VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
“Queremos justicia, no más impunidad”: Transitional Justice in a Post-Ortega Nicaragua
Keywords: Transitional justice
Nicaragua
Text
Thesis

Lindsay Thornton’s capstone project examined the range of transitional justice measures available to address the serious human rights abuses committed by the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Her paper focused on the 2018 political unrests experienced across Nicaragua and how these was informed by the contentious rise of Daniel Ortega and his legacy in Nicaraguan politics. Lindsay also analyzed the history of the Nicaraguan Revolution, electoral politics, and public opinion, to show how anti-democratic reforms gave rise to government corruption and brutality across Nicaragua. Lastly, she considers how a transitional justice process implemented in a post-Ortega Nicaragua can help the country secure justice and accountability as well as pave the way for a peaceful and democratic future.
Student project deposited by department for archival purposes. Original work unavailable for public download due to permission restriction preferences of the author.
Racial Disparities in Childhood Cancer Survival and the Role of Time to Treatment
Keywords: Department of Epidemiology and Population Health
Stanford University School of Medicine
Master’s of Science in Epidemiology and Clinical Research
healthcare disparities
pediatrics
pediatric oncology
childhood cancer
survival disparities
race/ethnicity
socioeconomic status
Text
Thesis

Background: Survival disparities of childhood cancers among racial and ethnic minorities continue to persist despite significant advancements in care. While partially mitigated when accounting for socioeconomic status (SES) and stage at diagnosis, the persistence of these disparities suggests that additional factors need investigation. There have been suggestions that delays in treatment may contribute to differences in mortality among pediatric and young adult cancer patients.
Methods: Using cancer registry data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program, we investigated the role of time from diagnosis to treatment in racial survival disparities among patients diagnosed with a primary malignancy at ages 19 years and under. We compared mortality hazard ratios from regression models with and without time to treatment to assess its specific role in risk of mortality. We also compared race-specific unadjusted survival curves to those adjusted for other known determinants of survival, socioeconomic status and stage at diagnosis.
Results: A total of 47,661 patients were included in the analysis, with 24,696 (51.82%) Non-Hispanic White patients, 5,032 (10.56%) Non-Hispanic Black patients, 3,636 (7.63%) Non-Hispanic Asian/Pacific Islander patients, and 14,297 (30.00%) Hispanic patients. Overall, time to treatment had no statistically significant effect on survival, and it did not affect the risk of mortality in any race group. We then assessed the degree to which stage and SES contribute to known racial survival disparities and found there was partial reduction in survival gaps between minority racial groups compared to Non- Hispanic White patients for lymphomas, central nervous system cancers, and other solid tumors but not for leukemias.
Conclusions: Time from diagnosis to treatment does not appear to act as a significant driver of survival outcomes among children with cancer, and despite adjustment for socioeconomic status and stage, there remain significant racial survival disparities.
Radar sounding of ice sheet near-surface processes
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

Ice-penetrating radar is powerful tool for imaging the englacial and subglacial conditions that modulate mass loss and sea level contributions from Earth's ice sheets. Instrument design, data collection, and quantitative data analysis efforts have traditionally focused on resolving the conditions at the ice-bed interface that influence ice velocity. However, the structure and water storage capacity of the glacial near-surface are also important sources of uncertainty in projections of future mass loss from the runoff of surface meltwater, as well as potential impediments to deeper radar imaging. This is because the top of the ice column consists of a 50-100m thick layer of porous, compacting snow known as firn. Firn structure is controlled by past and present temperatures, accumulation rates, and surface melt rates, and this direct coupling to atmospheric conditions makes the firn one of the most heterogeneous and rapidly changing components of the ice sheet system. Here, I develop glaciologically-informed electromagnetic models that link physical conditions in the ice-sheet near-surface to their expressions in measurable properties of airborne ice-penetrating radar data. I combine these models with inverse methods to study the impact of near-surface heterogeneity on the performance of orbital radar ice sounders, characterize the long-term impact of extreme melt seasons on the near-surface structure and hydrology of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and constrain the physical processes governing double ridge formation on Europa based on an analog feature observed in Northwest Greenland
Rate-based Carbon Pricing Mechanism Design and Macroeconomic Impacts
Keywords: Carbon pricing
Auctions
Text
Article
Thesis

