VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Plato's philosophy of law

This dissertation examines Plato's philosophy of law in the two great political works of Plato's middle career: the Gorgias and the Republic. Two related questions guide the study. First, what did Plato think about the nature of law? Second, what roles should law play in a just society? I show that Plato confronted the question of the nature of law in the Gorgias and Republic, that he was interested in developing a natural law account, and that a different natural law theory can be fairly attributed to each dialogue. In the Gorgias, Plato maintains Socratic Natural Law, a theory requiring that law essentially aims at instilling the orders and arrangements in a human soul that give rise to virtue. In the Republic, Plato articulates Platonic Natural Law, according to which law essentially aims at instilling civic justice among different classes of citizens. I show that, in the Republic, law plays cultivating and cognitive roles in promoting an alternative to genuine virtue, which I call secondary virtue. These roles are complimented by the city's judiciary, which is bound by the Asclepiad Principle, such that the judicial art is tailored to promoting its subjects' civic functioning. The founding laws of Kallipolis also play a structural role in the Republic, by guiding the conduct of ideal philosophical rulers and establishing domains of discretion within which those rulers may legislate in imitation of the foundational laws

Keywords: Philosophy.
Advisor: Bobonich Christopher
Code Alan Dodd
Ober Josiah
Poems on Landscape Paintings in Tang Dynasty

This thesis project aims to connect findings on Tang paintings with poetic tradition in a larger scale in Chinese art history, looking at specific topics and aspects under the subject. I employ a historical approach by looking at the change through time from mid Tang to late Tang by textual analysis and literary reading. I divide this paper in three major aspects: 1) Relationship of painted image to nature; 2) Creation and development of technical and aesthetic ideals in poems; 3) Painting as an interactive and live performance. This newly emerged poetic form contributes to aesthetic tastes and cultural identity in Tang Dynasty and later largely influences Chinese art and literary history.

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Stanford Global Studies
East Asian Studies
Tang dynasty
Poem
Thesis
Advisor: Egan Ronald
The poet's display : the genre of hellenistic expository poetry

From the middle of the fourth century BCE, Greeks started composing poetry that conveyed information about one or more aspects of the natural or social world. Despite the great variety of topics, the poems shared key features that made them stand out as a genre. My dissertation argues that the label "didactic poetry" does not capture these features. I treat this genre as "expository poetry" and interpret it in the context of early Hellenistic culture. The poets' goal was to display knowledge. Thus, a hallmark of this poetry is to feature a multifaceted "rhetoric of exposition" in the texts. I also explore how ancient readers experienced this rhetoric, responding to its pleasing, authoritative or playful qualities

Keywords: Classics.
Advisor: Netz Reviel 
Nightingale Andrea Wilson
Parker Grant Richard
Peponi Anastasia-Erasmia
A point-of-care testing system with giant magnetoresistive biosensors

Point-of-care testing (POCT) is an important diagnostic tool used in many areas of clinical medicine, especially in critical care settings. Its development is driven by the goal of bringing diagnostic tests close to patients in order to make fast triage and treatment decisions. The rapid worldwide spread and impact of COVID-19 has validated and further prompted the need for accurate, fast, and portable testing technologies. Many attempts have been made to bring lab-quality molecular tests to point-of-care settings, but in order to meet the portability requirement, most technologies compromise sensitivity and multiplexing capability. In this work, we present a portable testing platform with magnetoresistive biosensors that can perform automated, accurate, multiplexed, and fast tests. In this dissertation, we first summarize the use of giant magnetoresistive (GMR) biosensor arrays in medical detection and diagnosis. We also describe the development of a fully automated platform that can perform both protein detection and nucleic acid amplification tests in various types of samples. We demonstrate its wide usage in detecting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), leukocytosis, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), gene expressions of the influenza immune response, and DNA polymorphisms in catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT) and show that the presented platform has excellent performance and multiplex capability. We expect this new platform to dramatically improve the usability, efficacy, and availability of future molecular tests

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Wang Shan X. 
Rao Jianghong
De la Zerda Adam
Policing an Pobal: Community Policing and Legitimacy in the United States and Ireland

