VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Beyond the Runner's High: How Female Collegiate Distance Runners Develop Athletic Identity to Find Purpose and Place in the World
Keywords: Stanford
Thesis
Honors
Science Technology and Society
Athletics
Runners
Sports
Anecdotal
Interviews
Habitus
Biopower
Body Awareness
Body Image
Injury
Purpose
Belonging
Relationship with Body
Eating Disorders
Food choices
Body Dysmorphia
Identity
Team
Social Community
Thesis

This thesis provides a window into the unique ways in which distance runners experience the world. After conducting extensive interviews with competitive collegiate female distance runners, I identified central themes and common experiences that richly convey these runners’ athletic narratives. The questions these athletes address include: Why wake up an extra hour early before class or work to complete the daily run? Why complete a grueling workout when no one is watching? Why is injury such a big deal? Why race if it’s so painful and stressful? I interweave athletes’ personal anecdotes with key concepts from two theoretical frameworks – Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus and Michel Foucault’s biopower – to illustrate the myriad ways in which distance runners construct and maintain athletic identity. I explore the ways in which distance runners develop unique relationships with their bodies; in particular, how their place on an elite team causes them to become cogs within a machine. These stories illustrate how an athlete derives self-worth from her body’s ability to function efficiently within the training system and to represent the discipline, sacrifice, and restriction so integral to the elite athlete lifestyle. Most of all, these athletic narratives show how distance running provides the space for the relentless pursuit of self-betterment, which gives athletes a sense of belonging, purpose, and control over their bodies and minds. Put simply, this thesis explores how athletes use the sport of distance running as way to transcend their ordinary selves.
Big data as a governance mechanism
Keywords: Business.

This study empirically investigates two effects of the availability of alternative data: stock price informativeness and its disciplining effect on managers' actions. Recent advancements in cloud computing, data collection, and machine learning have enabled technology companies to collect real-time, granular indicators of fundamentals to be sold to investment professionals. These data include consumer transactions and satellite images. I find that the introduction of these data increases price informativeness through decreased information acquisition costs, and these results are stronger in firms where sophisticated investors have the highest incentives to uncover information. In addition, the increased information content about future earnings contained in price affects managerial actions: I find that when alternative data become available, managers reduce their rent extraction through personal trading. These results are consistent with managers having less of an opportunity to trade profitably on their private information about future earnings because this information is reflected in prices sooner and to a greater extent. Furthermore, I find that investment efficiency, measured in various ways, increases after alternative data become available, consistent with price informativeness improving managers' incentives to invest and divest efficiently. My study informs academics, practitioners, and regulators about the impacts of reduced information acquisition costs for a group of sophisticated investors.
Biomechanical behavior of human stratum corneum : impact of treatments on SC components
Keywords: Materials Science and Engineering.

The stratum corneum (SC) is a remarkable biocomposite thin-film material. As the outermost layer of human skin, it serves as our primary protection against environmental insults such as bacterial infection, UV damage, temperature changes, and chemical exposure. To accomplish this task, it must be mechanically robust yet flexible; provide a barrier to water loss while maintaining its own moisture balance; and act as an interface through which we can perceive the outside world while not exposing any living tissue to harm. The SC fulfills these daunting duties thanks to its complex structure, which takes advantage of several structural elements operating at various scales to provide the wide array of biomechanical properties and behaviors necessary for its function. Among the most important of these are the keratin structural fibers which make up the bulk of the SC and provide rigidity and strength to the tissue; the intercellular lipid bilayers which comprise the primary barrier to water transport through the skin; and finally the corneodesmosome binding protein complexes, which physically hold the individual corneocyte skin cells together and which are critical for both the mechanical integrity and proper shedding of human skin. In this work the impact of various topical treatments on each of these three SC components is examined using biomechanical thin-film testing methodologies. First, the impact of lipid and natural moisturizing factors (NMFs) on the barrier function of the SC is studied. By extracting these components from the tissue, changes to the drying behavior of the SC is induced. In particular, lipid damage is found to increase both the magnitude and rate at which mechanical stresses develop in the tissue during drying. These changes are found to be linear with the fraction of lipids extracted from the skin. Next, two keratin dispersing compounds, namely ectoine and HEG, are applied to the tissue. The degree of keratin dispersion is measured, and improvements to water transport kinetics through the tissue are observed. These effects also lead to better skin hydration in ambient humidities; however, extreme drying conditions can reverse this trend, suggesting that the efficacy of these treatments may be dependent on the environment in which they will be used. Finally, aqueous and organic solvents, as well as the aforementioned keratin dispersing compounds, are applied to the SC in order to change the cohesive properties of the tissue. In this way, interactions of the corneodesmosomes with various treatments can be probed. These experiments reveal the sensitivity of these structures to a variety of treatment types, and highlight the importance of maintaining a proper balance of cohesion in the tissue.
Biomechanical differences between rearfoot striking and forefoot striking in running
Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.

