VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Adult Education and Missing Women: Evidence from India's Saakshar Bharat Literacy Program
Keywords: Department of Economics
health
education
gender
mortality
sex selection
Thesis

Nearly 800 million adults are illiterate worldwide, two-thirds of them women. Gender gaps in educational attainment coincide with inequities in health, personal agency, and labor market outcomes. With the aim of reducing the gender disparity in basic education among adults, the Government of India’s Saakshar Bharat program provided functional literacy training to over 70 million women in 157,000 village-level literacy centers between 2009 and 2018. Despite its size and scope, there have been no comprehensive quantitative evaluations of this program. Using a regression discontinuity approach, I find that the program raised female literacy rates in eligible districts by three percentage points and lowered mortality among elderly women and infant girls in eligible districts. Younger program-eligible women were more likely to work and experienced greater personal autonomy. Reductions in female child mortality, however, are accompanied by a rise in sex ratios at birth, leading to an overall increase in missing girls. The results indicate the promise of large-scale female empowerment programs — as well as the need to anticipate unintended interactions with persistent cultural norms.
Advanced reconstruction techniques for high-resolution diffusion-weighted MRI
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

Diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) is a non-invasive and non-ionizing method that detects the tissue microstructure by measuring the Brownian motion of water molecules in our body. It plays an essential role in numerous clinical applications and neuroscience research. However, the spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio of conventional DWI are limited due to the use of a single-shot acquisition. Multi-shot imaging enables the acquisition of high-resolution DWI data, but results in ghosting artifacts and signal cancellation. In this dissertation, we present advanced reconstruction techniques to overcome these artifacts and enable high-quality DWI in the clinic. First, we present the usage of the locally low-rank regularization to resolve the motion-induced phase variations among different shots. We demonstrate the improvements of multi-shot imaging with our proposed reconstruction in a clinical breast MRI study. To further improve the image quality, we introduce a non-linear model with a constraint on the magnitude images to utilize the angular correlation between different diffusion-encoding directions. Finally, we accelerate the reconstruction with an unrolled pipeline, which contains recurrences of model-based gradient updates and neural networks alternating between image space and Fourier space. Together, these techniques allow immediate reconstruction of high-resolution high-SNR DWI with reduced scan time requirements
Advancements in the development of quantitative molecular assays
Keywords: Chemical Engineering.

The first published implementation of a binding assay was an immunoassay for insulin detection in 1960. Over the subsequent 60 years, analytical technologies based on binding assays have evolved substantially. Molecular detection platforms based on enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs)—as well as newer commercial technologies, such as Luminex and NanoString—are core components of today's diagnostic and research armamentaria. There are two main challenges in the development of binding assays. First, binding alone does not generate an observable signal. The target and/or affinity reagent must be directly coupled to a moiety that generates a signal upon binding. Myriad immunosensors have been developed that couple the interaction between an antibody and its antigen to an observable output based on an electronic, optical, or mechanical signal. The second challenge is that binding assays are governed by the principles of chemical equilibrium. Binding assays generate signal through concentration-dependent shifts in equilibrium that result from the interaction of the target molecule with an affinity reagent. Convention affixes the range of measurable target concentrations to an 81-fold dynamic range centered around the dissociation constant of an affinity reagent to its target. In this dissertation, I introduce three major advances to the development of binding assays: (i) I demonstrate that high-throughput DNA sequencing can be used as a readout mechanism that is in many ways superior to optical and electrical readouts, (ii) I describe novel methodologies of modulating detection ranges without changing the actual physicochemical interactions between target and affinity reagent, and (iii) I challenge the conventional wisdom regarding binding assays and introduce a new conceptual framework for developing modern analytical technologies. Together, these studies provide new insights into the use of binding assays for molecular quantification and represent a rich resource for understanding the design of future assays
Advancing microbial metrology to reveal microbe-microbe, microbe-host, and microbe-environment interactions
Keywords: Microbiology and Immunology.

Today, bacteriology faces the propitious simultaneous emergence of powerful new tools in synthetic biology, ecology, and lab automation. Unfortunately, we lack the measurement and experimental tools to fully realize the potential of these new developments. In this thesis, I will discuss my study of microbial metrology by highlighting a set of successful (and unsuccessful) projects centered on improving the tools available for high throughput experimentation and measurement in the field of the microbiome. In particular, I discuss my research and publications on: the development of a liquid-chromatography mass-spectrometry (LCMS) pipeline for microbial metabolomics, in vivo sensors for oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) measurement, microfluidic measures of coral model systems, and the development of a volumetric sourcetracking algorithm using microbial markers
Aeschylus and the cultural history of tragedy : dramatic connoisseurship, ideology, and poetics from the 5th century BCE to the 5th century CE
Keywords: Classics.

