VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Improving student achievement [electronic resource] : rethinking the impacts of teacher quality and school finance
Keywords: Education.

Across three papers, I reevaluate the roles that teacher quality and court-ordered school finance reform have in improving student achievement. In the first paper, I examine the extent to which teachers have longer-term effects on student achievement using administrative data from Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS). I define longer-term effects as the effects teachers have on student achievement in the years after they teach their students. Using a flexible statistical model, I obtain teacher-specific short-term and longer-term effects. I also estimate the extent to which short-term and longer-term effects relate to one another, on average. Results suggest that there is meaningful variation in teacher longer-term effects. I also find that short-term and longer-term effects are not perfectly correlated with each other. Finally, I find that having a master's degree or Ph.D. is associated with higher longer-term effects when estimating the model for math teachers. In the second paper, I assess the validity and stability of short-term and longer-term teacher effect estimates. I assess validity by examining whether future teachers predict the past test score gains of students they have not yet taught. This particular test is designed to provide evidence of student sorting bias that could potentially invalidate the teacher effect estimates. I then assess the stability of teacher effect estimates by considering the stability of teacher effects across different cohorts of students and the stability of teacher effects across math and English language arts within a given cohort of students. Results show that teacher effect estimates suffer from sorting bias. Although this is problematic, it suggests the need to understand whether the sorting bias is large enough to invalidate teacher effect estimates; this is an area of future research. With respect to stability, there is substantive overlap of teacher effects---both short-term and longer-term---across student cohorts, which suggests that the estimates carry some true signal of teacher quality and are reliable. Overlap of teacher effects across subjects is also non-trivial, but it is less stable the across cohort stability. These results suggest that teachers have different strengths in different subjects. In the third paper, Kenneth Shores and I provide new evidence about the effect of court-ordered finance reform on per-pupil revenues and graduation rates. We account for cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity in the treated and counterfactual groups to estimate the effect of overturning a state's finance system. Seven years after reform, the highest poverty quartile in a treated state experienced a 4 to 12 percent increase in per-pupil spending and a 5 to 8 percentage point increase in graduation rates. We subject the model to various sensitivity tests. In most cases, point estimates for graduation rates are within 2 percentage points of our preferred model.
In Data We Trust?: The Big Data Capabilities of the National Counterterrorism Center
Keywords: Center for International Security and Cooperation
Big Data
Organizational Theory
Counterterrorism
Thesis

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) sits as the central nexus for counterterror intelligence analysis and strategy for the entire American intelligence community (IC). It exists to offset the fragmentation issues that came to light in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Its role is to integrate all types of intelligence information using traditional and computational Big Data techniques. Unfortunately, the NCTC is not in a position to take full advantage of contemporary Big Data analytics, severely reducing its analytical capabilities in the current information environment. These weaknesses stem from its organizational structure, not its technological capabilities.
The NCTC’s deficiencies manifest themselves both its internal structure as well as its position within the community as a whole. Internally, the NCTC does not have the information-sharing environment that it should and provides poor incentives for collaboration and innovation. Externally, it has a poorly defined role within the community and lacks the power that is required in order to truly centralize big data analytics. The private sector is leaps and bounds ahead of the government when it comes to the implementation of Big Data analytics. Internet giants such as Google and Facebook may serve as models for future improvements to the NCTC. With full understanding that certain limitations apply to government agencies, this thesis provides recommendations on how the NCTC may improve its ability to take advantage of large-scale data analytics and provide a better service to the rest of the Intelligence Community.
In silico interaction of adaptive tissues and devices [electronic resource]
Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.

Finite element simulations were introduced in the aviation industry in the 1970s and soon found their way into other industries as well as biomedical research. Since then, constitutive laws have been developed with the goal of building realistic organ level models and ultimately creating a whole human model. The attempts to model the fibrous soft tissue in the human body has led to the development of anisotropic models as conceived by Fung or Holzapfel and active muscle models as developed by Hill. These models have led to a better understanding of the underlying biomechanics in both passive and active systems and their interaction with devices or changing boundary conditions during disease. However, the human body's ability to adapt to boundary conditions, particularly in conjunction with devices or disease, has been ignored in most of these models. Here, I present constitutive laws for soft tissue adaptation, their implementation into general purpose finite element codes, and applications to clinically relevant problems. I applied a continuum mechanics framework to model the in-plane area growth of skin upon overstretch, the adaptation of skeletal muscle to changes in its mechanical environment, and the effect of annuloplasty ring sizes during mitral valve repair surgery. Our results demonstrate how the finite element method can be applied to model the interaction of adapting soft tissue with medical devices and changing mechanical changes in ite environment. We anticipate our models to open new avenues in surgical planning and to enhance the treatment of patients in both plastic and cardiovascular surgery. Furthermore, I expect these models to be used by medical device manufacturers as part of their computer-aided engineering pipelines.
In the hands of God [electronic resource] : affect, agency, and faith among Brazilian migrants in greater Washington D.C.
Keywords: Anthropology.

