VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
(Re)creating Mexico in the US: How grandchildren of Mexican immigrants develop diasporic subjectivities
Keywords: Mexican immigration
diaspora
identity formation
migration narratives
diasporic subjectivities
Thesis

US Mexican subjectivities and diasporization are markedly different from European immigrants’ path toward assimilation. According to scholars, this difference is explained by the sustained flow of new immigrants replenishes the strength of community identification with Mexicanness. While continued immigration accounts for some aspects of how identity is maintained, such as Spanish language use, it does not account for other aspects of identity. In fact, US Mexican identity formation may be a different process entirely. As such, a better framework for understanding subjectivities among grandchildren of Mexican immigrants is that of the creation of diasporic subjectivities rather than identities that are slowly becoming more “American.” The US Mexicans I interviewed are invested in constructing a diasporic Mexicanness in the United States. This group attempts to bring closer that which is expected to be distant from them, and from which they are expected to feel alienated. In some ways, they successfully bridge temporal and spatial distances, but they cannot bridge all distances. Instead, they redefine what makes up categories of belonging, and they enact these alternative subjectivities through the terms they use to define themselves, their language practices, and the ways in which they bring their families’ past into the present.
Rectifying the Curve: Deformity in Early Modern Drama
Keywords:  Department of English
early modern drama
disability studies
Richard III
William Shakespeare
Thomas Lupton
George Peele
William Jordan
medieval drama
hunchback
deformity
Department of English
Thesis

“Rectifying the Curve: Deformity in Early Modern Drama” explores the dramatization of disfigured characters in late medieval and Renaissance English drama. Situated in the context of disability studies, this thesis aims to dispense with the tendency to render Shakespeare’s Richard III in an anachronistic and idealist light. Aiming to “listen to the whispers of lived experience that permeate every representation of ‘deformed’ individuals in early modern drama,” this thesis provides an analysis of four major instances: William Jordan’s Creation of the World, Thomas Lupton’s All for Money, George Peele’s Arraignment of Paris, and Shakespeare’s tetralogy that culminates with Richard III.
Redefining Consumer Engagement for Social Media Marketing
Keywords:  Department of Communication
Department of Communication
Coterminal MA in Communication
Media Studies Track
Consumer Engagement
Customer Engagement
Social Media Marketing
Thesis

Brands have leveraged the power of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in an attempt to create relationships with their consumers by sharing product information, promotions, and brand content online. While social media brand marketing is necessary for companies looking to thrive in today’s advertising landscape, it is difficult to quantify the return on investment of social media marketing. What is the value of a ‘like’? How does gaining a ‘follower’ benefit a company? Marketers try to measure this benefit through consumer engagement, a multifaceted term that scholars have attempted to clearly define for years. The following literature review seeks to concisely define consumer engagement, and show that the amalgamation of likes and comments on social networking sites are not sufficient metrics of consumer engagement for social media marketing.
Re-examining the Leaky Pre-med Pipeline: An Updated Survey on Female and Minority Undergraduate Perspectives on Pre-medical Preparation at Stanford University
Keywords: Stanford University
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Graduate School of Education
Interdisciplinary honors thesis
medical education
education
undergraduate
pre-med
premedical
interest levels
medical school
medical career pipeline
sense of belonging
women
minority students
URM students
Underrepresented minority
chemistry
biology
pursuing medicine
Leaky Pre-Med Pipeline
physician mentorship
peer support
peer competition
preparedness
Thesis

