VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Shame to Cure: An Epic Journey of Gender, Language, and the Mind
Keywords:  Program in Feminist
Feminist Gender &amp; Sexuality Studies
psychology
poetry
Thesis

The Shame to Cure is a 40-poem collection that served as my honors thesis for Stanford University’s Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies department. The aim of this project is to explore the dissolution of female mentality through an untraditional epic journey, specifically regarding the relationship between language and consciousness and how they mediate each other.
The epic undertaken by the protagonist of this collection, an unnamed young woman, is a journey of mental dissolution and recovery. As the collection progresses, the poetic language fragments in different ways, including through tense, form, point of view, to mimic the protagonist’s mental deterioration. Several motifs come to haunt her through this journey; digital error messages interrupt the narrative flow, blurring the line between connectivity and loneliness, as well as continual encounters with an ambiguous female figure who is always just out of her reach. Around the middle of the collection, this deterioration culminates in a serious breakdown as language finally fails and the protagonist’s consciousness dissolves. However, after the breakdown, the protagonist begins the process of recovery and piecing herself together; and slowly, the language and poetry reflect this positive change, finally ending the narrative with hope.
The Theoretical Implications of Connecting Virtuality and Queerness Through Passing
Keywords:  Department of Communication
Queerness
Virtuality
Passing
Thesis

In modern academic contexts, rich scholarship exists for two seemingly disparate theoretical traditions: human-computer interaction (HCI) theory, and queer theory. The former field examines the manners in which human users and computers may engage to increase user productivity and immersion; the latter field concerns itself with understanding the experiences of non-heterosexual and non-cisgender individuals in society and, more broadly, what range of situations and actions might be rightly labeled as queer. The fields of human-computer interaction and queer theory may not seem to be thematically linked, but I believe that they are, and that understanding that linkage provides a valuable new thread of discourse in both fields. Namely, I believe that the concept of virtuality, a theoretical bedrock of HCI, should be integrated into the lexicon of queer theorists’ work, and queerness, unsurprisingly a theoretical bedrock of queer theory, should likewise be integrated into the lexicon of HCI theorists. The concepts of virtuality and queerness are related by a mutual connection to the concept of passing.
The Work of Play: The Perception and Implementation of Play-Based Learning at a Kenyan Preschool, LEAP Academy
Keywords: play-based learning
preschool students
early education
Kenya
Christian missionary education
administrators
teachers
parents
caregivers
participant observation
interviews
Graduate School of Education
Stanford University
Thesis

There are long global histories of both Christian missionary education and play-based pedagogies in early education. These two legacies collide at the rural Kenyan preschool, LEAP Academy. LEAP is an American-founded, play-based missionary school that educates 42 students ages three to five from Mai Mahiu, Kenya. Of these 42, 9 are total orphans living at the children’s home, Naomi’s Village, and 33 are students from the neighboring community. Given the unique nature of a play-based, missionary preschool in Kenya, this study asks two central questions regarding the perception and implementation of play. 1. How is play perceived in relation to learning by administrators, teachers, parents, and caregivers at LEAP Academy? 2. In what ways do the administration’s claims about the academic effects of play align with their goals for LEAP and translate into practice in the classroom? To answer these questions, I conducted two months of participant observation and in-person interviews with two administrators, four teachers, ten parents, and two caregivers. Through my analysis, it is clear that all stakeholder groups perceive play as very closely intertwined with learning. Though they held diverse perspectives and provided a variety of defining qualities of play, all of the groups converged in their belief that play is beneficial for building: language acquisition, critical thinking skills, creativity, social skills, and emotional healing. Parents also identified outcomes such as “play opens up the child’s mind” and can be used to signal a child’s well-being. Regarding goals, all of the administrators’ hopes for LEAP’s teaching environment and prioritized learning outcomes were achieved. The only unmet goal was reflected in excess daily desk time for the 4-year old classes, which I advise can be met by distributing desk time more evenly across school days. This study reveals one of the diverse settings in which play has been implemented and perceived positively by stakeholders. Findings from LEAP reinforce the importance of inter-stakeholder collaboration when creating goals, adopting nontraditional pedagogies, and reflecting on students’ educational experiences. The process of conducting research on the African continent also invites a necessary and ongoing conversation about the ethics and complications of international service.
Theoretical investigations into thermal and electrocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide
Keywords: Chemical Engineering.

