VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
When Home Exists No Longer: Climate Change and Forced Cross-Border Migration

Is the right to a healthy environment a fundamental human right? Climate change is predicted to
exacerbate negative environmental phenomena, including drought, rising sea levels, and the
prevalence of severe natural disasters. How should international institutions, such as the United
Nations, aid persons displaced due to climate change? First, the thesis traces how the
international community’s definition of refugees has evolved in the past century, in order to
argue how and on what grounds persons displaced due to climate change may be considered
refugees in the future. The UN does do not yet recognize persons displaced due to climate
change as refugees under international law. Second, the thesis explores international
organizations’ responses to previous high magnitude natural disasters, which often generate
comparable population displacements as those predicted by the climate change. Finally, this
thesis investigates three case studies of regions already experiencing the effects of climate
change: Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, and the Sahel region in Africa. These cases provide
insights on how climate change could affect global migration patterns and will serve as guidance
for how the international community should address the challenges of forced displacement due to
climate change. In conclusion, this thesis argues that the international community must design a
legal framework that is flexible and adaptable. Additionally, as an international framework may
take years to implement, nations should form regional agreements to address the specific
challenges of climate change in their respective localities. Forced displacement due to climate
change is a complex and deeply rooted challenge that will need to be addressed through a
combination of scientific and legal innovations.

Keywords:  Program in International Relations
Climate change
forced displacement
refugees
Stanford Department of International Relations
Honors Program in International Relations
Stanford
Thesis
Advisor: Cohen David
When others change : the social influence of dynamic norms

It is well known that people conform to normative information about other people's current attitudes and behaviors. Do they also conform to dynamic norms—information about how other people's behavior is changing over time? If so, through what psychological processes do dynamic norms become influential? I theorized that, when others change, it can lead observers to infer specific inferences that facilitate personal change. I expected that witnessing change leads observers to infer that many of the barriers that had seemed to stand in the way of a change do not. If true, dynamic norms may alter diverse mechanisms of personal change, and encourage behavior change in diverse contexts. Specifically, others' change may convey that change is possible (self-efficacy), that change is considered important by others (prescriptive norms), and that a behavior can be compatible with one's identity (identity compatibility). Further, I expected that learning that norms are presently changing will lead people to envision and conform to future norm states as if they were the present (preconformity). Experiments 1 through 4 examined high levels of meat consumption, a normative and salient behavior that is decreasing in the United States. Dynamic norms motivated change despite prevailing static norms, increasing interest in eating less meat (Experiments 1--3) and doubling meatless orders at a cafe (Experiment 4). Mediators included the anticipation of less meat eating in the future and the inference that reducing meat consumption mattered to other people (Experiments 2 and 3). In Experiment 5, I took advantage of a natural comparison to provide evidence that dynamic norms can also strengthen social norm interventions when the static norm is positive; a positive dynamic norm resulted in reduced laundry loads and water use over 3 weeks during a drought. To further investigate psychological processes across a wider range of contexts, I examined dynamic norm effects in four domains: smokers' intention to quit, sleep-related behavior, men's identification as feminist, and reducing consumption of sugary beverages. I found that dynamic norms positively affected interest and intentions to change in each. Moreover, dynamic norms affected diverse psychological inferences, including the beliefs that personal change is possible (Experiment 6), that change is important to others (Experiment 7 and 9), and that change is compatible with one's social identity (Experiment 8). Specific instances of such changes statistically mediated the increase in change-related attitudes in each context. The results suggest that dynamic norms can help resolve a variety of psychological barriers to encourage personal change. They may thus be an especially robust source of social influence across contexts. Implications for a foundational theory of dynamic norm effects, and the role of dynamic norms in social change are discussed.

Keywords: Psychology.
Advisor: Walton Gregory M. (Gregory Mariotti) 
Dweck Carol S.
Ross Lee
"Where the action is" : a conceptual and experimental evaluation of measurement, dynamics, and reputational incentives in corrupt transactions

I focus on a central theme in the political economy of service provision within public sector organizations: corrupt transactions, defined as bribe exchanges between frontline providers and citizens, and also known as market corruption. A distinct orientation of my approach to this issue is grounded in the idea that significant theoretical and policy strides are achievable by focusing analysis on the interpersonal dynamics between transacting parties and by leveraging social incentives within organizations. The empirical papers in this dissertation address two questions: (1) How do partners in a bribe transaction, typically unknown to each other, mitigate the risk of an exchange backfiring? To answer this question, I use micro-survey data on bribe exchanges between healthcare providers and patients in the Moroccan healthcare sector. (2) Can group-level reputational incentives reduce corrupt transactions during public service provision? To answer this question, I design and implement a field experiment in Moroccan public hospitals. In my theoretical paper, I offer a preliminary and conceptual treatment of outstanding issues in transactional corruption, provide an alternative modeling space to the conventional institutional and microeconomic approaches, and introduce concrete tools for capturing the microdynamics of these exchanges and reconsidering standard assumptions about the institutionalization of corruption in organizations.