Running is a popular and beneficial form of exercise, but has notoriously high injury rates. One modification that has been suggested for reducing injury is changing foot strike pattern. The majority of recreational runners land on their heels when running, which is known as rearfoot striking. However, converting to forefoot striking and landing on the ball of the foot rather than the heel may be useful for reducing overuse injuries. Understanding the differences between rearfoot striking and forefoot striking during running and how these differences affect injury risk is necessary before promoting one foot strike pattern as protective. The goal of this dissertation was to improve the understanding of biomechanical differences between rearfoot striking and forefoot striking. Initially, I gained an understanding of how these running patterns differ by comparing muscle activity between habitual rearfoot striking runners and habitual forefoot striking runners in ten major lower limb muscles. Next, I used acute gait retraining on habitual rearfoot striking runners, asking them to perform two different running adaptations: converting to a forefoot striking pattern and increasing their cadence by 10%. I compared how these adaptations affected biomechanical parameters associated with a history of tibial stress fractures. From this study, I found that converting to forefoot striking and increasing cadence reduced different injury risk parameters. Both of these adaptations appear to potentially reduce the risk of tibial stress fractures, but they do so in different ways. Finally, I analyzed the effect of converting to forefoot striking on plantar flexor muscle-tendon dynamics using simulations driven by measured kinematics and electromyography. With these simulations, I evaluated acute adaptation to forefoot striking on elastic energy storage in the Achilles tendon and plantar flexor muscle mechanics. Based on increased activation, increased negative work, and eccentric contraction during early stance, runners interested in converting to forefoot striking should be mindful of the increased demands on the gastrocnemius. The experimental results and simulations from this thesis are publicly available, allowing others to build upon this work and continue to probe the differences between habitual rearfoot striking and converted forefoot striking.
Biomechanics of hovering vertebrates
Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.

Insects, hummingbirds, and nectar bats evolved the ability to hover in front of flowers to get access to energy-rich nectar. It has been established that insects generate up to half of the lift needed to support their body weight during the upstroke. Estimates show that hummingbirds generate at least a quarter of their weight support during the upstroke by inverting their feathered wings more than generalist birds. In contrast, bats evolved membrane wings that they partially fold during the upstroke. While it has been hypothesized that hovering nectar bats generate vertical lift force during the upstroke, the complex structure of their wakes makes it hard to quantify this through flow measurement. To understand how hummingbirds and bats manipulate aerodynamic forces with their wings to perform these feats, we developed a new instrument that accurately measures these aerodynamic forces in vivo. This Aerodynamic Force Platform and an array of 3D-calibrated high-speed cameras simultaneously recorded the vertical aerodynamic forces and wing kinematics. The pressure field generated by the animal travels to the boundaries of the flight volume at the speed of sound. The top and bottom plate mechanically integrate the pressure distribution, which is measured by three force sensors on each plate. By using the Aerodynamic Force Platform to measure these wingbeat-resolved aerodynamic lift forces in vivo, we highlight similarities and differences across species and taxa. While it is known that insects improve efficiency by using elastic recoil for stroke reversal, it is unclear if hummingbirds converged on a similar solution, due to asymmetries in their lift generation and specialized flight muscle apparatus. We measured the aerodynamic force and kinematics of Anna's hummingbirds to resolve wing torque and power within the wingbeat. Comparing wingbeat resolved aerodynamic weight support measurements across species, we find that hummingbirds have low induced power losses similar to flies, much lower than typical for a generalist bird in slow hovering flight. We also show how hummingbirds' early muscle activation furnishes elastic recoil through stroke reversal to stay within the physiological limits of the pectoralis and supracoracoideus flight muscles. Expanding our species of interest, we traveled to Costa Rica with our new measurement device. We resolved the aerodynamic force and wing kinematics of 104 slow hovering hummingbirds and bats across 20 total species in vivo. While all hummingbirds we studied converged on an efficient horizontal wingbeat with an active upstroke to generate lift, the bats did not---they relied on drag to fully support their body weight. Remarkably, the nectar bats generate a significantly elevated vertical force during the upstroke compared to fruit bats---by inverting their wing more like hummingbirds---suggesting convergent evolution.
Black and white meets blue : race and the social psychology of police-community interactions
Keywords: Psychology.

