optimizer explores the search space by repeatedly applying the rewrite rules it knows. To support a new optimization technique, developers only need to implement the corresponding rewrite rule for the query optimizer, without worrying about any changes to the search algorithm. This architecture is widely adopted in the designs of modern data pipelines because it simplifies the process of extending a query optimizer with new optimization techniques. However, the growth in the complexity of rewrite rules continues to bring development challenges in terms of implementation correctness and cost.

In this paper, we present RuleScript, a domain-specific language designed for expressing rewrite rules in an extensible query optimizer. Rules expressed in RuleScript are automatically verified for correctness, and they can be used to generate implementations of rewrite rules to be invoked by extensible query optimizers. Moreover, RuleScript can be extended to support custom symbols in rewrite rules, which are defined by users to represent query plan components specific to the backend query engine.

We have implemented a prototype of RuleScript in Java, and performed case studies with this implementation. We have verified rewrites rules in Apache Calcite and generated implementations that can be plugged into Apache Calcite codebase to illustrate the usability of our design.

Advisors: Alvin Cheung

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Mossavar-rahmani center announces 2024 dunlop undergraduate thesis prize winner.

Aden Barton.

Courtesy Aden Barton

The Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government announced Aden Barton as the 2024 winner of the John T. Dunlop Undergraduate Thesis Prize in Business and Government.

Barton won for his thesis, “The Causal Effect of Welfare Retrenchment: Evidence from Medicaid and SNAP.” He is graduating from Harvard College this week with an A.B. in economics.

The John T. Dunlop Thesis Prize in Business and Government is awarded to graduating seniors who write the best thesis on a challenging public policy issue at the interface of business and government. The prize carries a $2,000 award.

This year’s winning thesis by Barton examines the ongoing Medicaid Unwinding, in which millions have been removed from public insurance based on a state’s caseload prioritization. He finds that disenrollment increases the likelihood of being on private insurance and of being uninsured, and reduces the likelihood of enrollees and disenrollees working in the last week by about 5 percentage points, as individuals likely reduced their labor supply to maintain eligibility. His findings also indicate an increased household financial strain, most conclusively by greatly raising the likelihood individuals delay medical treatment.

In explaining why the center chose to award the John Dunlop Prize to Barton, John A. Haigh, co-director of M-RCBG, said that “Aden’s thesis was impressive in its conception and execution. It represents the type of excellent analysis and policy recommendations at the intersection of business and government that we value so highly here at the center.”

John T. Dunlop, the Lamont University Professor Emeritus, was a widely respected labor economist who served as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1969 to 1973. An adviser to many U.S. presidents, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dunlop was secretary of labor under Gerald Ford, serving from March 1975 to January 1976. In addition to serving as secretary of labor, Dunlop held many other government posts, including: director of the Cost of Living Council, (1973-74), chairman of the Construction Industry Stabilization Committee (1993-95), chair of the Massachusetts Joint Labor-Management Committee for Municipal Police and Firefighters (1977-2003) and Chair of the Commission on Migratory Farm Labor (1984-2003). Dunlop served as the second director of the Center for Business and Government from 1987 to1991. The Center, renamed in 2005 as the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, focuses on policy issues at the intersection of business and government. Dunlop died in 2003.

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