The goal of the study was to determine how the pre-medical preparation at Stanford is affecting student interest levels in pursuing medicine as a career, with a specific focus on the perspectives of women and Underrepresented Minority (URM) students. The study also examines the ways in which women and URM students perceive the effectiveness strategies that either encouraged, maintained, or discouraged their interest in pursuing medicine to identify the specific types of resources, forms of support, and experiences that facilitate successful premedical preparation. During the 2017-2018 Winter quarter, rated their interest in pursuing premedical studies on a Likert Scale of 1 to 4 at the time they completed the survey. They were asked to recall and rate their interest levels in pursuing premedical studies at the beginning of their freshman year when they matriculated to Stanford University. The difference between ratings were taken to be the change in interest levels. Students’ sense of belongingness in their premedical studies was assessed as well. Responses to open-ended questions regarding the factors that lead to change of interest were identified and categorized with emergent coding. The responses of males to females and URM to non-URM students were compared. The principal positive influencers on student interest include physician mentorship and peer and familial support. Negative influencers include excessive peer competition, and perceived lack of preparedness in premed classes. Three areas of improvement were identified: 1) Alternative Introductory Science Sequences, 2) Expansion of Dedicated Pre-Med Advising, 3) Expansion of Social Support Groups and Mentoring. Longitudinal studies need to be conducted to obtain a more accurate view of the degree to which students’ interest levels changed over the course of their undergraduate career and to determine whether the key factors identified at Stanford apply to a larger, more diverse sample. Data from this study suggest that more specific attention and support must be allocated to URM students aspiring to enter a career in medicine.
Regeneration and functional recovery of the adult mouse utricle
Keywords: Cheng, Alan (Alan G.), degree supervisor.

Utricular hair cells (HC) are mechanoreceptors required for vestibular function. After damage, the mammalian utricle only marginally regenerates; thus, loss of vestibular function is presumed irreversible. Whether mammalian HC regeneration restores function is unclear. Here, we found partial HC replacement and functional recovery in the spontaneously regenerating mature mouse utricle, both enhanced by overexpressing the transcription factor Atoh1. Following toxin-induced HC death and vestibular dysfunction, long-term fate-mapping revealed that extrastriolar supporting cells non-mitotically and modestly regenerated HCs displaying nascent bundles. In the damaged but not undamaged utricle, constitutive Atoh1 overexpression stimulated proliferation and widespread regeneration of HCs (~80%) exhibiting elongated bundles, patent mechanotransduction channels, and synaptic connections. Finally, significantly more animals recovered vestibular function with Atoh1 overexpression than with damage only. Therefore, the mature, damaged utricle harbors a previously unrecognized Atoh1-responsive regenerative potential leading to functional recovery, underscoring the promise of a reprogramming approach to sensory regeneration.
A regularized deconvolution method for large-eddy simulations of multiphase reacting flows
Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.

In Large-eddy simulations (LES) for turbulent multiphase and reacting flows, sub-grid scale (SGS) models are required to represent the interaction between turbulence, combustion, and the dispersed phase. Different approaches have been proposed in the literature to represent these unresolved terms, such as gradient diffusion models for turbulent scalar fluxes, presumed-PDF and artificially thickened flame models for turbulence-chemistry interactions, and random walk and stochastic Langevin models for turbulence-spray interactions. Although these modeling approaches show good performance in application to a wide range of problems, it is also observed that different combinations of models lead to different results for the same simulation configuration, and the performance of these models depends highly on flow and flame configurations. This model behavior is a consequence of the inconsistency between closure models and LES formulations. To address this inconsistency, closure models in coherence with the LES formulation need to be developed. In this work, a regularized deconvolution method (RDM) for the SGS closure models is developed. This method is based on an approximate inversion of the filtering operation in LES, which is consistent with the LES formulation. The method is formulated as an optimization problem. To ensure the properties of boundedness and conservation for reactive scalars, which are not considered in existing deconvolution methods, constraints are introduced in the formulation of RDM. The framework of RDM is developed in the context of both explicitly and implicitly filtered LES. For explicitly-filtered LES, RDM reconstructs the flow structures that are under-resolved. In this context, the deconvolution is formulated as a solution to a Wiener filtering. To account for the boundedness and conservation of reactive scalars, a constrained minimum mean square error problem is solved on a subset of the deconvolution solution that violates these properties. In an implicitly-filtered LES, the unresolved flow structures require modeling. To provide a correct description of these sub-grid fluctuations, an additional constraint is enforced in the RDM framework to regularize the sub-grid scale energy. The performance of RDM is examined for the closure of turbulence-flame interaction, turbulent scalar transport, and sub-grid dispersion through both \emph{a priori} and \emph{a posteriori} analysis of multiple LES configurations. Improved predictability is observed with RDM compared to other SGS closures model combinations.
Regulating Trafficking of Nociceptive Transient Receptor Potential Channels
Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
TRPV1
capsaicin
opioid
Thesis