In 456 BCE, the story goes, an unsuspecting eagle tried to crack a tortoise open on the tragedian Aeschylus' bald head, killing him instantly. This dissertation explores what happened next—how assessments of Aeschylus' contributions to tragedy and place in history shifted over the following centuries, and how his poetics and dramaturgy were variously described, admired, reviled, imitated, and avoided. Over the past few decades, scholarship on drama after the fifth century BCE has focused on important issues of reperformance and canon formation, especially in the fourth century BCE. This dissertation moves beyond these issues to ask a different, equally important set of questions: what place—or places—did Aeschylus hold in the cultural history of tragedy? Setting aside the historical Aeschylus, what is at stake in the stories told about him? What do these stories say about how tragedy is conceived and how it fits into broader cultural narratives and institutions? What implications do these conceptions have for literary and visual interpretations of Aeschylus' life and work? In exploring these questions across multiple centuries and genres, this dissertation uncovers a rich case study in how ancient thinking about a single figure shaped the ways cultural artifacts were assessed and experienced—and the ways new ones were produced
Aesthetics and Politics of the Rural Bodies in Kuaishou
Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Stanford Global Studies
East Asian Studies
Kuaishou
Thesis

As a short video app with over 400 million monthly active users, today kuaishou Short Video App is one of the most successful and most controversial social media in China, as kuaishou’s contents are generally criticized as “vulgar” and “outlandish.” This paper purports to investigate the revolutionary power underneath the apparent “vulgarity.” With reference to studies of the dynamics of body, aesthetics and political order, the paper examines the politico-aesthetic significance of kuaishou short videos’ advent in the urban commodity culture.
African Autocrats and Progressive Refugee Governance: Motivating the Illiberal Paradox in African Asylum Policy Through a Case Study of Uganda
Keywords:  Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy
refugee
asylum
Uganda
Africa
migration
autocracy
Center on Democracy
Development
and the Rule of Law
Thesis

The refugee and asylum policies of developing world countries have long been overlooked in academic and policy circles. This represents a critical gap in the literature, as developing countries host 84% of the world’s refugees. Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, hosts 26% of the global refugee population. Some African countries welcome refugees and facilitate their safety and prosperity by offering them liberal freedoms. Others seek to prevent the entry of refugees or limit their freedom with draconian policies. How do African countries formulate asylum policies and how do they respond when borders are threatened or crossed by refugees? Uganda is an empirical outlier which can offer insight into this understudied area. Uganda hosts over 1 million refugees, which the country supports with policies that are perceived to be the most progressive in the world.
The limited literature on the determinants of asylum policy in the developing world fail to explain Uganda’s policy response. This thesis argues that this failure stems from an inadequate engagement with the nature and political priorities of the host state’s governing regime. Host governments formulate asylum policies with a view towards both domestic and international political considerations. How much or how little governing regimes provide for refugees is influenced by the possibilities afforded by the state’s domestic political environment. For Museveni, progressive refugee governance fits into a broader foreign policy strategy of image management with the West, reinforcing his reputation as a guarantor of regional stability and deflecting scrutiny of his authoritarian domestic policies.
Evaluating the relationship between regime type and asylum policy is one way to examine how policy outcomes vary across different domestic political environments. Analysis of this relationship reveals that autocrats comprise some 93% of asylum policy liberalizers in Sub-Saharan Africa since the Cold War. In particular, personalist autocrats – those autocrats who have “personalized” power and most closely resemble the stereotype of unconstrained dictatorial rule – account for 60% of liberalizers. This trend supports the idea that progressive refugee governance has strategic value for African autocrats, deflecting international scrutiny into repressive domestic policies, indicating a commitment to international norms, and highlighting a state’s stability relative to regional neighbors. This thesis posits that liberalization of national asylum policy came to serve as a signaling device of these desirable characteristics in the Cold War’s aftermath as liberalizing pressure was applied to African dictators.
"The age of foreclosures and evictions" : literature of the 2008 financial crisis in Spain
Keywords: Iberian and Latin American Cultures.

