VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Investigating the Role of Spatial Resolution and Vegetation Structure in Live Fuel Moisture Content Estimation from Microwave Remote Sensing

Live fuel moisture content (LFMC) - the mass of water per unit dry biomass in vegetation - is a key factor in determining fire risk. Because LFMC varies with plant species and physiological traits, estimates from optical remote sensing and meteorological indices are often insufficient, making LFMC difficult to capture at large spatial scales. Microwave backscatter, due to its sensitivity to water, provides a complementary source of information to optical remote sensing for estimating LFMC. However, microwave backscatter data from remote sensing contains speckle noise, which can be accounted for by retrieving the data at a coarser spatial resolution.
This thesis aims to understand if accounting for plant heterogeneity with a finer resolution can outweigh the benefits of speckle noise reduction from a coarser resolution when estimating LFMC. This thesis also aims to understand if accounting for vegetation structure traits like canopy cover and canopy bulk density can lead to improved estimations of LFMC, since these traits are representative of plant physiology.
In this thesis, I built off of Rao et al (2020)’s recurrent neural network for estimating LFMC across the Western United States, which produced 15-day LFMC maps for the region at a 250 meter resolution. The training data from the National Fuel Moisture Database was rescaled so that the model from Rao et al. (2020) could be trained and validated at six different common spatial resolutions. Of the six resolutions tested, 250 m leads to the most optimal trade off between a lower root mean squared error and sufficient speckle noise reduction.
Using vegetation data from the California Forest Observatory, I then updated the model inputs with canopy structure variables. Although initial results suggested that training data that was more representative of the validation data would lead to improved estimates, adding the representative CFO data led to a drop in performance, indicating the need for an improved vegetation structure dataset.

Keywords: Geophysics
LFMC
Microwave Backscatter
California Forest Observatory
Wildfire
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Thesis
Advisor: Konings Alexandra
Investigation of Injury- and Paracrine-Induced Sensory Neuron Senescence in a Chronic Pain Model

Chronic pain is a significant public health issue and largely affects older members of the population. As people age, senescent cells, which do not divide but resist apoptosis, accumulate in response to stressors, and the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) may be a contributing and compounding factor to chronic pain. Preliminary data from the Tawfik Lab suggest that sensory neurons, whose cell bodies reside in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG), undergo cellular senescence following peripheral injury. However, it is unknown whether injury directly induces senescence and, further, whether injured senescent cells induce senescence in uninjured, neighboring cells via paracrine senescence. The objectives of this thesis were to (1) investigate cellular senescence of injured and uninjured neurons in the DRG at two chronic timepoints following spared nerve injury (SNI) and (2) investigate whether paracrine senescence occurs after SNI and is potentially exacerbated in aged DRG. RNAscope and immunohistochemistry methods were used to detect senescent cells in the DRG following SNI, and quantitative analysis was performed using ImageJ. A novel method was developed and used to categorize uninjured senescent neurons as paracrine induced based on their proximity to injured IL6+ senescent neurons. At 3 weeks post-SNI, more senescent neurons were observed in the young compared to aged DRG. By 7 weeks post-SNI, the percent of senescent neurons had declined and no difference was observed between young and aged DRG. Also at this timepoint, the ratio of uninjured to injured senescent neurons increased in young and aged DRG, and a slight increase in paracrine-induced senescent neurons was observed in aged tissue. Interestingly, however, paracrine-induced senescent neurons only comprised a minority of uninjured senescent cells. These findings suggest that senescence may be induced in uninjured neurons through processes other than IL6-induced paracrine senescence that have yet to be explored in the DRG.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
Aging
Senescence
Spared nerve injury
Paracrine senescence
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Thesis
Advisor: Tawfik Vivianne
Chen Xiaoke
Skotheim Jan
Investigation of unconventional superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelates

More than one century after the initial discovery of superconductivity in mercury, there remain entire classes of materials whose superconducting mechanisms have yet to be elucidated. One major avenue through which experimentalists contribute in this research has been nding new examples of unconventional superconductors. A recent trend in this material search is to combine traditional material synthesis methods with novel sample manipulation techniques in pursuit of materials in novel geometries. For example, topotactic reduction has demonstrated impressive capabilities to modify oxygen stoichiometry and achieving extreme valence states of 3d transition metal ions in complex oxide systems. In this thesis, I will introduce the in nite-layer nickelates obtained using this method as a new family of 3d-transition-metal-based unconventional superconductors. I will show that this system is a local type-II superconductor with singlet pairing and nodal superconducting gap structure, whose upper critical eld generically violates the Pauli limit and whose super uid density is so low that the superconductivity might be phase coherence limited. I will further identify the importance of rare earth 4f moments in shaping the superconductivity. Overall, I hope to show that this new system presents an additional source of experimental insight into unconventional superconductivity