Transient receptor potential (TRP) channels are a family of receptor proteins regulating pain sensation. TRP receptors are activated by a variety of noxious stimuli, such as capsaicin (chili peppers), heat, and mechanical stress. Chronic TRPV1 stimulation leads to desensitization of the receptor, a process which is mediated by calcium/calmodulin dependent kinases. This attribute, however, has yet to been leveraged for treatment of chronic pain diseases. Here, we identify a potential C-terminal phosphorylation site that is involved in regulating level of TRPV1 expression at the cell surface. In dorsal root ganglion cells, confocal microscopy and western blot show that de-phosphorylation of threonine 705 through creation of a T705A mutation is sufficient to induce significantly increased expression at the plasma membrane. Mimicking constitutive phosphorylation through a T705E mutant at that site induces the receptor to be retained on intracellular membranes. TRPV4 - another member of the TRPV family - also has a similar trafficking switch region that contains two adjacent threonines T739 and T740, both potentially involved in regulating TRPV4 surface expression. Confocal and western blot data show that removing the potential T740 phosphorylation site is sufficient to significantly increase surface trafficking. However, the phosphomimetic mutation reduced but did not eliminate surface expression.
Reimagining Strategic Philanthropy: From Principal-Agent Problems to Bottom-Up Learning in Foundations
Keywords: strategic philanthropy
principal-agent problem
bottom-up learning
top-down development
Thesis

Foundations are beginning to dwarf the U.S. government as agents of global development, both in terms of financial resources and influence. There is, however, little research on the top-down nature of foundations’ role in development. This study interviewed staff at 17 foundations, either actively working against or failing to address this top-down nature, about the factors contributing to hierarchical dynamics in philanthropy, as well as mechanisms to reduce resulting power imbalances. The results indicate that foundations face various principal-agent problems of social coordination in their work. The strategic philanthropy framework attempts to address these problems by shifting more control to the principal, thereby intensifying top-down hierarchies. In contrast, participating foundations had redefined strategic grantmaking as working against top-down hierarchies and emphasizing investing in and learning from partnerships with grantee organizations. These foundations used bottom-up organizational learning to incorporate grantee knowledge and expertise into their decision-making and move towards more participatory grantmaking. Bottom-up learning was, however, lacking in the officer-board and grantee-board relationships, limiting foundations’ abilities to fully utilize the knowledge they were acquiring from their grantees. Overall, bottom-up learning and its ability to create participatory grantmaking was strongest in community foundations.
The relationship between bacterial stress responses and cell shape : from the molecular to the macroscopic
Keywords: Bioengineering.

How do we respond to our environment? How much does our environment drive our very form, our physical shape? These are fundamental questions that biology must grapple with on all scales of life. Understanding how the shape of an organism is formed, how it is maintained, and how it interacts with external stresses is key to understanding its strengths, limitations, and what it could become. My thesis examines a portion of the complex relationship between organism and environment by studying the physical changes bacteria undergo in both friendly and hostile environments, using the well-studied model organism Escherichia coli. In Chapter one, I will introduce the relevant bacterial physiology necessary for understanding cellular growth and division. I will also define the structural and molecular determinants of cell shape in bacteria, and then examine what is known about how environmental conditions impact cell shape. In chapter two, I will start at the protein level, examining a key protein in the cell division machinery, FtsZ, and its relationship to inhibitors that induce cell death. In chapter three, four and five, I will move to larger cellular structures and discuss how genetic or external perturbations effect the integrity of the bacterial cell wall, the key macromolecule in cell shape determination. In chapter six, I will move from single molecules to molecular networks: I will examine a stress response pathway, the Rcs pathway, and its connection with perturbations to cell width and its influence on cell length. I will show how these observations again relate to the interaction and regulation of the cell wall synthesis machinery governed by cytoskeletal proteins MreB and FtsZ, respectively. In chapter seven, I move finally from single cell behavior to the behavior of cell populations under stress. Specifically, I will utilize previous work examining the relationship between increased cell size and fitness as the basis for generating a cell shape mutant library. I then used this library in a high-throughput chemical genomics screen to further characterize the types of stressful environments in which size plays a key role in fitness, revealing evolutionary pressures on cell shape. I will conclude in chapter eight by re-examining the fundamental questions posed at the beginning of this chapter and reflect on how this work moves us a step forward in illuminating the complex and varied ways in which organisms interact and are changed by their environment.
The relationship of surface deformation to groundwater storage and quality in the San Joaquin Valley, California
Keywords: Geophysics.