Community policing has been a widely accepted police reform ideal in the United States since the 1980s—but in most American police departments, it has never really taken root. Today, even notoriously aggressive, racist, and invasive police departments, like that of Ferguson, Missouri, claim to practice community policing while engaging in practices indistinguishable from its opposite. Still, community policing, when implemented well, promises enormous benefits, including improved police-community relationships, increased state legitimacy, decreased reliance on the criminal justice system, and safer and more cohesive communities. This thesis uses qualitative interviews and observations to compare community policing in Denver, Colorado and Dublin, Ireland, which treats community policing as a specialization, with its own training, promotion schemes, and units within each police station. This qualitative study suggests that: 1) community policing is fundamentally an ethos of trust and respect for the community, and its successful implementation will look different in different contexts, 2) the Dublin model of specialized community policing units working in a specific patch is more effective toward the goals of community policing than Denver’s less structured, more response-oriented model, 3) merely adding community policing to a non-community police force is not sufficient to reap the benefits of community policing, and 4) applying the label of community policing to a reform effort without making more fundamental changes undermines the goals of community policing and police reform.

Keywords:  Fisher Family Honors Program in Democracy
community policing
legitimacy
police reform
An Garda Síochána
Denver Police Department
Dublin
Denver
Thesis
Advisor: Sklansky David Alan
The politics of expertise in 21st century American policymaking

One of the consequences of political polarization in American today is that Democrats and Republicans not only disagree with each other on matters of values but also on matters of fact. With the growing concerns over fake news, social media echo chambers, and a decline in trust in experts, some have gone so far as to label our current discourse as "post-truth." However, most systematic evidence on these phenomena are drawn from studies of the mass public. We know very little about the extent to which this description extends to policymakers. One the one hand, elected officials tend to be committed partisans; consequently, we might expect policymakers to be especially prone to partisan biases in the processing of information. On the other hand, policymakers have the responsibility of making real decisions that affect the welfare of real people, potentially moderating these biases. In three studies, I adopt a range of empirical strategies to investigate these competing predictions. By (1) comparing the factual beliefs of policymakers and the public, (2) assessing policymaker responsiveness to expert evidence, and (3) analyzing who testifies on climate change in Congress, I present new evidence which challenges the dire predictions that follow from applying behavioral theories of partisan bias to policymaking

Keywords: Political Science.
Advisor: Bonica Adam 
Hainmueller Jens
Jefferson Hakeem
Rodden Jonathan
Tomz Michael
Polymer-nanoparticle materials for prophylaxis : from passive immunity to wildfire prevention

In order to broadly enable prophylactic strategies in fields spanning medicine to agriculture, there is a need for new carrier materials that can deliver active ingredients over extended timescales, while being easily manufactured and deployed. Because of their dynamic nature, physically crosslinked networks provide a route to meet these criteria. Among the many physical crosslink motifs, polymer-nanoparticle interactions stand out as a modular and simple way towards creating highly-scalable, multifunctional materials. In this work, I will first discuss the fundamental understanding we have developed on how our polymer-nanoparticle networks form viscoelastic materials. We showed that elasticity arises from overlap of polymer coronas that are adsorbed onto nanoparticles, which leads to bridging polymer chains as well as caging of local polymer-nanoparticle units. Furthermore, we found that contrary to traditionally used physical crosslinking motifs, polymer-nanoparticle interactions are entropy-driven and this difference manifested in temperature-independent mechanical properties. I will then describe how we used these networks to design hydrogels for long-term delivery of therapeutic antibodies for passive immunization. We explored combinations of cellulose derivatives and hydrophobic pendant modifications for the polymers that made the most robust and biocompatible hydrogels. From this screen, we identified the best hydrogel formulation and conducted in vivo release studies of a broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibody-like protein. These results demonstrated that our materials are able to extend the pharmacokinetics of antibody drugs and can potentially enable new prophylactic strategies. Lastly, we applied the design concepts developed from our passive immunization work to address the growing wildfire epidemic. Importantly, we identified that ignitions are localized in specific high-risk locales that are responsible for the majority of severe fires. Treating these small areas of high-risk land with fire retardant would prevent a large proportion of the worst fires, but current carrier materials do not retain the retardant on fuel through weathering. By engineering a sprayable viscoelastic carrier fluid, we demonstrated in pilot-scale and large-scale studies that we can provide season-long protection against wildfires

Keywords: Materials Science and Engineering.
Advisor: Appel Eric (Eric Andrew) 
Fuller Gerald G.
Heilshorn Sarah
Portfolio optimization of distributed energy resources and techno-economic optimization analysis of energy storage to address capacity issues and support higher renewable energy levels on the electrical grid