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Hwang Harold Yoonsung
Fisher Ian R. (Ian Randal)
Kivelson Steven
"Is It Challenging Them Without Killing Them?" How English Language Arts Teachers Develop Students' Self-Efficacy in the Classroom

Self-efficacy, first conceptualized by psychologist Albert Bandura in 1977, refers to an individual’s belief in their own abilities. Subsequent research from Bandura links classroom self-efficacy to cognitive benefits and improved academic performance, though most of this research comes from math and science classrooms. My research sought to answer the question: how do high school English language arts teachers think about their students’ self-efficacy, and how does this inform their pedagogy? I conducted semi-structured interviews with five high school English language arts teachers, allowing them to share their goals for students and their strategies for handling various pedagogical challenges they faced. Teachers expressed various goals for their students, wishing that they could express complex ideas in writing, read for understanding, and come to value the process of learning. Challenges for students fell along similar lines, with reading and writing most pressing. A secondary challenge identified was how to challenge students without destroying their confidence. In their responses, teachers discussed working to challenge students while building up their efficacy as writers, specifically through combining modeling and scaffolding. Their interviews also showed a variety of techniques to help students understand class material. Teachers discussed their limitations when it came to student self-efficacy, including how the school system affected students and whether or not they felt they had the power to really change a student’s efficacy. These interviews suggest that teachers are cognizant of the role they play in developing a student’s psyche, and that they feel confident in their ability to help students rise to the challenges of the subject.

Keywords: Education, Secondary
Self-efficacy
Teaching
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Istheam, A TikTok Video Curriculum

High school students are interested in science but do not feel as engaged when learning about science in school. We believe social media has the potential to increase student interest in science with its affordances for learning. We will address this intersection of learning and social media use by creating engaging opportunities to spark interest in science. Istheam’s goal is to create a fun, educational video curriculum that is completely free and accessible to users via social media. Our videos on TikTok will foster a multi-contextual exposure to science that is based on learning theories and best practices for social media short videos. Our focus on interest and learning is informed by learning theories: Hidi & Renninger’s four phase model of interest development (2006), Brigid Barron’s learning ecology’s conjectures of learning (2006), Tamara Clegg et al’s building blocks of disposition (2014), and Saba Kawas et al’s design framework for mobile technologies to promote children’s interest in nature (2019). With appreciating science more important than ever, we aim for students to become more interested in science and increase their disposition towards science after watching and engaging with our videos. Currently, we have created and posted 8 videos on TikTok and conducted a learner study. From our preliminary data, students are interested in the videos we have made and provided valuable feedback in regards to our video style and content.

Keywords: TikTok
social media learning
video curriculum
Communication in science
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Thesis
It Takes a Village… and More: Southeast Los Angeles as a Model for Alleviating Infrastructure Deficits and Environmental Injustices Through Community-Based Resistance

In this thesis, I explore the current community organizing efforts in Southeast Los Angeles, an area facing environmental justice issues. This area has a long history of environmental racism and government neglect; these factors have helped to establish community organizations’ role as the main resources providers. This work provides knowledge on the work these community organizations do, as well as the limitations they experience due to existing infrastructure deficits. I explore the following questions: 1) What is the relationship between a technological infrastructure and access to resources? 2) What assumptions are made by government agencies and community organizations in Los Angeles in their communication and outreach methods? 3) How has the COVID-19 pandemic shaped what community organizations advocate for in Southeast Los Angeles? 4) What are the consequences of already existing resource disparities in Southeast Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic?Through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic, I also witness the changes in community organizing due to the disproportionate burdens faced by Southeast Los Angeles. By examining the forms of advocacy and approaches used during and before the pandemic, as well as analyzing the structural deficits that both inhibit and influence community organizing, we can further understand what is needed by community organizations in communities of color.