"In the Hands of God" examines the relationship between Evangelical Christianity, migration, and affect in the United States. While the fact of increasing Evangelical religiosity among Latin Americans in the United States has been well documented, few studies have considered how this identity shapes, and is shaped by, the migrant experience itself, particularly for those without legal status. Scholars have long debated the political effect of Evangelicalism among Latin Americans, both in the United States and Latin America, emphasizing either its conservative or progressive influence. Such studies evaluate the extent to which converts become civically active, make more money, attain employment, or enhance their health as a result of Evangelical membership. While such research remains essential to understanding the broad phenomenon of Evangelical religiosity among migrants, it largely overlooks the deeply personal feelings, desires, and experiences of migrants themselves. Instead of considering what Evangelical religiosity produced economically, socially, or politically, my fieldwork set out to understand why migrants turned to Evangelicalism once in the United States, and how this newfound religious identity shaped their felt experience and identity as migrants. Based on 15 months of fieldwork among Brazilian migrants in greater Washington D.C., a "new immigrant gateway, " I analyze the following subjects: the affective experience of migration; the strategies pursued by Evangelical churches to attract adherents; and the multiple ways in which Evangelical faith mitigates the adversity faced by migrants. This research joins, and aims to expand, three main fields of theoretical inquiry: Migration Studies, Anthropology of Religion and Christianity, and Studies of Affect and Emotion.
In Vivo Human Skull-Brain Dynamics During Mild Sagittal Skull Acceleration
Keywords: Concussion
Traumatic Brain Injury
Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research
Thesis

Mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion, is one of the greatest medical challenges facing our society today, with diagnosed cases more prevalent than ever before, especially in contact sports. Previous studies have shown increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s in patients with a history of concussions, signifying the importance of better diagnostic tools and preventative equipment. Global kinematic variables and their variants have been historically used as indicators of concussion. The field of brain injury biomechanics rests on the assumptions that the brain is an almost incompressible material with little shear resistance. Together with the geometry of the relatively rigid skull, these assumptions have led to hypotheses that the brain is much more vulnerable to rotational rather than translational motions of the head. Previous animal experiments have shown higher rates of injury when rotational head accelerations were applied. Detailed finite element models have also predicted that rotational head motions lead to higher deformations in the brain. However, never before has this difference of dependence on skull input been shown experimentally. Here, we present the first study to experimentally investigate the decoupled effect of rotation and translation of the head on relative brain-skull displacement in live humans. Using high-speed fluoroscopy, we measured the brain's displacement as a result of head motions of up to 10g translational and 6 rad/s rotational velocities, which reach head motions near median soccer headers. Our results suggest that brain motion occurs predominantly due to the rotational head motion and relative motion of the brain is a function of the skull's rotational velocity. Furthermore, this experiment will allow us to validate our previous finding that skull–brain dynamics can be approximated by an under-damped system with a low-frequency resonance of less than 20 Hz. Our findings provide insight and suggest a new direction into designing smarter protective helmets based on the understanding of the complex dynamics of brain deformation rather than ad hoc injury correlations.
Incentive mechanisms for societal networks [electronic resource] : influencing behavior in transportation systems and organizational processes
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