Distributed energy resources (DER) have significant potential to defer the need for electrical infrastructure upgrades and are also useful for solving issues related to high penetrations of renewable generating resources. In this defense, two projects will be discussed. The first is a novel modeling framework for portfolio optimization of DER to solve problems on the electrical distribution network, dubbed "Hot Spots." The model optimizes over four different resources - distributed solar, energy storage, energy efficiency, and demand response - seeking a minimum cost portfolio that meets the desired outcomes input by a utility planner. Because the mathematical framework treats these outcomes as constraints in the model, multiple objectives can be achieved simultaneously. Common objectives include system peak shaving, load shaping and smoothing, and use of local energy production, among others. Case study results indicate that load reductions through DER can be achieved at a lower cost than an infrastructure capacity upgrade. Further, limiting the system ramp rate can be achieved with little additional cost beyond that of addressing the system's capacity constraint. The model shows the beneficial use of DER to address both distribution system capacity issues and shape load simultaneously. The second project is an analysis of how independent energy storage technology providers optimize equipment sizing and dispatch to generate bid prices for a resource adequacy contract. Contracts like these are a common way to procure energy storage for capacity planning purposes. With the goal of combating the "duck curve, " the storage system acts as an evening "peaker" plant and is expected to absorb excess solar energy that might be otherwise curtailed. Results indicate that utility solicitations for discharged-based storage products should consider the role of charging, round-trip efficiency, and emission impacts beyond the bid price. It is possible for inefficient storage systems to outbid efficient technologies and thus diminish emission reductions, even when carbon prices are considered. Further, lack of charging constraints might result in storage operations that limit the value of the storage in enabling more renewable energy deployment

Advisor: Jacobson Mark Z. (Mark Zachary)
Brandt Adam (Adam R.) 
Gragg Diana
Practical applications of difference tones in electronic music composition and synthesis

Difference tones are frequency components produced within the ear upon the physical and physiological interactions of spectral components in a given auditory input. Under certain conditions, these additional frequencies are audible and appear to be localized within the head. The phenomenon is the result of nonlinearities in the auditory system. The specific frequencies can be predicted by a classical power series expansion of a sum of sinusoids. With a two-tone signal, the quadratic and cubic terms of the polynomial yield two of the most audible difference tones. Difference tones introduce creative opportunities when applied in musical contexts. However, the effect is highly dependent on parameters of the acoustic primary tones. The conditions for evoking difference tones with a two-tone stimulus are well understood, but a three-tone signal is more complex and not typically employed in music. For the effective implementation of three-tone difference tones in creative work, the parameters for reliable detection must be understood. This dissertation consists of three interconnected branches of research. A psychoacoustic study on the detection of up to nine classes of two and three-tone difference tones reveals the most audible difference tones and the required stimulus conditions. Creation of an open-source toolbox of digital audio instruments for the synthesis of difference tones allows both creative and educational opportunities. With the results of the psychoacoustical study and the implementation of digital instruments, two series of compositions illustrate the physically of sound and spatial depth uniquely available with difference tones

Keywords: Music.
Advisor: Chafe Chris 
Berger Jonathan
DeMarinis Paul
Popelka Gerald R.
Practical determination : action, capacity, knowledge

I defend the thesis that intentional action constitutively involves practical knowledge: a distinctly practical form of knowledge that an agent has of her action when acting intentionally. I identify intentional action as an agent's felicitous exercise of her corresponding practical capacity, practical knowledge as a distinctive form of practical judgment involved in such exercise. I argue that such judgment constitutes knowledge in that it constitutes the agent's capacity to guide herself by the fact of her intentional action; that this knowledge is practical in that it is constituted by the agent's practical judgment, in felicitous exercise of her practical capacity. The argument develops over three parts. In Pt I, Action, I attend to the ontology of happening and action and of intentional action specifically. Standard ontologies of action conceive of action in terms of completed events, thus complicating the recognition of practical knowledge, the primary locus and object of which is ongoing intentional action. I develop an account of happening and action in terms of a focal notion of "practical determination": of a particular of a general, determinable type developing in a determinate way. I understand intentional action along these lines as the agent's intentional practical determination of what happens. In Pt II, Capacity, I turn to the nature of practical capacity as the capacity for intentional action. Following the discussion and framing of Pt I, I understand such capacity as the capacity for intentional practical determination. I develop an account of practical capacity along the lines of Aristotelian "rational two-way" capacities: as a capacity to act in a determinate way according as one intentionally determines to do so. I argue that intentional action is nothing other than the felicitous exercise of such capacity. In Pt III, Knowledge, I offer an account of practical knowledge hinged on the exercise of practical capacity. I argue that, where an agent exercises such a capacity felicitously, the particular judgment constitutively involved in her exercise constitutes her practical knowledge of her intentional action. Following an epistemological tradition that recognizes knowledge as the capacity to guide oneself by facts I recognize practical knowledge as the agent's capacity to guide herself by the fact of her intentional action

