VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Gray Matter of Young Adulthood: Neuroscience, Social Trends, and Justice Reform

Why have recent neuroscience research findings on young adult development (age eighteen to twenty-five) not caused widespread reform for this age group in the criminal justice system? The research shows that eighteen is an arbitrary age of maturity and full criminal responsibility, but the United States continues to treat young people eighteen and older like adults. This thesis seeks to answer this question through an analysis and synthesis of scientific papers, legal cases, policy reports, and academic works. It argues that current reform efforts fail to translate scientific research into practical reform because they do not place the science within its social context, which is defined as the history and present social trends, practices, and beliefs about juvenile and criminal justice in America, including the uniquely American relationship to race and crime. This argument is grounded in a historical and theoretical discussion of the relationship between science and law. Both science and law are flexible reflections of social ideals, and both can be used as tools for social control over targeted groups. This thesis places relevant neuroscience literature on young adult development within the broader history of juvenile and criminal justice. It also puts the scientific research in conversation with the present way that young adults interact with the justice system, including in specialized young adult programs. It argues that these programs do not go far enough and that categorical reform for all young adults is necessary. This discussion concludes with a proposed model for categorical young adult reform. In short, the model suggests waiting for, being prepared for, and creating the right contextual moment for reform.

Keywords:  Program in Science
youth
young adults
emerging adults
criminal justice
neuroscience
psychology
reform
social justice
social trends
policy
reform
criminal justice reform
Stanford University
STS
science technology and society
interdisciplinary
law
Thesis
Advisor: Garcia Angela
The impact of a health system strengthening initiative on the quality of healthcare in a rural district of Madagascar

Assessing the effectiveness of a healthcare delivery program in a quantifiable and comprehensive manner is a challenge that most health system strengthening (HSS) organizations face continuously given the wide-range of contributors to effective care. While past studies predominantly focused on measures of access to care, the World Health Organization has urged in the last decade for an increased emphasis on measures of care quality, including its safety, timeliness, equity, and patient-centeredness. Here, we present one of the first studies to evaluate the impact of an HSS intervention on the content of healthcare, a proxy for quality, at the population-level; we deem care to be effective when it is appropriately delivered to all people in need of medical attention, not just those able to attend a health center. We conducted a longitudinal cohort study examining changes in the content of care (including medications prescribed, diagnostic tests performed, and patient counseling) provided to Malagasy pregnant women and ill children during the first two years of the joint Ministry of Health and non-profit PIVOT’s HSS intervention in Ifanadiana, a rural district of Madagascar. This work was based on responses from an independently-conducted, district-wide survey of 1600 randomly sampled households, with an intervention and control group, that was administered at baseline in 2014 and again in 2016. Our analysis revealed that as access to a public healthcare facility (PHF) increased by 10-20 percentage points over the study period in the intervention group, so too did the content of appropriate care increase by similar levels, while there were minimal changes for the control group. Notably, there was a significant increase in the percent of children ill with diarrhea who were given oral rehydration therapy at a PHF and in the percent of women whose babies were examined by a health professional soon after delivery. Conversely, we identified several indicators that remained low in the intervention group throughout the study period, particularly in the content of antenatal care for pregnant women. In addition to helping quantify the impact of the intervention in Ifanadiana and identifying aspects of care that need further improvement, this study establishes a new method of measuring the quality of health care in a population, although further validation of this method is needed. Thus, this work provides essential insights into the creation of an evidence-based healthcare delivery system, which could be applied to future HSS initiatives outside of Madagascar.

Keywords:  Department of Health Research & Policy
healthcare quality
Madagascar
health system strengthening
Stanford University Department of Health Research &amp; Policy
Thesis
Advisor: Maldonado Yvonne
Bonds Matthew
The Impact of Short Interest on the Performance of Tech Initial Public Offerings in the U.S

This paper shows that short selling is an important component in the trading
of initial public offerings. The finding goes against conventional wisdom in the IPO
literature. Short sellers are informed traders who trade on negative information. Since their trades provide signals to the market, the short interest ratio serves as an indicator of subsequent low returns on a stock. This paper studies data on IPOs in the
technology sector issued on the Nasdaq and NYSE between October 2007 and
December 2015. The multiple regression analysis in this paper evaluates the
performance of returns on tech IPOs based on many variables, including book-to-market ratio, market premium, and firm size. The results provide evidence that the
average tech IPO exhibits a negative relationship between short interest ratio and
abnormal monthly returns during the first year of trading.