The growing computing power has made computational catalysis an attractive field for high-throughput material screening and rational catalysts design. This thesis explores recent advances in adopting atomic simulations to provide insights and shed light on catalytic processes, which could further aid the design of catalytic materials. The reaction focused in this work is carbon dioxide conversion, which is essentially the reverse process of carbon dioxide emission. This process could alleviate the environmental challenges by converting the emitted carbon dioxide back to useful fuels and chemicals. In this work, we discuss two kinds of conversion, the thermal chemical conversion and electrochemical conversion. To investigate the catalytic systems of interest, we mainly focus on establishing microkinetic models based on the mechanistic understanding of the reactions. While atomic simulations enable us to obtain microscopic information of catalytic materials, what are observed in reality, however, are the macroscopic properties such as turnover frequencies. And microkinetic model bridges this gap. With atomic properties as input, it outputs materials' catalytic activities, which could be directly correlated to experimental observations.
The theory and applications of collective investment
Keywords: Business.

In many contexts, it is necessary to obtain a critical mass before a collective action can succeed. Some agents jump in early while others wait, gaining confidence of success from the actions of others. Early movers often take extra risk or bear extra cost without benefiting more than late-comers from the success of the cause. Political uprisings are an example, where vanguards lead and others follow. Another example involves the funding of an entrepreneurial venture. One investor may lead while others hold off to see evidence of investment before committing. What explains the actions of different agents? If information is revealed over time, why doesn't everyone wait? Additionally, what is the pattern of actions over time for causes that eventually succeed compared to those that fail? A framework that combines collective action and learning is developed to capture the trade-off in such settings. With features of each application incorporated, this study provides the rationale for why agents move early despite the apparent value of waiting. The timing patterns of actions predicted by the theory are consistent with observational data. In particular, in the case of venture funding, the implications of the theory including the dynamics of investment activities and the impact of early investment on the followers are tested and borne out using unique venture funding data from Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website.
Theory and applications of kernel embedded chemical structure representations in chemoinformatic analysis
Keywords: Bioengineering.

Chemical information systems answer questions about chemistry to support decision-making across the spectrum of investment, research, operations, and governance in industries as diverse as agriculture, energy, and healthcare. Chemoinformatics systems facilitate question answering by providing three core functions: indexing, search, and inference. In chapter 1, we introduce the basic concepts, lexicon, use cases, and unmet needs in chemoinformatics. Chemical structure is a key index for molecules because it is unique physical description that determines properties and biological activities, offering powerful search and quantitative structure-activity relationship prediction (QSAR) capabilities. In chapter 2 we, give provide review of representations and algorithms in chemoinformatics. The computable descriptions of molecules that support search and QSAR are a key area of innovation in chemoinformatics, and the recent success of deep and shallow learning architectures in other fields has sparked interest in representation learning. In chapter 3, we investigate the transfer of representations learned by kernel methods employed by support vector machines to linear regression models and characterize the tradeoffs in classification performance and computation time. Analog analysis focuses on chemical structure transformations and relationships and requires specialized databases and techniques for indexing and search, which are limited by their inability to flexibly abstract over the molecular contexts of analogous transformations. In chapter 4 we develop a conceptual algebra of molecules that supports search for chemical analog relationships with flexible abstraction over their molecular contexts. In chapter 5, we apply our method of representing chemical transformations using algebraic expressions of molecules to characterize the space of drug metabolism reactions catalyzed by microbes in the human gut. Finally, in chapter 6 we conclude our work by summarizing our contributions and outlining future directions for our research.
Thermal and thermoelectric transport in carbon-based nanomaterials [electronic resource]
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

Thermoelectric (TE) energy harvesting was first used by NASA in 1961 but has been too inefficient and expensive for widespread applications on Earth. Conventional TE materials (Bi2Te3 and PbTe) rely on rare minerals, making it difficult to reduce costs. In contrast, carbon is an abundant material, and carbon-based TEs could decrease costs and increase adoption of thermal energy scavenging technologies, particularly by taking advantage of carbon nanostructures. To optimize such TEs, it is important to understand key yet interdependent material properties, such as thermopower or Seebeck coefficient (S), their electrical (σ) and thermal conductivity (k). This work has focused on developing accurate metrologies to unravel the physics of thermal and TE transport in carbon-based nanomaterials. First, we describe the design and construction of a bulk thermal and TE measurement tool that can be used to rapidly characterize cross-plane thermal conductivity and Seebeck voltage of macroscale materials. Next, we discuss a suspended infrared microscopy-based technique that is designed to measure the in-plane thermal conductivity of suspended thin films. Finally, we describe the design and fabrication of an on-chip thermometry platform used to measure TE properties of sub-10 nm thin films. Using the metrologies designed and built in this thesis, we are able to comprehensively study nano- to macroscale materials for thermal and TE applications.
Thermalization near integrability in a dipolar quantum Newton's cradle [electronic resource]
Keywords: Physics.

