VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Earthquakes and the structuring of Greco-Roman society : the longue durée of human-geological environment relationships in Helike, Greece

Earthquakes have been linked with societal collapse in various places throughout the past, most notably in the eastern Mediterranean with the end of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200 BCE) and the division and decline of the Roman Empire from the fourth to sixth centuries CE. Archaeological evidence of widespread destruction, complemented by an inflation of historical earthquake records for late Roman contexts, points to periods of higher seismicity coinciding with political and economic weakening and socio-cultural downturn. However, since ancient times, people living with persistent earthquake hazards have demonstrated forms of resilience. Just as Amartya Sen (1983) and Peter Garnsey (1989) revealed famines and food shortages as social, not natural, problems, I show how earthquakes traditionally perceived as 'natural' disasters are not 'natural' but social and a critical factor in political ecological relationships. My dissertation exposes the persistent factor of earthquake hazards in Greco-Roman society. I analyze Greco-Roman accounts of earthquakes together with targeted architectural and geological remains from six occupational phases of settlements spanning the third millennium BCE to fifth century CE in Helike, Greece. Applications of resilience theory from archaeology focus on effects of earthquakes in not only destruction but also invention and innovation in society. The results reveal a political ecology of human-earthquake relationships in the Greco-Roman world. The case of Helike demonstrates how earthquake factors persistently shaped and were shaped by political, economic, and cultural developments. The use of novel methodological approaches and techniques from geoarchaeology and soil micromorphology to new types of data proves catastrophe narratives to be false or too simplistic and reveals a political ecology of human-earthquake relationships. I contribute the earthquake and geological environmental context of Greco-Roman societal development and change, transforming scholarly attitudes toward earthquakes, disaster, and the environment in societal development and change

Keywords: Classics.
Advisor: Morris Ian
Bauer Andrew M. 
Leidwanger Justin
Manning Sturt W.
Ecological and evolutionary mechanisms for emerging infectious diseases : case studies in humans and mammalian wildlife

SARS. Ebola. Zika. COVID-19. The majority of all new infectious diseases discovered in the last decades are transmitted from animals to humans. More and more diseases have "spilled over" from wildlife to humans and escalated into pandemics, largely due to anthropogenic activities and global change, including climate change and land use change. Emerging diseases in wildlife can spill over from one species to another, decimating many vulnerable species. However, because human and wildlife systems are so complex, we still lack a clear understanding of the mechanisms driving disease emergence. My dissertation fills some critical gaps in our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary drivers of infectious diseases within and across species. In Chapter 1, I showed how temperature, rainfall and susceptible population size (ecological drivers) affect the (re)emerging mosquito-borne disease dengue. I used a data-driven approach for inferring causal relationships in nonlinear systems and demonstrated that suitable climate can only promote epidemics when the susceptible population is sufficiently large. In Chapter 2, I uncovered ecological and evolutionary drivers of pathogen sharing between different species using datasets of organisms and their pathogens, and their ecological and phylogenetic similarities, to understand how pathogens have adapted to multiple organisms. Here, I quantified the relative importance between ecological and evolutionary factors for predicting pathogen sharing by taxonomic level. Finally, Chapter 3 highlights a wildlife disease case study using genomic analyses of canine distemper virus (CDV) sampled from different carnivores in Alaska and Yellowstone to understand how viruses evolve in wildlife and what disease dynamics they cause. All these findings will help facilitate more effective preventative disease management strategies to improve human and animal health. In sum, my dissertation will help bridge the knowledge gap between ecological and evolutionary drivers of infectious diseases to better understand spillover and subsequent outbreaks. My research will help lay the foundation for future interdisciplinary studies in disease ecology and molecular evolution and will improve the effectiveness of both public health strategies and wildlife conservation

Keywords: Biology.
Advisor: Mordecai Erin
Petrov Dmitri Alex
De Leo Giulio A.
Feldman Marcus W.
Hadly Elizabeth
Economic Inequality and Local Political Trust in Modern China: Exploring the Role of Social Values

Economic inequality can lead to various sociopolitical consequences and declining political support is one of them. Previous empirical studies have reported the negative effects of economic inequality on political trust in societies with different economic and political systems. This study aims to examine the relationship between economic inequality and local political trust in Mainland China using the 2018 CFPS data, with special attention paid to the role of social values, including the belief in upward social mobility and the belief in the relationship between inequality and economic growth. Particularly, it focuses on the effects of both objective and subjective economic inequality.
Using multilevel ordinal logistic regression models, this study finds that 1) Both objective and subjective economic inequality is significantly negatively associated with local political trust. Respondents who have perceived the severity of economic inequality in the current society or live in areas with a large income gap between rich and poor families are more likely to consider local cadres as distrustful. 2) Two social values are both significantly negatively associated with perceived economic inequality. Individuals who have much confidence in opportunities for upward social mobility based on personal merits or agree with the statement that the income gap should be enlarged for economic growth are less likely to perceive economic inequality as highly severe. Moreover, the effect of the belief in social mobility is larger than the belief in economic growth. 3) Social values moderate the negative effect of economic inequality on local political trust. This study makes contributions to the literature by providing new understandings of mechanisms of economic inequality’s influence on political trust as well as the relationship between inequality and regime legitimacy in China.