Keywords:  Department of Economics
Stanford Department of Economics
short selling
initial public offerings
technology sector
Thesis
Advisor: Piazzesi Monika
The Impact of the Philippine ISP Duopoly on Mobile Broadband Adoption

The Philippine telecommunications market is dominated by two firms. Despite this duopoly structure, the country has been a fast adopter of mobile broadband and is home to one of the largest connected populations in the world. This paper tests and provides evidence to confirm the hypothesis that the Internet Service Provider (ISP) duopoly has not hindered Mobile Broadband Adoption. Telecommunications market consolidation does not appear to have a statistically significant effect on the Philippine’s rapid adoption of mobile broadband devices. This paper then studies key innovations that may have allowed the Philippine market to overcome the ISP duopoly and continue broadband adoption. Empirical analysis suggests that the diffusion of foreign innovations is a significant driver of increased mobile broadband use.

Keywords:  Department of Economics
Philippines
Internet
Duopoly
Market Structure
Innovation
Mobile
Broadband
Stanford Department of Economics
Thesis
Advisor: Bresnahan Timothy
The Implications of Changing Immigration Policy: Effects of Australia’s Immigration Policy Change Simulated on the United States

Immigration policy has emerged as one of the most contentious issues all over the developed world. Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of advocacy towards reforming the U.S. immigration policies towards one that is more conducive to economic growth citing merit-based immigration policies as the solution. Australia changed its immigration policy to a primarily merit-based system during the 1997-98 fiscal year and is often cited as an example of what the United States should do. This thesis studies the economic effects of the policy change in Australia and discerns changes the Untied States might benefit from by changing its own immigration policies. The economic effects (GDP per capita, wages, and unemployment) are analyzed through a difference-in-differences regression and findings are further supported through a qualitative case study approach of California and New South Wales. The results demonstrated that having a primarily merit-based immigration system is not a necessary condition to having positive economic outcomes. Additionally, merit-based immigration is incorrectly conflated with purely “high-skilled” immigration and often overlooks other occupations that would meet labor demanded. Based upon the evidence presented in this study, policymakers should focus on creating a more flexible immigration system that is more responsive to market demands, regardless of skill level, and expand all types of visas.

Keywords: Fisher Family Honors Program
Democracy
Development and the Rule of Law
CDDRL
immigration
immigration policies
family-based immigration
merit-based immigration
GDP
wages
unemployment
United States
Australia
Thesis
Advisor: Francis Fukuyama
The Inhibition of Calcineurin by C16orf74

Calcineurin (CN) is a highly-conserved serine/threonine phosphatase that is projected to interact with at least 300 proteins in the human proteome, only 27 of which have been experimentally confirmed to date. These proteins are known to interact with CN via at least one of two well-characterized amino acid binding motifs: the PxIxIT and the LxVP. C16orf74 is an uncharacterized protein that contains a candidate PxIxIT motif and which has been identified as a potential CN substrate by several independent screening techniques, including yeast two-hybrid, phage display, and computational methods. While previous work has established a correlation between C16orf74 expression and various cancers, little has been done to characterize this protein’s interaction with CN or to explore the implications of that interaction. To isolate the most essential residues in the C16orf74 PxIxIT motif, we created several versions of C16orf74 with strategically placed alanine mutations. We used these C16orf74 mutants to conduct in vitro and in vivo binding assays to quantify the strength of the CN-C16orf74 interaction. A luciferase reporter assay that uses NFAT-activated transcription as a proxy for CN activity was used to measure the effect of C16orf74 expression on CN function in HEK293 cells. This data combined with previously published information about C16orf74 localization from immunofluorescence microscopy suggests that C16orf74 is an inhibitor of CN that acts through the PxIxIT binding motif at the plasma membrane. This discovery expands our knowledge of CN signaling networks in humans, a network which is already known to be critical for T-cell activation, heart-valve development, and some aspects of learning and memory.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
calcineurin
c16orf74
calcium
calmodulin
phosphorylation
phosphatase
cell signaling
inhibition
Department of Biology
Thesis
Advisor: Cyert Martha
Jones Pat
The Intersection of the Classroom and the Home: Parent-Teacher Relationships of Low-Income Preschool Children

The education and care for young low-income children in the United States is a collaborative effort between school administrators, teachers, and parents. The parent-teacher relationship in particular can be a significant partnership that is not well understood for low-income, ethnically diverse families of preschool children. To better understand this relationship, this study explored with twelve parents and three teachers the factors they perceive as contributing to or impeding productive and amiable parent-teacher relationships. Communication, connectedness with the school, and perceptions of the teacher emerged as major themes for this relationship. Although limited to fourteen participants in an urban area, the results suggest preschools for low-income children would benefit from focusing on personalized and consistent methods of communication with parents, more opportunities for parent-teacher interaction, and ongoing discussion of teacher expectations.

