VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Discriminating democracy [electronic resource] : theater and republican cultural policy in France, 1878-1893
Keywords: History

The dissertation analyzes the projects of popular theater devised by the republican governments and assemblies, 1878 to 1893, in order to understand the conflicted point of view of republicans with regard to the democratization of art. In the 1880s, the four state-subsidized theaters (the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique, the Comédie-Française, and the Odéon) had a very select audience. Yet, republicans were divided on the issue of its diversification. On the one hand, the purportedly inferior moral capacities of the popular public made dramatic performances hazardous without a prior education of its will. On the other hand, it was fair to let people who paid for the upkeep of state-subsidized theaters access these institutions and to fulfill the wish of a significant part of the population to acquaint themselves with high-brow culture. The successive projects of popular theater represent the various solutions imagined by republican governments to reconcile two contradictory impulses, democratization and discrimination. They show how a culture of prejudices, inherited from previous regimes, progressively came to terms with a new conception of justice, more respectful of individuals' autonomy and sovereignty. At the end of the 1870s, the minister of public instruction and fine arts Agénor Bardoux denied that the state had any responsibility to democratize art. He variously argued that democratization happened spontaneously or that the artistic mission of the state did not include the dissemination of works. Jules Ferry believed that the state owed a theater to the lower classes, but, convinced that lower classes were inferior in their aptitudes, he imagined a popular lyric theater that would be the pale copy of the Opéra. Finally, Léon Bourgeois accepted the director of the Opéra's proposition that the institution should organize reduced-price performances. Bourgeois thought it more conducive to social peace to promote a common culture than to cultivate separate class identities. In his mind, the difference between the people and the elite should consist in their respective degrees of exposure to high-brow culture. The study of theatrical democratization in the 1880s shows that French republicans abided by two principles of government. One, which reflected the republicans' universalist credo, advocated the equal treatment of individuals by virtue of their equal rights. The other, inspired by utilitarian tenets, defended the differentiated treatment of individuals on the grounds of their unequal aptitudes. This dissertation argues that the ambiguity of the notion of merit in the republicans' discourse (did it lie in the essence of a social group or was it the result of individuals' actions?) informed a tension between the desire to extend liberties and democratize elite practices, on the one hand, and the perceived necessity to control activities and discriminate against the people, on the other.
Disorder, defects, and their effect on charge transport in organic semiconductors [electronic resource]
Keywords: Materials Science and Engineering

Understanding the nature of charge transport and its limitations on device performance has guided the rational design of organic semiconductors for over a decade. This understanding has led to the development of high performance small molecule and polymeric semiconductors for applications in low-cost complementary logic circuits, displays, lighting, and solar cells. Unfortunately, the large catalog of available materials and processing variables make it difficult to outline general design rules. Specifically, in polycrystalline and semicrystalline organic semiconductors, little is understood about the structural order within a grain and between grains, and even less is known about how this structure affects the material's performance. In this thesis, characterization methods are introduced to address these issues. To understand the structural source of electronic defects, a multi-step Fourier transform X-ray line shape analysis with thorough error analysis is adapted to determine crystallite size and intra-grain cumulative disorder. For the first time, the intra-crystalline disorder in transport-relevant directions is quantitatively determined for a variety of high performing organic semiconductors. These van der Waals bonded crystallites exhibit a wide range of disorder (from < 1% to 10% fluctuations from the mean lattice spacing) depending on the packing geometry and chemistry. The degree of lattice disorder is found to be a useful tool for ranking materials quantitatively on a continuous scale, from perfectly ordered to completely disordered. High levels of lattice disorder, evident in many polymeric semiconductors are found to introduce a tail of localized trap states that limit charge transport. At the low-disorder end of the scale, transport-limiting disorder is not significant and grain boundaries are found to limit charge transport. Finally, we suggest that, from the charge transport perspective, the transition from small molecule/oligomer- to polymer-like behavior may be demarcated by the onset of strong, transport-limiting lattice disorder. Thus, understanding the effect of disorder on transport promises to further aid in determining the structural origins of charge trapping, guiding future materials design.
Dissecting the interactions between Francisella tularensis and its murine host [electronic resource]
Keywords: Microbiology and Immunology

