VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Techniques for a chip-in-cell wireless platform for single cell monitoring
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

The rapid growth and development of technology has significant implications for healthcare, personalized medicine, and our understanding of biology. In this work, we follow the design and implementation of multiple subsystems of a larger vision of a non- invasive, intracellular wireless platform. Our vision is to develop a chip in a cell (CHIC) platform. This work details the journey toward the first demonstration of wireless detection and communication of an electronic device inside a cell, the fabrication of a microfluidic device to enhance the throughput of the wireless system, and the work toward integrating the subsystems together into the CHIC platform. The intracellular wireless platform is a multidisciplinary concept and requires expertise and work in a variety of topics. Specifically, we first demonstrate that a 25 μm wireless radio frequency identification (RFID) device can be uptaken by a mouse melanoma cell and detected and identified externally while located intracellularly. The performance of the electronic communication system is quantified before and after immersion in a biological environment, and the results show distinct electrical responses for different RFID designs, allowing for classification of a RFID from looking at the electrical output. Second, we show a robust method to fabricate a polydimethyliloxane (PDMS) microfluidic device with critical channel features located near the periphery. The fabricated device has a window cutout, allowing close placement and integration of the channel with solid state circuits and devices. Third, we detail the work toward integrating the wireless subsystem and PDMS device to realize our non-invasive, intracellular wireless platform. We show preliminary results of the complete system and describe the design process so that future generations can further refine the system. This work precedes and facilitates the development of long term intracellular measurement systems for personalized medicine and furthering our understanding of intrinsic biological behaviors. It helps provide an advanced technique to better assess the long term evolution of cellular physiology as a result of drug and disease stimuli in a way that is not enabled by current solutions.
Technological Adoption: A Case Study of the Automotive Industry in Mexico
Keywords:  Center for Latin American Studies
technological adoption
automotive industry
mexico
manufacturing
public policy
Stanford Center for Latin American Studies
Thesis

In Mexico and many other manufacturing countries, the automotive industry is considered a strategic pillar of the economy due to the many perceived benefits it brings with it. Many would argue that we are on the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution with the advent of artificially intelligent systems, understood as more efficient forms of automation. Due to the well-defined tasks and clear goals inherent in manufacturing jobs, they are believed to be the most susceptible to automation, and thus, the most at-risk for replacement. In this sense, examining how the Mexican state has contended with the introduction of new technologies in the past can provide useful tools for predicting its future. Through a case study of the automotive industry in Mexico, this paper will examine (1) how the state has influenced and responded to the industry through the use of public policy, and (2) what socioeconomic impact this has had on its development. Through the enactment of executive decrees, the Mexican government found limited success in terms of trade. However, this approach seemed to have no effect on employment rates, poverty levels, the Gini index or income shares within different sectors of the Mexican population. This is because not focusing on capacity building created a self-reinforcing vicious cycle in Mexico wherein low levels of technological capabilities constrained the expansion of the automotive sector and, as a result, most new employment in Mexico arose in low-productivity and low-income sectors of the economy. This paper concludes that learning how to adopt new technologies while also assimilating new knowledge and expertise holds the key to Mexico’s future success
Tell Me More : Redefine feedback
Keywords: stanford
stanford graduate school of education
education
ldt
learning design and technology
feedback
professional development
workplace learning
Thesis

While great solicitation of feedback is key to learning and growth, it’s a difficult skill to master. Tell Me More is a blended learning experience that supports employees in the art and science of soliciting feedback from their managers and peers. The tool uses a combination of a web-based platform and playing cards to help prepare and structure feedback conversations. Through use of reflection and goal-setting frameworks, learners build themselves a foundation for comprehensive support system, helping feedback happen more naturally, more often, and with greater impact.
Temporal development of plant-soil interactions and its effects on community dynamics
Keywords: Biology.

