VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A computationally conscious search for interactions

We tackle the problem of variable selection with a focus on discovering interactions between variables. The number of potential interactions grows exponentially with the order of the interaction, making exhaustive search infeasible. We show that it is nonetheless possible to identify the variables involved in interactions (of any order) with only linear computation cost and in a nonparametric fashion. Our algorithm is based on minimizing a nonconvex objective, carefully designed to have a favorable landscape. We provide finite sample guarantees on both false positives (we show all stationary points of the objective exclude noise variables) and false negatives (we characterize the sample sizes needed for gradient descent to converge to a good stationary point).

Keywords: Statistics.
Advisor: Tibshirani Robert 
Owen Art B. 
Wager Stefan
Concrete dreams : the second nature of American progressivism

Concrete Dreams: The Second Nature of American Progressivism, examines the many purposes to which Americans put Portland cement concrete over the first half of the twentieth century, making it by century's end the most common human-made material on earth. This study is, like its subject, a conglomerate: it integrates environmental history, the history of technology, social history, the history of labor, and political economy to tell a new narrative of American progressivism that centers on the built environment as a mode of reform politics. Using four case studies—concrete architecture and construction, early automobile highways, and modern dams—this dissertation seeks to reconstruct the history and meaning of early-twentieth-century concrete geographies, and to examine their changed meaning over time. Once a symbol of liberating possibilities, by the 1960s concrete structures became reductive shorthand for domination, either of states over people, or of people over nature.

Keywords: History.
Advisor: Campbell James T. 
White Richard
Frank Zephyr L.
Confronting Suicide: Clustering, County-Level Correlates, and Media Effects in the United States

The epidemiology of suicide has long been an area of interest for researchers, health professionals, and policymakers, with a recent emphasis on the potential consequences of suicide contagion, where one person’s suicide influences future suicides through local knowledge or depictions of the suicide in the media. Previous epidemiological literature has failed to estimate the effects of media portrayal on future suicides within a region by not appropriately accounting for the potential effects of homophily in suicide contagion. Using the National Center for Health Statistics’ Multiple Cause of Death data from 2000 to 2004, I first identify clusters of suicides over space and time within the United States using a spatio-temporal scan statistic. I then approach an estimate for the causal effect of media portrayal of suicide on future suicides within a cluster by analyzing suicide counts in the month immediately before and immediately after an article within a cluster detailing a specific suicide is published. I find that newspaper articles may be associated with higher suicide levels in the next month overall, but when looking at suicides by the same gender and with the same method as the subject of the article, there are much greater effects. These results show evidence for contagion effects in suicide at the local level with an emphasis on homophily in social influence.

Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford University
Department of Economics
suicide
suicide contagion
suicide clusters
suicide homophily
media effects
suicide in the United States
economic epidemiology
Thesis
Advisor: Bhattacharya Jay
Constructing manhood : men's rights activists and feminist men's shared meanings of gender

Despite the sweeping changes of the "gender revolution, " gender inequality persists across many domains. Scholars and activists alike have long recognized the importance of engaging men in feminist work to end gender inequality. In this dissertation, I ask what accounts for individual differences in men's willingness to contribute to or challenge gender inequality. I conducted 62 in-depth interviews with men who identify as feminists and men who identify as men's rights activists (or members of an anti-feminist social movement). Drawing on this data, I argue that feminist men and men who are men's rights activists are surprisingly similar in their motivation for engaging with two social movements that have diametrically opposed aims for gender inequality. I find that both groups of men participate in gender activism as a response to cultural narratives that portray men and other high-status group members (e.g., whites, straight people) as the recipients of unearned advantage. They interpret these cultural narratives as a threat to their morality and turn to activism as a strategy to recoup a sense of moral goodness. I find that men's attraction to their particular movement is not explained completely by their beliefs about gender, masculinity, and inequality, but instead shaped by their social contexts, primarily their educational environments, relationships with women, and interactions with feminists. Throughout this dissertation, I describe how men's identity work both intentionally and unintentionally challenges and contributes to gender inequality. By leveraging this unique comparison case, I show how the gender revolution has created an opportunity for men to contest meanings associated with masculinity, but that men's identity projects can have complex and contradictory consequences for gender inequality. This dissertation provides a unifying theory of men's gender activism, a compelling explanation for why gender inequality is so persistent, and practical insight into how to recruit more men to feminist struggle.