Francisella is a gram-negative bacterium that causes tularemia. It is capable of infecting a remarkably broad host range including humans, mammals, birds and fish via multiple different routes of infection, establishing a successful colonization event within the various organs. This facultative, intracellular pathogen is also capable of invading a broad range of host cell types ranging from macrophages to fibroblasts. This is an extremely fascinating facet of the bacterium. The ability of Francisella to infect such a wide range of hosts and cell types suggests that the bacterium either co-opts cellular mechanisms common to all hosts and cell types or has the requisite bacterial genes to adapt to many different intraorganismal environments, or both. We were interested in studying the diverse repertoire of interactions that may occur between the bacterium and its murine host. In this thesis, the transposon site hybridization (TraSH) negative selection strategy was applied in a range of in vivo and in vitro systems to identify novel host-pathogen interactions in Francisella. We subsequently demonstrated that Francisella require tryptophan for virulence specifically in the lungs due to lung-specific induction of a host innate immune molecule indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 1. Alveolar macrophages may also deplete intracellular trytophan via a novel mechanism and microbial lung-specific requirement of tryptophan for virulence may be widely applicable to all bacterial species. We also demonstrate that Francisella hypercytotoxic mutants, unlike previously suggested, induce macrophage hypercytotoxicity due to increased bacteriolysis in the intracellular milieu. Identification and characterization of bacterial mutants that are attenuated under different in vitro and in vivo conditions have led to further insights into the interactions that occur between Francisella and its murine host.
DNA methylation profiling reveals novel biomarkers and important roles for DNA methyltransferases in prostate cancer [electronic resource]
Keywords: Genetics

Candidate gene based studies have identified a handful of aberrant CpG DNA methylation events in prostate cancer (Brooks et al. 1998; Yegnasubramanian et al. 2004). However, large scale DNA methylation profiles have not been examined for normal prostates or prostate tumors. Additionally, the mechanisms behind these DNA methylation alterations are unknown. In this thesis, I describe the results of my efforts to better understand these previously unexplored areas of biology. For the study presented in this thesis, I quantitatively profiled 95 primary prostate tumors and 86 healthy prostate tissue samples for their DNA methylation levels at 26,333 CpGs representing 14,104 gene promoters by using the Illumina HumanMethylation27 platform. When the profiles of the prostate tissue samples were compared, I observed a substantial number of tumor-specific DNA methylation alterations. A 2-class Significance Analysis of this dataset revealed 5,912 CpG sites with increased DNA methylation and 2,151 CpG sites with decreased DNA methylation in tumors (FDR < 0.8%). Prediction Analysis of this dataset identified 87 CpGs that are the most predictive diagnostic methylation biomarkers of prostate cancer. By integrating available clinical follow-up data, I also identified 69 prognostic DNA methylation alterations that correlate with biochemical recurrence of the tumor. To identify the mechanisms responsible for these genome-wide DNA methylation alterations, I measured the gene expression levels of several DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) and their interacting proteins by TaqMan qPCR and observed increased expression of DNMT3A2, DNMT3B, and EZH2 in tumors. Subsequent transient transfection assays in cultured primary prostate cells revealed that DNMT3B1 and DNMT3B2 overexpression resulted in increased methylation of a substantial subset of CpG sites that also showed tumor-specific increased methylation.
Does Court-Mandated School Finance Reform Affect Private School Enrollment?
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
private schools
school finance litigation
Serrano
Proposition 13
equality
redistribution
Thesis

Several court-mandated public school finance reforms, among them the Serrano cases in California, the Abbott cases in New Jersey, and the Edgewood cases in Texas, have drastically changed the way in which public schools are financed. Much of this litigation has led to more centralized financing mechanisms in an attempt to better equalize funds between richer and poorer school districts. However, while such policies may have equity advantages for students at the bottom, they can have some tricky ramifications for students at the top. I examine the proportion of students enrolled in private schools and how that proportion changes based on school finance litigation status, in an attempt to assess the role of public school finance on parents’ willingness to pay for private education. An increase in private school enrollment following court-mandated public school finance reform suggests that parents are willing to pay much more for schools if they have more control over how that money is spent, and that they are willing to pay less if their money is subsidizing the education of other children.
Drift fields, a method for resource allocation in wireless networks [electronic resource]
Keywords: Electrical Engineering

This dissertation recommends system engineering designs that implement the latest technologies in OFDMA cellular and femtocellular networks, specifically in the area of resource allocation and interference coordination. These recommended designs guarantee good user experience for time-sensitive applications such as streaming video. While throughput is often the metric used to benchmark a system, field performance requires the system also guarantees a maximum service latency to satisfy users. This dissertation provides both intuitive and low-overhead schemes that are robust and practical for implementation. The novelty of this work is the application of stochastic control techniques that guarantee the Quality of Service (QoS) through proper buffer management. Guarantee of a non-empty user buffer for streaming applications prevents service interruption. The thesis considers both centralized and distributed topologies that result from either a single base-station serving many users, or many femtocell base-stations each serving a single user, respectively. This dissertation provides insight and solutions to the following question: Under the constraints of buffer management, how does a system engineer determine the transmission scheme, resource allocation algorithms, transmitter coordination, user feedback, and achievable QoS guarantees that maximize efficiency. A combination of theory, heuristics motivated in theory, and numerical simulations will justify the presented methods.
A duality theorem for deligne-mumford stacks with respect to Morava K-theory [electronic resource]
Keywords: Mathematics