Societal Networks, which we use every day and are critical for the orderly functioning of society, include transportation networks, energy grids, waste management networks, etc. Due to increased population and demand, they are preforming quite poorly recently. Therefore, it is important to restore the supply-demand balance of these networks to improve their efficiency. In this thesis, we consider demand management by incentivizing people to change their consumption behaviors. Our focus is on transportation networks, where we encourage commuters to avoid traveling in the peak hour. Our main contributions are (a) the development of a system, consisting of a back-end database and a user-facing front-end, designed for implementing large-scale "nudge engines", and (b) an analysis of the efficacy of the nudge engine in influencing commuter behavior. We apply our nudge engine to reduce peak hour congestion in Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system by encouraging commuters to travel off-peak. This program, called Travel Smart Rewards (TSR), has been running for close to 5 years with over 340,000 commuters and 86 companies as corporate members. The key ingredients of our approach are: (I) random monetary incentives paid out through games of chance, (ii) social influence and (iii) personalized rewards. Next, we apply our nudge engine to another setting of corporate learning and launch the A-Way program. It is used in conjunction with the employee training program of Accenture to train its management consultants. We describe the system and analyze its efficacy in improving outcomes of their training program.
Income Shocks, Child Fostering and Education in Senegal
Keywords:  Department of Economics
Senegal
Children
Fostering
Education
Income Shock
Stanford Department of Economics
Thesis

This paper examines the practice of child fostering in Senegal. Specifically, it looks at the treatment that fostered children are subject to in their host families relative to their host siblings. It compares the effect of exogenous income shocks on biological and fostered children in the same family. This comparison reveals whether there is a differential in educational investment between the two groups while accounting for any gap in treatment that might exist at baseline. Fluctuations in household economic conditions significantly change three variables for fostered children: their ability to read and write, their school enrollment, and their primary school completion rate. On the other hand, for biological children, these same metrics are mostly unchanged whether the shock is positive or negative. This leads to positive shocks shrinking the differences in educational ability, school enrollment and future earnings between the two groups by 0.21 points, 16 p.p. and 35 basis points respectively; negative shocks worsen the gap between them in the same magnitude. These results indicate that fostered children are less insured than their host siblings, although there is no difference in educational outcomes between the two groups absent any shock.
Indole antibiotic biosynthesis in edible plants [electronic resource]
Keywords: Chemical Engineering.

The adept synthesis of antimicrobial small molecules is central to the sedentary lifestyle of plants. In the case of plants that we consume as food, these natural compounds are significant for human nutrition, too. Cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, mustards, and turnip, produce a bouquet of sulfur-containing molecules that restrict fungal pathogens and also possess drug-like activities in humans. Knowledge of the enzymes that assemble these natural compounds — termed the biosynthetic pathway — is crucial to understand their biological functions. Furthermore, elucidating a complete biosynthetic pathway would open the door to engineering plant metabolism for applications in sustainable agriculture and human health. Here I describe three studies that discover and characterize enzymes involved in the synthesis of plant antibiotics known as phytoalexins. These investigations employ a combination of mass spectrometry-based metabolite profiling, comparative genomics, gene expression analysis, and enzyme biochemistry. The three studies include: (i) uncovering a branch point for phytoalexin biosynthesis in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana; (ii) identifying the first enzymes in the brassinin pathway from turnip mustard (Brassica rapa); and (iii) completing an entire pathway of Brassica phytoalexin biosynthesis. A set of ten enzymes is sufficient to engineer this pathway into a foreign plant, and future work will examine the valuable traits conferred by over 30 chemically diverse derivatives that are produced in cruciferous plants. The biochemical and genetic basis of phytoalexin biosynthesis elucidated here provides insights into the evolution and future engineering of the complex chemical communication among plants and their associated microbes.
The influence of lithology on the forms of hillslopes and drainage basins in soil mantled landscapes [electronic resource]
Keywords: Geological Sciences.

Much of the Earth's surface is blanketed by a mantle of soil and weathered rock. In these settings, topographic forms are typically smooth, with convex hillslopes grading subtly into the concave valley networks that define drainage basins. In 1877, G.K. Gilbert recognized that this smooth topography masked the underlying variability in geologic structure and proclaimed this the `Law of Divides.' Gilbert reasoned that in settings where rock weathered to soil faster than that soil could be eroded, topographic forms would be dictated by the processes transporting that soil rather than the variations in strength of the underlying rocks. There are exceptions to every rule, and this dissertation focuses on exceptions to Gilbert's `Law of Divides, ' situations where lithology influences the form of soil-mantled landscapes. I begin at hillslopes, demonstrating that if soil transport is sensitive to soil thickness, which in turn depends on underlying rock properties, variations in hillslope gradient can arise at geologic contacts, a phenomenon observed in some landscapes. Following this, I focus on the heads of valley networks and ultimately entire drainage basins. In the Gabilan Mesa, in the central Coast Ranges of California, properties of the weathered zone vary with slope aspect, placing rocks that favor headward channel growth close to the surface on south facing slopes. As a result, the preferential expansion of channel heads on south-facing slopes has led to a basin-scale topographic asymmetry. I conclude by measuring asymmetry in drainage basins in a number of other landscapes, and demonstrate that asymmetry in the structure of drainage networks is most pronounced in rock types that may be especially vulnerable to erosion. Hence, even at the largest scales, soil-mantled topography may encode some signature of the properties of underlying rocks.
Information and influence [electronic resource] : organizational influence on public policy through advisory committees
Keywords: Management Science and Engineering.