Keywords: Sociology.
Advisor: Granovetter Mark S. 
Parigi Paolo
Walder Andrew G. (Andrew George)
Willer Robert Bartley
Whither the 2015 US-Japan Defense Cooperation Guidelines: Expectation vs. Reality

The US-Japan Defense Cooperation Guidelines are best thought of as the implementing guidance for the security treaty. They clarify expectations for both parties by defining their respective roles and missions within the alliance, in both peacetime and wartime, to meet the obligations of the security treaty. The United States and Japan revised the Guidelines in April 2015 in an effort to ensure that alliance roles and responsibilities were more balanced and capable of addressing 21st century security threats, as well to emphasize the new global nature of the US-Japan alliance. This revision was made possible by the Abe administration’s controversial decision to reinterpret Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, and the passage of its accompanying peace and security legislation. It is in this context that this paper will examine the implementation of the Guidelines. While they call for “seamless, robust, flexible, and effective bilateral responses” to threats against Japan’s peace and security, there remains considerable debate as to whether the alliance is thus capable. After an overview of alliance history, its unique characteristics, and a review of the previous versions of the Guidelines, this paper will examine the impetus for and the implementation of the 2015 Guidelines to assess whether the rhetoric around purported alliance capabilities matches its actual means. It will show that the US-Japan alliance, as enabled by the 2015 Guidelines, is structurally postured for effective deterrence against its most-likely threats – those that will occur off-shore, such as with China or North Korea. However, there are significant policy and operational challenges to effectively implementing the 2015 Guidelines. Most critically, as the capstone defense cooperation document, the Guidelines are merely an evolution of the previous two; they reinforce the parallel operational approach to potential conflicts. This paper will explore the roadblocks to truly seamless, bilateral responses. Significant political, operational, and doctrinal hurdles remain if the alliance is called to respond to a real-world scenario. In this regard, the Guidelines are insufficient and should be further updated to force deeper operational integration.

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
US-Japan Defense Cooperation Guidelines
US-Japan Alliance
US-Japan Security
Stanford Global Studies
East Asian Studies
Thesis
Advisor: Sneider Daniel
Who knows and who decides? : priorities, perceptions, and participation in fisheries management

Fisheries are complex social-ecological systems and as such cannot be effectively understood or managed without consideration of their human dimensions in combination with their ecological dynamics. In particular, research that centers fishers' knowledge, perceptions, and values is critical for more accurate and complete conclusions and legitimate and equitable conservation interventions. In this dissertation, I explore the challenges and opportunities presented by multiple stakeholder perceptions in fishery management in the United States and Peru. First, I survey US marine and coastal policymakers and ocean resource users on their ocean research priorities and find broad agreement but a clarion call from ocean resource users to incorporate more of their local knowledge in science and decision-making. I then evaluate the community-level ecological consequences of a conservation process that did not address fishermen's values, revealing that a controversial time-area closure was one of many management actions contributing to overall declining catch and participation in the California swordfish fishery. The fishery is no longer economically or politically viable, an arguable conservation success but a failure in social and procedural terms. For a similar fishery in Peru, I examine opportunities for incorporating fisher knowledge and increasing fisher policy participation in conserving vulnerable juvenile hammerhead sharks. Fishermen demonstrated local ecological knowledge that corresponded well with a biophysical statistical model and strong understanding of and motivation for conserving the species. However, they objected to perceived unfairness in the implementation of a seasonal hammerhead ban, emphasizing the importance of and potential for a more participatory process. This dissertation educed a profound appreciation for trust, listening, and collaboration as essential tools for conservation scientists and practitioners.

Keywords: Biology.
Advisor: Crowder Larry B.
Ardoin Nicole M. (Nicole Michele) 
Hazen Elliott Lee
Why You Need Women In Your Corner: An Analysis of Gender Representation at Music Labels on the Executive Level

The music industry creates content for people all over the world. Yet, while a diverse audience may listen to music, the executive teams at music labels often lack diversity. This paper addresses diversity gaps in label leadership through the lens of gender. I argue that having a more balanced representation of gender could result in more innovative teams and inclusive company cultures. I support this argument through an analysis of the responses that traditional labels had towards the digital music revolution, in comparison with the response of Atlantic Records, which is co-led by a woman (Julie Greenwald). This paper includes an examination of available literature, a case study on Greenwald and her work at Atlantic Records, and insight from five interviews of female leaders in the industry. I observe that female leaders often manifest innovation and inclusivity and are more likely to encourage transformational leadership. I also find the support of male mentors and allies to be crucial for the trajectory of women in the music industry.

