VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Search for neutrinoless double beta decay with EXO-200 and nEXO

Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay is a theorized nuclear decay in which a nucleus decays via the emission of two electrons but no neutrinos. Detection of this lepton number violating process represents the best test of the Majorana nature of neutrinos, which could potentially provide an elegant mechanism by which neutrinos obtain mass. Both the recently decommissioned EXO-200 and the future experiment nEXO search for this hypothesized decay using liquid xenon time projection chambers filled with xenon enriched in the isotope Xe136. In the first part of this work, the results from the final neutrinoless double beta decay search of EXO-200 with the complete dataset is presented. This includes a description of the advanced analysis techniques used to maximize the topological discrimination between double beta signal and gamma backgrounds. The second part of this work presents the current state of R\& D efforts towards designing the planned tonne scale experiment, with focus on the characterization of charge-detecting tiles which are proposed to make up the anode plane of nEXO

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Gratta Giorgio
Cabrera Blas
Tompkins Lauren Alexandra
Searches for new physics using jets with the ATLAS detector

The Large Hadron Collider produces particle collisions at the highest energies ever observed in a scientific experiment. This apparatus is built to test the predictions of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, including the existence and properties of the Higgs boson. As a proton-proton collider, quarks and gluons are produced in abundance, which quickly fragment and hadronize into collimated showers of energy called jets. These jets are detected and measured in the ATLAS detector, which is built around the point of the proton-proton collisions to observe the products of these interactions. Three major original research efforts are presented using data from proton-proton collisions observed in ATLAS. The first analyzes events with jets and photons to search for a beyond-the-Standard-Model decay of the Higgs boson. The second utilizes novel techniques in weak supervision to perform a generic data-driven resonance search in events with two jets. The third formalizes the calibration of the jet energies observed in the ATLAS detector, and further proposes a new method to improve this calibration with machine learning. The work presented here addresses some of the key questions in particle physics today. By searching for new physics, it is possible to shed light on the nature of the Higgs boson and the possibility of physics beyond the Standard Model. These searches focus on processes involving multiple jets in the final state, which motivates innovations in the reconstruction of jet energies. In addition to setting new bounds on theoretically interesting models, the innovations in object reconstruction and analysis techniques developed in this work can be applied in other ATLAS efforts using currently available data or data gathered in the future

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Schwartzman Ariel G.
Burchat P. (Patricia)
Su Dong
Toro Natalia
Secondary Mathematics Education: An Analysis of the Effects on Postsecondary Degrees, Educational Attainment, and Labor Market Outcomes

The optimization of educational curricula in the domain of mathematics has long been an area of interest for researchers, educators, and policymakers, yet further scholarship is needed to capture the effects through causal methods. Researchers are limited by the self-selection bias, as students and families retain a degree of agency in selecting their mathematics curricula. A causal estimate is approached in this analysis through an empirical strategy in which secondary mathematics requirements—both for college admission and for a high school diploma—serve as an exogenous source of cross-state, temporal curricular variation, enabling my systematic approach to address the concern of course-taking selection bias. I find that a one Carnegie unit increase in college admissions requirements plausibly causes an increase in the percent of baccalaureate graduates who hold STEM degrees by 1%; of real earnings by 4%; and of the mathematical skill of one’s occupation by 2 points in the zero to one-hundred classification system. Demographically, I find slight differences in these outcomes by race and sex; for instance, females see a 0.4% higher earnings increase than do males and the only significant educational attainment increase when admissions requirements increase by one unit. Further, I find that a one Carnegie unit increase in the requirement for a high school diploma plausibly causes a 0.1% reduction in the percent of STEM degree earners. These results show evidence for both individual and societal implications of heightened secondary mathematics education.

Keywords:  Department of Economics
Department of Economics
mathematics
education
mathematics education
educational requirements
mathematics standards
STEM
labor force composition
Thesis
Advisor: Hoxby Caroline
Secularization, the Decline of Temple Buddhism, and the Search for Connection in Contemporary Japan

This thesis aims to contribute to the scholarly discussion of secularization in Japan through a nuanced analysis of demographic changes, their connection to family structure, and the importance of Japanese family structure to a functional and thriving Buddhist order. Based on a review of scholarly definitions of religion and secularity in a Japanese context, this thesis makes the case for a theory of Japanese secularization that considers the relationships embedded in Japanese religious practice and avoids relying on a Protestant-based understanding of religion. It suggests that the ie family system that integrated Japan was central to the structure of the Buddhist order and facilitated ancestor worship as its primary form of ritual practice. This, in addition to the marginalization of Buddhism to the sphere of death-related rituals made temples more sensitive to demographic shifts. By applying Yanagawa’s concept of religion as human relationships, this thesis shows that the decline in Japanese temple Buddhism can be attributed to the secularization of Buddhism as a religion of human relationships centered on the interpersonal connections between priests and parishioner families and among parishioner families themselves. Lastly, this thesis suggests a relationships centered framework for analyzing socially engaged Buddhism and its role in the public sphere.