Keywords: Environmental justice
Community organization
Nonprofit organizations
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Thesis
Advisor: Diver Sibyl
The Italian resistance and its narrative mythologization

In this dissertation I look at how the narrativization of historical events of national importance creates powerful mythical images -- mythologems (recurring images and narrative elements) — which persist in time while being reworked to reflect cultural progress in society. This narrativizing process functions as a political mythologization — "the work on a common narrative by which the members of a social group make significance of their political experiences." (Bottici, 2007) I argue that narrative mythologizations do not just reflect the evolution of social consciousness, but also actively shape it by constantly re-defining the basic mythologems on which the founding myth is constructed. On April 25th, 1945, the Italian National Liberation Committee declared the uprising against Nazi occupation. This event is considered the final act of the Italian Resistance against Nazi-Fascism, supported by the Allies. The Resistenza became the founding political myth of the Italian republic, as its shared values (equality, solidarity, work) became the ground for the new constitution. In the following 75 years, events surrounding the Resistance and Liberation have generated a plethora of narrative accounts. Scholarship at the crossroads of Italian Studies, Literary Studies, and Film Studies has traditionally focused on the aesthetic innovations of Resistance narratives -- associating them with the emergence of literary and cinematic Neorealism in the aftermath of World War II. My project considers how the Resistance myth has generated different narrative legacies and core mythologems in literature and cinema, and how their development throughout the 20th century can be traced and interpreted in light of the social, political, and cultural evolution of Italy. In each chapter I trace the narrative evolution of the Resistance myth in a specific genre — each cultural product looks not only at the historical source, but also at its artistic predecessors as narrative models

Keywords: French & Italian.
Advisor: Wittman Laura
Alduy Cécile
Harrison Thomas J.
Prodan Sarah Rolfe
Iterative methods for structured algorithmic data science

This thesis studies the interplay between two aspects of algorithmic data science: iterative method theory and structured problem instances arising from applications. We organize the thesis into two parts, each of which couples a branch of the modern iterative method toolkit with a family of related structured problems in data science. Each part of the thesis develops new frameworks for designing iterative methods, gives new tools for the efficient implementation of said methods, and offers fresh perspectives on the relationships between our new iterative methods and various fundamental algorithmic problems in the relevant application domain

Advisor: Sidford Aaron
Ahmadipouranari Nima
Charikar Moses
Valiant Gregory
Japan’s Aging Population: How Do Stock Market Fluctuations Influence Expected Retirement Age

As Japan’s population continues to age, the national pension plans are starved of new entrants into the labor market due to low fertility rates and a historically strict immigration policies. This problem is exacerbated by mandatory retirement laws that remove workers from their positions of employment when they could be providing value-additive labor. In this paper, I use panel data from the Japan Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) in 10 municipalities to understand how the Nikkei 225 performance impacts expected age of retirement. Controlling for macroeconomic and descriptive variables, I find evidence of a negative relationship between Nikkei performance and expected age of retirement, where a 10 percent year-over-year increase in the Nikkei 225 results in an approximate 2.5 month decrease in expected age of retirement. I do not find evidence that the estimates differ when splitting the population by age, gender, stock ownership, occupational physical intensity, or educational attainment. These results are similar in magnitude and sign to that of past studies examining the relationship between stock market performance and retirement expectations

Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
Retirement
Stock Market
Japan
Economics of Aging
Stanford Department of Economics
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Thesis
Advisor: Goda Gopi Shah
Japan’s Evolving Stance on cross‐Strait Relations: Policy Shifts or Attitude Shifts?

For the first time in over 50 years, the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait was raised in the 2021 Japan-U.S. Joint Leaders’ Statement. Not only did Tokyo’s increasingly assertive posture on the Taiwan issue attract domestic and international attention, but it was also interpreted as Tokyo shifting its policies on Taiwan. Tokyo’s perceived policy shifts could incur potential retaliation from Beijing and result in unfavorable outcomes due to Tokyo’s enormous economic, geographic, and political interests in China. Therefore, it is important to understand the intentions behind the perceived shifts. This thesis assesses the recent turns in Tokyo’s stances on Taiwan by reviewing the significant events among Japan, China, and Taiwan and analyzing the Diet debates on the Taiwan issue. This analysis of Tokyo’s stances on Taiwan since 1972 reveals no change in Tokyo’s fundamental policies; Tokyo continues to adhere to “One China” and maintains only unofficial ties with Taipei. However, the analysis does reveal shifts in attitudes toward Taiwan. Today’s assertive posture is rooted in Tokyo’s attitude shift after the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1995-1996, when Tokyo began linking its own national security with peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. Tokyo’s increasing assertiveness is proportional to China’s increasing pressure on Taiwan. Tokyo’s posture reflects its goal to defend its national security by promoting peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait without purposefully opposing Beijing. This thesis predicts Tokyo will continue to increase its voice on the Taiwan issue as long as tension exists across the Strait but will not change its fundamental policies.