Keywords: Sociology.
Advisor: Correll Shelley Joyce 
Fields Corey 
Pedulla David
Ridgeway Cecilia L.
Contemplation in fire : immolation, photography, and Vietnam 1963

A single photograph from the morning of June 11, 1963, began the research for this dissertation (fig. i.1). The picture shows Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc on fire. His self-immolation on the streets of Saigon on an early Tuesday morning was captured by Associated Press correspondent Malcolm Browne, a US journalist and the only Western cameraman present at the scene. Browne's reel of photographs forever memorialized the Buddhist monk ablaze, and Duc's image, and other images based on it, began appearing in newspapers around the world. The pictures, continually reproduced, acted as a universal igniting force, and Duc's immolation began to linger. As his life ended, the existence of Browne's photography commenced; fixed indelibly in time and space, the monk's destruction of his own body initiated my own art historical exploration. Browne's pictures are elegiac and today remain some of the most immediately recognizable images of the era. The photographs are also, too, icons of trauma and images of suffering. They show a deep melancholy seared into collective consciousness. Thich Quang Duc's immolation was the first of over two dozen monks to self-immolate in Vietnam throughout the ensuing decade. In an attempt to recognize this gravitas, my project situates Thich Quang Duc's self-sacrifice as one of the great acts of civil disobedience—active non-violent resistance (Satyagraha), and peaceful protest—during the early 1960s and nascent stages of the American-Vietnam War. His public self-immolation on the morning of June 11 was a call for peace, a prayer in the name of religious freedom, and a plea for Buddhist equality. In quietude, the elderly Vietnamese monk announced his final stand in flames and meditated through death. My project, in essence, investigates the entirety of Duc's life, unfolds the stakes of his death and uncovers a vast world of socio-cultural happenings latently present in his death photography. In a final analysis, the dissertation suggest that Browne's 1963 pictures reveal a singular moment, actually a rupture, in worldwide consciousness. In effect, Duc's self-immolation activated a revolution.

Keywords: Art and Art History.
Advisor: Nemerov Alexander 
Eshel Amir 
Levi Pavle 
Ma Jean
Contemporary American-Chinese operas as the nexus of business, innovation, and aesthetics

Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines business and ethnographic methodologies with cultural and translation studies, this dissertation investigates the traditional American opera house model and festival business model through an ethnographic examination of two contemporary Chinese-American operas' creation. Dream of the Red Chamber (premiered at San Francisco Opera in 2016) and Paradise Interrupted (premiered at Spoleto Festival USA in 2015) are part of a corpus of new Chinese-American contemporary operas, and offer important exceptions to the dominant business model's reliance upon Western canonical works to attract donors and audiences. As the assistant director for Paradise Interrupted and an ethnographer for Dream of the Red Chamber, I witnessed the process of these operas' production, from commissioning to premiere. The operas' box office success and subsequent national and international productions demonstrate the power of identifying new demographics to support the renewal of an art form that struggles to communicate its relevance to contemporary audiences. Equally importantly, these operas contribute to the redefinition of cultural hybridity from an "East-meets-West" model to an everyday practice of individual and institutional interactions driven by complicated and often conflicting motivations. Irrespective of the traditions and sources involved in the works, however, their critical reception—positive or negative—reveals the persistence of exoticist discourses in contemporary journalism. Through my fieldwork and the analysis of financial and marketing data provided by San Francisco Opera and Spoleto Festival USA, I uncover the intertwining cultural, economic, and aesthetic drivers behind the production of these two operas. I draw upon my analysis of these case studies to assess the American opera ecosystem's ability to incubate innovation and risk-taking through culturally hybrid works that target new audiences and donor bases, with a focus on the challenges and opportunities presented by the current institutional infrastructures of large unionized opera houses and multi-genre festivals. I conclude by articulating the need for an innovative hybrid model for the production of opera that develops pipelines for new artistic talent, audiences, and funding sources, which should be used to experiment with modes of presentation that challenge the traditional opera house experience.