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Stanford Global Studies
East Asian Studies
Secularization
Buddhism
Deprivatization
Demographic Change
Socially Engaged Buddhism
Thesis
Advisor: Kieschnick John
Mross Michaela
Secure by default : a behavioral approach to cyber security

Most computer systems that interface with the internet today presume that users will adopt additional security measures to protect themselves against phishing and malware attacks, and are capable of configuring software to obtain optimal security. This assumption is worrying, as prior work has repeatedly shown that not all computer users face similar levels of risk, and at-risk users may not have the resources or know-how to adopt obtain optimal levels of security. The first part of this thesis conducts an empirical analysis of the HTTPS configuration of over 4 million websites in order to assess the security posture of the ecosystem, as well as the factors that influence operators' security decisions. We show that while most websites have secure configurations, this is largely due to major cloud providers that supply secure defaults. Individually configured servers are more often insecure than not. We show that both server software defaults and online configuration recommendations are frequently insecure, and conclude with lessons for improving the HTTPS ecosystem. Among these, is the recommendation that server software should provide optimal security by default, thereby removing the burden of achieving optimal security from users. As technologies to defend against phishing and malware (e.g., two factor authentication or security keys) often impose an additional financial and usability cost on users, a key question is who should adopt these heightened protections. The second part of the thesis uses computational and survey methods to construct data-driven tools that identify at risk users for (1) malware, with a special focus on ransomware, and (2) for e-mail based phishing and malware. We measure over 287 phishing and malware attacks against Gmail users to identify the factors place a user at heightened risk of attack. Secondly, we present a machine learning model that draws on detailed web browsing behavior to predict users at risk of malware infection the following month; lastly, we develop and administer a survey to a representative sample of the U.S. population to first, provide a representative estimate of the prevalence of ransomware attacks within the general population, and second, to develop a proof-of-concept self-assessment of future ransomware risk

Keywords: Management Science and Engineering.
Advisor: Goel Sharad
Durumeric Zakir 
Mitchell John C.
Sedimentology and Provenance of the Norton Basin, offshore Alaska: Insight into the Paleogene Evolution of the Paleo-Yukon Drainage System

The onset of flat-slab subduction across the southern Alaskan margin has been linked to documented variations in exhumation, magmatism, basin formation and structural styles. While previous outcrop-based studies have focused on understanding the latter stages of basinal responses to these tectonically induced forces, there remains limited knowledge of the response of large paleo-drainage systems. This study provides new insight into the drainage response of tectonic reorganization by investigating the Cenozoic stratigraphic record of the Norton Basin, a subsurface basin lying ~ 53 kilometers offshore from the modern Yukon delta. Stratigraphic analyses of subsurface core was coupled with new U-Pb grain ages to understand depositional and provenance changes across lower Eocene to upper Oligocene basinal stratigraphy. Eocene stratigraphy preserves a regional upper mid-Eocene unconformity that separates lower Eocene volcaniclastic strata from upper Eocene fluvial and deltaic strata deposited by the early paleo-Yukon drainage. Oligocene stratigraphy documents a progressive drainage expansion of the established paleo-Yukon in response to the onset and expansion of flat-slab subduction across the southern Alaskan margin. U-Pb detrital zircon provenance analysis along with new maximum depositional age constraints support a mid-Oligocene age (25-31 Ma) for the initial collision of the Yakutat microplate. Appearance of early Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic grain ages within the Norton Basin support a southeastward expansion of the paleo- Yukon to the then exhuming, Chugach Mountains and Wrangellia Composite Terrane. As the Yakutat microplate subducted inboard as a coupled flat slab, uplift and denudation of the Alaska Range commenced. Within the Norton Basin, Cenozoic grain ages derived from the Alaska Range appear and increase in abundance between the mid- and late Oligocene, indicating the continual expansion of the paleo-Yukon drainage in response to the inboard progression of the flat slab and corresponding uplift. The stratigraphic record of the Norton Basin provides a rare record of the continual deformational effects of flat slab subduction from the initial collision linked to the subduction of thick oceanic plateau crust beneath the southeastern Alaskan margin to the development of flat slab subduction across the southern Alaska throughout the mid to late Oligocene. Results from this study demonstrate the utility of the offshore detrital record in unraveling the topographic and tectonic evolution of areas comprising extensively deformed and poorly exposed onshore terranes.