This paper studies the market design and macroeconomic aspects of carbon pricing. Based on a firm-level intertemporal decision model, this paper argues that an auction should be adopted as the allocation method for emissions allowances. It further examines the dynamics of allowances demand through four auction-based allocation formats. Using panel data from 11 member countries in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) between 2005 and 2021, this paper performs regression analyses that show a moderately positive impact of carbon pricing on the overall price level of an economy.
Recognizing Humanity: Classifying Certain Discriminatory Practices Against Disabled People as Crimes Against Humanity
Keywords: Disability Rights
Crimes against humanity
World politics
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Thesis

Brickelle Bro’s capstone project centered on examining the political, social, and historical conditions of people with disabilities and the lack of knowledge surrounding disability rights in the international human rights community. She notes how lack of knowledge and empathy has led this community to face stigma, discrimination, abuse, exploitation, and even violence during intense periods of conflict, underlining how cultural beliefs, institutional practices, and government regimes all contribute to this unfortunate treatment. As people with disabilities across various countries and governments continue to be victims of violence, such as abandonment, mutilation, and even death, Brickelle argues that in order to promote the rights of people with disabilities, the international order must recognize these as human rights violations and crimes against humanity. Through three case studies ranging from the Holocaust, USSR institutionalization, and South Sudan imprisonment laws, Brickelle shows how people with disabilities cannot be protected until harmful institutional and cultural practices are changed.
Recuerdos: Queer Central American Identity Formation in/through Photography
Keywords: Central Americans
US-Central Americans
Latinx
Queer theory
Queer phenomenology
Queer Latinx
Decoloniality
Photographs
visual studies
queer photography
queer central americans
latinx photography
Diaspora
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Thesis

What does it mean to be a Queer Central American? This photo exhibition is an elevation of my family’s personal photography as part of a transnational, intergenerational journey in/through Queerness. Being Central American is already fraught with colonial and imperial trauma; US imperialism and the dispossession of land from Campesinos, nation-states that employ a culture of fear and silencing to further their political projects, and a culture that centers religiosity with oftentimes anti-Queer/Trans sentiment/social structures. Put into conversation with my own photography of Queer Central Americans, I ask us to complicate our understandings of Diaspora, Family, and what it looks like to be Queer Central American today by applying Queer framework of orientation and using photography as a mode of analysis.
A recurrent neural network proxy for production optimization with nonlinear constraints under geological uncertainty
Keywords: Energy Resources Engineering.

In well control optimization problems, the goal is to determine the time-varying well settings that maximize an appropriate objective function, which is often specified to be the net present value (NPV) of the operation. Derivative-free optimization algorithms have been widely used in this setting because of their flexibility and ease of implementation. Because these approaches require many simulation runs, proxy models have been developed to predict objective function values for a set of inputs such as time-varying well bottom-hole pressures (BHPs). However, when nonlinear output constraints such as maximum well/field water production rate or minimum well/field oil rate are specified, the problem is more challenging because well rates as a function of time are required for constraint evaluations. In this work, we first introduce a recurrent neural network (RNN)-based proxy model to predict oil and water production and injection rates, as a function of time, for specified time-varying well BHP schedules. This proxy model is incorporated into a derivative-free (particle swarm optimization) production optimization procedure and tested for cases that include nonlinear output constraints. Next, we extend the RNN-based proxy to predict well responses over multiple realizations. This is achieved by incorporating a convolutional neural network (CNN) with the RNN. This enables us to perform robust optimization over an ensemble of geomodels. The proxy is then incorporated into a closed-loop reservoir management (CLRM) workflow, in which we successively apply history matching followed by production optimization to maximize expected NPV. Lastly, we extend the CNN-RNN proxy to estimate production and injection rates over multiple realizations of embedded discrete fracture models (EDFMs). This EDFM-CNN-RNN proxy is used as a function evaluator in robust production optimization problems
Redirected reaching in virtual reality : modeling, control & applications
Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.

Virtual reality (VR) systems are inherently limited by their inability to replicate physical reality. Even as technology advances, VR experiences will always be subject to the constraints of the user's hardware setup and external environment. However, the immersive nature of VR systems allows them to create convincing illusions that take advantage of our bias towards believing what we see. Reach redirection is one such illusory technique that influences where users believe their hand is in space. This is done by gradually offsetting the virtual representation of the user's hand during reach. Researchers have used this to alter the perceived properties of real-world objects and enable more physically ergonomic layouts of virtual environments. While there has been considerable research studying the usefulness and perceptibility of redirection, very little focus has been placed on how it works from a sensorimotor perspective. In this thesis, I apply a sensorimotor lens to the study of redirected interactions -- particularly through computational modeling -- to enable more robust and diverse redirection techniques that better handle the complexities of real-world interactions. First, I illustrate how modeling movement duration improves interactions with dynamic encountered-type haptic devices during redirected reaching. Next, I introduce a more adaptable, user-aware approach to redirection using real-time model predictive control. Finally, I present a stochastic sensorimotor simulation of redirected reaching and demonstrate how it can be used to gain insights about the effects of visual attention. Throughout this thesis, I highlight how incorporating sensorimotor control principles can improve the study of redirected reaching and further extend users' experience in VR beyond the physical limitations of reality
Reduced-order models of transport phenomena
Keywords: Energy Resources Engineering.