Ultracold atomic gases are powerful platforms for studying isolated, nearly ideal quantum systems. Recent advancements in laser cooling and trapping of magnetic lanthanide atoms have introduced magnetic dipole-dipole interaction into the toolbox of ultracold atomic physics. When coupled with the short-ranged Van der Waals interaction, the long-ranged and anisotropic dipolar interaction dramatically modifies the atomic gas properties. This thesis presents experimental studies of ultracold gases of dysprosium (Dy) - the most magnetic atom. We measured the strength of the Van der Waals interaction in bosonic gases of Dy. Furthermore, we studied how the interplay between the Van der Waals and the dipolar interactions affects expansion dynamics in thermal Dy gases. We have also characterized the anisotropic atomic polarizability near the Dy 741-nm narrow-line transition. These measurements led to the creation of the first dipolar quantum Newton's cradle, with which we studied thermalization in a nearly integrable one-dimensional gas with a tunable integrability breaking dipolar interaction.
"They Comfort Me": The Politics of Representation and the Power of Survivor Visibility for WWII Korean Comfort Women and Modern-Day Asian Femme Sex Workers
Keywords: Korean
comfort women
Asian
femme
sex workers
race/ethnicity
gender
class
power
choice
coercion
feminism
survivor
Thesis

The purpose of my paper is to compare WWII Korean comfort women's experiences of gendered, racialized, and class-based imbalances of power to those of the modern-day Asian femme sex worker and explore the possibility that these two marginalized groups may share commonalities in the way they practice resilience, empowerment, and survivorship. Before analyzing such dynamics of power, it is important to first clearly define and describe the characteristics of Korean comfort women and Asian femme sex workers, as these identities are prone to misconstruals based on histories of misrepresentations. This research will draw upon literature on the history of the comfort system, testimonies of Korean comfort women, statistics on sex workers, literature on stereotypes about Asian sexuality, interviews with Asian femme sex workers in the Bay Area, and literature on feminist theories. This paper will conclude that incomplete understandings of Korean comfort women and Asian femme sex workers contribute to their disempowerment, and thus, this project will culminate with a creative piece that aims to account for such lack of nuance in existing narratives in the format of a feature film screenplay.
Thin silicon and metal-assisted chemical etching for photovoltaic and electronic devices
Keywords: Physics.

Ultrathin silicon membranes, less than 20um thick, have extreme flexibility, lightness, and the superior materials quality and advantages in silicon micro-processing. There are two major roadblocks in developing ultrathin silicon membranes: the fabrication processing of the more delicate material in traditional CMOS fabrication, and the manufacturing of high quality, ultrathin sheets from bulk Si material. First, I use alkaline silicon etching of silicon wafers to form ultrathin silicon sheets, supported by a thick ring of Si material on its edge, that enable facile processing of large 3" sheets in traditional CMOS apparatuses. Second, I explored the novel use of a "chemical wafer-saw" for silicon by using metal-assisted chemical etching, as a possible pathway to create thin silicon sheets. Third, I developed a new theoretical model for the mechanism of metal-assisted chemical etching of silicon, which explained for the first time the silicon doping dependence of the etch. Fourth, I present computational design and fabrication of a novel nanophotonic solar cell contact for a metal-insulator-semiconductor solar cell, as well as other nanostructures, fabricated using metal-assisted chemical etching.
Three essays in applied economics
Keywords: Economics.