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Economic inequality
Political trust
Social values
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Thesis
Advisor: Zhou Xueguang
EdConnect, empowering support teams to share knowledge and collaborate

The world of special education is complex. Families and general education teachers struggle to understand the characteristics of a student’s specific disability as well as how to implement the recommended supports that can positively impact the student’s learning. Stakeholders on the support team for students such as the special education teacher and intervention specialists are experts in implementing effective support for students with special needs. But other stakeholders such as general education teachers or families may lack knowledge needed to ensure the student is receiving consistent support in and outside of the classroom.
To address this knowledge gap and better ensure that students are getting adequate services, we are creating a centralized digital platform for a community of learners (the support team) engaged in collective knowledge exchange. Research from the learning sciences undergirds each core feature of our platform, EdConnect.Through these selected features, teachers can leverage the expertise of the specialists and families on the support team to customize and implement student supports, while engaging within a community of learners focused around the issue of best supporting learners with special needs. Preliminary user studies indicate that users perceive the application to be helpful and value the affordances of the platform in various contexts.

Keywords: Special Education; Individualized Education Plan
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Thesis
Education, Collective Memory and Transitional Justice in postcolonial Britain

What role do textbooks and educational materials have in institutionalizing officially-sanctioned narratives of the past? How can history education be used to inculcate national identity and inform collective historical memory? My research seeks to answer these questions with regard to the case of modern Britain, specifically how the British education system has shaped the collective historical memory of the British Empire since 1900. Through textual analysis of history textbooks from 1900-1960 and an original survey connecting educational experience with opinions about the empire, I seek to critically analyze the dominant narratives of the empire within educational materials from the twentieth century to the present and analyze their impact on collective memory. My empirical research finds that the national history curriculum has institutionalized a glorified view of the past while omitting key historical episodes that do not fit the narrative of imperialism as a “civilizing mission.” The thesis concludes by examining how education reform can be leveraged to promote truth, reconciliation, and justice at the systemic level in Britain and other postcolonial societies.

Keywords: British Empire
Education
Collective memory
Transitional justice
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Thesis
EDUCATIONAL DISPOSSESSION AND RE-ENVISIONING EQUITABLE FUTURES: HOW MARGINALIZED STUDENTS INTERNALIZE, RESIST, OR DEFY EXPECTATIONS OF A FLIPPED CLASSROOM IN GENERAL CHEMISTRY

Research demonstrates that STEM education before college often excludes members of marginalized communities, including female , ethnic- and racial-minoritized, first-generation college, and low socioeconomic status students. The same pattern continues in college, where introductory STEM courses act as gateways into careers in STEM and medicine. As reforms in introductory STEM classes focus on academic outcomes, they miss key insights about students’ experiences, particularly students’ psychological character. Using grounded theory and narrative inquiry, this research will center the voices of marginalized students. Evaluating fifty-seven interviews with students of various backgrounds, this paper argues that the implementation of the flipped classroom in the introductory chemistry series prevents the success of students with medium to low incoming preparation in chemistry. Inaccessible pedagogical practices such as speed learning, assessing primarily problem solving on exams, and a lack of transparency create academic and psychological vulnerabilities in students that lead to long-term lowered confidence and belonging. As the series acts as a gateway for marginalized students, their life trajectories are most affected by their experience, either positive or negative, in the series. By closing doors of opportunity for students, we fail to uphold equity and uplift student agency. Therefore, issues of equity and access must be addressed at the pedagogical level to create a more inclusive pipeline into STEM and medicine at Stanford and beyond.

