VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Big Shot for the Big Apple -- Can the COVID-19 Vaccine Mobilize the City that Never Sleeps?

The clinical benefits of public health interventions, like COVID-19 vaccines, are largely
documented and understood, but little evidence is available to inform the human behavioral and
economic impacts of these interventions. This analysis utilizes anonymized cellphone and
publicly available COVID-19 data to quantify the impact of COVID-19 health interventions on
geographic mobility in New York City. Mobility is defined as visit and foot traffic totals,
captured through cellphone pings to business and retail locations, aggregated into weekly totals,
from May 2019 – December 2021. The percent change in mobility between time intervals of
interest and a linear regression model inform the results of this analysis. The key findings
suggest that geographic mobility in New York City remains below pre-pandemic levels. In
addition, COVID-19 vaccines do not appear to have a significant impact in increasing
geographic mobility. However, the conclusive impact of COVID-19 vaccines on geographic
mobility cannot be quantified through this analysis alone. Additional analyses should be
conducted to identify alternate factors influencing geographic mobility. These results and
conclusions discussed can provide a new perspective for policymakers and public health officials
to evaluate the non-clinical impacts of public health interventions.

Keywords: Public Policy Program
Covid-19
Vaccintations
Covid-10 vaccines
economic impact
public health
Geographic mobility
Stanford University
Humanities and Sciences
Public Policy Program
Text
Thesis
Advisor: Bhattacharya Jay
Bioelectronic interfaces for molecular quantification

The rapid advances of Moore's law have empowered electronics to solve many of modern society's problems, with healthcare emerging as a promising new application for highly miniaturized instrumentation. More specifically, biomolecular analysis techniques used in clinical settings often rely on expensive benchtop instruments and skilled technicians to carry out diagnostic assays, limiting access to biomolecular data. Indeed, it would be preferable to develop molecular diagnostics that can be deployed in the field. Hoping to leverage the potential for integration offered by CMOS processing, there has been much interest in developing biosensors that can transduce molecular concentrations in electrical signals. However, outside of the continuous glucose monitor and a few others, developing these technologies for a broad spectrum of molecular targets has proven challenging. In this dissertation, I explore some candidate technologies for a broad bioelectronic molecular sensing platform. First, I discuss direct electrical detection of biomolecules and identify the fundamental sensitivity challenge they face, the electric double layer, as well as a few strategies to overcome it. I next describe the development of a custom molecular-electronic platform for field-effect biosensing and demonstrate some practical challenges facing this class of biosensors. After that, I apply some of lessons of direct electrical detection to a different, more robust biosensing technology: electrochemical aptamers. In the first project, I demonstrate how the sensitivity of an electrochemical aptamer can be enhanced by engineering the electric double layer. In the second project, I describe how further engineering of the double layer can be used to endow cross-reactive electrochemical aptamers with specificity. As a whole, these studies provide a new perspective on biomolecular- electronic transduction and make progress towards solving developing broadly useful bioelectronic molecular diagnostic platforms

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Murmann Boris
Howe Roger Thomas
Soh H. Tom
Biomimetic design for advanced heart failure technologies

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, with heart failure (HF) affecting over 23 million people. Heart transplantation is the only definitive treatment for advanced HF, but the unavailability of transplantable hearts imposes severe limitations. Prosthetic devices have the potential to address this critical shortage of organs. Biomimicry provides an opportunity to use healthy cardiac physiology as a template for device design. This work employs a needs-first design approach and leverages biomimicry, computational systems, and mechanical design tools to improve the biocompatibility and durability of mechanical cardiac support. The clinical need addressed by this work is right heart failure, the "forgotten half of the heart." For decades, the left ventricle has received disproportionately more attention, and the development of devices for right ventricular (RV) dysfunction has languished. The pivotal role of RV dysfunction in surgical outcomes is now recognized as a substantial clinical burden, particularly in perioperative settings of left-sided procedures. Using metamaterial design, this work presents RVEX, a biomimetic, elastic sleeve to support RV-specific motion by tuning regional mechanical properties of an auxetic lattice. The device can be implanted prophylactically during left-sided procedures to prevent volume overload, a primary failure mode. RVEX is shown to reproduce RV-specific regional deformations and provide support by passive elastic recoil. Integrated self-sensing capabilities also demonstrate the utility of continuous volume monitoring to track ventricular functional status. Additionally, this work presents eVaC, a soft, implantable electrohydraulic actuator for acute ventricular unloading of the RV by vascular pulsation. eVaC is integrated with a sensing module through a simple control scheme for adaptive physiological response. In-vitro experiments demonstrate eVaC's ability to accurately modulate pulsatile pressures to a clinically relevant extent. Computational modeling further predicts the improvement of hemodynamic and biomechanical function of the ventricle. Together, these devices represent a trend toward smart, mechanoactive prosthetic devices that are more biocompatible and expected to yield improved patient outcomes