The chapters of this dissertation deal with three different topics in applied economics. In Chapter 1, I investigate whether the government of Japan was able to use industrial policy to accelerate economic growth. To do so, I estimate the magnitude of external economies of scale and external learning by doing in each major manufacturing industry in postwar Japan. I find evidence that external economies of scale were relatively large and significantly different across industries, while external learning by doing was not. I then evaluate the industrial policy of postwar Japan by comparing estimates of technological externalities to measures of government intervention across industries and over time. I find evidence that industrial policy favored industries with stronger (more positive) external economies of scale but weaker (more negative) external learning by doing. In Chapter 2, I investigate the economic consequences of a hypothetical Catalan secession. I perform an event study to analyze the behavior of stock prices of publicly-traded firms operating in Catalonia in the days before and after a referendum on independence that took place on November 9 of 2014. I find that stock prices of publicly-traded firms operating in Catalonia did not react to the referendum. Assuming that the celebration of the referendum or its outcome allowed investors to update their priors on the likelihood of secession, these results suggest that investors do not associate large economic gains or losses to a hypothetical Catalan secession. In Chapter 3, I investigate the economic mobility within generations in the United States by the end of the 19th century, in an attempt to explain current preferences for low redistribution. I find that the United States had lower economic mobility within generations than Great Britain, but this fact was driven entirely by farmers. For non-farmers, economic mobility within generations was higher in the United States than in Great Britain, which might explain current preferences for low redistribution in the United States.
Through a national lens : the art and politics of photography in Republican China
Keywords: Art and Art History.

This dissertation examines the ascent of photography to the status of fine art in a time of heightened national consciousness in Republican China (1912--1949). It focuses on the formative period of pictorial photography, from the first public photographic art exhibition in the late 1910s through 1937, when the outbreak of Sino-Japanese war brought art photography in China to a standstill. Through integrated analyses of photographs, artist writings, and period press accounts, this study argues that Chinese photographers developed an acute awareness of their dual positions behind the camera: as modern artists, and as members of a fledgling nation still forging an identity within a new global politics. When Chinese photographers began to participate in the international art movement of pictorialism, tension between these two roles peaked as these camera artists strove to create a distinctive photographic identity for China. Bringing together Chinese, Japanese, and English-language primary sources, I show how competing nationalist and internationalist impulses informed the discourse, practice, and aesthetic concerns of photographic art in China. In doing so, this study considers how photography formed concepts of national identity in an era of intense national rivalries. It emphasizes the heated politics behind softly-focused photographs of seemingly apolitical subjects, revealing how making an art of photography became essential to the profile of a modern China.
Tiny Homes and Big Money: Options for the City of Oakland, California to Support the Construction of Additional Accessory Dwelling Units
Keywords:  Public Policy Program
Stanford University
Humanities and Sciences
Public Policy Program
Accessory Dwelling Unit
In-law unit
ADU
laneway house
granny flat
ADU finance
municipal finance
affordable housing finance
Oakland
Bay Area housing crisis
Section 108 loan
real estate crowdfunding
ADUs-as-a-service
real estate innovation
revolving fund
secondary unit.
Thesis

This paper explores options for the City of Oakland, California to help its residents finance the construction of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) as a means to boost the supply of affordable housing. This paper finds that private finance options are limited for homeowners with limited incomes and home equity. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 108 loan program, combined with local funding sources, are the most readily accessible options for Oakland to support ADU construction. More innovative options, such as real estate crowdfunding and ADUs-as-a-service, may one day provide viable alternatives for Oakland to encourage ADU construction.
Tit for Tat: The Influence of Resource Dependence on China's Foreign Relations
Keywords:  Center for International Security and Cooperation
Center for International Security and Cooperation
energy geopolitics
Thesis

Existing literature argues that China cultivates relations with resource-rich nations in order to access and procure energy exports. However, this neomercantilist hypothesis inaccurately defines China’s relations as a limited quid pro quo exchange. This thesis expands upon neomercantilist arguments by examining the extent to which energy needs influences China’s foreign relations with resource exporters. Energy relations are examined through quantitative and qualitative methods. A regression analysis is performed to test the strength of China’s oil and gas as an explanatory variable of indicators of political cooperation. Additionally, this thesis examines the evolution of China’s relations with three resource-rich countries of varying oil export levels: Angola, Republic of Congo, and Gabon.
This study finds that neomercantilism is a necessary but insufficient framework for understanding the role of China’s energy dependence. In the regression analysis, energy dependence is a statistically significant predictor of how frequently China aligns with another country in UN voting but not of other indicators of political cooperation, suggesting that resource relations are linked with a limited form of political cooperation. In the case studies, while energy interests may have catalyzed China’s further engagement with resource rich nations, relations quickly evolved beyond resource interests as both African nations and China sought to redefine developmental assistance under the framework of South-South cooperation. Overall, these results suggest the necessity of understanding China’s energy security within the context of its efforts to increase its soft power with resource-rich nations.