Reduced-order models (ROMs) have been developed to obtain "cheap" yet accurate surrogates of high-fidelity simulations, which remain a challenging and often unfeasible task due to the nonlinear nature of coupled transport phenomena and the heterogeneity of ambient environments. The goal is to alleviate the expensive computational costs, while simultaneously capturing the underlying dynamic features. This dissertation addresses several challenges in construction of conventional ROMs for flow and transport problems, and introduces a physics-aware dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) framework to ameliorate the shortcomings of conventional ROMs. This framework supplements DMD, a data-driven tool that uses best linear approximations to construct efficient ROMs for complex systems, with physics-aware ingredients. The resulting ROMs are capable of capturing key features of the underlying dynamics with higher-order accuracy than conventional pure data-driven methods. They do so at a small fraction of the computational time of the iteration-based methods, which explains its rapid adoption by engineers in a plethora of applications
Re-examining dominance as an antecedent of social rank attainment
Keywords: Business.

Dominant actors—individuals who engage in aggressive behaviors aimed at controlling others—are reliably deferred to, propelling them to positions of status and influence in groups, organizations, and society more broadly. This dissertation considers the potential precarity of dominance as a rank-ascending strategy by considering novel pathways through which dominance succeeds, and fails, to incite submission in others. While the majority of research on dominance and social rank attainment adopts a dyadic level of analysis—that is, it considers a single dominant actor and a single potential submitter—this dissertation widens the lens to consider the entire group context in which dominance attempts often take place. Chapter 1 provides a review of the dominance literature in order to identify sources of conflicting accounts of dominance's effectiveness and highlights potentially critical yet largely untested moderators of the dominance-submission relationship. Chapter 2 highlights the crucial role that others' deference towards dominant actors plays in individuals' own decisions to defer to dominant actors. Finally, Chapter 3 shows that individuals think others respect dominant actors more than they themselves do, and perceptions of others' respect inform individuals' own deference decisions, even after accounting for individuals' own first-order respect for, and fear of, dominant actors. Collectively, this research suggests that dominance is not by default a reliable "path to the top, " but instead is contingent upon a host of moderating factors that have gone largely overlooked in research on dominance's effectiveness, particularly those at the group level
Regulating data privacy in the age of surveillance capitalism : the making of the European general data protection regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act
Keywords: Law JSD.

Drawing from original interviews with the lawmakers, archival materials, internal emails, and other primary and secondary sources, this dissertation presents a comprehensive, comparative case study of the legislative histories of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). It explores the role of institutions, business interest groups and civil society, as well of individual policy entrepreneurs in the policymaking process and explains their ability to pass the world's two strictest privacy laws despite significant push-back from powerful tech giants and other business interests. The dissertation identifies three common factors in the GDPR and CCPA policymaking process. First, both laws were influenced by the presence of foreign elements. In the GDPR case, American tech giants were direct participants through their extensive lobbying in the European institutions. Their lobbying, perceived as aggressive, nontransparent and self-serving, backfired and allowed privacy advocates to frame the need for the GDPR to protect Europeans from their public-private surveillance. Conversely, for the subsequently enacted CCPA, the GDPR served both as a sample for legislative transplant and also as a case in point that comprehensive data privacy laws are possible and will not "break the Internet." Given that many California-based tech giants had to comply with the stricter GDPR standards, the CCPA has also arguably received less resistance than it would have without the GDPR. Second, both the GDPR and CCPA proponents benefited from exogenous events, major scandals related to the collection and use of personal information. For the GDPR process, that scandal was Edward Snowden's revelations about a massive US surveillance program based on the data collected by US-based tech companies. For the CCPA, the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that personal data from millions of Facebook profiles was used without consent for political advertising and amplified the concerns about implications of individual data privacy violations on democratic process. Both scandals made the arguments against a data privacy law politically unpopular. Third, this dissertation highlights the increasingly important role of underdog policy entrepreneurs, individuals outside of traditional lawmaking institutions or organized interest groups in promoting policy change
Regulation of beta-catenin degradation by the adenomatous polyposis coli protein
Keywords: Molecular and Cellular Physiology.

