VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Unpopular Choices: A Cautionary Tale for the Future of Venezuela
Keywords:  Center for Latin American Studies
Stanford Center for Latin American Studies
Latin America
Venezuela
democracy
political institutions
armed forces
policy making process
Pact of Punto Fijo
Thesis

After the death of Hugo Chavez and the rise of his handpicked successor Nicolas Maduro, Venezuelan began a rapid descent towards authoritarianism. However, the conditions that gave way to this chaos trace their roots beyond that of Chavismo and modern Venezuelan socialism. In 1958, political leaders with visions of democracy and liberal ideals united to oust a military dictator that ruled for the past decade. Together, they crafted a power sharing agreement in the Pact of Punto Fijo to ensure alternation of power among political parties and to curtail divisions on ideological issues. The pact survived for nearly five decades and weathered numerous coup attempts and a large Marxist insurgency. However, structural changes in the political institutions eventually weakened the pact and created the conditions for the rise of populism. All signs of democracy have evaporated since the Pact of Punto Fijo was signed sixty years ago. Now, opposition parties to President Maduro are fracturing and the Venezuelan armed forces remain closely tied to Maduro. However, with history as their guide, this paper argues that the opposition leaders should maintain strong coordination among themselves and identify moderates within the armed forces that will be essential when the transformation back to democracy begins. It will review the historical process which brought about democracy in the mid-twentieth century. It will subsequently review the structural transformation of the political institutions and how it created the conditions for the breakdown of democracy. It will conclude with a contemporary assessment of the current political situation and put forth an unpopular recommendation.
Unruly Proxies: Why States Sponsor Non-State Actors That Threaten Their Interests
Keywords:  Center for International Security and Cooperation
Stanford University
Center for International Security and Cooperation
CISAC
terrorism
proxies
sponsorship
Middle East
terror financing
Kashmir
Fatah
al-Qaeda
Saudi Arabia
Pakistan
Syria
Israel
Thesis

Authoritarian regimes in Muslim-majority countries sometimes fund proxy groups at a significant cost to their own stability. States can lose control of the proxy groups they support, or a state’s policy decisions can drive a wedge between the sponsor and the proxy, pitting them against one another. Frequently, and sometimes disastrously, proxy groups “bite the hand that feeds them” and turn on their sponsors. In some cases, the state continues to support a proxy group after the group has defected on its sponsor. These puzzling relationships prompt a question previously unexplored in the literature: Why do states support proxy groups that threaten their interests? In this thesis, I use process-tracing to analyze several case studies involving state support of a proxy that has defected on its sponsor. Ultimately, I conclude that states support non-state actors that threaten their interests when three conditions are present: the relationship between the state and the proxy group is public, the proxy is popular with key domestic coalitions and the general public, and the group is strong enough to retaliate against the state. My research sheds new light on the role of domestic politics in state sponsorship of terrorism.
Unsupervised learning for residential energy consumption analytics
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

Developing strategies to encourage reduction in households energy consumption requires utilities to categorize, predict and modify consumers electricity usage. Unfortunately, a typical consumer exhibits wide variation in daily 24-hour electricity usage patterns. Traditional clustering methods have resulted in many hundreds of clusters, with a given consumer often associated with several clusters, making it difficult to classify consumers into stable representative groups and to predict individual electricity usage patterns. This dissertation presents two methods that better cluster consumer electricity usage pattern. The first method uses Dynamic time warping (DTW), which seeks an optimal alignment between electricity usage patterns. The second method assumes that electricity usage composes of a sequence of blocks generated from electrical devices. The clustering uses a novel block factorization model that embeds consumer usage pattern into a low dimensional space that flexibly captures time shifts of usage. Compared to commonly used clustering algorithm, both methods result in a more distinct set of clusters, and on average, a given consumer associates with a fewer clusters. The ideas and results from clustering is then used for individual electricity usage prediction. Prediction is done at two levels. The first level is day-to-day prediction where the shape of next day electricity usage pattern is predicted by cluster representatives from DTW. The second level is finer grain prediction based on block idea where load curve is predicted through block sequences. Predictions at both levels result in lower prediction error compared to some popular load forecasting techniques.
U.S.-China Cybersecurity Relations 2011-2017: Analyzing differences of approaches and stability
Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Stanford Global Studies
East Asian Studies
cyber security
China
United States
Thesis

This thesis examines the development of cybersecurity approaches of both the U.S. and Chinese governments and their stability in cyberspace between 2011-2017. This thesis argues that deterrence postures of U.S. and China has been affected by each other’s behaviors during major events in recent years and that certain level of stability exists albeit some risk of misperception.
USING AMBIENT MULTIPLE CHAPTER NARRATIVES TO MOTIVATE FITNESS BEHAVIOR CHANGE OVER TIME
Keywords:  Symbolic Systems Program
behavior change
narrative persuasion
ambient display
Thesis