This dissertation analyzes the literary response to the 2008 financial crisis in Spain. I argue that literature serves as a powerful tool to capture what is all too often left behind in discussions of the crisis. The texts analyzed in this dissertation show that the 2008 crisis was a symptom of deeper issues: the legacy of the Spanish transition and its links to corruption and crony capitalism; the precarity that defines the modern labor environment; and the tendency of official discourses to divert attention from emerging crises. I draw on the writings of Karl Marx and Adam Smith to discuss the inner workings of capitalism and its propensity for crisis. In conclusion, I put forth that by looking to the past, the literature of the 2008 financial crisis in Spain teaches us important lessons for the future
AI Is Increasing the Gap Between Countries: Effects in Human Development and Strategies to Prevent It
Keywords:  Public Policy Program
Stanford University
Humanities and Sciences
Public Policy Program
Artificial Intelligence
AI
Human Development Index
HDI
Economic Growth
Health
Life Expectancy
Education
Schooling
Thesis

The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world. Earlier studies have concluded that countries will adopt AI technologies at different rates and that therefore some countries will likely experience greater economic growth from AI than others. This paper asks an additional question: how might these differences in AI-based economic growth in turn affect average national life expectancy and mean years of education? Using regression analysis and data from the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI), the paper first identifies 2019 correlations that show the relationship between national per capita income, on the one hand, and national life expectancy and mean years of education, on the other hand. Then by assuming that the 2030 relationship among these variables is likely to be similar to the 2019 correlations, the analysis combines these correlations and existing projections of 2030 per capita incomes in 20 countries, after they adopt different levels of AI, to estimate what life expectancy and years of schooling might be in those countries in 2030. These estimates show just how much different rates of AI adoption may increase existing differences in lifespans and education among nations. Further studies are needed to establish causal relationships and to develop effective public policy responses.
AK47s, Tanks, and F16s: Understanding Shifts in Pakistan's Conventional Military Strategy in the Post-Cold War Era
Keywords: Center for International Security and Cooperation
Pakistan
Strategy
Military
South Asia
Conventional
Thesis

The United States has navigated a turbulent and complex relationship with Pakistan since its inception in 1947 in an attempt to achieve security and stability in South Asia. The Pakistan Army is a primary actor in determining geopolitical relations in the region and its conventional military strategy is a strong indicator of the army’s strategic calculus. Despite a renaissance of interest in understanding the Pakistan Army, there are no existing empirical analysis on the strategic calculus of the Pakistan Army. This thesis analyzes when, how and why the Pakistan Army has shifted its conventional military strategy in the post-Cold war era.
A shift in an army’s conventional military strategy indicates a major change in its perceived existing threats and in the capabilities of the army to address a shifting threat landscape. What accounts for the Pakistan Army’s strategy shifts since 1989? An investigation of the Pakistan Army’s capabilities, doctrines, rhetoric and force distribution discovers that Pakistan shifted its conventional military strategy four times since 1989: a ‘post-Cold war strategy’ from 1989-1994, a ‘defense minimal strategy’ from 1994-2001, a ‘two-front commitment strategy’ from 2001-2010, and a ‘three-front commitment strategy’ from 2010-2019.
Few institutions face such extreme pressures from a variety of different factors. Based on existing literature and interviews, this investigation finds that the Pakistan Army must balance external forces, internal forces, bureaucratic pressures and its nuclear strategy when forming and evolving its conventional military strategy. Through an analysis of the conditions surrounding strategic shifts and examining each individual pressure, this thesis presents the case that external forces, specifically those emanating from India and the U.S. and bureaucratic politics, primarily in leadership changes, have impacted shifts in Pakistan’s conventional military strategy substantially. A proposed policy to address these new findings centers on a carefully calibrated US South Asia policy comprising the management of Pakistan-India relations and balanced incentives and coercive tools.
The algebra and machine representation of statistical models
Keywords: Statistics.

As the twin movements of open science and open source bring an ever greater share of the scientific process into the digital realm, new opportunities arise for the meta-scientific study of science itself, including of data science and statistics. Future science will likely see machines play an active role in processing, organizing, and perhaps even creating scientific knowledge. To make this possible, large engineering efforts must be undertaken to transform scientific artifacts into useful computational resources, and conceptual advances must be made in the organization of scientific theories, models, experiments, and data. This dissertation takes steps toward digitizing and systematizing two major artifacts of data science, statistical models and data analyses. Using tools from algebra, particularly categorical logic, a precise analogy is drawn between models in statistics and logic, enabling statistical models to be seen as models of theories, in the logical sense. Statistical theories, being algebraic structures, are amenable to machine representation and are equipped with morphisms that formalize the relations between different statistical methods. Turning from mathematics to engineering, a software system for creating machine representations of data analyses, in the form of Python or R programs, is designed and implemented. The representations aim to capture the semantics of data analyses, independent of the programming language and libraries in which they are implemented
Algebraization theorems for coherent sheaves on stacks
Keywords: Alper, Jarod, degree supervisor.
Mathematics.