In [7] Greenlees and Sadofsky used a transfer map to show that the classifying spaces of finite groups are self-dual with respect to Morava K-theory K(n). By regarding these classifying spaces as the homotopy types of certain differentiable stacks, their construction can be viewed as a stack version of Spanier-Whitehead type construction. From this point of view, we will extend their results and prove a K(n)-version of Poincare duality for Deligne-Mumford stacks. A few examples of stacks defined by finite groups and moduli stack of Riemann surfaces will be discussed at the end.
Dynamic control of light in on-chip microresonators [electronic resource]
Keywords: Electrical Engineering

Optical microresonators have generated much progress in many aspects of optical science, such as in optical buffering, wavelength division-multiplexed filters for optical networks, optical switching, and in the enhancement of nonlinear effects. All these applications are made possible by the confinement of light within a small modal volume in the microresonator. The ability to actively tune the resonance within a microresonator has resulted in systems that can dynamically manipulate the flow of light. This thesis discusses some of the novel capabilities of these dynamic systems. Chapters 3 - 4 discusses the use of a dynamic delay line to suppress dispersion, and to overcome the gain-bandwidth product constraint of slow-light structures. This is followed by Chapter 5 which introduces a light-stopping scheme based on loss modulation. Finally, Chapter 6 shows how coherent control can be used in a microresonator system to enhance optical switching.
Dynamic empirical Bayes models and their applications to longitudinal data [electronic resource]
Keywords: Statistics

In the field of insurance rate-making, the framework of standard credibility theory was laid down by Buhlmann in an empirical Bayes setting. However, evolutionary credibility models, in which the individual risk profile that is embedded in a collective evolves over time, are not yet well developed. We develop a new class of dynamic linear empirical Bayes (EB) models as an alternative to linear state-space models for evolutionary credibility. This new dynamic EB modeling approach can be readily extended to a generalized framework, which provides flexible and computationally efficient methods for modeling longitudinal data. Our dynamic EB approach pools the cross-sectional information over individual time series to replace an inherently complicated hidden Markov model by a considerably simpler generalized linear mixed model. We also review the Pepe-Couper (1997) approach to modeling longitudinal data and propose a more general formulation of the approach in terms of "information sets" for prediction. This formulation unifies the marginal and transitional modeling approaches and strikes a balance between the flexibility of the marginal approach and the predictive power of transitional modeling. We further extend our predictive dynamic EB models to resolve the problem of "excess zeros" in longitudinal data. The advantages of using these models are illustrated using examples in insurance, default modeling of corporate loans in finance and predicting baseball batting averages.
Dynamic optimization with random and smoothed constraints [electronic resource]
Keywords: Electrical Engineering

Stochastic control theory is a well known mathematical framework that is widely applied because of its robustness. This thesis describes the use of stochastic control, convex optimization, and time smoothing, for resource allocation in radio communication systems. As the demand for heterogeneous multimedia services increases, it has become increasingly important to devise more efficient resource allocation strategies. These resource allocation problems can be represented as network flow control problems where the goal is to design flow controllers, which are equivalent to network protocols. We present a stochastic control framework, that integrates adaptive modulation and network utility maximization, for designing simple and implementable adaptive flow rate controllers for efficient and fair resource allocation. For each problem presented, we characterize the exact optimal controller and in a few special cases we show how to compute it. For cases where computing the optimal controller is intractable, we design efficient suboptimal controllers using approximate dynamic programming.
Dynamic resource management and numerical optimization [electronic resource] : practical applications in communication networks and finance
Keywords: Electrical Engineering