Keywords: Philosophy.
Advisor: Hills David James
Bratman Michael 
Lawlor Krista
Practical machine learning for sequential decision problems on the internet

Networking algorithms often perform sequential decision making under uncertainty: They observe a network path and decide, e.g., how many packets to send or what to put in them. The Internet presents a particularly challenging setting: performance varies across several orders of magnitude and changes with time, control is decentralized, each node observes only a noisy sliver of the overall system, and accurate simulators do not exist. Despite the recent progress in applying machine learning (ML) to networking research, sequential decision problems on the Internet continue to rely on hand-designed algorithms. Slow adoption of ML in these scenarios can be attributed to the requirement that control algorithms be not just performant, but also practical: robust, generalizable, real-time, and resource-efficient. Lack of research platforms for studying ML approaches in the real world exacerbates the problem. This dissertation presents the platforms and algorithms we developed to achieve practical ML in the context of video streaming and congestion control. We describe Puffer, a free, publicly accessible website that live-streams television channels and operates as a randomized experiment of adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms. As of June 2020, Puffer has attracted 120,000 real users and streamed 60 years of video across the Internet. Using Puffer, we developed an ML-based ABR algorithm, Fugu, that robustly outperformed existing schemes by learning in situ, on real data from its actual deployment environment. Next, we describe Pantheon, a community "training ground" for Internet congestion-control research. It allows network researchers to benefit from and contribute to a common set of benchmark algorithms, a shared evaluation platform, and a public archive of results. Pantheon has assisted four algorithms from other research groups in publishing at NSDI 2018, ICML 2019, and SIGCOMM 2020. It also enabled our own ML-based congestion-control algorithm, Indigo, which was trained to imitate expert congestion-control algorithms we created in emulation and achieved good performance over the real Internet

Advisor: Levis Philip 
Winstein Keith 
Brunskill Emma
Practices and Judgements of False Accusations during the Late 18th Century and Early 19th Century

During the late 18th century and early 19th century, false accusation (wugao) was an illegal but prevalent customary practice that people used to escalate their disputes to the local courts. In archival materials, local residents usually used female chastity, the importance of which was repeatedly emphasized by the Qing state, to falsely accuse others of adultery and rape (wujian) with the aims to obtain financial gains or to take revenge on their enemies. In most cases, female chastity was a manipulable weapon taken by males, while female voices were often muted. In some cases, women also took the initiative to falsely accuse others of raping them. However, many women framed others for rape because their illicit sex was caught by the accused; they resorted to wujian as the last option in desperation to cover their affairs. Wujian cases, like other types of false accusation cases, were usually adjudicated as minor matters at the local level. Nevertheless, some circumstances that offended patriarchy and challenged the ruling supremacy of the Qing would transform false accusations from minor matters to severe cases.

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
History Department
CEAS
China
false accusation
female chastity
the Qing Dynasty
chastity cult
wujian
wuzhi wengjian
Thesis
Advisor: Sommer Matthew
Precision margin : first-principles margins for aircraft design under uncertainty

This thesis is about design under uncertainty, with a particular focus on aircraft structures. This work uncovers weaknesses in present aircraft structural design criteria, presents an alternative con- ceptual framework—precision margin—for treating uncertainties in design, and develops the math- ematical theory and computational algorithms to put these ideas into practice. Through several computational experiments, we will see how precision margin can improve current aircraft design, and enable smarter engineering decision-making. Developing this thesis was transformative for my perspective on engineering as a practice. My initial training as an engineer provided me with the tools to carry out deterministic design: a toolkit that deeply articulated physical phenomena, but provided only the crudest means to express and handle uncertain factors. This thesis is a product of learning to embrace uncertainty: I have gone to great lengths to connect the ideas in this work to current aircraft design practice, and moreover the current, broadly-accepted engineering mindset. My hope is that, in making a direct comparison between the current and prospective practice, the reader may see new opportunities for improved engineering practice

Keywords: Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Advisor: Iaccarino Gianluca 
Alonso Juan José
Owen Art B.