Given a moduli problem, two important questions one can ask are the following: Is there an algebraic stack representing the moduli problem? If so, does it have a coarse space? A necessary step to answering these questions in the post-GIT era is to prove an algebraization result akin to formal GAGA for proper schemes. In this dissertation, we will present two such results. The first result (Chapter 2) is Grothendieck's existence theorem for relatively perfect complexes on an algebraic stack. This generalizes work of Lieblich in the setting of algebraic spaces. The second result (Chapter 3) is coherent completeness of BG (with G a split reductive group) and [\SL_d \backslash \mathbf{A}^d]. The results of this chapter are joint work with Jack Hall and are an important step to extending the \'{e}tale slice theorem of Alper-Hall-Rydh to positive characteristic. Finally, in future work with Jack Hall and Jarod Alper, we prove that an arbitrary [G \backslash \spec A] with G reductive is coherently complete
All Roads Lead From Home: The Rhetoric of the Interactive Superhighway and Its Effects on the Development of Targeted Advertising
Keywords: Advertising
STS
Interdisciplinary Honors
Internet
Media Studies
Historical Analysis
Thesis

As privacy and security leaks continue to expose the weaknesses in the massive reams of data gathered on us, targeted advertising and Big Data have come under fire for their handling of consumer information. Much of these discussions have centered around Web media in particular. Due to its dynamism, measurability, and classification as an “interactive medium,” as opposed to television and radio, the Web has perhaps disproportionately contributed to predictive modeling. Yet the nature of interactivity is not well agreed-upon; furthermore, while it has been studied across fields such as computer science, information science, or industrial design, less attention has been paid to how advertising agencies have understood it. Through an analysis of internal research documents and case studies from ad agency J. Walter Thompson, combined with coverage of “interactive media” in industry trades, this thesis traces how advertising defined “interactive” over time and links those processes with the steps taken in targeted marketing. In doing so, it breaks from the technocentric narrative that has dominated the literature and aims to provide more sociohistorical perspective. It finds that the commercialization of the Web has heavily favored user-message interactivity, to the detriment of earlier concepts of interactivity that favored user-user interactivity and community building. The discussion concludes that given this knowledge, approaches to future interactive media must be wary of transplanting current-day structures without a critical eye.
America in East Africa: Security Partnerships, Aid Dependence, and Diplomatic Leverage
Keywords:  Center for International Security and Cooperation
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Kenya
Uganda
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Somalia
diplomacy
coercive diplomacy
balance of interests
dependence
liberalization
Thesis

Why is the United States able to shape the actions of friendly nations? In this thesis, I offer an answer by examining American efforts to influence cases of invasion and the liberalization of domestic politics in Kenya and Uganda from 1989 to 2012. Drawing on academic, journalistic, and participant reporting on each case, including interviews with key American policymakers, I test three theoretical frameworks: balance of interests, dependence, and diplomatic strategy. Through these I attempt to explain American influence over the 1998 Ugandan and Rwandan invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the 2011 Kenyan invasion of southern Somalia, the 1991 Kenyan reinstitution of multiparty politics, and the 2005 Ugandan abolition of presidential term limits and reinstitution of multiparty politics. The existing literature on these cases focuses on outcomes broadly, and on African states’ comparative ability to secure agency relative to the wishes of their donors. Taking the United States as my focus, in this comparative case study, I find consistent limits to America’s ability to shape the actions of Kenya and Uganda regarding their core interests; however, clear, sustained application of coercive diplomacy still altered outcomes — especially when it used the leverage offered by dependence. This thesis creates a model of American agency in maximizing leverage over aid-dependent states.
Analysis and development of algorithms for fully compositional, thermal and reactive numerical simulation of in-situ combustion at laboratory scale
Keywords: Energy Resources Engineering.

In this work, we study the numerical simulation of computational, thermal and reactive flow in porous media. We built, tested and verified a robust numerical framework to obtain solutions of the coupled and non-linear system of partial differential equations. We illustrate that some of the models typically used in isothermal simulations need to be adapted in the presence of thermal effects. Our cases are largely impacted by the evaporation and condensation of components, and we demonstrate that lumping has a strong influence on the accuracy of the solutions. Aggressive lumping of the heavy components results in premature evaporation and an overestimation of the recovery. We designed a new multi-level delumping method suitable to thermal recovery processes and were able to lower the error made in the phase behavior calculations by an order of magnitude. Finally, we propose a new family of multi-stage preconditioners dedicated to thermal and reactive cases, reducing the number of iterations of a GMRES linear solver by 40-85% compared to the usual CPR method. The new preconditioners exhibit little to no sensitivity to the thermal regime (advection or diffusion dominated)