VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Without a word of WARN-ing : advance notice, the information environment, and labor market outcomes

This thesis examines mandated advance notice of employment loss, a disclosure made by firms to workers, not investors. It has two components. First, I study the impact of mandated advance notice on workers' labor market outcomes. The impact is theoretically ambiguous. While advance notice mechanically increases job search time before displacement, it may also reduce both aggregate employment and the marginal incentive to search for new employment. Using the staggered adoption of advance notice laws and worker-level data, I find advance notice as practiced in the U.S. is associated with a five percentage point reduction in joblessness incidence immediately after displacement and a three percentage point increase in labor force participation measured one year after displacement. Second, I study the role of internal information quality on firm compliance with mandated advance notice laws. The prior labor economics literature interprets imperfect compliance as evidence of deliberate non-compliance. I propose an alternative explanation for imperfect compliance: low internal information quality. I predict that firms with high internal information quality will unwind operations before financial constraints bind and prevent the provision of notice. Using government records of notice provision, I find the days of advance notice provided is increasing in a firm's internal information quality. Collectively, my results suggest a critical role of disclosure and the information environment in aggregate unemployment

Keywords: Business.
Advisor: Piotroski Joseph D. (Joseph David) 
Choi Jungho 
Lee Charles M. C. 
Marinovic Iván
XinSheng

Xinsheng is a 20-minute opera. The storyline follows a young boxer, Andrei, who gets badly injured in an illegal underground fight in Berlin. Fan, a woman in her late thirties working as a nutritionist/pharmacologist, has just fallen in love with Andrei. Fan calls her best friend Anne, a surgeon and her ex-lover, to operate on Andrei in an undercover hangar in the outskirts of Berlin. Because Andrei is about to die, Fan demands that Anne administers Xinsheng to him in order to make the operation and his chances of survival more successful. Xinsheng is a new experimental drug that Fan invented. It has great regenerative properties, but since it's not completely perfected, it also has severe side effects. At first, Anne is reluctant to administer the drug. However, when Fan says she'll never speak to her again (should Andrei die), Anne (still in love with Fan) decides to go along with Fan's plan. In the opera, the ideas of fake versus real and various perspectives on the same event are crucial elements around which the music has been structured. With the use of electronics (notably concatenative sound synthesis) and the compositional strategy called "microlage" (neologism coined by the author from words micro and collage), the music attempts to create atmospheres in which the blurry textures signify the double entendre, floating around, yet never settling for a particular sonic shape or clear musical gesture. The piece was performed and recorded as video by Decoder Ensemble and directed by Heinrich Horwitz in March 2021 in Berlin

Keywords: Music.
Advisor: Alessandrini Patricia
Abel Jonathan (Jonathan Stuart)
Ferneyhough Brian
You Are What You Watch: The Netflix Recommendation System and the Rise of the Algorithmic Culture Industry

Netflix is a film and media streaming service with over 200 million subscribers and a quarterly revenue of $7.16 billion. Netflix catalyzed massive change in media distribution, and the company continues to dominate the marketplace. By examining Netflix’s conceptualization of and interaction with its millions of users, I demonstrate how Netflix’s algorithmic recommendation system evolved older cultural models by moving away from user ratings, demographic categories, and human decisions around film distribution. These shifts happened gradually and with little awareness on the part of Netflix’s subscriber base. I trace Netflix patents, publications, press releases, and more to make visible the opaque algorithmic system. I find that the Netflix algorithmic system pronounces the user’s identity through recommendations, a process I link to Althusser’s theory of interpellation. I argue that iterated interactions with the algorithmic system structure user behavior and give rise to an algorithmic culture. I demonstrate how the system limits user autonomy by collecting data without the user’s active participation, constraining the user’s behavior, and manufacturing the user’s desires. The algorithmic system creates a culture that shares elements with Adorno and Horkheimer’s description of the “culture industry,” including the valuing of consumption over fulfillment and the narrowing of tastes toward the mainstream to maximize profits. Algorithmic culture moves beyond what Horkheimer and Adorno describe, however, because a non-human actor becomes the dominant cultural force.