Ecologists have devised a long list of theories to predict when species diversity can be maintained, focusing on species interactions ranging from resource competition to multi-trophic interactions. However, these theories have mostly been developed separately with little crosstalk and have ignored the temporal complexity of ecological communities by assuming that the strength of species interactions are static throughout time. In this dissertation, I explore the complementarity of different theoretical frameworks for understanding species coexistence and, with plant--soil microbe associations as an example, highlight the multi-trophic and age-dependent nature of ecological communities. To study how multiple mechanisms interactively determine species coexistence, I quantify the effects of different mechanisms with the stabilizing and equalizing processes of modern coexistence theory. First, I show how differences in traits related to resource competition translate to changes in the two components of modern coexistence theory, which can then be used as a common currency for understanding coexistence and priority effects. Second, I expand this framework to discuss how the function and host specificity of soil microbes affect plant competitive outcome. Finally, to study the temporal development of plant-soil microbe interactions, I use a series of aerial photos to construct a chronosequence of plant individual age for four coastal foredune perennial plants. By collecting soils beneath plant individuals of different ages for three consecutive years, I find that soil microbial communities are converging, and becoming progressively different from bare sand communities, with increasing plant age. With a greenhouse experiment that preserves age-specific soil microbial communities, I show that compositional turnovers of soil microbes translate into temporally varying plant-soil microbe interactions, and different plant--soil combinations have different temporal development patterns. Taken together, my dissertation demonstrates an approach synthesizing the effects of different trophic levels and interaction types, and informs our understanding of how species' interactions are coordinated in time.
The Age of Girls: History and Testimony in Emma Cline's The Girls
Keywords:  Department of English
crime fiction
gender studies
contemporary fiction
contemporary crime fiction
Emma Cline
Manson Family
Department of English
Thesis

“The Age of Girls: History and Testimony in Emma Cline’s The Girls” theorizes the “girl” novel as a contemporary literary genre and analyzes The Girls by Emma Cline as an example of this genre. This thesis discusses the rise of the contemporary “girl” novel that resists the "dead girl" and "detective girl" tropes common to the crime fiction genre. The Girls draws upon the historical record of the Manson Family to construct a coming-of-age story for protagonist Evie Boyd. This thesis assesses The Girls as a work of historiographic metafiction narrated by a literary witness and suggests that that this alternative history featuring Evie Boyd as a living female witness to violence not only moves beyond the existing scripts of crime fiction, but actually establishes the “girl” novel subgenre as a space for women’s testimony.
The Allegorical Aidahar: An Animated Look at Kazakh National Identity
Keywords: Stanford Global Studies
Center for Russian
East European Studies
Kazakhstan
Nationalism
Central Asia
Film
Identity
Animation
Folklore
Kazakh culture
Thesis

The little-known Kazakh animation film, Why the Swallow’s Tail is Forked (1967), written and directed by Amen Khaydarov, not only holds the position as the aboriginal Kazakh animation film, but is also acclaimed as the greatest work of Kazakh animation by critics, academics, and contemporary animators. The film, based on the traditional Kazakh folktale of the same name, was significantly altered by Khaydarov in his auteurist direction and screenplay resulting in a radically different retelling. However, Khaydarov’s unique variant of the folktale resonated with viewers of the period as well as with viewers today. It was also released at a pivotal moment in Kazakh nationalist thought as it coincided with the first rumblings of the pastoral nationalist narrative of the late 1960s. In this paper I argue how certain motifs are changed, added, and removed from the original folktale by Khaydarov, consciously or unconsciously, to incorporate new allegorical elements in the folktale.
This essay is informed by a multitude of theorists and follows a methodology specific to film studies. I perform a close reading of the film, shot by shot, and in the spirit of Eric Hobsbawm, deconstruct alleged “traditional” Kazakh elements. Following the close reading, I use theory from the ethnomusicologist Thomas Turino in analyzing the constructed nature of national identity. This will be supported using concepts I borrow from Benedict Anderson, the prominent theorist on nationalism, the folklorists Roman Jakobson and Petr Bogatyrev, the filmic folklorist Juwen Zhang, and the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Following the deconstruction of Kazakh identity more largely, this essay will turn to the concept of allegory, as defined by Paul de Man but balanced by James Clifford, and will show how specific readings of the audio, visual, and folkloric aspects of the film are justified given the previous close reading. Ultimately, I will return to the film and display it as a construction of a specific nationalist narrative, one that holds surprising elements of suffering, submission, and trauma, thus shedding light on the broader pastoral nationalist vision.
The Behavioral Economics of Social Media: A Study of Self Commitment Devices and the Facebook Privacy Paradox
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Department of Economics
Stanford University
Behavioral
Commitment Devices
Social Media
Self-control Problems
Time Inconsistency
Present-Bias
Privacy
Defaults
Thesis