Keywords: Music.
Advisor: Hadlock Heather
Grey Thomas C. 
Levin David J.
Schultz Anna C.
Contested Surveillance: Aadhaar as a Trust Infrastructure

Aadhaar is the national biometric identity project undertaken by India in 2009. The goal is to provide a 12 digit unique identification number to the 1.32 billion people in the country, but since its conception the Aadhaar has been at the center of fierce debate. To some, it is a project of identification and brings fears of privacy violations and surveillance. To others, it is a project of registration, representing modernity, technical progress and the right to be seen by the state. This thesis tries to answer to grapple with the question of whether the Aadhaar is about identity, identification or registration — and why this answer differs for different interest groups.
Existing literature about the Aadhaar centers around technical failures of the system, but this thesis constructs a more theoretical critique of the system to get to the answer. By using the framework of a ‘Trust Infrastructure’ that manages trust between different parties, this thesis makes the case that both surveillance and transparency are low trust, high control situations. What distinguishes them is two factors: the directionality in which the sight is directed, and the proportional power between the observer and the observed. By problematising the context around the Aadhaar and the dominant narratives presented by the government, this thesis finds that the Aadhaar currently facilitates identification by the government towards citizens, but does not provide the necessary mechanisms for citizens to hold the government accountable for the rights conferred by registration. And the same Aadhaar is called a transparency tool by its builders and a surveillance tool by critics because the story of this power differential between citizens and the government is contested by differing narratives of who is responsible for the corruption in public systems.

Keywords: Aadhaar
trust
trust infrastructure
surveillance
privacy
registration
biometric
identity
Science Technology and Society
Stanford University
India
ID card
Thesis
Controlled centriole amplification in the giant cells of the placenta

The centrosome is a major microtubule-organizing center of animal cells and is composed of a pair of centrioles and pericentriolar material. The centriole duplication cycle is coordinated to the cell cycle, such that centrioles are duplicated once per cell cycle to form the bipolar spindle. Both the centrosome and DNA are evenly segregated in mitosis so that each daughter cell inherits one centrosome and has a DNA content of 2C. However, centriole duplication can become uncoupled from DNA replication in some differentiated cell types. Amplification is often critical to the function of these differentiated cell types; for example, multiciliated cells amplify hundreds of basal bodies, or modified centrioles, to form the hundreds of motile cilia in tissues like the airway epithelium. In contrast, cells that preferentially amplify the genome to increase their ploidy content are known as polyploid cells. Polyploidy occurs when cells exits a traditional cell cycle to then enter a terminally differentiated state with modified cell cycles known as endoreduplication. Trophoblast giant cells (TGCs) are terminally differentiated, polyploid cells found in the placenta that undergo endoreduplication to amplify the genome. Here we characterize centrioles and the centrosome in mouse TGCs throughout in vitro differentiation. Throughout TGC differentiation in vitro, centriole and centrosome number increase as nuclear size increases. We term this amplification in TGCs controlled centriole amplification as we do not observe hundreds of centrioles made as in multiciliated cells. We demonstrate that controlled centriole amplification can occur independently from DNA replication, and that amplified centrioles can function as microtubule-organizing centers. We also observe that amplified centrioles in TGCs have known markers of centrosomal maturation, such as distal and subdistal appendages. However, not every centriole in TGCs acquire appendages, perhaps indicative of their altered cell cycle state. Lastly, we highlight preliminary observations of controlled centriole amplification in TGCs, where like cycling cells, only one pair of centrioles is competent for centriole duplication and can form procentrioles form from preexisting centrioles.

Keywords: genetics) degree committee member.
Biology.
Advisor: Stearns Tim 
Bergmann Dominique 
Feldman Jessica L.
Controlled Nanoparticle Deposition Reveals High-Temperature Stability and Density-Independent Sintering of Pd/SiO2 Emissions Control Catalysts

Supported-metal emissions control catalysts must maintain steady activity at high temperatures over their entire lifetimes. However, preventing loss of reactive surface area due to particle sintering is challenging. It is thought that spatially isolating metal nanoparticles on the catalyst support slows high-temperature degradation by minimizing the probability of interparticle interaction. Yet, studying this effect is complicated by an inability to synthesize catalysts with well-defined nanoparticle spatial distributions using traditional synthesis methods. Herein, we prepare Pd/SiO2 catalysts with quantifiable nanoparticle spatial distributions using colloidal Pd nanoparticles and amorphous spherical silica supports. With this model system, we demonstrate that Pd/SiO2 sintering is thermally activated at 888°C and is independent of nanoparticle density on the support surface over two orders of magnitude. The vapor pressure of Pd and corresponding NP atomic solid-vapor exchange rate suggest a gas-phase sintering mechanism activated at the reduction temperature of PdO to metallic Pd. While minimal fusion of adjacent nanoparticles occurs at temperatures below 888 °C, the loss of reactive surface area is negligible. These results call into question the traditional approach of achieving maximum stability via spatial isolation of nanoparticles. Moreover, the remarkable stability of our system up to 888°C unlocks new strategies for the realization of sinter-resistant catalysts.