Keywords: preschool
parent-teacher relationship
low-income preschools
parent-teacher communication
graduate school of education
interview
qualitative research
preschool
preschool children
Thesis
The Rise and Fall of Secular Politics in Iraq

What explains the political success and failure of secular politics in Iraq? A conventional account would suggest that Iraqis, divided by sectarian conflict, would be unable to organize politically around issues rather than identities, with negative implications for democratic consolidation. I document the history of secular political organization in Iraq in the pre-Ba’thist period to demonstrate that non-sectarian forms of political organization did in fact exist but did not consolidate because of avoidable errors that Great Britain made in building Iraqi institutions. Next, I discuss the electoral process in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. While Iraq’s leading secular coalition, Iraqiyya, won a plurality of seats in the 2010 parliamentary election, secular parties lost drastically in the 2014 elections. Why? In addition to coalition weakness and lack of external support, I empirically show that sectarian violence suppressed voter turnout among secular voters. While sectarian Shia parties had Iranian-backed militias to protect their constituents, secular parties did not with the effect of disincentivizing political participation. My results suggest that democratic consolidation is not possible in without a minimum threshold of security. Without a secure environment, cycles of ethnic violence can persist, inhibiting the creation of a secular political culture. Tailored electoral systems and an even playing field are also essential to encouraging cross-sectarian outreach. If we believe that issue-based politics are good for consolidating democracy, this research helps to explain why post-2003 Iraq failed to achieve the aspirations of American democracy promoters and how the consequences are still affecting US security today.

Keywords:  Center for International Security and Cooperation
Center for International Security and Cooperation
governance
security
Iraq
state-building
American foreign policy
Thesis
Advisor: Blaydes Lisa
The role of Arp5 and Ies6 in the INO80 chromatin remodeling complex

Within the nucleus of the eukaryotic cell, DNA is packaged into chromatin, a compact yet dynamic structure consisting of DNA wrapped around histones to form nucleosomes. Chromatin remodelers are the protein complexes responsible for the repositioning and restructuring of nucleosomes, an essential process for regulating access to the genome. Previous research on INO80, a chromatin remodeler conserved from Saccharomyces cerevisiae to humans, has shown that one module of the complex (consisting of two protein subunits, Arp5 and Ies6) can exist as a separate subcomplex in the cell, capable of binding to chromatin independently. This Arp5 subcomplex appears to be essential for regulation of several key metabolic genes in yeast. This study examines how Arp5 and Ies6 bind to each other and to the full INO80 remodeling complex, as well as how the subcomplex is loaded onto chromatin by the full complex, the mechanism of which has yet to be determined. Through immunoprecipitation experiments in yeast, it was determined that the C-terminus of Ies6 is critical for complex assembly. Through chromatin fractionation experiments, we show that the deposition of the subcomplex is dependent upon the Nhp10 module of INO80, but independent of the catalytic activity of the Arp8 module. Chromatin remodeling is an important means of epigenetic regulation, and the discovery of the Arp5 subcomplex presents a novel method of chromatin regulation by remodeling complexes. Further research aims to reveal the presence of other subcomplexes and elucidate their distinct chromatin remodeling functions.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
Arp5
Ies6
INO80
chromatin remodeling
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Thesis
Advisor: Morrison Ashby
Cyert Martha
THE ROLE OF SHALE KEROGEN – HYDRAULIC FRACTURING FLUID INTERACTIONS IN HYDROCARBON TRANSPORT AND CONTAMINANT RELEASE