In this dissertation, I examine how everyday interactions between police officers and community members build or erode trust along racial lines. In contrast to past social psychological approaches, which have narrowly focused on racial biases in officers' decision making, I advance an alternative framework for understanding these encounters: as institutional interactions. In Chapter 1, I outline this framework, which centers the interactions between institutional agents (e.g., police officers, teachers, doctors), and participants (e.g., citizens, students, patients). Like other intergroup interactions, these encounters bring together perspectives in a dynamic that unfolds across time. However, these interactions are unique in their institutional nature. Police officers are simultaneously individuals and extensions of the state, and act using a combination of their own discretion and departmental guidance. This dual role shapes both officer behavior and citizen experiences in the most common way in which citizens come into contact with the criminal justice system: as the subject of a traffic stop. A distinctive feature of vehicle stops is that the interaction occurs at the officer's discretion; that is, as a result of their decision to pull over a driver. In Chapter 2, I demonstrate that this discretionary context frames interactions in different ways for White and Black community members, shaping their construal of police encounters. In Chapter 3, I analyze racial disparities in the discretionary context of stops, demonstrating that, relative to White drivers, Black drivers are more likely to be stopped in circumstances where the justification for the stop is unclear and the officers' motives more discretionary in nature. I further establish that these disparities vary across departments, and are sensitive to changes in departmental policies. In Chapters 4 and 5, I turn to racial disparities in the content of interactions: how police officers communicate with drivers during traffic stops. In these chapters, I examine racial disparities in the respect that officers' language (Chapter 4) and tone of voice (Chapter 5) connote to drivers, as well as how officers' interpersonal communication influences how citizens' construal of police institutions. To conclude the dissertation, I highlight areas for future research within the institutional interactions framework, along with of implications of the theory for interventions to reduce racial disparities in policing.
Braindrop : a mixed-signal neuromorphic architecture with a dynamical systems-based programming model
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

This thesis describes the architecture of Braindrop, a .85 square-millimeter, 4096-neuron, low-power, mixed-signal neuromorphic system. Braindrop is the first such system designed with a comprehensive set of high-level programming abstractions and a synthesis procedure for mapping them to mismatched (and temperature-sensitive) subthreshold analog hardware. This high level of abstraction stands in stark contrast to previous neuromorphic systems, which required expert knowledge (and extensive characterization) of the hardware to use. Braindrop's computations are specified as coupled nonlinear dynamical systems. This program specification is synthesized to the hardware using the Neural Engineering Framework, not just compensating for, but leveraging the fabric of mismatched analog circuit elements as dynamic computational primitives. For typical network configurations, Braindrop achieves an energy per equivalent synaptic operation of 388 fJ.
Building a Nanophone: Detecting Surface Acoustic Waves with an Optomechanical Cavity
Keywords:  Department of Physics
Cavity
Optomechanics
Optomechanical
Physics
Applied Physics
Surface Acoustic Wave
SAW
detector
fin waveguide
fin
fin cavity
mechanical resonator
photoacoustic
photo
acoustic
Thesis

A technique is presented for detecting surface acoustic waves on a Silicon-on-Oxide chip using a nanomechanical resonator coupled to an optical cavity. Recent advances in cavity optomechanics have generated interest in using on-chip devices for a variety of practical applications, creating a new way to design mass or force sensors, on-chip LIDAR systems, and Bragg cells to name a few. These devices have the dual benefit of being extremely sensitive and relatively easy to integrate with other silicon photonic or electrical components. In this paper, we attempt to photoacoustically excite surface acoustic waves (or SAWs) on chip by focusing a small laser beam on a thin film of aluminum. Then, we try to use a fin cavity device, comprised of an optical waveguide with two mechanical fin resonators on either side, to measure any resulting SAWs. Essentially, we aim to create an extremely sensitive SAW microphone. We determine that it is possible to detect the increased intensity fluctuations on the mechanical resonator due to its interaction with waves generated from a photoacoustic event. However, at this time we cannot prove that we have evidence of SAW detection. There are many promising applications of a SAW microphone; among them is the possibility to resolve individual chemical reaction events by ‘listening’ for their SAW signature. A device that is capable of sensitive SAW measurement would be of great interest to those studying chemical reactions, small biological processes, and RF electronics.
Building empathy through psychological interventions
Keywords: Psychology.