Keywords:  Department of Science
culture industry
algorithmic culture
Netflix
Science Technology and Society
recommendation system
Thesis
Advisor: Edwards Paul N.
Your tenderness for truth

Your Tenderness for Truth examines a spectrum of wounding personal violations in their entwinement with loving companionship and larger histories of colonial and imperial trespasses. With attention to what I term "intimate violations"—gendered transgressions against a person's subjectivity and will accomplished in close emotional and physical proximity—this dissertation grapples with the production of victimhood in relationships marked by familiarity and intimacy, especially when such closeness is contested by the insistent brutalization of the outside world. To accomplish this, I offer readings of four contemporary Latinx texts published between the last decade of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first. My study of Junot Díaz's Drown (1996), Justin Torres' We the Animals (2011), Helena María Viramontes' Their Dogs Came with Them (2007), and Nelly Rosario's Song of the Water Saints (2002) tracks how a culture of violation is enabled by being made mundane. With focus on quiet scenes, everyday exchanges, and odd details, I reveal how these four texts effectively bear witness to the micropolitics of daily interactions where power, at its most intimate, is negotiated and certified. Proposing a way to make the quotidian legible, my analysis engages the Lugonesian concept of "faithful witness" as a method of reading against dominant common sense that allows one to interpret behaviors as resistant even when absolute triumph over oppression seems unlikely. I argue that bearing faithful witness by cultivating our attention to the most tender parts of ourselves—those parts that have been most hurt and most silenced—is an urgently necessary endeavor. It is an invaluable method of gaining deeper insight into the nature of our closest-held oppressions. As such, this dissertation intervenes against a particular form of Latinx literary common sense that largely emphasizes forms of agency and resistance that are readily recognizable. Returning to a long-standing body of feminist scholarship concerned with the everyday, I propose rather that we tend to hurt we would otherwise dismiss, cultivating thus the tenderness that makes us free

Advisor: Moya Paula M. L.
Menon Jisha
Saldívar José David
2D materials for logic and memory integration

Today's data-driven applications, such as big data analytics, neural networks, and machine learning, require huge memory and computing resources. The latency and energy incurred for data movement between processing unit and memory has become a significant limitation (known as the "memory wall") as traditional techniques such as caching are no longer effective for the data-intensive applications that dominate modern computing. Solving the "memory wall" problem requires future computer technology to directly integrate memory and transistor devices with high density vertical interconnect accesses (vias) to provide parallel, high bandwidth memory access. However, the high temperature of silicon processing is not compatible with this 3D monolithic integration. A desired low temperature integration can be achieved by using two-dimensional (2D) materials which have intrinsically layered and flat atomic structures, because devices made of 2D materials can be fabricated at lower temperatures. This thesis introduces three exploratory studies on advancing 2D materials for developing 3D monolithic integrated systems. First, I focused on improving transistor performance and studied high-mobility 2D material black phosphorous (BP) transistors using various metals as the contact metal. This work achieved unipolar n-type BP transistors by using ultra-low work function metals, demonstrating record high n-type current. Furthermore, the study revealed the physical mechanisms of controlling doping and de-pinning effects for n- and p- type BP transistors. Beyond transistor studies, I then demonstrated the first 3D sequential monolithic integrated two levels of 1-transistor-1-resistor (1T1R) memory cells. The cell is fabricated entirely using 2D materials: hexagonal-Boron Nitride (hBN) serves as the resistive switching memory cell and monolayer Molybdenum Disulfide (MoS2) serves as the channel material for the transistor selector. In order to achieve a high-density memory array, a two-terminal selector with a high nonlinear current-voltage characteristic is necessary. I developed a new two-terminal selector utilizing a 2D material heterostructure with an H-shape energy barrier. This new device design in theory should have high on-state current density and virtually unlimited endurance due to its quantum tunneling mechanism. Our results characterized the first out-of-plane current through an ultra-thin (3 monolayer) heterojunction and provide the critical foundation for a high endurance selector using a 2D heterojunction. Due to the transferable feature of 2D materials, these processes can be easily adopted for 3D monolithic integrated transistors and memories in multiple logic and memory layers connected vertically by fine-grained nanoscale vias, thereby overcoming the "memory wall.".

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Wong Hon-Sum Philip
Pop Eric 
Saraswat Krishna
A Centriole-less Pericentriolar Material Serves as the Base of C. elegans Sensory Cilia