The recent increase in unconventional oil and gas exploration and production has
stimulated significant research on hydraulic fracturing, but the many possible chemical
reactions between the fracturing fluids and the minerals and organic matter comprising the
shale host rocks are not well understood. In particular, there is a lack of information
concerning the evolution of organic matter in shale reservoirs during hydraulic fracturing
operations. Organic matter, primarily in the form of kerogen, is the dominant source of
hydrocarbons in shale plays and is therefore critical to productivity. In addition, kerogen is
enriched in metals, making it a potential source of contaminants to produced waters. In the
present study, two different kerogens of contrasting types and maturities (Green River and
Marcellus) were reacted with a variety of fluids, including a commonly used synthetic
hydraulic fracturing fluid, in order to determine the effect of these fluids on shale minerals
and organic matter before and after exposure and solid-fluid partitioning. No trends in the
concentrations or speciation of carbon, hydrogen, or oxygen were quantifiable, due to
either the absence of reactions or difficulties in detecting such trends because of significant
natural heterogeneity in the kerogen samples. However, solubilization of organic
compounds occurred in the more immature Green River kerogen when it was exposed to
fracturing fluid. The same effect was not observed in experiments involving Marcellus
kerogen. The organic compounds released from the Green River kerogen to solution
impacted Fe speciation in particular. Additionally, experiments with Green River and
Marcellus kerogens and either fracturing fluid or pH 2 water mobilized metal contaminants.
The source of contaminants varies between the two kerogens, with metals in the Marcellus
largely sourced from associated pyrite, and with metals within the Green River sourced
from a combination of accessory mineral dissolution and desorption from kerogen. These
results suggest that chemical reactions between fracturing fluid and more immature
kerogens can impact reservoir geochemistry, potentially affecting production. However,
the apparent stability of kerogenic pores based on the lack of observable changes in
functional group chemistry of either kerogen studied suggests that important transport and
storage parameters such as wettability and gas sorption capacity should remain constant
throughout the lifetime of a well.

Keywords:  Department of Geological Sciences
School of Earth Energy &amp; Environmental Sciences
kerogen
hydraulic fracturing
Thesis
Advisor: Maher Katharine
Brown Gordon
The Sharon Formula: The U.S.-Israel Relationship and the Age of Israeli Unilateralism

Why did Israel disengage from Gaza in 2005? By analyzing my interviews with American and Israeli officials, studying memoirs by high-level officials in the United States, Israeli, and Palestinian governments, and examining government documents and the relevant academic literature, I show that contrary to the literature, the Israeli government did not decide to disengage from Gaza in response to domestic or foreign pressure. Rather, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon disengaged in order to initiate negotiations with America through which Israel could consolidate favorable shifts in American foreign policy that occurred between 2001 and 2003. In these negotiations, Israel gained American support for its positions on final-status issues, including ownership of major settlements in the West Bank and the status of Palestinian refugees. These negotiations culminated in an exchange of letters between President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon on April 14, 2004 at the White House. This thesis shows that the current literature on the topic fails to fully appreciate the significance of the April 14 Letter and the fact that Israel treated the Roadmap for Peace, created in 2003, as a major diplomatic victory. Additionally, Prime Minister Sharon and Prime Minister Olmert rejected the idea of negotiating with the Palestinians and intended to take further unilateral actions in the West Bank after the disengagement from Gaza. By analyzing this negotiation process, this thesis sheds light on the complex and calculating nature of the American-Israeli relationship. This thesis reveals that Ariel Sharon developed a formula to prevent negotiations with the Palestinians, while gaining American support for unilateral action. Finally, this thesis’ study of the American-Israeli diplomatic relationship also reveals how Israel and America’s democratic makeup prevents certainty in negotiations. Neither country can be sure of the outcome of the other country’s elections or legislative votes, which creates challenges and openings in negotiations.

Keywords: Ariel Sharon
Israeli disengagement
unilateral
Gaza
Palestinian
Israel
Ehud Olmert
George W. Bush
minor power
great power
convergence
Thesis
Advisor: Diamond Larry
The Significance of Sleep and Circadian Rhythms in Learning and Memory

Previous studies have demonstrated that sleep plays an important role in learning and memory, and that lack of sleep impairs memory consolidation. Starting with the observation that rodents performed poorly on hippocampal-dependent memory tests at certain times of the day, we sought to determine: 1) how the circadian system modulates learning, and 2) how sleep deprivation (SD) impairs learning and memory as a function of circadian phase. The present study evaluated the cognitive function of animals with intact circadian rhythms using variations of the Novel Object Recognition (NOR) test at four different time points of a 12-hour light/dark cycle – light onset (9:00am), mid-light (3:00pm), dark onset (9:00pm), and mid-dark (3:00am) – with or without SD. Although the tests on the effects of SD were inconclusive, animals tested with the simple NOR test demonstrated equivalent learning at all daily time points, while animals tested with the complex NOR test demonstrated greater performance at the mid-light and mid-dark time points. These results suggest that time of day effects modulate learning and memory, and that the degree to which time influences cognitive performance is dependent on the complexity of the cognitive task.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
Neurobiology
Circadian Rhythms
Learning
Memory
Sleep
Sleep Deprivation
Novel Object Recognition
Thesis
Advisor: Heller H. Craig
Zeitzer Jamie