Despite mounting public concern over the issue of social media overusage, there is limited evidence that the time individuals spend on social media platforms is excessive from a welfare standpoint. I implement a randomised intervention over 6 weeks, encouraging a subset of 629 participants recruited over Facebook to adopt a voluntary soft commitment device designed to help limit their phone, Facebook, and Instagram usage. Utilising data from 4 surveys and direct measurement of social media use, I find that: (i) individuals persistently underestimate how much time they actually spend on social media; (ii) they spend much more time on their phones and Facebook than they profess to ideally desire; (iii) users are willing to set application limits even in the absence of incentives to do so; (iv) and lastly, the adoption of such limits significantly reduces phone and Facebook use, with reductions in the latter persisting even after a month. These results all suggest that individuals spend more time on social media than is optimal as a result of their limited ability to exercise self-control. Additionally, in a second experimental arm of the study, I investigate the effect of nudging individuals to review and report their Facebook privacy settings on their behaviour, finding that it results in limited changes to privacy-protective choices; instead, I find that individuals respond by reducing their usage of Facebook.
The "Black Blouse Girl": The History of Sexual Violence in the Vietnam War and Opportunities for Justice
Keywords: International Relations
Vietnam War
Sexual Violence
War Crimes
Thesis

Although there has been extensive documentation of the atrocities committed by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, little to no academic literature exists on the sexual violence perpetrated by the U.S. military against Vietnamese civilians. In 2018, I identified a massive archive of U.S. military records that details cases of sexual violence committed against over 400 Vietnamese civilians. Using these case files as an initial evidentiary basis, my thesis explores the following research question: What is the history of the sexual violence perpetrated by the U.S. military against Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War, and what legal and political mechanisms existed to bring justice to victims? Through qualitative analysis of U.S. military records, tribunal transcripts, American soldiers’ and Vietnamese survivors’ memoirs, and interviews with Vietnamese and American civilians, I construct a comprehensive account of the sexual violence that occurred during the Vietnam War and explore the U.S. government’s silence surrounding these crimes. I also evaluate the viability of several different mechanisms of transitional justice within the context of addressing wartime sexual violence in Vietnam. Ultimately, I outline recommended frameworks for transitional justice for Vietnamese survivors and their families, with the goal of holding the U.S. more accountable for war crimes they commit and setting a precedent for rule of law and justice for wartime sexual violence.
The Case for Congresswomen: Gender Equality in Congress as a Determinant of Political Outcomes
Keywords: congresswomen
gender equality
domestic political institutions
international relations
Thesis

On November 7, 1916, Jeanette Rankin (R-MT) was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. Half a century later, 1992 became the “Year of the Woman” as 48 women were elected to the House, and six were already sitting in the Senate. Since this watershed movement, women’s advancement into Congress has continued at a slow yet unremitting pace. While female Congresspersons now compose twenty-three percent of the overall legislative body, the existing gains have not translated to equal participation and legislative productivity.
This raises the central question of this thesis: Between 1992 and 2015, how did the increase in women’s representation in the United States Congress affect legislative outcomes? To analyze the question, this thesis evaluates four hypotheses about differences between women’s and men’s influence on Congress – including productivity, diverse legislative outcomes, distinct leadership styles, and representational focus. Through both a quantitative and qualitative approach, this thesis seeks to make the case for Congresswomen.
The Chinese Innovation System and China's Innovation Policies in a new Phase of Growth: Insights from Artificial Intelligence Policy in China
Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Stanford Global Studies
East Asian Studies
Innovation Policy
Innovation System
Artificial Intelligence Policy
China
Thesis

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between China’s innovation policies and its innovation system, particularly in regards to Artificial Intelligence (AI). First, it will describe China’s innovation system, systematically outlining its elements and key characteristics before assessing its strengths and weaknesses according to the framework established by the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Competitiveness Index and expanded upon by Dasher (2019). Given the importance of the innovation system for sustained growth, this paper will then discuss how the innovation system may interact with the possibility of a middle-income trap as defined by Otsuka et al. (2017). Drawing from a combination of primary and secondary sources including reports, policy documents, press releases, and interviews with industry insiders, this paper will examine some of China’s recent innovation policies. Based on these sources, we find that China’s approach to innovation policy has remained largely the same over the years in terms of formulation, substance, implementation and evaluation. Consequently, these findings suggest that China’s innovation policies are likely to be inappropriate for supporting the continued development of its innovation system and may thus hinder its growth in the long-run. The findings of this paper have implications relevant to the direction of China’s future innovation policies and economic growth, to deepening the collective understanding of China’s innovation system, and to policymakers’ understanding of the interaction between innovation systems and policy.
The Decision to Prosecute: Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Chile and Argentina after Military Regimes
Keywords: International Relations
human rights
Chile
Argentina
military regimes
prosecutions
Thesis