Cilia are complex sensory and motile organelles found on almost all cells of the body. Sensory cilia act as the cell’s antennae, detecting and managing external signals. Perturbation of cilia related genes leads to a large scope of diseases, ciliopathies, such as retinal degeneration and polycystic kidney disease. While the assembly of cilia by basal bodies, which are re-purposed centrioles, is shared among unicellular organisms and animal cells, in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans basal bodies are necessary for ciliogenesis, but are degraded upon cilia maturation. This raises the question of how ciliary microtubules are maintained in the absence of the basal bodies from which they are templated. We used CRISPR-generated endogenously tagged alleles to assess the localization of centrosomal proteins. Surprisingly, although the base of cilia lacks an association with centriole proteins or the PCM protein SPD-2/CEP192, SPD-5, ZYG-9/XMAP-215 and the conserved microtubule nucleating γ-tubulin ring complex (γ-TuRC) localize to this region. We named this previously unidentified structure the “centriole-less PCM.” Confocal microscopy revealed distinct subdomains of the centriole-less PCM, with a subset of proteins localizing closer to the ciliary axoneme and others localizing closer to the dendrites, a region nucleating the assembly of dynamic microtubules into the cell body, confirming that the base of cilia is a microtubule organizing center (MTOC). Using tissue-specific degradation, we tested the role of SPD-5 at the base of cilia at different time points in development. Degradation of SPD-5 after cilia maturation did not grossly impact cilia structure or function. However, degradation of SPD-5 during ciliogenesis perturbed cilia structure, suggesting that SPD-5 is required to maintain the axoneme in the absence of a canonical basal body. Moreover, SPD-5 is necessary for γ-TuRC localization at the ciliary base and nucleating dynamic microtubules into the cell body of the neuron. Unlike at the centrosome, the localization and regulation of SPD-5 appears to be independent of mitotic kinases. The presence of a RFX-type transcription factor binding site in the promoter region of SPD-5 indicates a pressure to maintain its expression in ciliated neurons. Thus, I propose that, in the absence of a canonical basal body, SPD-5 maintains the cilia structure while also recruiting the γ-TuRC, which imparts MTOC function to the centriole-less PCM.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
biology
cilia
basal body
MTOC
Pericentriolar material
neuronal microtubules
C. elegans
Thesis
Advisor: Feldman Jessica Lynn
Stearns Tim
A Chinese American Vision of The King and I: American Culture, Democracy, and Policy in Soft Power

This thesis on David Henry Hwang and Jeanine Tesori’s Soft Power foregrounds the importance of cultural exchange in an era when global powers like the US and China are obsessed with wielding greater influence and spreading their respective values. Hwang offers an alternative vision from the perspective of a Chinese American: he sees cultural collaboration rather than cultural competition as the key to examining the faults within each culture, and as an essential step in creating a pluralist world. The “musical within a play” itself is an example of how the in-depth understanding of one country can expose the inherent flaws within another: Hwang uses the debate surrounding China’s rise, namely, the “China Threat” theory versus “China’s Peaceful Rise” policy, the Confucian concept of self-cultivation, and his cross-cultural experience as a Chinese American to expose the arrogance of Western culture, the fragility of American democracy, and the short-sightedness of unilateralist foreign policy. I argue that David Henry Hwang’s bicultural perspective allows him to transform a problematic musical into a star vehicle for elevating Asian voices artistically and politically. More importantly, Soft Power reveals the healing of the division in both America and the world today requires the insights of people like Asian Americans who can negotiate different ways of seeing.

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Center for East Asian Studies
China-US relations
Asian American
Theatre
David Henry Hwang
Thesis
Advisor: Wang Ban
A comparison of the upper Cretaceous Pigeon Point Formation, northern California, and the Gold Beach Terrane, southwest Oregon, USA: unrelated stratigraphic sequences or parts of a single now-dismembered cretaceous basinal sequence?

The Pigeon Point Formation, northern California, and the Gold Beach Terrane, southwestern Oregon, are Late Cretaceous allochthonous terranes that outcrop along the Pacific Coast of the United States. Both are characterized by upper Cretaceous deep-water sequences overlain by or including near the top units of fine- to very fine-grained, uppermost Cretaceous sandstone deposited in a storm-dominated shelf setting. Previous studies have suggested that both terranes originated as far south as southern California and have since been translated north by right lateral displacement along the San Andreas Fault System. In this study we use provenance analyses, including sandstone petrography, detrital zircon (DZ) geochronology, and major- and trace-element mudstone geochemistry to determine the provenance of both terranes and estimate whether they were once part of a single Late Cretaceous submarine depositional system. Sandstone petrography and mudstone geochemistry show that both terranes are arc derived; however, the Pigeon Point Formation has a more evolved, felsic source while the Gold Beach Terrane is sourced from more juvenile parent rocks that are mafic in character. Key differences are also seen in the detrital zircon signatures from both terranes. Both terranes contain abundant Late Cretaceous zircons; however, the Gold Beach Terrane contains abundant Early to Late Jurassic zircons whereas the Pigeon Point Formation does not. All of the observations in this study indicate that the two terranes do not share the same provenance and were not once part of the same Late Cretaceous submarine depositional system. Based on our observations, we conclude that the Pigeon Point Formation was likely sourced mainly from the Cretaceous Sierra Nevada Batholith and the Gold Beach Terrane from Klamath Mountains and Sierran Foothills Belt as well as the main Sierra Nevada Batholith. Thus, the Pigeon Point Formation likely originated as far south as southern California, whereas the Gold Beach Terrane likely originated close to its present location.