Keywords: Sintering
Catalysis
Nanoparticles
Text
Thesis
Advisor: Cargnello Matteo
Chueh William
Controlling Tuberculosis: Understanding the Effects of Incarceration on Tuberculosis Treatment Outcomes In Brazil

Prisoners bear a disproportionate and increasing burden of tuberculosis (TB) in Brazil. They make up only 0.4% of Brazil’s total population yet represent 8.7% of Brazil’s total TB cases. Prior research has demonstrated that TB in prisons acts like a reservoir for the surrounding communities and is responsible for a sizeable percentage of TB cases in the general population. TB treatment success in Brazil is among the lowest in the world for high burden countries with only 72% of cases who begin treatment successfully completing it. However, given the substantial burden little is known about incarceration’s relationship to TB treatment outcomes and care gaps in this population. The goal of this study was to assess the relationship between incarceration and treatment outcomes within Brazil. We obtained data on sociodemographic and clinical characteristics and TB treatment outcomes using Brazil’s national disease registry from 2009 to 2017.We conducted multivariable logistic regression and propensity score analysis to quantify the effect of incarceration on the probability of treatment success among new adult TB cases, controlling for sex, age, self-reported race, education status, diagnosis year, HIV status, and reported use of alcohol and tobacco. TB treatment outcomes were reported for 97.3 % of non-incarcerated and 94.4 % of prisoners. Among these, the treatment success was 71.1% among non-incarcerated individuals and 77.4% among prisoners. In multivariable regression, prisoners were more likely to have treatment success (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 1.24 % CI 1.2-1.29). Among prisoners, self-reported black (AOR 0.74, 95% CI 0.67-0.81) or mixed-race individuals (AOR 0.91, 95% CI 0.84-0.98), HIV-coinfected (AOR 0.40, 95% CI 0.36-0.44), and those reporting alcohol use (AOR 0.64, 95% CI 0.58-0.71) were less likely to have treatment success. However, prisoners enrolled on Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) seemed to have improved treatment outcomes with DOT being associated with treatment success (AOR 1.87, 95 % CI 1.73-2.02). Access to DOT was significantly higher among prisoners (77.0%) compared to those outside prison (56.1%) (p<.0001), and this partially explained the superior outcomes among prisoners as an effect modification was observed when our cohort was stratified on DOT enrollment (DOT+ 1.61 (1.54-1.68) vs. DOT- 0.97 (0.91-1.03)). Prisoners have a greater odds of treatment success than those outside prisoners, an effect mediated in part by an increased exposure to DOT. Treatment success among both incarcerated and non-incarcerated populations is below international targets. Expanding access to DOT and other interventions to improve outcomes is needed, particularly in populations with poorer outcomes such as black or mixed- race inmates, HIV co-infected individuals and those reporting alcohol use.

Keywords:  Department of Health Research & Policy
Tuberculosis
Treatment Outcomes
Incarceration
Prisons
Brazil
Department of Health Research &amp; Policy
Thesis
Advisor: Andrews Jason
Popat Rita
Convex methods for radiation treatment planning

Upwards of 1.6 million cases of cancer are diagnosed each year in the US alone, and two-thirds of those patients receive radiation therapy (RT). For each such patient, clinicians design an individualized treatment plan based on anatomy scans and the capabilities of their clinic's radiation delivery hardware. Treatment planning involves fundamental tensions between tumor coverage and toxicity to surrounding healthy tissues. Increasingly sophisticated RT hardware and planning algorithms have been designed to address these challenges, but come with commensurate increases in computational burden. This thesis addresses two planning challenges common to all modern RT modalities: (1) efficiently solving large scale intensity optimization problems, and (2) satisfying the (nonconvex) radiation dose constraints derived from clinical trials. We formulate the treatment planning problem as a convex minimization. We introduce methods for approximately solving treatment planning problems at dramatically reduced computational cost, and appeal to our convex problem formulation and duality theory to obtain bounds on the suboptimality of these approximations. We then present a framework for handling all desired clinical objectives via convex surrogates. We implement these methods as open-source software packages that make use of modern, general purpose convex solvers. Collectively, this thesis lays the groundwork for a core, modality-agnostic, intensity optimization module that can incorporated as-is into virtually all planning algorithms used in current practice or proposed in the literature.

Keywords: Bioengineering.
Advisor: Xing Lei
Altman Russ 
Boyd Stephen P.