VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Essays on the macroeconomics of housing markets
Keywords: Economics.

This dissertation studies the macroeconomic implications of government policies and house- hold decisions for housing market outcomes. The first chapter, "The Welfare Effects of Eviction and Homelessness Policies", studies the effects of various rental market policies that address evictions and homelessness. I find that "Right-to-Counsel" drives up rents so much that homelessness increases, and welfare is dampened. While lawyers make it harder to evict delinquent tenants, they are unable to prevent evictions because defaults on rent are driven by persistent shocks to income that cannot easily be smoothed across time. In contrast, rental assistance lowers tenants default risk and as a result reduces both homelessness and evictions and increases welfare. the second chapter, "Self-Assessed Financial Literacy in Housing Markets", studies the role of financial knowledge in home- ownership decisions. I show that households who self-assess them- selves to be more financially literate are more likely to own a house and take a more levered position on their house. I find that this is because households with higher levels of self-assessed financial knowledge have access to more accommodating mortgage terms and better risk-return tradeoffs in the housing market
Establishing a comprehensive and dynamic map of the alloimmune response in solid organ transplantation
Keywords: Microbiology and Immunology.

The dynamic and multi-dimensional properties of our immune system that makes it so remarkable are the same properties that cause us problems in solid-organ transplantation and causes acute rejection. Our immune system views genetically different tissue of the transplanted organ as a dangerous foreign substance similar to a pathogen and attacks it. The ongoing challenge is to determine how we can circumvent the natural defense mechanisms of the immune system without sacrificing its numerous regulatory functions. The datasets described in this thesis address this challenge by applying high-dimensional cytometry analysis to deep profile the peripheral immune cells involved in acute rejection using a murine model of transplantation. More than 40 different markers are used to obtain a highly granular and multi-parametric proteomic overview of the immune signature that defines acute rejection. This analysis is performed in spleen and lymph node over multiple days post-transplant from day 1 to day 7. T cells, NK cells, monocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells are expansively profiled to ascertain the differences in protein composition that associate with acute rejection. This high resolution characterization of the immune response reveals a unique phenotypic signature of rejection that is evident by day 5 post-transplantation, and clearly distinguishes rejecting from non-rejecting grafts. This alloimmune phenotype is furthermore conserved across two distinct models of acute rejection. Lastly, strategies to prolong allograft survival are investigated with the use of plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDC). The results reported here reveal tolerogenic properties that are unique to pDC when compared to conventional dendritic cells. The molecular profile of these pDC points to a potential mechanism of harnessing the immune system's natural immune suppressive capabilities to prolong graft survival. Taken together, these data provide a comprehensive and dynamic map of the alloimmune response in solid organ transplant and provides a foundation for unveiling new therapeutic strategies that can effectively delay graft rejection
Evaluating Patient Needs and Provider Attitudes Towards a Novel Hyperbilirubinemia Treatment Plan
Keywords: Hyperbilirubinemia
Jaundice, Neonatal > Treatment
Neonatology
Maternal and infant welfare
Physician and patient
Clinical medicine > Decision making
Decision making
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Thesis

Neonatal hyperbilirubinemia is one of the most prevalent infant conditions, impacting approximately 60 percent of newborns worldwide. However, prior studies have shown high variation in care practices across the United States despite the condition's prevalence. NICU overuse in non-emergent cases is one of the most common and stressful treatments for infants and their mothers. This thesis investigates the feasibility of researching the benefits for patients and providers of a novel transcutaneous bilirubinometer in removing the burden of treatment within the NICU setting. Through interviews with American mothers of jaundiced infants and decision analysis performed on neonatal providers affiliated with Stanford University, I sought to understand and analyze current maternal needs in hyperbilirubinemia treatment and assess provider tolerance for novel options of care. I propose a novel treatment technology and seek to answer two questions: (1) Could the proposed technology potentially reduce core concerns with hyperbilirubinemia treatment among American mothers? (2) Could introducing the proposed technology be a feasible alternative to traditional NICU care? I find favorable evidence for both and discuss future directions for research.
Evaluating Regime Shifts and Shifting Environmental Policy in the Arkansas River near Larned, KS
Keywords: Earth Energy & Environmental Sciences
Federal Water Pollution Control Act (United States)
Kansas Geological Survey
Hydrogeology
Regime Shift Theory
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Thesis

