VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
From well to welfare: social spending in mineral-rich post-Soviet states

Why do some autocrats redistribute resource rents through high welfare spending, while others do not? Conventional wisdom suggests that authoritarian leaders unconstrained by institutions and with unlimited access to resource wealth would siphon off these funds for themselves and rent-seeking elites at the expense of delivering goods to citizens. Yet, welfare spending levels among the world's petroleum-rich authoritarian and hybrid regimes indicate that some rulers are more inclined than others to "share the loot" with the larger citizenry./nThis dissertation provides a theory of redistributive social spending in mineral-rich authoritarian regimes, using the cases of Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. I analyze health, education and social security spending in each country from 2000-present, leveraging variation across cases as well as within each case over time. In Azerbaijan under Heidar Aliev (1995-2003) and Ilham Aliev (2003-present), there is little evidence of desire on the part of the government to engage in redistribution. Welfare expenditures have remained consistently low as a percentage of GDP and decreased drastically over time as a percentage of total government spending. By contrast, welfare expenditures in Russia under Vladimir Putin (2000-present) have increased substantially since the early 2000s, driven largely by new social policy initiatives aimed at increasing pensions, salaries for health and education workers, and expanding categories for direct cash transfers and benefits to citizens. Finally, Kazakhstan under Nursultan Nazarbaev (1991-present) occupies a middle position between these two extremes./nI find that variation in social spending is explained by differences in elite cohesion. Different degrees of unity and conflict among political and economic elites affect the autocrat's sense of security about his position. When elites are divided, the level of threat to the autocrat is high. In order to counterbalance this threat and guarantee security, the autocrat buys the loyalty of allies in society through high social spending. The public becomes an important beneficiary of the redistribution of resource rents, and provides the autocrat with legitimate support. The autocrat then leverages this societal allegiance to deter threats by potential opponents. Conversely, when the elite is unified, the level of threat to the autocrat is low. In the absence of potential challenges from within the elite, the autocrat does not depend on societal allies to ensure the continued stability of his position, so welfare spending remains low. Due to the broad empirical and theoretical significance of redistribution under authoritarianism, this explanatory approach makes both substantive and theoretical contributions to the study of authoritarianism and the "resource curse," and is applicable to mineral-rich non-democratic regimes in the Middle East, North and sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

Advisor: Fish, Michael S
Tapping into the Anointing: Pentecostal Pedagogy, Connectivity, and Power in Contemporary Ghana

Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity has grown vigorously in sub-Saharan Africa especially since the 1980s. Ghana is no exception. Pentecostal churches' ecclesiastical, mediatic, and welfare networks have secured a strategic public role to these organizations in the country by filling part of the material and moral gaps left by the Ghanaian state in its post-structural adjustment moment. A new generation of influential charismatic leaders has emerged as the local faces of this global movement. Those are women, but mostly men who embody a Christian ethos that coordinates intense piety with self-achievement, inviting the youth to follow their ways. But this history is not only one of successful expansion, as observed in widespread public anxieties about the authenticity of "men of god" in the country. Concerned with the methods of authoritative reproduction of charismatic leadership, my research is based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork centered on the transmission of Pentecostalism in Ghana through both formal and informal methods of "discipleship", the process of ushering new converts into the Christian life. Chapter one situates the problem of Christian conversion in history, whereas chapter two builds an ethnographic model based on how converts move from "spiritual rebirth" to "spiritual maturation" and how their faith grows. Chapters three to five explore the discipleship structures of Lighthouse Chapel International, focusing especially on the Anagkazo Bible and Ministry Training Center, where the denomination's future full-time ministers are nurtured to recognize and attend to the call of God. Some of my guiding questions are: What is the role of human relations in Pentecostal piety? How is charisma transferred or transmitted? How learning unfolds in charismatic spirituality without jeopardizing the givenness of grace and the sovereign agency of the Holy Spirit? What is the role of pedagogy in the social reproduction of pastoral norms? How charisma finds different strategies of distribution, according to specific ecclesiastical forms? I mobilize conceptual tools provided by the anthropology of Christianity, linguistic anthropology, and the anthropology of ethics in order to develop a theoretical framework that allows me to think the pedagogical dissemination of charismatic discourse in Ghana, focusing especially on how religious empowerment becomes predicated on specific forms of willing obedience.