Keywords: Bioengineering.
Advisor: Cutkosky Mark R.
Hiesinger William 
Marsden Alison (Alison Leslie)
Yock Paul G.
Black carbon amended engineered media filters for improved treatment of dissolved trace organic contaminants in stormwaterr runoff

Urban stormwater runoff threatens human and aquatic health by transporting anthropogenic pollutants into receiving water bodies. Recent attention has focused on opportunities for beneficial use of stormwater runoff. Most significantly, cities in drought-stressed regions are planning to incorporate stormwater runoff into their drinking water supply portfolios through capture and managed aquifer recharge. Improved stormwater treatment, specifically for harder-to-remove and potentially-toxic dissolved trace organic contaminants (TrOCs), is necessary to realize beneficial use of stormwater runoff and protect human and aquatic health. This dissertation focuses on understanding the performance and limitations of black carbon (BC) amended engineered media filters for improved stormwater treatment. Long-term column experiments with high-flow rates and contaminant transport modeling are used to elucidate the kinetic limitations of TrOCs removal for a high-temperature gasification biochar and regenerated activated carbon and push the boundaries of what is possible for stormwater treatment. Results from this work are used in the development of a design tool that incorporates long-term filter performance modeling into stormwater management design and sizing processes

Advisor: Luthy Richard G.
Boehm Alexandria
Fendorf Scott
Black hole superradiance of self-interacting scalar fields

Black hole superradiance is a powerful probe of light, weakly-coupled hidden sector particles. Many candidate particles, such as axions, generically have self-interactions that can influence the evolution of the superradiant instability. Much of the existing literature on spin-0 superradiance does not take into account the most important self-interaction-induced processes. These processes lead to energy exchange between quasi-bound levels and particle emission to infinity; for large self-couplings, superradiant growth is saturated at a quasi-equilibrium configuration of reduced level occupation numbers. In this work, we perform a detailed analysis of the rich dynamics of spin-0 superradiance with self-interactions, and the resulting observational signatures. We focus on quartic self-interactions, which dominate the evolution for most models of interest. We explore multiple distinct regimes of parameter space introduced by a non-zero self-interaction, including the simultaneous population of two or more bound levels; at large coupling, we confirm the basic picture of quasi-equilibrium saturation and provide evidence that the "bosenova" collapse does not occur in most of the astrophysical parameter space. Compared to gravitational superradiance, we find that gravitational wave "annihilation" signals and black hole spin-down are parametrically suppressed with increasing interactions, while new gravitational wave "transition" signals can take place for moderate interactions. The novel phenomenon of scalar wave emission is less suppressed at large couplings, and if the particle has Standard Model interactions, then coherent, monochromatic axion wave signals from black hole superradiance may be detectable in proposed axion dark matter experiments

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Dimopoulos Savas
Graham Peter (Peter Wickelgren)
Silverstein Eva
Block copolymer directed self-assembly for patterning memory and logic

With the anticipated arrival of high-numerical aperture (NA) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography in the next two years, it is in principle possible to pattern the highest resolution line-space features projected for future semiconductor devices in a single exposure. However, the resolution needed to pattern contact holes past the 3 nm node is still a key challenge in lithography, requiring triple or quadruple patterning with the existing EUV systems or double patterning with the as yet unreleased high-NA EUV systems. Block copolymer directed self-assembly (DSA) is a low-cost, high-throughput patterning technique capable of producing uniform features at the resolution needed beyond the 3 nm node (hole pitch < 25 nm, hole diameter < 20 nm). In this thesis, I will share my work on integrating DSA into fabrication of memory and logic devices. First, I will describe the fabrication process and electrical characterization of a phase change memory (PCM) array patterned using DSA, in which germanium antimony telluride (GST) is confined in 20 nm vias through SiO2. To pattern these vias, a PS-b-PMMA block copolymer was used to shrink an array of 80 nm guides, and the resulting 20 nm DSA patterns were transferred through an amorphous silicon hard mask into SiO2. The PCM devices fabricated were measured to switch at 150-200 µA with a high-resistance state of ~30 MΩ and low-resistance state of ~3 MΩ. When patterning logic, the pattern density variation inherent to contact and via layouts presents an additional challenge from a DSA perspective. That is, for layouts of random logic with non-uniform pattern density, the self-assembly process tends to yield patterns with poor defectivity and uniformity. I will discuss my work on inserting sub-DSA resolution assist features (SDRAFs) features into a via layout to even out its density. This discussion will include a strategy that I developed for SDRAF placement, as well as an experimental demonstration. So far, DSA has not been deployed commercially for semiconductor manufacturing, and much of the existing work on DSA does not account for the specific challenges of patterning practical devices with DSA. In discussing my work on patterning a PCM array using DSA and on an SDRAF insertion strategy, I highlight some DSA integration challenges and delve into possible routes to solve them. Through this work, I show that DSA can be used to pattern memory and logic and point researchers toward important considerations for future demonstrations of DSA-patterned devices