Characterizing the drivers of flow in non-perennial streams is increasingly important for understanding the impacts of variable flow regimes on local communities and ecosystems. Regime-shift theory has been used to explain changes in other hydrologic systems, but non-perennial streams have yet to be fully explored. Here, the Arkansas River Basin near Larned, KS serves as a place-based case study to determine if changes between flow and no-flow conditions can be described using a regime-shift framework. This thesis combines hydrological, meteorological, and ecological time-series data to test for the presence of statistical early-warning signs commonly associated with regime shifting systems and used a sequential t-test analysis of regime shifts (STARS) algorithm to test for regime shifts in the time series of weekly and monthly no-flow days. While flow data exhibit hints like critical slowing down and asymmetry in flow rates, evidence for increases in both variance and autocorrelation signatures in surface water data level was weak. STARS identified at least five shifts between dry, intermediate, and wet regimes between 1998 and 2021, which are characterized by predominantly no-flow conditions, alternating flowing and no-flow conditions, and predominantly flowing conditions in the river, respectively. The intermediate regime appears to be a transitory phase between the stable wet and dry regimes observed at Larned. Regime shifts at the site are likely driven by a complex interaction between climate, pumping, local vegetation, and stream-aquifer interactions. Recent proposals to federal water policy, including the redefinition of “waters of the United States,” do not alter future protections for the Arkansas River as a navigable waterway. However, evidence of negative feedback loops that enforce no-flow conditions at the Larned site indicates that policy should refrain from excluding non-perennial stream systems from federal protection, especially those of low and ephemeral flow patterns.
Evaluating the Effects of Higher Education in Mechanical Engineering on Divergent Thinking in Problem Solving
Keywords: Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Design Education
Engineering Design
Creativity in Engineering
Engineering Education
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Thesis

In the last half of the 20th century, academic excellence in engineering education was thought to be synonymous with learning skills associated with convergent thinking and production (Felder, 1988). Now, there has become a broader recognition that creativity and innovation abilities are essential to the success of engineers in the workplace. This recognition comes as today’s workplace is increasingly becoming an environment in which engineers tackle problems from broader perspectives with more interdisciplinary teams (Cropley, 2019; World Economic Forum, 2016; Rieken, 2017). In the present work, I aim to explore how higher education in mechanical engineering affects students’ creative approaches to solving an open-ended engineering design task. In doing so, I establish a framework to analyze different measures of creativity including fluency, novelty, elaboration, and completeness in a comparative study that evaluates 20 students majoring in mechanical engineering or psychology. Moreover, throughout this thesis, I uncover the underpinnings behind how mechanical engineering undergraduates explore decision-making pertaining to creativity and prototyping. The results of this study show a need to encourage mechanical engineering students to pursue additional ideas and to pursue these ideas to a greater extent. This work has implications for how future engineers integrate creativity into the workplace and how engineering is taught.
Evaluating the impact of mammalian coronary collateral flow during fetal and adult stages
Keywords: Bioengineering.

Collateral arteries are a vessel subtype that bridges two artery branches, forming a natural bypass that can deliver blood flow downstream of an occlusion. These bridges in the human heart are associated with better outcomes during coronary artery disease. We recently found that their rapid development in neonates supports heart regeneration, while the non-regenerative adult heart displays slow and minimal collateralization. Thus, inducing robust collateral artery networks could serve as viable treatment for cardiac ischemia, but reaching this goal requires increased knowledge of developmental mechanisms and functional capabilities. Here, we use whole-organ imaging and 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling to identify the spatial architecture of and predict blood flow through collaterals in neonate and adult hearts. We found that neonatal collaterals are more numerous, larger in diameter, and, even when similar in size/number, are predicted to more effectively re-perfuse an occluded coronary network when compared to those in adults. CFD analysis revealed that collaterals perform better in neonates because of de-creased differential pressures along the coronary artery tree. Furthermore, testing of various collateral configurations indicated that larger, more proximal collaterals are more beneficial than many smaller ones, identifying a target architecture for future therapeutic interventions. Morphometric analysis revealed how the coronary artery network expands during postnatal growth. Vessel diameters do not scale with cardiac muscle growth. Instead, the coronary tree expands solely by adding additional branches of a set length, a burst of which occurs during murine puberty. Finally, we compared mouse structural and functional data to human hearts. Surprisingly, fetal human hearts possessed a very large number of small, but mature, smooth muscle cell covered collaterals while angiogram data indicated adult patients with chronic coronary occlusions contained at least two. Comparing size ratios with modeled mouse data suggested low re-perfusion capabilities of the embryonic collaterals but higher functional benefits of those in diseased adults. Comparison of fetal guinea pig and human collaterals suggests that the collaterals in the fetal guinea pig stabilize due to increased pressure loads, while the collaterals in the fetal human are slowly pruned as the pressure load lessens. Our unique interdisciplinary approach allowed us to quantify the functional significance and maintenance of collateral arteries during heart regeneration and repair--a critical step towards realizing their therapeutic potential
The evolution of gained traits in fishes
Keywords: Developmental Biology.