Persuasive technologies have been proposed to address global health issues caused by lack of physical activity and the growing rate of sedentary lifestyles. However, existing systems are not effective in sustaining behavior change over time. To motivate behavior change toward healthier lifestyles, we have designed and developed WhoIsZuki, a mobile app which visualizes physical activities and goals as components of a multiple chapter graphic narrative that resides on an ambient display of users’ phones. Three formative studies including two survey studies and two rounds of one-on-one interviews have been conducted to inform project ideas, design of the system, and to improve narrative engagement and comprehension. A 3-week field trial is ongoing in which 16 participants use different designs of the system and report feedback about its ambient narratives and interface. The result of this 3-week field trial will inform the design of a 12-week field trial as well as provide broadly applicable design guidelines and implications for persuasive technologies that aim to motivate and sustain behavior change over time.
Variations in the oxygen fugacity of the Upper Mantle
Keywords: Geological and Environmental Sciences.

Life thrives on our planet today because of the oxygen fugacity of the Earth's interior. Volcanic degassing of relatively oxidized C-O-H-S species helps sustain the oxygen-rich atmosphere that we breathe, while convection of reduced liquid Fe-Ni metal in the outer core generates the magnetic field that protects our planet from harmful radiation. On and within our planet alone, oxygen fugacity varies by over fifteen orders of magnitude, yet sub-log unit changes can have drastic effects on mineralogy, volatile speciation, and melting behavior within the Earth's mantle. In this thesis, I investigate the oxygen fugacity of upper mantle rocks (peridotites) dredged from the seafloor at convergent plate boundaries (subduction zones) and divergent plate boundaries (mid-ocean ridges). The first part of my thesis focuses on methodology—updating and refining the existing technique for determining oxygen fugacity in peridotites and demonstrating that this technique is applicable to even highly altered seafloor samples. In the remainder of the thesis, I present analyses of seafloor peridotites, primarily from the Tonga subduction zone in the South Pacific and the Southwest Indian Ridge in the southern Indian Ocean. My datasets are unique in that they document the oxygen fugacity of these geographic locations with unprecedented spatial density, allowing me to interrogate variability that was previously obscured by sparse global sampling. I show that the mantle beneath subduction zones gains its uniquely oxidized signature upon interaction with subduction-related melts and fluids. I additionally demonstrate that once changes related to a peridotite's thermal history are taken into account, mid-ocean ridge peridotites imply an average upper mantle oxygen fugacity consistent with that implied by mid-ocean ridge basaltic magmas. Finally, I show previously undocumented heterogeneity in the range of oxygen fugacity recorded by seafloor peridotites, indicating a vast complexity to the behavior of oxygen within our planet's interior.
Viral Taxonomy Derived From Evolutionary Genome Relationships
Keywords:  Department of Physics
Virus Taxonomy
Thesis

We describe a new genome alignment-based model for classification of viruses based on evolutionary genetic relationships. This approach uses information theory and a physical model to determine the information shared by the genes in two genomes. Pairwise comparisons of genes from the viruses are created from alignments using NCBI BLAST, and their match scores are combined to produce a metric between genomes, which is in turn used to determine a global classification using the 5,817 viruses on RefSeq. In cases where there is no measurable alignment between any genes, the method falls back to a coarser measure of genome relationship: the mutual information of k-mer frequency. This results in a principled model which depends only on the genome sequence, which captures many interesting relationships between viral families, and which creates clusters which correlate well with both the Baltimore and ICTV classifications. The incremental computational cost of classifying a novel virus is low and therefore newly discovered viruses can be quickly identified and classified.
Visibility policy, seller incentives, and pricing dynamics in a digital goods marketplace
Keywords: Business.