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Wong Hon-Sum Philip
Howe Roger Thomas
Pop Eric
Blood Diamonds and Infrastructure: Poverty Reduction as a form of Transitional Justice in the Case of Sierra Leone

For her capstone project, Cathy Nguyen researched the ways in which wealth distribution and infrastructure development, that is ethical and sustainable, can be part of the transitional justice process. Using Sierra Leone as a case study, she examined how the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) grew so large and influential as a result of civil unrest surrounding poverty and corruption. She further looked at the legacy of what has already been done in Sierra Leone and what more should be done, considering Sierra Leone’s position as one of the poorest countries in the world.

Keywords: Transitional justice
World politics
Sierra Leone
Text
Thesis
Borderland central : edirne and its Jewish community from the late Ottoman Empire to the early Turkish Republic, 1908-1934

Located in the southeast corner of Europe, the city and province of Edirne, Turkey and the region of Eastern Thrace were once home to a large Jewish population that had thrived--more often than not--under Ottoman administration. This dissertation follows these Jews from the final years of the Ottoman Empire (1908-1922) through the first decade of the Turkish Republic (1923-1934), a period that started with the local Jewish population hitting its all-time demographic peak but ended with anti-Jewish violence that spelled the end of the community, for all intents and purposes. Focusing on the process by which this zone became a borderland (with Greece and Bulgaria) and the implications of that development, this dissertation argues that to survive in a contested region, the Jews of Edirne successfully employed various strategies in ways that challenge historical narratives regarding the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the development of nationalism in Southeastern Europe, the Jewish experience in late-imperial borderlands, and the rise of Zionism. Furthermore, this dissertation argues that these same strategies—-and others—-ultimately failed Edirne Jews in the context of the Turkish Republic, due to general characteristics of the modern nation-state, specific traits of the borderland, and the intersection of these two categories

Keywords: History.
Advisor: Rodrigue Aron
Yaycioglu Ali
Zipperstein Steven J.
"Both sides now" : Ethiopian Israeli girls between jewishness and blackness

This dissertation explores being and becoming "Jews" in Israel through the perspective of four teenage girls, whose lived experiences between Israel and Ethiopia and Jewishness and Blackness mirrors the dynamics of religion and race, statecraft and nation-building in Israel. My focus on "becoming" Jews aims to engineer a conceptual shift within the study of Ethiopian Jews in Israel, from addressing competing perceptions of their Jewishness or Blackness to examining how unresolved yet consequential tensions between Jewishness as a religious tradition, a national identity and a state apparatus in Israel resulted in Ethiopian Jews becoming marginalized as "Black Jews:" beyond the scope of Jewish religion, nationality, and equal citizenship in the Jewish State. Guided by Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) methods from the field of public health, a learning-ecology framework, and the ethnographic lenses of thin description (Jackson, 2013), I examine critical issues like inequality in religious education and informal learning environments, through these girls' everyday choices of words, clothes and pathways for action. I analyze state reports, legislation and official letters to situate their lived experience within the complex historio-political context of Israel's becoming a Jewish state. Together these methods enable me to relate their situated learning experience to our growing understanding of Jewishness as an Israeli state-practice, as well as to craft mutually-educative paths for researchers and participants in the production of scientific knowledge

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: Kelman Ari Y.
Labaree David F.
Rosa Jonathan
Brauer classes, Azumaya algebras, and higher analogues

The Brauer group of a scheme has many interpretations. It is the group parameterizing both gerbes and Azumaya algebras over the scheme. It is also the group containing obstructions to the existence of universal sheaves. In this work, we extend both of these interpretations. In Chapter 2, we extend the understanding of the Brauer group in terms of Azumaya algebras to an understanding of the higher (third) cohomology group in terms of 2-Azumaya algebras. In Chapter 3, we use the interpretation of the Brauer group as obstructions to the existence of universal sheaves to study gerbes over genus 1 curves. This provides information about derived equivalences between connected components of the Picard stack of a genus 1 curve

Keywords: Mathematics.
Advisor: Vakil Ravi
Krashen Daniel 
Spink Hunter
Breaking the Archive: Beyond Exceptionalization and Ephemerality in Haitian and Dominican Digital Counterstories

Although Dominican and Haitian digital archives still need to reckon with the ills of archival institutionalization, they have challenged what we continue to assume about both Dominicans and Haitians. How might innovative digital archiving practices create spaces for Dominican and Haitian histories beyond popular narratives of political, economic and social failure? How are these practices archived - or digitally archived? Importantly, how do Dominican and Haitian refusals function politically in very similar ways and how do counter-historical digital projects hold space for these refusals? I analyze the practices of two digital projects, Micro-syllabus: History from Below in the Dominican Republic by Amaury Rodríguez and H-Haiti, edited by Marlene L. Daut and Julia Gaffield. These projects do not relocate dominant narratives of Dominicans and Haitians, nor do they exclusively function to collect alternative or “counter” interpretations of Dominican and Haitian histories. Instead, I propose that they develop and rehearse an anti-colonial analytic for the complete destabilization of what we know or expect Dominican and Haitian identities to be.