Keywords: Equity in STEM
Education, Higher
Active learning
Flipped classrooms
Chemistry education
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Thesis
Effects of numerical centrosome aberrations on cell division and mitotic spindles

Most cycling animal cells contain one or two centrosomes depending on cell cycle stage. However, alternative centrosome states are crucial to who we are: We all come from an mother cell lacking centrosomes, the acentrosomal human oocyte, which, after fertilization, developed into a conceptus that invaded the maternal endometrium using trophoblast giant cells containing more than two centrosomes. However, while numerical centrosome aberrations occur as physiological phenomena, they can also occur pathologically, such as in tumorigenesis and microcephaly. Centrosomes are non-membrane-bound organelles that are in the cytosol of most cycling animal cells and are major microtubule organizing centers during mitosis. During mitosis, one centrosome consisting of two centrioles and surrounding pericentriolar material (PCM) is present at each side of the mitotic spindle apparatus, which separates chromosomes into two future daughter cells. In late G2 and early mitosis, centrosomes undergo a PCM expansion that increases the capacity to nucleate and organize microtubules. The two centrosomes then become separated, defining the spindle poles. However, cells can build bipolar spindles and divide into two without centrosomes or with extra centrosomes. Nevertheless, numerical centrosomes aberrations, whether greater or less than two during mitosis, influence the progression and, in some cases, outcome of cell division. In absence of centrosomes mitotic duration becomes elongated and PCM proteins localize to the spindle poles. In presence of supernumerary centrosomes, multiples spindle poles can form and either become clustered into two poles, resulting in bipolar division, or remain as multiple poles, resulting in multipolar division. After a brief introduction to centrosomes and numerical centrosome aberrations in Chapter 1, I present an experimental analysis of cell division in mammalian cells without centrosomes (Chapters 2-3) or with supernumerary centrosomes (Chapter 4). In Chapter 2, I investigate the cause of the mitotic elongation in acentrosomal cells and specifically assess whether the spindle assembly checkpoint, which halts mitotic progression until chromosomes are correctly attached to the mitotic spindle, is responsible for this elongation. Furthermore, I assess whether the temporal delay is necessary for completion of cell division in acentrosomal cells. In Chapter 3, I investigate the spatiotemporal arrangement of normally centrosome-localized proteins, with focus on the PCM proteins γ-tubulin and Cep192, during mitosis in absence of centrosomes. In Chapter 4, I investigate how cells with supernumerary centrosomes return to homeostatic centrosome numbers on a population level. In Chapter 5, I present general conclusions as well as ideas for future investigation of numerical centrosome aberrations in mammalian cells

Keywords: Biology.
Advisor: Stearns Tim
Feldman Jessica L.
O'Brien Lucy Erin
Shen Kang
The efficacy of beauty : aesthetics and action in the thought of Xenophon of Athens

This dissertation examines the role of aesthetics, art and visual culture in the thought of Xenophon of Athens (c. 430-354 BCE). Although his diverse writings offer many insights into the visual culture of 4th century Greece, no study has yet attempted to explain them as pertaining to a consistent thinker. I argue Xenophon's engagement with art is both coherent and original. His thought about art and beauty was grounded in a conception of their functionality and practical applicability: the experience and value of beauty and art, in other words, are to be explained and considered in relation to human needs and human action. Unlike what the modern concept to aesthetics often implies, Xenophon's approach to art treats it not as a domain separated to itself but as a practice that is organically interwoven with the life of action. I develop my argument in four chapters. In chapter 1, I examine the theoretical principles discussed by Xenophon's Socrates in the Memorabilia, which show that in contrast to contemporary intellectuals, he saw value in the realm of the visual and argued that the phenomenon of beauty should not be abstracted but rather seen in relation to human needs. In chapters 2-4, I demonstrate how this conception of the visual is represented in his other works: in his representation of leisure in the Symposium (chapter 2), of practical domestic life in the Oeconomicus (chapter 3), and in his political thought in the Agesilaus, Cyropaedia and Hipparchicus (chapter 4). I argue that throughout these distinct fields, for Xenophon art and beauty are fundamental forces in human life that inform domestic economy and provide avenues for understanding and practicing politics

Keywords: Classics.
Advisor: Nightingale Andrea Wilson
Peponi Anastasia-Erasmia
Kidd Stephen E.
Martin Richard P.
Efficient event understanding in videos and language

The visual world offers a smorgasbord of interesting events: human-object interactions, dynamic visual relationships, and activities of daily living. The ability to comprehend them is critical to the development of real-world, interactive AI systems. However, making sense of these events as humans do -- from a continuous and high-volume sensory stream in an efficient and effective manner -- remains a daunting endeavor. The challenges are chiefly two-fold. First, videos are computationally expensive to process; we need more than traditional extensions of systems designed for images. Second, videos capture a broad spectrum of event complexity, from low-level action primitives to higher-order spatiotemporal relationships; we need techniques to learn these semantics from natural language without expensive, dense annotations. This dissertation presents several research contributions aimed at addressing these challenges. First, we will discuss new architectures for recognizing actions in videos, which learn how to allocate a fixed computation budget to improve efficiency-accuracy by an order of magnitude over traditional techniques. Second, we will present new frameworks that advance our capability for efficiently learning about dense visual events from weak natural language supervision, including settings where language is not well-structured or contains ambiguous coreferences. Finally, we will discuss how a novel technique, leveraging progress in multimodal foundation models, reveals fundamental insights into pressing challenges and opportunities for deeper temporal event understanding with improved efficiency