Advisor: Hirschkind, Charles
Communities, Traffickers and the State: The Transformation of Urban Social Policy in Brazil

Academic work on Brazil has long underscored the state's shortcomings. Past scholarship portrayed a state beset by patronage, held captive to elite interests and mired in inefficiencies that impeded the basic practice of governance. The literature on Brazilian urbanism depicted the state as particularly deficient. State interaction with favelas, disadvantaged communities common throughout the country's cities, demonstrated state-society relations at their most fraught. The state alternatively neglected favelas, failing to extend to them same services and rights that the formal city enjoyed; abused them, destroying communities through violent demolition campaigns, sanctioning police brutality and colluding with drug traffickers; or exploited them for political gain through clientelistic networks./nIn the wake of democracy's return to Brazil there are many indications of substantial changes to state capacity. These advances demand a re-evaluation of state-society relations and an interrogation of the continued utility of past theoretical frameworks. Through a case study of Rio de Janeiro, this dissertation explores the ramifications of the re-emergence of state sponsored welfare for disadvantaged urban communities. I examine how relationships among the state, favela residents and drug traffickers change with the proliferation of new equalization measures. Through quantitative, geographic and qualitative analyses, my data reveal impressive gains in the scale and reach of recent social policies. New connections linking the Brazilian state with favela residents have emerged. Each conceptualizes and interacts with the other in novel ways. Such achievements, however, are accompanied with the notable cost of further complicating the state's relationship with drug trafficking. Nevertheless, these developments underscore the need to cease privileging deficit perspectives when analyzing the Brazilian state. The recent social policies reflect a newly re-invigorated beneficent dimension of the Brazilian state, one that warrants closer scrutiny.

Advisor: Evans, Peter
Swidler, Ann
Advanced Architectures for Efficient mm-Wave CMOS Wireless Transmitters

With fast growing consumer demand for high speed mobile data capacity, wireless spectrum has become increasingly precious. This drives the evolution of the personal wireless communication, with new standards developed to improve the spectral efficiency. However, the available spectrum below 10GHz is very limited and packing more bits per second into the same bandwidth requires larger energy consumption as well as more stringent radio and MODEM performance. As a result, such an approach is not sustainable for meeting the future demand. A natural path is to move into higher frequency bands which have larger spectrum bandwidth but less commercial usage. Recent years have witnessed vast technology development on V-band (60GHz) Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) and E-band (80GHz) point-to-point cellular backhauls. Meanwhile, the advancement of low-cost CMOS technologies enables researchers to significantly improve the integration level of high speed mm-wave radios with traditional analog and digital circuitry. However, current mm-wave radio transmitters suffer from short communication distance and low energy efficiency. This is mainly caused by the reduced performance of the CMOS transmitters employing traditional Power Amplifiers (PAs) that suffer from low transistor breakdown voltage, low power gain and poor back-off characteristics. This dissertation investigates the challenges of designing efficient mm-wave transmitters for both long range and short range applications, and proposes concepts and techniques that can potentially break the barriers imposed by the low cost digital CMOS process. The scope of investigation and proposal extends from the architecture level down to the transistor level. Specifically, on-chip and spatial power combining techniques are analyzed and implemented to achieve larger transmitter Equivalent Isotropically Radiated Power (EIRP). To enhance the average efficiency for modulated signals with high Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio (PAPR), a direct digital-to-RF conversion architecture is proposed and implemented, enabling dynamic DC power scaling. Finally, a Quadrature Spatial Combining concept is introduced to eliminate the tradeoff between low insertion loss and high isolation present in a traditional Cartesian architecture with on-chip signal combiners. Prototype chips are fabricated and tested in 65nm CMOS technology to verify the proposed architectures and techniques.