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Stanford Global Studies, East Asian Studies, Japan, China, Taiwan, International Policy
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Thesis
Advisor: Miller Alice
Journalism as Transitional Justice: Generating the Bosnia War Crimes and Genocide Media Archive

Emma Smith’s capstone project consisted of building a media archive documenting human rights violations during the Bosnian War from 1992-1995, often considered the deadliest conflict in Europe since WWII. Her project centered around highlighting the critical role journalism played in alerting the global public of the crisis, with war reporters and photojournalists broadcasting live –– for the first time in history –– war crimes in Europe. She worked with the Srebrenica Memorial Center (MC) and the Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) to propose a project that would document, collect, digitize, recognize, and celebrate the work of international journalists who brought vast awareness to the suffering of Bosnian citizens from 1992 to 1995. For her final deliverable, Emma submitted a preliminary database of the digitized “archive,” annotated with comments and personal reflections on trends identified while collecting research materials. She hopes this project will inform historical narratives of the past and help engage citizens in discussions relating to transitional justice, memorialization, and genocide prevention in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region at large.

Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Mass media
Transitional justice
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Thesis
Kosmos embodied : eunuchs and byzantine art during the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1056)

This dissertation uncovers the aesthetic importance of elite court eunuchs in Constantinople, who were at the height of their power during the Macedonian Dynasty (867-1056). While the period is familiar territory for art historians, the field has largely overlooked the importance of eunuchs to Byzantine visual culture because they are uncommon and difficult to identify in surviving images. Embracing their visual ambiguity, I uncover how eunuchs challenge typical modes of mimetic representation and offer alternative performative, ephemeral, or otherwise shifting images. Records of their roles in the ceremonies of the imperial court, where they were ubiquitous, offer the art historian rich ground for the investigation of figurability and framing. The Byzantines conceived of the earthly court as a mirror image of the heavenly one wherein the emperor played the role of Christ. Attending to how and where eunuchs visually set apart the emperor, I show that eunuchs were a living kosmos. Engaging the dual meaning of kosmos as both "order" and "ornament, " I argue that eunuchs created a blurry edge where signification never quite congealed and the transformative possibilities of adornment could render the earthly court into a vision of heaven. The aesthetic and structural role of this specifically gendered group allows me to uncover a different understanding of social power wrought through ornamentation and beauty as much as political proximity to rulers

Keywords: Art and Art History.
Advisor: Pentcheva Bissera V. 
Griffiths Fiona J.
Maranci Christina
Vinograd Richard Ellis
La Cité des Trans

Siena Fay’s capstone project addressed the lack of transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) representation in historical and cultural imaginaries. Through an adaptation of 14th century French novel, “La Cité des Dames”, Siena grappled with the misconceptions of TGNC communities as important historical figures and influences. This literature adaptation, titled “La Cité des Trans”, was reformulated as a modern trans-feminist piece centering a trans character who learns about other TGNC individuals who made significant history and contributions. Siena hopes this literary piece serves as an educational tool for communities, particularly TGNC youth, to learn more about the ways in which TGNC historical figures have been present across cultures and centuries to help contextualize contemporary trans issues.
Student project deposited by department for archival purposes. Original work unavailable for public download due to permission restriction preferences of the author.

Keywords: Transgender history
Feminist literature
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Thesis
Book chapter
Landscapes of inequality : social differentiation in geometric through classical crete

Traditional histories of the Greek world in the first millennium BCE characterize Crete as an unusual region, where a seventh-century floruit was followed by the emergence of economically stagnant, oligarchic city-states. This dissertation takes an archaeological approach to understanding inequality and social difference in Cretan communities in the 8th through the 4th centuries BCE, one that moves beyond literary accounts to focus on the material culture of rural settlements recovered by archaeological surveys. I first critique some of the ways that archaeologists have approached inequality in the past and demonstrate why we need a new approach. I discuss how interpretations of survey evidence have traditionally been deployed in arguments about inequality and complexity and argue that we can extract more information from this evidence than has been previously attempted. My own methods combine spatial and functional analysis of settlement patterns across the island with in-depth study of small regions. I demonstrate that there are meaningful differences between small survey sites on Crete, with some sites more engaged in agricultural intensification, large-scale storage, elaborate dining practices, or trade than others. This is important, for it suggests that we cannot interpret all small settlements as single-family farmsteads of equal means occupied year-round. The Cretan evidence thus encourages us to consider alternatives to models of Greek land use and community organization predicated a middle class of small freeholding citizen farmers -- a narrative that has dominated the interpretation of evidence from archaeological surveys on the Greek mainland and has had broad implications for discussions of Greek egalitarianism in general. The dissertation concludes with a reflection on how Cretan communities used material culture to send messages about individual and collective identity, with particular focus on the phenomena of "austerity" and "conservatism" in Cretan material culture

Keywords: Classics.
Advisor: Morris Ian
Bauer Andrew M. 
Gaignerot-Driessen Florence
Haggis Donald C.
Martin Richard P.