Evolution has generated a fascinating diversity of life on earth that has captured the imagination of scientists for centuries. To understand how this diversity arose, evolutionary biologists have tried to link adaptive phenotypes seen in nature to the causal DNA sequence changes. Identifying the mutations for many different traits in many different species across different ranges of evolutionary time allows us to determine the genetic mechanisms that are used and elucidate whether evolution is repeatable. To study the genetic mechanisms underlying adaptive traits, I have focused on two groups of fish, stickleback and sea robins, because of their unique ecology and intriguing and diverse skeletal traits. To study the genetics of the gain and loss of traits in a given species, the ability to edit their genome is a powerful tool to link genotype to phenotype. In chapter 2 of my thesis, I describe the work I did to establish CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in stickleback fish and its use to characterize the functions of genes previously implicated in major evolutionary changes in sticklebacks. In chapter 3, these methods were applied to help understand the role of a pelvic enhancer (PelA) in stickleback evolution. While the genetic basis of trait loss has been well characterized in many examples, the genetic mechanisms by which traits are gained are not as well understood. In chapter 4, I studied the gain of spines in two different stickleback genera (Gasterosteus and Apeltes) and characterized the genetic mechanisms. In doing so, I uncovered the role of a Hox cluster. Through independent cis-regulatory mutations in the same enhancer, the expression patterns of the genes have been modified affecting both the length and number of spines. These findings provide evidence to support the long-standing hypotheses and debates surrounding the role of Hox genes in trait evolution in wild populations. In addition to developing genetic tools, the ability to hybridize species remains a powerful way to characterize the differences between species. In chapter 5, I studied the possibility of hybridizing many different sticklebacks to determine if they are viable and if they can be used to study intraspecies differences. Finally, to explore more dramatic examples of the gain of new traits, I worked on developing sea robins as a new system in which to study the gains of "legs" (modified pectoral fin rays) and new spinal lobes controlling them. The study of evolution across broader taxonomic distances and in new and diverse species can help shed more light on questions relating to the genetic basis of evolution and how repeatable it is
Evolution of plant physiology from the lamina perspective
Keywords: Geological and Environmental Sciences.

This dissertation is focused on the evolutionary paths of plants as reflected by their photosynthetic organs. The history of life on earth is also the history of primary producers, and leaves are the most abundant fossil where helpful information from which plant functional diversity can be derived. Photosynthetic carbon fixation involves gas exchange with the atmosphere and is accompanied by unavoidable water loss from the plant interior. Understanding evolutionary innovations and trends involved in the transpiration capacity of plants becomes a tool for understanding primary productivity. This work approaches diversity from a physiological perspective and, more specifically, focuses on physiological innovations that impact bottlenecks in the transpiration stream. The first chapter introduces the evolutionary history of vascular plants through time and tools for interpreting leaf physiology from morphology. The second chapter contributes to our understanding of the relatively fixed and low transpiration capacity among most vascular plants compared to flowering plants. It provides evidence of a conflict between the allocation of the lamina's vascular network (transporting water to the lamina) and of the gas exchange surfaces. This conflict arises from a widespread and recurrent tendency for the vascular bundles to occupy a large volume of the leaf interior and a large fraction of the leaf surface. This chapter proposes that lamina developmental innovations among flowering plants avoid this conflict by allowing multiple hierarchies in the venation network, which enable ultimate bundles transporting water to evaporation sites without interfering with gas exchange. The third chapter gathers considerable evidence showing that large laminas became common only recently with the dominance of flowering plants. This work addresses the role of lamina dimensions in transpiration rates and energetic budgets and shows how the interplay of both is complex. This chapter challenges previously established concepts related to environmental feedback limiting lamina dimensions and proposes developmental and structural innovations as a likely explanation of the evolution of large lamina. Chapter four explores the evolution of physiological diversity directly by collecting functional traits for laminas spanning the evolutionary history of plants. This chapter provides evidence for a relatively fixed evolutionary breadth for ferns, shared with early seed plants radiating during the wetland expansion of the Carboniferous. Physiological innovations occur among plants with seeds and coincide with the global disappearance of wetlands and the increase of well-drained, seasonal environments towards the Mesozoic. The seed plant's physiological expansion is interpreted as allowing occupation of exposed environments, but ultimately limiting maximum productivity
The evolution of the trading system : the effects of rising preferential trade agreements
Keywords: Political Science.