Advisor: Niknejad, Ali M
Building Regulatory Bodies in the Brazilian States

Why do some bureaucratic bodies become robust after they are created, with adequate resources and authority to perform their tasks, while others remain underfunded and limited in scope? My dissertation explores this question using multisector regulatory agencies in Brazil. Before, during, and after the development of concessions and transfer of essential services to private control in Brazil, state governments created regulatory agencies to maintain an active state role overseeing of service delivery. Though regulatory agencies followed very similar formal outlines, their post-creation development varied widely. I explain this variation./nMy arguments are based in political principals' electoral incentives. I begin with an instrumental explanation of agency creation. Governors created regulatory agencies to address a combination of consumer and concessionaire anxiety where they were unable to otherwise make long-term commitments to prevent abusive price increases or expropriation. I then argue that post-creation development was most pronounced where multisector bodies focused most heavily on work in electrical energy, sanitation, and piped natural gas distribution. Mayors and city councilmembers can claim credit for service improvements in these policy areas because these services are geographically bounded. By contrast, work in intercity highways and transportation provides few opportunities for improvement for which local officials can claim credit. Agencies focused on these second set of issues do not develop a positive reputation with mayors. Governors in turn care about mayors' opinions, and receive credible information about bureaucratic work from them, because mayors' support is key in future statewide elections. Agency leaders who employ their positive reputation to successfully lobby for more resources and authority produce robust agencies./nI explore this argument in multiple areas. First, I explain the workings of the proposed causal mechanism through a comparison between the agency Agergs in moderately well-developed state of Rio Grande do Sul and the agency Arce in the less-developed state of Ceará. Agergs's early focus on highway and transportation regulation meant that it grew far less robust by 2010 than did Arce, which focused on electricity and sanitation. I then test hypotheses across the case universe using descriptive statistics and causal process-tracing. I expand the argument slightly to examine sectoral agencies in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and hypothesize how different political institutions might affect subnational regulatory body development in Argentina and Mexico, the next-largest Latin American federations./nMy work contributes to our understanding of the functioning of the regulatory state in the global South. I raise new important questions about local state capacity in developing countries, and propose an explanation that can be transferred to multiple cases.

Advisor: Collier, David
Post, Alison
Identification and analysis of cellular factors involved in v-Abl transformation of B lineage cells

Apparently, science has fought a long war on cancer with a myriad of efforts. Nonetheless cancer is still one of the leading causes of death, and our understanding of cancer remains very narrow. Many studies have recognized that one of the hallmark features of cancer is the complex involvement of many cellular components and events throughout cancer development./nIn 1970, Abelson-Murine Leukemia Virus (A-MuLV) was accidentally discovered as a replication-defective mutant retrovirus that causes acute leukemia in mice. A-MuLV can infect mouse bone marrow, and generate so-called Abelson transformed cell lines. However, A-MuLV infected cells exhibit two distinct stages of transformation with stringent clonal selection during the transformation process. This suggests that in addition to expression of the viral oncogene v-Abl, cellular factors also play an important role in the transformation process./nHere, we studied this v-Abl transformation system to ask some questions about how cellular factors are involved in leukemic transformation. 1) Are there a unique subset of cell populations susceptible to v-Abl transformation? With bone marrow fractionation experiments, we confirmed that pro-B cells are the major target cells of v-Abl transformation. 2) In which stages of the process is tumor suppressor p53 involved in the transformation? p53 knock-down studies clearly validated that p53 is also involved in early v-Abl transformation, as well as later stages. 3) Are there any other cellular factors important in v-Abl transformation? A loss-of-function screen identified Dpf2, a zinc finger transcription factor, as a protein that can affect v-Abl transformation in a p53-dependent manner./nIn the meanwhile, we have developed a 96 well round-bottom plate assay that can measure initial v-Abl transformation frequency reliably and accurately. Also we have implemented a sequential infection method, which could provide a good platform to allow genetic manipulation of cells during the transformation process. These assays should facilitate answering many more questions about the v-Abl transformation process.

Advisor: Schlissel, Mark
Providing Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) as an HIV Prevention Intervention: Programmatic Strategies to Maximize Service Utilization in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Over the past decade, myriad social and economic factors have fueled a burgeoning population of people who inject heroin in sub-Saharan Africa, creating an urgent need for HIV prevention and treatment services tailored to this marginalized group. While the epidemic in the region remains largely driven through heterosexual risk behavior, a higher probability of disease acquisition per exposure can lead to rapid transmission among people who inject drugs (PWID). Stigma and discrimination isolates PWID from accessing available HIV care services designed for the general population and has contributed to HIV prevalence in PWID up to four times greater than country averages. To address this crisis, a few trailblazing governments with support from international HIV/AIDS funders have begun to develop and in the case of Tanzania, implement, comprehensive national harm reduction services for people who use and inject drugs. This dissertation contributes to the growing body of implementation science literature on medication assisted treatment programs (MAT) for PWID in sub-Saharan Africa./nThis dissertation takes a three-paper model to identify programmatic and policy strategies to enroll, retain and support patients in MAT programs, focusing on Tanzania. The first paper, a systematic review of the literature on methadone as an HIV prevention intervention, describes evidence-based best practices and applies key findings to make recommendations about service delivery in a limited resource setting. Results suggest that enhanced outreach and increased dosing can help maximize service utilization. The second and third papers delve into the experiences of the first MAT program on mainland sub-Saharan Africa, located at Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The program has successfully implemented a continuum of harm reduction care, culminating in methadone treatment for PWID. However, monitoring and evaluation data highlight a gender disparity in service utilization, with women comprising less than 10% of clients. Relying on in-depth interviews and observational data collected over three field visits from July 2011 to February 2013, the last two articles look at ongoing service needs for women in treatment and identify strategies to bring more women into care. Results suggest that women face distinct hardship in treatment, needing increased psychosocial support services and economic development interventions to help them heal histories of sexual trauma and regain custody of their children. Additionally, outreach tailored to women can help increase treatment enrollment. Findings from this dissertation have implications for MAT programs in Tanzania and in other areas in the region with similar epidemiological and cultural environments.