Keywords: music
label
Science
Technology
Society
STS
Stanford University
gender
diversity
innovation
music industry
record labels
Thesis
Advisor: Tarr Kathleen
The work of love : domestic violence and bodily experience in Kolkata, India

The World Health Organization estimates that almost one in three women worldwide have experienced abuse by an intimate partner (2013). Despite its high prevalence, global definitions of domestic violence do not travel across contexts. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Kolkata, India, my doctoral research offers a new account of domestic violence. The women I studied are laborers who live in low-income (slum) neighborhoods and face a continuum of violence in daily life; I followed their stories at home, in clinics, and in NGOs. Through attention to women's bodily experiences, I found that not all violence is marked as abuse and not all abuse is violent. Even when women "stay" in relationships, they do not stay silent. In scenes of complaint, we see how women set thresholds for what they can endure and the stakes of doing so. I argue that existing models for domestic violence in South Asia—the American model of "Power and Control" and the cultural model of "Suffering Sita, " the good wife who suffers in silence—are both inadequate in explaining Bengali women's realities. A nuanced analysis of domestic violence, based in cultural theories of intimacy and the body, can allow us to better hear and attend to women's stories within clinical encounters and spaces of care.

Keywords: Anthropology.
Advisor: Luhrmann T. M. (Tanya M.)
Garcia Angela
Hansen Thomas Blom
Kohrman Matthew
Thiranagama Sharika
The world is (almost surely) a strange place

I develop a probabilistic approach to metaphysics that is centered around the idea of epistemic modesty. I also apply this approach to develop new ways of thinking about two traditional philosophical issues. In particular, I develop a novel probabilistic argument against skepticism about the external world. I also develop a probabilistic argument that the world is almost surely extraordinarily complex. The overall outlook I defend contrasts starkly with the widespread view in science and metaphysics that simplicity is a guide to truth.

Keywords: Philosophy.
Advisor: Briggs R. A.
Crimmins Mark 
Easwaran Kenny
Ryckman Thomas
X-ray absorption spectroscopy with an X-ray free electron laser : nonlinear and ultrafast effects in solids

X-ray absorption spectroscopy provides element-specific information about local electronic structure through the photon energy and polarization dependence of the X-ray absorption coefficient in the vicinity of core-to-valence resonance energies. When using circular polarization, this technique also provides magnetic sensitivity through X-ray magnetic circular dichroism. With the advent of X-ray free electron lasers, it has become possible to perform high resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy studies with femtosecond time resolution and intensities high enough that nonlinear X-ray effects are important. In this dissertation, we describe our development and use of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism absorption spectroscopy at the Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray free electron laser at SLAC. After describing the implementation of this technique, we briefly describe its application to studies of ultrafast optically-induced magnetic and electronic dynamics in a few magnetic metals of current technological interest. Next, we present X-ray-intensity-dependent measurements of X-ray absorption near the Co L3 edge of Co/Pd magnetic multilayers. The polarization-dependent intensity of the Co L3 absorption resonance changes significantly with increasing incident X-ray flux. These changes depend on the pulse length and photon energy content of the incident X-ray pulses. For monochromatic 40 fs duration X-ray pulses with fluences near the sample melting threshold, the fluence-dependent changes in resonant X-ray asborption are attributed to decreased population of the Co valence states below the Fermi level, and increased population of the Co valence states above the Fermi level. They can be accounted for by reshuffling of electrons from below the Fermi level to above the Fermi level caused by inelastic scattering of photoelectrons and Auger electrons. In this experiment, we also observe a decrease of the X-ray magnetic circular dichroism strength with increasing X-ray intensity, which can be attributed to X-ray-induced demagnetization within the X-ray pulse duration. With wide bandwidth X-ray pulses of about 5 fs and 25 fs duration and fluences many times the sample melting threshold, we observe even stronger fluence-dependent X-ray absorption changes. Some of the observed changes can be assigned to stimulated resonant inelastic X-ray scattering. This constitutes the first observation of this effect in a solid. Our studies pave the way for more sophisticated nonlinear X-ray measurements of solids which are envisioned to provide new insight into their properties.