Empathy—the ability to share and understand others' emotions—is a social bridge that connects people to one another. It facilitates important outcomes including prosocial behavior, emotional wellbeing, and social centrality, and reduces harmful social forces like prejudice and bullying. Given these benefits, researchers have tried to increase empathy through intervention, often developing a person's empathy-related skills like emotion recognition and empathic communication. But skills-related interventions overlook an essential determinant of empathy: people's desire to empathize. I propose that increasing people's motivation to empathize through psychological intervention can create enduring and generalizable changes in empathy that practically benefit people's social and emotional lives. In this dissertation, I design, administer, and evaluate novel, motivation-based empathy interventions within two populations undergoing significant life changes: college freshmen (chapter 2) and seventh graders (chapter 3). I find that these interventions addressing people's mindsets of empathy or their perceptions of the social normativity of empathy differentially elicit changes in empathy and social behavior in these two groups. These data suggest that shifting motivation related to empathy is a promising new tool for improving social and emotional outcomes during important developmental periods.
Building markets within authoritarian institutions : the political economy of banking development in China
Keywords: Political Science.

This dissertation studies the development of the banking system in China, the world's largest. Specifically, it examines why and how the banking market has become diverse and competitive, and the economic consequences of this process. The case is puzzling and important for political science because contrary to the existing literature, none of the formal institutions commonly associated with financial development—those that credibly constrain state power—is present. I argue that what happened in China is an outcome not of financial liberalization but of state engineering. In lieu of full-fledged market opening, Beijing mobilized and incentivized its local state agents to enter the banking market as competitors. While the new local state banks (LSBs) are distinct profit-maximizing players, their organizational structure and institutional missions are modeled explicitly after those owned by the central state. I call this model of banking market development "organizational spinoff." Through this approach, the Chinese state has managed to capture gains from a more competitive albeit internal market while maintaining political monopoly over it. In essence, organizational spinoff has enabled the state to avoid the conventional commitment game with private financiers, which would have required tying its own hands to entice market entry while risking losing financial control. This dissertation makes several contributions to the study of political economy and Chinese politics. Substantively, it contributes to our understanding of market development in autocracies. Analytically, it highlights the limits of modeling autocracies as unitary actors and shows the utility of an organizational approach. Methodologically, it introduces spatial and experimental methods to the study of the political economy of finance. Finally, it is the first to systematically trace the evolution of China's banking system, the complexity of which has thus far been masked by the simple term "state-owned, " thereby shedding new light on policy making and central--local politics in reform China.
Bureaucracy and networks : the politics of career mobility in large organizational systems
Keywords: Sociology.

Career mobility in state bureaucracy is an important topic with key implications for policy, development, and labor market dynamics. Existing literature on organizations emphasizes the importance of experience and network connections, whereas careers develop as linear progression in internal labor markets. The standard theories, however, commonly suffer from three issues. First, whereas network research focuses on static effects of connections, I point out the dynamic impacts of connections: the same tie that used to bring career benefits can carry inherent risks in an evolving authority structure. Second, whereas the assumption of linear job ladders prevails in internal labor market theories, I find that such functional ladders rarely exist in large bureaucracies. Third, one of the most challenging issues in organizational research is the limited scope condition, as studies typically focus on a single market or institutional setting. Using unique administrative data from the state bureaucracy of China and the Indian Administrative Service, I tackle these theoretical problems with novel empirical strategies, combining techniques from network analysis, quasi-experiment, and stochastic models. The findings challenge the standard theories, bringing out the contextual variations between organizations in different political systems.
Call Collect: Enabling any journalist to gather audio from the public
Keywords:  Department of Communication
Stanford
communication
department of communication
journalism
audience engagement
audience participation
hotline
vox populi
call
call-in
audio
podcast
radio
recording
collect
crowdsource
crowdsourcing
Thesis

Call Collect is an open source web application for gathering audio. It helps journalists quickly create call-in numbers and simple web widgets where people can record themselves. It's designed so that any newsroom can set up its own copy of the software easily and affordably.