Advisor: Potts, Malcolm
Rigidity Phenomena in random point sets

Let X be a translation invariant point process on the Euclidean space E and let D, a subset of E, be a bounded open set whose boundary has zero Lebesgue measure. We ask what does the point configuration O obtained by taking the points of X outside D tell us about the point configuration I obtained from the points of X inside D? We focus mainly on translation invariant point processes on the plane. We show that for the Ginibre ensemble, O determines the number of points in I. We refer to this kind of behaviour as ``rigidity''. For the translation-invariant zero process of a planar Gaussian Analytic Function, we show that O determines the number as well as the centre of mass of the points in I. Further, in both models we prove that the outside says ``nothing more'' about the inside, in the sense that the conditional distribution of the inside points, given the outside, is mutually absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure on its supporting submanifold. We further show that the conditional density (of the inside points given the outside) is, roughly speaking, comparable to a squared Vandermonde density. In particular, this shows that even under spatial conditioning, the points exhibit repulsion which is quadratic in their mutual separation. We apply these results to the study of continuum percolation on these point processes, and establish the existence of a non-trivial critical radius and the uniqueness of infinite cluster in the supercritical regime. En route, we obtain new estimates on hole probabilities for zeroes of the planar Gaussian Analytic Function. Finally, we apply these ideas to prove completeness properties of random exponential functions originating from "rigid" determinantal point processes. We conclude by establishing miscellaneous other results on determinantal point processes. These include answers to two questions of Lyons and Steif on certain models of stationary determinantal processes on the integers, one involving insertion and deletion tolerance, and the other regarding the recovery of the driving function from the process.

Advisor: Peres, Yuval
Aldous, David
Studies on the Neutrality of Antihydrogen

The recent demonstration of trapping of antihydrogen atoms by the ALPHA collaboration at CERN opened great possibilities to study antimatter and perform precision measurements on it./nIn this work, a retrospective analysis of the 2010 and 2011 experimental runs in ALPHA, together with comprehensive studies of the apparatus and detailed simulations of the manipulations of anti-atoms, are performed and used to measure the electric charge of antihydrogen. This result is an example of a precision measurement on antimatter that may ultimately lead to keys for solving some of the most important problems in physics today, such as the asymmetry between matter and antimatter, by comparison to measurements carried out on normal matter atoms./nA procedure similar to the one presented may lead to increased precision with a larger data sample, perhaps using the new ALPHA2 apparatus. Nevertheless, a method using stochastic heating is proposed that could increase the precision of the measurement by many orders of magnitude. The technique offers many other advantages that make it very attractive for future experimental implementations.

Advisor: Fajans, Joel
DNA Mediated Assembly of Protein Heterodimers on Membrane Surfaces

Signal transduction at cell-cell junctions is critical for many biological processes, such as the development of multicellular organisms and the recognition of damaged or infected cells. Such interfaces can be reconstituted in vitro by synthetically coupling cell surface ligands to supported membranes, which can be interfaced directly with live cells. The lateral fluidity of these membranes allows ligand receptor complexes to assemble into oligomers and higher order clusters. This type of higher order clustering has been shown to play a role in the regulation and function of various cell membrane receptors. In order to study complex, multicomponent signaling assemblies, I have extended the use of supported membranes and DNA-based protein assembly to form heterodimers of signaling molecules. Characterization of these structures was performed by fluorescence cross-correlation spectroscopy, which confirmed their lateral mobility and the formation of specific heterodimers. I have additionally demonstrated the interaction of these structures with live cells and the modulation of signaling cluster content in these cells. DNA based assembly was also used for the precise positioning of fluorophores at a fixed distance from a gold nanoparticle encased in a viral capsid. These fluorophores were protected from contact quenching, and their fluorescence was enhanced by their proximity to the gold nanoparticle. Together these studies demonstrate the use of DNA hybridization in directing the formation of functional nanoscale assemblies.

Advisor: Francis, Matthew B
Groves, Jay T