The transition from military regimes to democratic governments is a difficult one for all states, particularly those with a history of human rights abuses. This thesis explores the differences in human rights prosecutions after military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina through the lens of the following two questions: How did the quantity and judicial mechanism of prosecutions for human rights abuses in Argentina and Chile differ and what was the role of political legitimacy in the decision to prosecute? To answer the first question, details of how the prosecutorial patterns differed between the two countries are examined, including trial location, level of crime prosecuted, rank of those prosecuted, and verdict. Next, qualitative evidence from newspaper articles, speeches by public officials, and publications from international advocacy groups is used to build a causal story about how the trials were both a reconciliation tool and a political negotiation point in each country. In Argentina, democratic actors found it advantageous to heavily prosecute immediately after the transition; when democratic stability was challenged however, amnesty was granted, indicating political motivations for prosecution trends. Human rights prosecutions in Chile after the democratic transition were sparse and avoided high ranking officials. The trends were also a political compromise to protect democracy given the negotiating power of the exiting military regime. Argentina and Chile differ in their prosecution details, yet in their causal stories share a similar thread of being heavily influenced by the political repercussions that came with the trials. The story in these two countries can be used to better understand how, when, why countries use prosecutions for reconciliation as well as how to encourage accountability for human rights violations in the future.
The Eagle And The Dragon: Sino-German Military Cooperation 1919-1938
Keywords: international relations
china
germany
war
military
army
adviser
advisor
Thesis

In an age when a politically and militarily resurgent China is beginning to reshape the liberal international order, it is instructive to look backward to a time when a weak and fragmented China turned to foreign powers for tutelage. My thesis explores the evolution of Sino-German military cooperation between 1919, when Germany was stripped of her colonial possessions, and 1938, when the last German military advisors were recalled from service in China, to show how the German military missions created the first truly national Chinese armed forces. To this end, I use English-, German,- and Chinese-language sources across a variety of media and disciplines to shed light upon this little-known chapter of diplomatic history, about which little scholarly material exists in English. I conclude that the Sino-German was, to a remarkable degree for its time, grounded in reciprocity, and equality, and it was National Socialist ideology, German bureaucratic politics, and a shift in German geopolitical motives that unilaterally ended their military cooperation and possible alliance. Throughout my examination of what the German military missions to China could and could not accomplish, a recurring lesson is for policymakers to "mind the gap" between expectations and reality. By examining an earlier period of cooperation with a Western power, I hope my thesis can be of use in predicting how and why China decides to cooperate within the international system.
The Effect of Oral Contraceptive Hormones on Serum Relaxin Levels, Collagen Expression, and ACL Strength in a Rat Model
Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
relaxin
oral contraceptives
ACL
progestin
estrogen
female anterior cruciate ligament injury
Thesis

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) stabilizes the knee and is frequently injured in active populations. Female athletes are two to nine times as likely to experience an ACL tear compared to their male counterparts. Females’ higher levels of a collagen-degrading hormone, relaxin, may drive this disparity. Relaxin’s effects may be modulated by estrogen and progestins, the constituent hormones in oral contraceptives. Therefore, this study evaluated the impact of oral contraceptives on serum relaxin levels, ACL strength, and ACL expression of collagen and collagen-metabolizing matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) using a rat model. While previous animal models have evaluated ACL strength following treatment with female sex hormones, the drug regimens assessed have not modeled human contraceptive formulations, and no prior work has compared different formulations to determine what features of a contraceptive might make it more or less effective for protecting the ACL. Hence in this study adult female rats were treated with one of six oral contraceptive hormone cocktails—each a scaled model of a currently-marketed human birth control pill—for four estrus cycles (20 days).
Oral contraceptive formulations containing higher progestin-to-estrogen ratios were found to improve the strength of the ACL. High progestin-to-estrogen ratio was also associated with higher ACL expression of collagen I, as well as lower expression of MMP1 and the relaxin receptor RXFP1. Treatment with a lower progestin-to-estrogen ratio formulation increased collagen III expression without significantly altering ACL strength or expression of collagen I, MMP1, or the relaxin receptor relative to controls. For all treatment cases regardless of formulation, the influence of hormones on serum relaxin levels was not significant. These findings indicate a potential application for oral contraceptives, particularly those with higher progestin-to-estrogen ratios, in protecting against ACL injury in at-risk female athletes.