There has been rapid growth in digital goods platform-marketplaces such as the Apple App Store or Google Play store, partially driven by low barriers to entry for new and entrepreneuring developers looking to sell their products. These small and independent sellers rely on marketplace mechanisms for product discovery in the absence of the means or ability to advertise. App store markets frequently link visibility and discovery to historical sales: top selling products are featured more prominently on frontpage and search results. Similar mechanisms are present in many online store contexts. Yet, their impact on marketplace outcomes has largely been understudied in the literature. This research aims to bridge this gap using data from a large app store-like marketplace to examine the implications of this common marketplace visibility policy. I present a model in which the visibility policy is internalized by sellers in their pricing decisions and incorporate rich institutional details from the marketplace to aid in estimation. Using this model, I show that marketplace policy leads sellers to compete for visibility by adopting strategies of lowered introductory pricing. The widespread use of introductory pricing strategies leads to inefficient pricing from an aggregate perspective, reducing seller revenue and thereby the marketplace operator's revenue share. This issue can be thought of as a form of channel conflict from the perspective of the marketplace operator, whereby the operator in the role of the wholesaler would like to enforce a higher price level but is thwarted by seller (retailer) competition for visibility. I evaluate a mitigation strategy the marketplace operator could pursue - ranking products by revenue rather than sales quantity - through counterfactual simulation and find that the marketplace operator could increase revenue 13% by switching ranking algorithms, though at the cost of consumer welfare and among other implications.
Visual understanding of human activity : towards ambient intelligence in AI-assisted hospitals
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

Ambient intelligence infused in the physical space of buildings and structures aims to make them perceptive and reactive, able to dynamically provide assistance to humans in environments ranging from homes to hospitals. A key requirement towards this is visual interpretation of human activity captured by visual sensors embedded in the physical spaces. In order to provide humans with appropriate assistance, we must develop the computer vision algorithms that can recognize what humans are doing at every moment in time, across diverse and fine-grained activities and despite challenging viewpoints and computational constraints. In this thesis, I present computer vision algorithms that push our capabilities towards ambient intelligence. In the first part of the thesis, I tackle major technical challenges of contextual awareness, embedded vision, and adaptivity, in the context of recognizing human activities. I introduce methods for dense and detailed interpretation of human activity, for efficient detection of actions, and for learning about new human actions from few labeled training examples. Then in the second part of the thesis, I present my work on a real-world prototype of ambient intelligence: AI-Assisted Hospitals where computer vision algorithms are used to provide continuous awareness of clinical activities. I describe two proof-of-concepts, monitoring hand hygiene and documenting patient mobility care activities. These reflect the potential of computer vision and ambient intelligence to assist clinicians and healthcare workers across rich and diverse use cases.
Visualizing Gentrification
Keywords:  Department of Communication
Gentrification
Department of Communication
Graduate Program in Journalism
School of Humanities and Sciences
census
Thesis

This is a web-based application that visualizes gentrification in the United States based on Census data from the 2011 and 2016 American Community Surveys. Using an index based on Census data, the application allows users to visualize the factors that affect gentrification for a specific U.S. geography (city, state and/or Census tract). The application is available for use at https://www.gentriviz.com.
Waiting room: a feminist theatre-making Practice & Waiting room: A verbatim play
Keywords: breasts
mastectomy
breast cancer
gender dysphoria
transgender
top surgery
verbatim theatre
Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies
Thesis

Interviews with nine individuals about their experiences undergoing surgery to remove their breasts have been edited and transformed into a verbatim theatre script. The author uses feminist interviewing techniques and places people of different ages and genders in conversation with one another about an experience they share. This document includes a paper detailing the author's research process and personal relationship to the project and a draft of the script that was completed in June 2018.
Waveform design for charge pumps in energy harvesting systems
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

Wireless energy harvesting devices convert received AC energy into DC voltages suitable to power the back-end functionality of the devices. The low energy available to the devices require high AC-DC conversion efficiency in order for enough power to be delivered to the load. However, models to accurately predict charge pump performance, especially across waveform shape, for energy harvesting systems are limited. In this work, we will first present a model to characterize loss through charge pump cells in wireless energy harvesting devices. The proposed model includes the time-domain effects of the input radio-frequency (RF) energy wave and provides additional insight into how clock and switch parameters along with architecture considerations can be used to improve the efficiency of AC-DC conversion. We compare the performance between sine-wave and square-wave clocked charge pumps to show the trade-off between charge pump loss and clock generation power consumption. We will then show the benefits of using multi-tone waveforms and present a pathway to determining an arbitrary input waveform.
What does an interruption sound like?
Keywords: Linguistics.