The Wnt/Beta-catenin pathway controls the differentiation and growth of tissues by regulating the stability of the transcription factor Beta-catenin. In the absence of a Wnt growth factor, Beta-catenin is destroyed in a multiprotein complex that contains the protein adenomatous polyposis coli (APC). Over two-thirds of colorectal cancers bear mutations in APC, which leads to inappropriate stabilization of Beta-catenin. Despite its importance, the precise role of APC in Beta-catenin destruction has not been defined. Here I present studies showing the identification of cyclin-dependent kinases as critical for APC's interactions with the Beta-catenin destruction complex. Phosphorylated APC binds directly to the ubiquitin E3 ligase Beta-TrCP and facilitates ubiquitination of Beta-catenin, which is required for its destruction. These findings establish a new link between the cell division cycle and the Wnt growth factor pathway
Reindustrialized socialism : expanding steel cities and second world interconnections
Keywords: History.

Utilizing interlinked urban histories of three key industrial cities -- Kryvyi Rih (Soviet Ukraine), Dąbrowa Górnicza (Poland), and Staryi Oskol (Russian Soviet Republic), this dissertation argues that a particular, Socialist Bloc approach to planning and development from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s wrought momentous transformation of production networks, social structures, urban space, and individual lives. Challenging the normalization of a painful, parallel transition to 'post-industrial society' which has helped reinforce oversimplified diagnoses of political and economic 'stagnation' under state socialism, this study explores the impetus for and impact of a conscious recommitment to heavy industry. East European leaders embraced perceived opportunities based on access to natural resources, increased integration into systems of regional and global exchange, and an extended social contract with the urban working class. The uneven results of this vision were inscribed in the cityscape, environment, and external economic relationships of these three iron and steel industry hubs, leaving evidence crucial to understanding state socialism and its legacies. Ground-level inquiry at each of these three sites also reveals their interconnection as nodes of a shared economic, professional, and social geography. Expanded extraction of iron ore at Kryvyi Rih was a key condition for the USSR's Polish partners to build a gargantuan new plant in Dąbrowa Górnicza. This and other Eastern Bloc demands for steel industry inputs justified development of a new mining and enrichment hub around Staryi Oskol. Looking beyond narrowly national frameworks common in post-socialist successor states, this study points to infrastructures of interdependence constructed alongside these cities. Whether trade networks, a specially-built rail line, or strategies for coping with supply shortfalls, these were practices and physical structures that -- in some cases -- both conditioned and outlasted the collapse of the system that created them
Relating large-scale population activity to movement using machine learning
Keywords: Applied Physics.

Neural representations in cognitive tasks are typically considered in terms of abstract cognitive performance, yet it is known that cognitive and emotional states are associated with typical movements, e.g., pacing when nervous. This makes the assignment of neural representations to movement, internal state or other factors difficult. To better understand this problem, We developed and applied a series of methods to directly relate neural activity to high-speed video of mice performing a short-term memory task. Our methods span from interpretable but less expressive tracking of manually defined animal features, through projection of videos to low-dimensional embedding vectors with convolutional auto-encoders, to expressive but less interpretable end-to-end learning by neural networks. We dissect motor-related and sensory-related neurons, by measuring the time offsets between the embedding and neural activity. We map the brain region and location of motor or sensory time offsets, and demonstrate this map is consistent with previous findings in the literature regarding sensory vs. motor processing. Further, we revisit the long suggested but relatively unexplored question of micro-movements directly associated with specific task contingencies. We demonstrate that we can directly predict single-trial animal choices from video embedding vectors. Based on this prediction, we analyze preparatory micro-movements, and divide neurons into neurons whose activity more closely follows micro-movements (motor-type) and neurons whose activity is more agnostically linked to trial type. This suggests an initial direction in separating the internal-state information and motor-movement information. We also introduce other computational methods for analyzing the connection between videos and neural activities, including canonical correlation analysis (CCA), session non-specific auto-encoder, DeepLabCut marker corrector, and soft GLM-HMM. Apart from the mice short-term memory dataset, we analyzed a drosophila walking dataset and developed inferred dynamics models to transform the joint angles into a simpler, low-dimensional representation, with potential application in understanding how ventral nerve cord controls walking. These methods are important steps in linking neural representations to movement