Over the last 40 years, there has been a proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that vary in terms of their content and design. This dissertation examines the impetus for the expansion in the scope of these PTAs, and then the implications of these mini-lateral agreements on the more general multilateral trade regime. To gain a better understanding of the micro foundations of specific rules, this study examines both domestic sources of PTA variation and then once enacted, the behavioral implications of the agreement, focusing on ex post litigation. The comparison of the ex ante interests, and then the ex post behavior of domestic groups focuses on one key institutional feature of all bilateral PTAs: dispute settlement mechanisms (DSMs). On the surface, the design of DSMs looks very similar across bilateral PTAs, but a closer look at the details suggests important differences, including the statutory time frame of the dispute settlement process. This thesis argues that governments vary the content of PTA dispute settlement mechanisms to garner domestic support for trade liberalization. In order to assure passage of a treaty that opens up trade flows, governments incorporate design features at the behest of powerful domestic actors. Once agreed to, however, these differences in PTA design do not create a "spaghetti bowl" of conflicting and incoherent rules that undermine the trading system. PTAs do not exist in a vacuum but rather, they are part of a larger set of economic transactions that occur among nations. Relative differences in economic wealth will have behavioral implications on how governments use these agreed upon rules. Instead of turning to the bilateral treaty to deal with a trading issue between the two states, the weaker party always chooses to resolve the dispute through the WTO. To justify their choice of forum, governments use rhetoric to build and sustain the legitimacy of the WTO system as the focal point for dispute settlement. The dissertation concludes with a more optimistic view on the future of the trading order than is common today. PTAs re-enforce the WTO multilateral trading system, given that there is shared consensus on the fundamental goal of international coordination on trade under the WTO's leadership
Examining the role of neuron-glia signaling in the peripheral nervous system
Keywords: Chemistry.

The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is a complex interweave of neurons and glial cells, both of which are critical for information transfer and processing. Electrical signaling in the PNS relies, in part, on a diverse family of membrane proteins known as ion channels that are predominantly expressed in primary neurons of the PNS. Here, we demonstrate that Schwann cells, the most abundant glia in the PNS, regulate the excitability of dorsal root ganglia (DRGs), the somatosensory neuron of the PNS, through secretion of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). As our work shows, this low molecular weight signaling agent acts on DRGs to alter voltage-gated sodium channel (NaV) expression. Experiments to understand the underlying mechanism by which PGE2 regulates action potential firing in DRGs and whether voltage-gated potassium channels (KVs) are modulated by PGE2 are also presented
Examining the Social and Economic Impacts of Seaweed Farming on Communities in Southeast Asia
Keywords: Fisheries
Southeast Asia
Commerce
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Thesis

For her capstone project, Sarah Saboorian examined the livelihood of Southeast Asian seaweed farming and fishing communities and their relationship to trade. Through a systems-thinking approach, her research paper evaluated the international legal context these communities operate under, as these have become detrimental to the farming communities while benefiting international corporations. Furthermore, her analysis took a deeper look at community organizations and the various structures under which they operate to see how other aspects of systems thinking (i.e. having the human capital to undergo negotiations with the buyers or the working capital to store materials past the season and take control of pricing, etc.) can impact the long-term viability of these communities. 
Student project deposited by department for archival purposes. Original work unavailable for public download due to permission restriction preferences of the author.
Exhuming the dead to save the living : fingerprints of the anthropocene on California's faunal communities
Keywords: Biology.

In this dissertation, I use historical and subfossil data to elucidate anthropogenic impacts on faunal communities in California. In chapter one, I explore the effectiveness of sampling small mammals using raptor pellets and find that skeletal remains from pellet accumulations are indeed faithful subsamples of local small mammal communities. This result has important implications for both ecologists and paleontologists and provides confirmation for the methodological approach of my third chapter. For chapter two, I assess the extent of taphonomic bias introduced by pocket gopher (Thomomys bottae) bioturbation in a late Holocene archaeological site in Woodside, CA. I radiocarbon dated skeletal remains of T. bottae and non-fossorial small mammals and found that T. bottae bones are younger than those of other small mammals from the same stratigraphic layers. This suggests that many pocket gopher remains were introduced after archaeological deposition, which prompts reevaluation of faunal community reconstructions from fossil deposits impacted by pocket gophers and other fossorial mammals. In chapter three, I assess how the small mammal communities of the San Francisco Bay Area have changed over the last few thousand years using archaeological deposits and modern raptor pellet accumulations. I show that all Anthropocene small mammal communities are fundamentally distinct from their Holocene baselines, but that urban Anthropocene sites are significantly less diverse than non-urban ones. These results highlight the importance of land management in conserving modern biodiversity. In chapter four, I identify microcrustaceans from a high-resolution sediment core to track anthropogenic impacts on the watershed over the last century. I find significant perturbations in the microcrustacean community over time, corresponding to historic evidence of the input of environmental toxins in the system. I hope this interdisciplinary and multi-system dissertation brings us one step closer to understanding the impacts of the Anthropocene on biotic environments both in California and around the world