Taking turns is fundamental to conversation. When people participate in a conversation, they alternate between moments of speaking and not speaking, and generally, only one person at a time claims the role of speaker. It has long been argued that attempting to avoid moments where two or more people speak at the same time is a universal norm for conversation with both cognitive and social motivations. Despite this, moments of simultaneous, overlapping speech are relatively common in everyday conversation and can occur without diminishing comprehensibility or violating social norms. This has provoked a great deal of research which asks: When is it acceptable for more than one person to speak at the same time, and when is it disruptive? In other words, when does overlapping speech constitute an interruption? I argue that the answer to this question is inherently subjective and influenced by a person's own conversational style. Moreover, because conversation participants take turns carrying out actions which extend beyond the scope of a single speaking turn—such as telling a story or solving a problem—I argue that speakers can interrupt by disrupting the completion of such an action, even when they do not speak at the same time as another person. This dissertation uses a large-scale social perception experiment to analyze how listeners come to the interpretation that an interruption has occurred in conversation. I find that listeners perceived speakers to be interrupting when they overlapped with their interlocutors for an extended period of time while also using louder voice and faster speaking rate. However, these perceptions varied depending on the listeners' own conversational styles and were more heavily influenced by the pragmatic relations between speaking turns than even the degree of overlap between turns. Based on these findings, I argue that, rather than being an objectively measurable property of the speech signal, interruptions are subjective and context-dependent interpretations about who has the right to speak at a particular moment in time about a particular topic.
What Makes Korean Software Engineers Continue to Stay in Silicon Valley?
Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Center for East Asian Studies
Brain Drain
Brain Circulation
Brain Linkage
Korean software engineers
Silicon Valley
Thesis

This thesis seeks to understand what prevents Korean software engineers from returning to South Korea and examines the motivations and concerns that Korean software engineers have in deciding whether to return to Korea or remain in Silicon Valley. Because Silicon Valley is known for attracting top foreign skilled talent, the Korean government has made many attempts to mirror Silicon Valley’s startup environment in places such as Pangyo and Ayang (SBS News, 2013). As a result, I had initially hypothesized that Korean software engineers desired to stay in the U.S. primarily due to their attraction to Silicon Valley’s innovative and startup environments. Instead, key identifying factors that made Korean software engineers desire to continue working and living in Silicon Valley included higher paying salaries than those in South Korea, better cost and quality of living, stable residency status, self-identity, and participant status. My research thesis will be outlined as follows.
My research thesis acquired demographic data on a sample size of 100 Korean international software engineers who have already left South Korea to work in Silicon Valley in order to better understand what has made them decide against physically returning back to South Korea. My thesis research (i) provides background information on brain drain in South Korea, (ii) how the causes of brain drain are different today, (iii) what South Korean policymakers have been doing in attempts to reverse brain drain both in the past and currently, (iv) present key empirical and qualitative findings, (v) present limitations from my survey results, and (vi) concludes with suggestions on turning brain drain into brain circulation and brain linkage based on the findings from my thesis research. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to provide more insight on what drives these Korean software engineers to continue working in Silicon Valley. It is my hope that such insights will allow for more relevant suggestions on how to turn this brain drain into brain circulation and brain linkages.
“What right had Caesar to the empery?”: Power and the Individual in Plays of Christopher Marlowe
Keywords: Christopher Marlowe
New Historicism
Cultural Materialism
Dr. Faustus
Jew of Malta
Massacre at Paris
English Undergrad Honors Thesis
Thesis

This honors thesis is a powerful interrogation of "radical individuality" in two plays by renegade Renaissance playwright Christopher Marlowe. This thesis covers a wealth of historical and dramatic terrain, and blends "close reading" with "distant reading" in its analysis and argument. It questions why Marlowe has not received significant attention by New Historicists; nor has Digital Humanities seen fit to bend its practices to Marlowe's plays. The first chapter discusses Dr. Faustus through various close readings, Cultural Materialism, and New Historicism. The second chapter is a Digital Humanities inquiry into The Jew of Malta. It utilizes network analysis to discuss various characters' spheres of influence.
What’s in the air you breathe?: California tackles air pollution disparities with data, policy efforts
Keywords:  Department of Communication and Journalism
Stanford University Department of Communication
Master's in Journalism Program
environmental justice
air pollution
public health
California
Thesis

While California holds a reputation as a leader in environmental policy, it still ranks worst out of all 50 states for average public exposure to particulate matter pollution — largely due to the state’s topography and dense population. California is also home to 8 of the 10 U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest year-round concentration of particulate matter. In 2017, the Bay Area ranked fourth on the list, above the notoriously polluted Los Angeles-Long Beach area. And though overall air quality statewide is improving, there are communities where pollution levels are the same or worse.
Today, understanding air quality at a hyperlocal level is a major challenge for both local residents and public officials. Data monitoring stations are few and far between, taking regional air measurements that differ drastically from what an individual may be actually breathing at any given time. As population and traffic congestion in the Bay Area grow, existing infrastructure keeps many local schools and athletic facilities a stone’s throw from emissions-heavy freeway routes. And as has been well-documented, low-income areas and communities of color face stronger impacts from polluted air.
Startups and government agencies are working to improve data collection on air quality statewide, while policymakers attempt to close the disparity in pollution levels between wealthy and disadvantaged communities. But as they do so, future wildfires like those that tore through the North Bay in 2017 threaten to set back the state's efforts to clean up the air.