Keywords: Applied Physics.
Advisor: Reis David A.
Stöhr Joachim 
Huang Zhirong
Zoom epistemologies : technology, education and representation in the 1970s

This dissertation examines the impact of a new visual technology, the zoom lens, on three channels of film production and pedagogy in the 1970s: documentaries of science, ethnography, and experimental cinema. With its ability to transition smoothly from capturing details in telephoto to surveying large scenes in wide angle, the zoom lens was foremost among advances in cinema technology concurrent to a dramatic expansion in the use of media in higher education. Both practical and economical, the zoom lens was widely used in commercial film and television after World War II, but it was of particular utility to filmmaker-educators, who adapted its unique visual syntax to meet specific intellectual and cultural demands. Modeling contemporary forms of attention and mediating new relations between detail and whole, distance and presence, self and other, the educational zoom constructed modern perspectival laws for an era of abstract technical and cognitive processes. Zoom Epistemologies focuses on "classroom films, " educational television programs and experimental films which made extensive use of the zoom during the late 1960s and 1970s, revealing how filmmakers and educators negotiated emergent cinematic conventions around the representation and transmission of knowledge.

Keywords: Art and Art History.
Advisor: Levi Pavle 
Denson Shane 
Ma Jean
Richmond Scott C.
Ν=4 Compactifications of String Theory and Supergravity

Compactifying Type II string theory on a threefold of SU(2) holonomy yields a string theory with N=4 supersymmetry, commonly known as a CHL model. We will present the classification of threefolds of SU(2) holonomy, and a computation of their Betti numbers using a recursive formula for certain orbifold Euler characteristics. We will also directly dimensionally reduce ten-dimensional Type II supergravity on all CHL manifolds. The attractor equations have a particularly nice form in CHL models, and this allows us to compute attractor geometries explicitly. It will turn out that certain natural counts of attractor geometries in CHL models are mock modular forms constructed by Funke. We will also exactly compute half-BPS black hole entropy by precisely counting microstates in CHL models.

Keywords:  Department of Physics
CHL models
half-BPS
attractor mechanism
Rademacher sums
entropy
Thesis
Advisor: Kachru. Shamit
Silverstein Eva
3D Printing of Bioengineered Functional Cardiac Tissues

Heart disease is the world’s leading cause of mortality, accounting for over 7.4 million deaths each year. Consequently, there has been immense interest in the medical and scientific community to develop technologies to help regenerate injured hearts. 3D printing of biological materials (i.e., 3D bioprinting) is an innovative technology that may be applied to help us understand and treat cardiac disease. In my thesis work, I utilized 3D bioprinting to create a viable and functional artificial cardiac construct. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) were encapsulated in 10% gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) hydrogels and subsequently bioprinted into 3D tissue constructs. Analysis of the printed tissues over time demonstrated cell viability as assessed by their metabolic activity in culture. Cell migration and proliferation were observed in the printed HUVEC tissues 7 days post printing and beating was observed in the hiPSC-CM tissues 3 days post printing. In addition, I demonstrated the endothelialization of acellular printed scaffolds using a perfusion bioreactor system. In the future, I plan to utilize the 3D tissue printing and bioreactor platform for in vitro applications such as personalized drug cardiotoxicity screening and in vivo applications such as generating a cardiac patch for transplantation into an animal model of myocardial infarction.

Keywords: Wu, Sean
Serpooshan, Vahid
tissue engineering
cardiovascular medicine
stem cell biology
3D bioprinting
3D printing
biomaterials
cardiac tissue engineering
Stanford Cardiovascular Institute
Stanford Department of Bioengineering
Thesis
A Behavioral System for Imaging Prefrontal Cortex Activity in Freely Behaving Mice

The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is important in guiding learned, reward-seeking behavior through the integration of relevant information from multiple brain regions. Multiple studies have used the head-fixed Go/No-Go task to assess mPFC function in decision-making because rodents learn the task quickly and it is compatible with several imaging strategies. However, this paradigm has two inherent flaws: 1) head-fixation does not emulate natural behavior, and 2) the motivational state of the animals is ambiguous because they are forced to perform task trials at an experimenter-defined schedule. To assess the function of mPFC in decision making in a more naturalistic context, I have designed and successfully built a behavioral system that robustly reads out a two-alternative-forced choice (2AFC) behavior in freely moving mice. First, this behavioral system allows for freely moving mice to perform learned choice behavior in a custom-designed behavioral box that is dimensioned to mimic its home cage. Second, mice are able to self-initiate task trials without external constraints placed upon them, which is made possible by motion sensing hardware. This behavioral system is also built to be flexible, allowing for easy control of task parameters and integration of external devices such as imaging cameras. The construction of this system combines sensory systems, MATLAB software, and the Arduino platform. By using this behavioral set up, I have effectively trained mice in the 2AFC task, and have recently begun to perform in vivo Ca2+ imaging using the Inscopix mini-endoscopic microscopy system. By correlating the real-time activity patterns of genetically/anatomically-defined mPFC neurons with freely moving choice behavior, I have found cell type specific activity that correlates with specific outcomes of 2AFC.

Keywords: Behavior
Two-Alternative-Forced Choice
Imaging
Prefrontal Cortex
Thesis
Advisor: Luo Liqun
Chaudhuri Ovijit