Advisor: Li Fei Fei
Niebles Duque Juan Carlos
Goodman Noah (Noah D.)
Wu Jiajun (Computer scientist)
Efficient optimization techniques for traffic engineering

Many enterprises today manage their Internet traffic on their wide-area networks (WANs) using software-defined traffic engineering to route traffic and allocate bandwidth optimally. This approach, however, scales poorly with network size; as the network grows, the algorithmic runtimes scale super-linearly, and they struggle to keep pace with changing traffic demands in the WAN. Simple heuristics can reduce the runtime but come at the expense of optimality: they lead to poor utilization and suboptimal performance. In this talk, we demonstrate how we can leverage clever partitioning strategies in the network to develop new, more scalable algorithms for traffic engineering that provide a better trade-off between runtime and optimality. We first present NCFlow, short for Network Contractions for Flow Problems. NCFlow uses a geographic partitioning strategy to modify the original problem and solve (1) a reduced problem on a contraction of the network, and (2) a set of sub-problems in parallel on disjoint clusters within the network. We also present POP, short for Partitioned Optimized Problems. Unlike NCFlow, POP uses a commodity-based partitioning strategy—it randomly splits the original traffic engineering problem into smaller, independent but identical sub-problems, solves them in parallel, and then coalesces the results into a single solution. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these two algorithms. Furthermore, we show that, on a large cloud provider's WAN traffic, as well as on publicly available WAN topologies, both NCFlow and POP nearly match the solution quality of currently deployed solutions, but are 11x faster in the median case, and up to 1,900x faster in the best case

Advisor: Bailis Peter
Zaharia Matei
Prabhakar Balaji
Efficient remote memory for parallel and distributed data analytics

This thesis describes Clamor, a functional cluster computing framework that adds support for fine-grained, transparent access to global variables for distributed, data-parallel tasks. Clamor targets workloads that perform sparse accesses and updates within the bulk synchronous parallel (BSP) execution model, a setting where the standard technique of broadcasting global variables is highly inefficient. We show that this restriction of workloads is powerful, enabling efficient transparent remote memory access using techniques from distributed shared memory that are known to be inefficient for general workloads. These restrictions further enable novel features in Clamor, including a dynamic distributed serving mechanism that takes advantage of the functional programming model to cache and serve data for the duration of a parallel task, and lineage-based fault recovery at a finer granularity than existing systems that do not account for sparsity in the access pattern. Clamor can integrate with existing Rust and C ++ libraries to transparently distribute programs on the cluster. We show that Clamor is competitive with Spark in simple functional workloads and can improve performance significantly compared to custom systems on workloads that sparsely access large global variables: from 5× for sparse logistic regression to over 100× on distributed geospatial queries

Advisor: Zaharia Matei
Levis Philip
Ousterhout John K.
Efficient shuffle for flash burst computing

Shuffle is the operation of exchanging arbitrary data among a group of servers, and it is a fundamental communication primitive in distributed computing. In particular, shuffle has been shown to be a fundamental bottleneck to the scalability of flash bursts, a radically new paradigm in datacenter computing. Flash bursts use a large number of servers but for very short time intervals (as little as one millisecond), which makes it possible to run large-scale data-intensive computation within a few milliseconds. Flash bursts present three significant challenges to the design of a shuffle algorithm. First, it cannot use a centralized scheduler. Second, it needs to be efficient even under interference from competing workloads. Finally, it must be applicable to large clusters that don't provide full bisection bandwidth. This thesis presents a clean-slate shuffle algorithm that achieves optimal performance cross a wide range of workloads even under the demanding conditions of flash bursts. This algorithm schedules messages as ensembles to match sender and receiver bandwidths decentrally; it overcommits receiver downlinks to maintain high network utilization; it uses pro rata sliding windows to enforce a weighted max-min fair sharing policy; finally, it uses a lightweight global scheduling scheme to manage the bottleneck links in the network core without knowledge of the underlying network topology

Advisor: Ousterhout John K.
Winstein Keith
Zaharia Matei