Keywords: Dominican Republic
Haiti
Text
Thesis
Breaking the Symmetry: Resolving Symmetry Ambiguities in Equivariant Neural Networks

Equivariant neural networks have been adopted in a variety of 3-D learning areas. In this paper, we identify and address a fundamental problem of equivariant networks: their ambiguity to symmetries. For a left-right symmetric input, like an airplane, these networks cannot complete symmetry-dependent tasks like segmenting the object into its left and right sides. We tackle this problem by adding components that resolve symmetry ambiguities while preserving rotational equivariance. We present OAVNN: Orientation Aware Vector Neuron Network, an extension of the Vector Neuron Network. OAVNN is a rotation equivariant network that is robust to planar symmetric inputs. Our network consists of three key components. First, we introduce an algorithm to calculate features for detecting symmetries. Second, we create an orientation aware linear layer that is sensitive to symmetries. Finally, we construct an attention mechanism that relates directional information across points. We evaluate the network using left-right segmentation and find that the network quickly obtains accurate segmentations. We hope this work motivates investigations on the expressivity of equivariant networks to symmetric objects.

Keywords: Computer Science
Equivariance
Machine learning
Symmetry groups
Text
Thesis
Advisor: Poulenard Adrien
Guibas Leonidas
Dror Ron
Deng Congyue
Brick Kiln Pollution and Seasonal Blood Pressure Variation in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, air pollution levels are higher in the dry winter months than in the rainy summer months. Much of this fluctuation can be attributed to brick kilns, which emit pollutants only in the winter “brick season.” This analysis examines whether seasonal variation in air pollution might affect blood pressure and prevalence of hypertension in Bangladesh.
Using longitudinal data from a study of 2,242 adults in Mirzapur, Bangladesh, we analyzed differences in blood pressure between winter 2018 and summer 2019. Decreases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure in the summer compared to the winter were experienced by 73% and 76% of participants. The between-season differences for mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure were 8.49mmHg (p<.0001) and 6.40mmHg (p<.0001), respectively. The prevalence of hypertension was 43% in the brick season and 22% in the non-brick season.
We conducted a literature review of the association between temperature and blood pressure and used a summary effect estimate from this review to estimate the extent to which temperature might explain the seasonal patterns we observed. Using a mean effect estimate derived from 28 studies (systolic=0.29mmHg/-1°C, diastolic=0.13mmHg/-1°C), we calculated that the observed seasonal differences in systolic and diastolic blood pressure exceeded what could be expected due to temperature variation alone by 6.32mmHg and 5.32mmHg, respectively.
We concluded that seasonal spikes in air pollution likely contribute to increases in blood pressure and hypertension prevalence. Given recent increases in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, we recommend policy and public health measures be taken to reduce exposure to air pollution in Bangladesh.

Keywords: Brooks, Nina
Blood pressure
Hypertension
Air > Pollution
Bangladesh
Brick kiln
Text
Thesis
Brill--Noether theory over the Hurwitz space

Historically, algebraic curves were defined as the solutions to a collection of polynomial equations inside of some ambient space. In the 19th century, however, mathematicians defined the notion of an abstract curve. With this perspective, the same abstract curve may sit in an ambient (projective) space in more than one way. The foundational Brill--Noether theorem, proved in the 1970s and 1980s, bridges these two perspectives by describing the maps of "most" abstract curves to projective spaces. However, the theorem does not hold for all curves. In nature, we often encounter curves already in (or mapping to) a projective space, and the presence of such a map may force the curve to have unexpected maps to other projective spaces! The first case of this is a curve that already has a map to the projective line. From the 1990s through the late 2010s, several mathematicians investigated this first case. They found that the space of maps of such a curve to other projective spaces can have multiple components of varying dimensions and eventually determined the dimension of the largest component. In this thesis, I develop analogues of all the main theorems of Brill--Noether theory for curves that already have a map to the projective line. The moduli space of curves together with a map to the line is called the Hurwitz space, so we call this work Brill--Noether theory over the Hurwitz space

Keywords: Mathematics.
Advisor: Vakil Ravi
Ionel Eleny
Spink Hunter