How do private organizations influence public policy, particularly through non-economic means? Scholarship in political science and corporate political activity has primarily examined the influence of private organizations via lobbying, campaign donations and the "revolving door." These studies are inherently limited by a perspective that views legislation as the outcome of the market for dollars and votes and by focusing on legislation almost exclusively. My dissertation addresses these limitations through a mixed-methods study combining interviews and a multi-year analysis of how organizations participate in federal advisory committees as a means of influencing regulation (rather than legislation). Advisory committees are a common tool federal agencies use to solicit feedback and gather expert advice from non-governmental sources. I find that agencies utilize these committees as part of an extensive information gathering network. As such, these committees, and those represented on them, have the ability to affect agency decision making by influencing the information that an agency receives. This effect I demonstrate through a statistical analysis of the relationship between representation on committees and the receipt of policy-related grants from related agencies. These findings demonstrate the importance of studying regulation, not legislation, as the "hand of government" that most frequently interacts with organizations and the ability of private organizations to influence regulation. In addition, my dissertation adds nuance to existing literature by showing a new pathway for corporate political activity, information sharing, that has long been the focus of organization theory in other contexts.
An information-theoretic study of problems in wireless relaying [electronic resource]
Keywords: Electrical Engineering.

Wireless relaying (using additional radio devices to improve the communication between a source and a destination) is poised to emerge as a key component in heterogeneous networks, internet of things and device-to-device communication. As a result, it is crucial to construct relaying models that capture practical constraints, derive fundamental limits on the performance in these models, and construct schemes that approach these performance limits. This thesis will describe our work in four specific instances in this direction. The first two chapters focus on questions that arise while operating a network of multiple relays. In the first of these, we take a closer look at the popular relaying paradigm of ``compress-forward'', wherein relays simply attempt to describe their received signals to the destination. We show that this paradigm can be optimized to deliver significantly better performance than what is suggested in existing results. The improvement is based on the surprising notion that the relays should do a poor job of describing their observations. In the next chapter, we consider the problem of selecting a subset of relays that is small but nevertheless good in the sense that it supports high end-to-end rates. This is non-trivial due to the large search space and difficult-to-evaluate objective function. We exploit the structure of the network to develop an approximation algorithm based on simulated annealing. The algorithm performs exceptionally well in terms of both the runtime and the objective of the selected set of relays. The next two chapters focus on the single relay channel, and study the impact of practical constraints of relay such as half-duplexing and lack of complete channel state information. In the first, we consider the problem of operating a single relay that can at any time either act as a receiver or a transmitter, but not both (half-duplex). Studying this setup gives rise to highly interesting questions, such as when should the relay receive and when should it transmit, whether it can decide this as a function of dynamically available information or not, what this function should be, what information about the channel is available at the relay, and how should it process the received signal. We provide a comprehensive investigation into these questions. In the next chapter, we consider a relay which is assumed to be uninformed about the state of the channel. This captures the fact that it can be difficult for the relay to obtain timely information about the fading between source and destination. We address the inadequacy of existing schemes by developing a novel scheme "cooperative-bin-forward" that achieves the capacity. This scheme leverages the benefits of the two basic relaying paradigms of "decode-forward" and "compress-forward".
inHabit
Keywords: Learning Spaces
Metacognition
Space Design
Environmental Psychology
Thesis

Entering college means having to make decisions for the first time about how you learn best. These skills are usually developed on one’s own through trial and error, if at all. inHabit in an interactive map that guides learners through a place-based self-reflection cycle: from exploring which physical spaces support which kinds of learning, to reflecting on their feelings once in the space. Students not only learn how they learn best in the context of physical space, but also gain feelings of ownership and agency over their work, which can intrinsically motivate them to learn and succeed in college.