The exponential increase in computing efficiency over the past few decades, known as Moore's law, has led to wide-spread commercial applications of resource management and optimization theory in various fields. This thesis researches the increasingly important roles dynamic and intelligent resource management and optimization algorithms have played in present-day communication networks and financial portfolio management. First, this thesis studies Dynamical Spectrum Management (DSM), an emerging technology for next-generation Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) access networks. Present DSL networks' speed and Quality-of Service (QoS) are often limited by the interference between multiple users sharing a common physical transmission medium. Compared to the traditional static network planning that limits network speed to survive laboratory contrived worst-case scenarios, DSM's dynamic resource management and optimization adapts to network channel and noise changes to improve speed and robustness significantly. A fast and robust Multi-Level Water-Filling (MLWF) DSM algorithm is proposed for the efficient management of multi-user DSL networks. Distributed protocols are also proposed for MLWF's low-overhead implementation in DSL access networks. Second, this thesis shows that DSM can also benefit Home Power-line Communication (PLC) networks, which utilize home power cords as the transmission medium with a Frequency-Division Multiple-Access (FDMA) resource allocation constraint. An Equivalent Interference (EI) is introduced to reformulate the nonlinear integer programming Home-PLC FDMA resource management problem into a special case of DSL's multi-user interference management problem. DSM algorithms can thus be applied to solve the FDMA resource allocation problem in Home-PLC networks. In addition, dynamic relay protocols based on the presented FDMA algorithms are proposed to reuse idle Home-PLC devices to increase PLC networks' data rate substantially. Third, this thesis studies dynamic asset allocation strategies for drawdown-limited portfolio management. The divergence between theoretical model assumptions and empirical financial time-series statistics are analyzed. Empirical simulation results demonstrate that theoretical drawdown-limited portfolio management strategies tend to over-leverage a portfolio with lagged and overly optimistic correlation and volatility estimate. Adjustment on the trading strategy is thus needed to balance the risk and return of a portfolio. Finally, this thesis analyzes investment managers' incentive alignment with investors under a utility maximization framework. Simulation results illustrate that mangers' and investors' interests can often be misaligned. An investor-led Stackelberg game strategy with dynamic fund outflows is proposed to mitigate such incentive misalignment. Numerical optimization results show that mitigation of the manager-investor conflict of interests is possible with the proposed Stackelberg game strategy.
The dynamics of effusive volcanic eruptions [electronic resource] : kinematic and physics-based inversions of observations at Mount St. Helens, 2004-2011
Keywords: Geophysics

Despite advances in the technology used to monitor volcanoes, our understanding of volcanic systems remains quite rudimentary, in part due to limitations in the techniques typically used to infer properties of magmatic systems from observations recorded at the surface. The kinematic models typically used with geodetic observations have no predictive ability, cannot easily be used to model multiple data sets, and generally cannot be used to infer anything about the actual magmatic processes which give rise to modeled changes in pressures and volumes. The 2004-2008 eruption of Mount St. Helens resulted in a wealth of remarkable data which can be used to better understand key magmatic processes, and also suggests a clear opportunity to move beyond some of the limitations associated with traditional modeling techniques. This work focuses firstly on characterizing and modeling enigmatic cyclic ground tilt events with the goal of gaining insight into critical upper-conduit processes at Mount St. Helens; results are consistent with a mechanism involving extrusion of the semi-solid dacite plug and/or cycles of conduit pressurization. The second part of this work focuses on the development of a physics-based model of an effusive silicic volcanic eruption which is coupled to the host rock and therefore can be used to relate magma physics with diverse surface observations. The third part of this work involves the development of a technique for using a physics-based model of an effusive volcanic eruption in a Bayesian inversion, constrained by diverse data sets and independent information, to estimate key properties of a magmatic system including the volume, pressure, depth, and volatile content of the magma chamber, and properties of the fluid conduit and solid plug. Finally, this technique is applied to the 2004-2008 eruption of Mount St. Helens and is used with observations of ground deformation and lava dome extrusion from that eruption to estimate properties of the magmatic system.
The dynamics of partisanship within election cycles [electronic resource]
Keywords: Sociology.

Is party identification immovable and immune from short-term influences or is it swayed by political dynamics that arise during campaigns and elections? Social scientists have debate the answer to this question for over fifty years while relying on data that measures partisanship between elections. This dissertation incorporates data from two unique sources to offer a look into how partisanship behaves within election cycles. First, I observe individual-level systematic changes in partisanship over the course of the 2008 presidential election campaign using 10-wave panel data covering the 13 months leading up to the election. Partisanship becomes entangled by and confused with vote intention. Furthermore, these changes cannot be accounted for by measurement error alone. Next, I use the same data set to evaluate the relative stability of partisanship compared to a diverse set of attitudes and find it as stable, but not more stable, than ideology or evaluations of president's job performance. Finally, by bringing together an aggregate set of data composed of over 160 high quality commercial and academic public opinion polls, I am able to corroborate the patterns found in 2008. Overall, partisan intensity decreases closer to elections and increases further away from the glare and mixed messages of a campaign. Implications for how we understand American politics are discussed.