Keywords:  Department of Geological Sciences
Geological Sciences
Coterminal Master's
School of Earth
provenance
sedimentology
stratigraphy
Pigeon Point Formation
Gold Beach Terrane
Oregon
California
geology
Thesis
Advisor: Lowe Donald
Lapôtre Mathieu
A Deficit of Due Process: Racial Bias within Death Penalty Sentencing in Harris County, Texas

This project researches racial bias within the death penalty in Harris County, Texas. Although Harris County has greatly limited its use of the death penalty in recent years, the area was once regarded as the “capital of capital punishment.” This thesis analyzes crime and legal data to determine if a relationship exists between race and death sentences. The data is collected from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Utilizing data that centers around the type of crime committed, victim characteristics, and defendant characteristics, this research examines if a racial bias exists among all death penalty eligible cases within this prominent county. Overall, this study displays a causal relationship between the race of the defendant and the sentence received in Harris County, Texas. Between 1976 and 2016, a minority defendant is 1.58 times more likely to be sentenced to the death penalty compared to a white defendant. Furthermore, a Black defendant, compared to a white defendant, is 1.82 times more likely to receive a death sentence between 1976 and 2016. Prior to the 2005 legislation that allowed sentences of life without the possibility of parole in capital murder cases, a Black defendant was 1.56 times more likely to be sentenced to death. Following the 2005 life-without-parole law, this disparity drastically increased by 5.42 times to an odds ratio of 8.45.

Keywords: Death Penalty
Criminal Justice
Racial Bias
Race
Crime
Harris County
Texas
Capital Punishment
Law and Economics
Legal System
Thesis
Advisor: Donohue John
A Framework for Identifying Local and Universal Symptoms of Emerging Structural Violence: A Case Study in Berlin

Berlin currently faces a housing crisis and is forced to use alternative modes of housing such as converted warehouse spaces for the large number of refugees that began arriving in 2015. While these solutions might prove effective as temporary facilities, the scarcity of housing availability has necessitated the utilization of these spaces on a more permanent basis. The adequacy of these unintentionally designed living environments is called into question.
Poor health often arises as a symptom of distress from inadequate housing. If the initial issue prompting illness is not addressed early enough, the health problems can accumulate and become a chronic disease burden that may impede the ability to work and access quality medical attention, only resulting in larger medical issues. Inadequate living spaces that are created by greater social structures, and house vulnerable or marginalized populations who are being afflicted by housing related illness, are a function of structural violence, a medical anthropological term. Using the temporary refugee housing in Berlin as a case study, this research forges a methodology to identify symptoms of emerging structural violence through qualitative data collected from interviews. Physical health disparities, such as anaphylaxis, weight loss and sleep deprivation, as well as mental health disparities such as a higher prevalence of PTSD and depression were most commonly observed and flagged as potential symptoms of emerging structural violence. If it is possible to identify local symptoms of emerging structural violence in a vulnerable space, it is easier to remedy the problem and mitigate greater future conflict.

Keywords: Emerging Structural Violence
Health
Refugee Housing
Urban Studies
Stanford University
Thesis
A Novel 3-D Culture System for Modeling Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is the world’s most common monogenic disorder. It is characterized by mutations in the PKD1 and PKD2 genes that cause cyst formation in kidney epithelial cells and bilaterally enlarge the kidney, leading to renal failure by age 60. While gene therapy to correct the underlying mutations in PKD1 and PKD2 could someday serve as a cure for ADPKD in the future, it is limited by the lack of a simple and inexpensive model with a clear phenotypic readout. Here, we describe a novel immortalized 3-D cell model for modeling cyst formation in vitro that shows rapid cyst formation in response to inducible Pkd2 knockout (KO). The cell line for this model was created by crossing the temperature-sensitive simian virus 40 (SV40) “Immortomouse” with a homozygous, Tet-On, Pkd2-inducible KO mouse and then isolating kidney tubular epithelial cells. The temperature-sensitivity of the SV40 transgene allows this cell line to renew indefinitely at 33 °C, but revert to a primary-like state upon transfer to 37 °C. Cells in this primary-like state were seeded into a modified 3-D Matrigel culture system to initiate cyst formation and treated with doxycycline (DOX) to induce Pkd2 KO. Although the wild-type (WT) cells also developed cyst-like structures, the Pkd2 KO cysts grew significantly faster after DOX treatment than the WT controls (p < 0.001), demonstrating that cyst growth in our model was Pkd2 KO specific. This is the first immortalized, inducible cell culture system described in the PKD field with a cystic size phenotype that varies between WT and PKD KO, and will be extremely useful for testing various gene therapy cures for ADPKD in a simple, low-cost, in vitro environment.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
polycystic kidney disease
3-D culture
gene therapy
cyst formation
Thesis
Advisor: Bhalla Vivek
Axelrod Jeff
Stearns Timothy