Land subsidence due to groundwater pumping in the San Joaquin Valley of California is known to cause many negative side effects, including a loss of groundwater storage. The general theory behind surface deformation, which includes subsidence and rebound, due to changes in the groundwater system, is well established. Surface deformation occurs as a direct result of changes in water level in an aquifer system, and can be permanent or recoverable, depending on the stress history of the aquifer system. An advanced satellite method known as Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) can be used to measure surface deformation with ~cm accuracy, at a resolution of ~100 m and measurements every 10 to 40 days. In spite of our ability to measure surface deformation with this method, and the existing theory describing the relation of deformation to changes in water level, it remains challenging to relate this deformation to changes in the aquifer system because so much information is required to do so accurately. The goal of this thesis is to develop methods to improve our ability to monitor and model groundwater storage and quality by incorporating InSAR with geological, geophysical and water quality datasets. This includes developing methods that estimate how much observed deformation is permanent, methods that predict deformation given water level changes, and methods that relate deformation to arsenic contamination. By integrating multiple datasets with InSAR, we are able to extract more useful hydrogeological information that provides water managers with tools to map and model deformation due to changes in the groundwater system, as well as its impacts on groundwater storage and quality. Our key findings are that 1) in the San Joaquin Valley, 54-98% of the subsidence that occurred from 2007-2010 throughout our study area was permanent, 2) by combining InSAR data with airborne electromagnetic (AEM) data, we are able to model surface deformation over time and improve estimates of the subsurface hydrostratigraphy, as well as hydrologic, geomechanical and rock physics parameters, 3) our modeling indicates that the land has subsided by as much as 3 m since 1990 in one specific location within our study area, and 4) land subsidence resulting from overpumping is linked to arsenic contamination in the San Joaquin Valley aquifer system.
Remaining Authentic on Digital Media using an Existential Framework
Keywords:  Department of Communication
Authenticity
Social Media
True Self
Thesis

Unlike any other generation before them, digital natives are constant users of various social media platforms. These social media platforms include sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which all have the power to influence the users identity and self-perception. Despite the pervasive use of these social media platforms, individuals still appears quite indifferent and uncritical of the effects that social media may be having on society. This literature review will examine previous research that has been conducted on the relationship between digital natives and social media use, specifically as it pertains to achieving authenticity of self. Though examining the works of various philosophers and research studies from different scholars, the meaning of authenticity before and after the invent of social media will be discussed. Further, this thesis will examine how technology use such as social media, increases authenticity of individuals in the technological age. The ways in which technology has hindered authentic expression of self will also be explored. The main questions that will be structure the thesis include: What do past philosophers believe classifies a human being as an authentic member in society? How has the concept of authenticity evolved with the invent of the internet and social media? What is social media’s effect on the human experience, specifically on the individual’s ability to act authentically online?
"Reporters for RAN translation of C9ORF72 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and the role of hnRNP A1"
Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
School of Medicine
Molecular Genetics
Thesis

The translation of expanded DNA repeats lacking an AUG start codon has been implicated in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive and universally fatal neurodegenerative disease. While the RNA transcripts and proteins produced by repetitive regions of the C9ORF72 gene have been characterized as toxic and correlate with disease, how these repeats are able to circumvent the conventional mechanisms of translation remain unknown. The field has begun to uncover genes responsible for driving this form of translation, but a model for the non-canonical mechanism remains unresolved, as is an understanding of how it contributes to ALS and other repeat-associated diseases. We have developed a GFP reporter with which we are able to visualize these abnormal translation products, called dipeptide repeat (DPR) proteins, using fluorescence microscopy. Using shRNA knockdown, we have investigated the role of hnRNP A1 in this possible disease pathway of ALS. We also saw a possible but equivocal reduction in DPR protein product when hnRNP A1 was knocked down in HEK293T cells with shRNAs. Given the prominence of repeat expansions in ALS and other neurodegenerative diseases—Huntington Disease, several spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA), and Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS)—understanding how these sequences are translated and finding the genes responsible can reveal therapeutic targets for treating these diseases.