Keywords:  Department of Geological Sciences
Geological Sciences
School of Earth Energy &amp; Environmental Sciences
Thesis
Advisor: Graham Stephan
Malkowski Matthew
Seeing harm, thinking 'humans' : perceptions of harm prompt human-driven explanations

In this dissertation, I examine the causal attributions that people make for negative events and find that the more harmful the consequences of an event are perceived to be, the more likely people are to attribute the event to humans. I find initial evidence for this effect in a secondary analysis of archival data (Studies 1a and 1b). In follow-up experiments, I find that this seems to be specific to human-driven explanations, rather than a search for explanations in general, and that this finding is robust across a wide variety of contexts (Studies 2-6). Furthermore, there is some evidence that this process is at least somewhat restricted to perceptions of harm, not of unexpected or moral outcomes more generally, as I do not find the same effects for perceived helpfulness (Studies 3, 4, and 6). Perceiving harm elicits a desire to understand the event, which leads to attributions to human-driven causes, but not to non-human-driven causes (Study 4). Looking at downstream consequences, I find that attributions to human-driven causes are related to greater support for policies to address the event underlying the harm (Study 5). Finally, this effect holds even in explicit comparisons between events of equal magnitude that vary only with respect to the magnitude of their consequences (Study 6)

Keywords: Business.
Advisor: Lowery Brian
Halevy Nir
Martin Ashley
Seeking the Sacred: Literary Language in Isaac Babel’s Short Stories and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Poetry

In this thesis, I ask how artistic language enables authors to translate ideas and questions from past contexts, whose original meanings and terms have become obscured from their contemporaries, into words and stories that enable moderns to both realize what underlies their present conditions and to shape their futures. To approach this question, I consider three Russian short stories by the Russian-Jewish writer Isaac Babel and five Yiddish poems by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. These works were written and published between 1916 and 1933. Babel is typically thought of as a secular revolutionary, and Heschel is usually considered a religious thinker. However, in studying them together, I break down the binary between the worlds of secular and religious Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia in the early twentieth century. In a discussion of the shifting conceptions of language in this time and region, I outline shared concerns within both secular and religious spheres of Jewish thought over how to communicate revelation and truth in terms that are accessible and meaningful to those living in the changing twentieth-century world. I show how Babel and Heschel experimented with these shifting conceptions of language to respond to the challenges of their worlds, and I describe how each author crafts his own conception of language and how to use it in literature to make their prophetic revelations both accessible to individual readers and meaningful in the face of twentieth-century challenges.

Keywords: judaism
jewish literature
soviet literature
language
twentieth century
secular
religious
prophecy
messianism
jewish thought
inner life
revolution
god-seeking
god-building
Slavic Languages and Literatures
Department of Literatures Cultures and Languages
Russian Studies
Slavic Studies
Jewish Studies
Thesis
Seismological and geomechanical controls on the properties of the brittle crust and economic reservoirs

In 2008, large-scale horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing allowed for the exploitation of hydrocarbons from extremely impermeable formations for the first time. The exploitation of these unconventional reservoirs caused their geomechanical properties to take on new importance. With insight into such properties, it is possible to withdraw more efficiently hydrocarbons from the resources. These properties can be measured in two distinct ways. First, operators can look at in situ properties by drilling into the formations of interest, which is often expensive. The second way of measuring geomechanical properties is the primary focus of this dissertation: seismological data can be used to discern these properties in either the earth's crust or unconventional reservoirs during stimulation. Four chapters tie together a coherent description of the solid earth: The second chapter looks at the ability of teleseismic waves to measure the direction of the maximum horizontal principal stress in the earth's crust at four locations within the United States. The third chapter uses both seismology and other methods of in situ measurements to well explain the hydraulic fractures, microseismic clouds, and production data that were observed at an unconventional site in the Denver-Julesburg Basin in north-central Colorado. The fourth chapter uses similar geomechanical concepts in the development of conventional reservoirs in the Vienna Basin, Austria. Finally, chapter five investigates the clay content of reservoirs - which has implications for their exploitation - using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. All told, this dissertation illuminates both sources of success and difficulties for understanding the earth's crust and economic reservoirs from a seismological and geomechanical perspective

Keywords: Geophysics.
Advisor: Zoback Mark D.
Beroza Gregory C. (Gregory Christian)
Ellsworth William L.
Seismological constraints on the mechanisms of intermediate-depth earthquakes in Japan

Intermediate-depth earthquakes (around 70-300 km deep within plates) appear to occur at temperatures and pressures which would prohibit the frictional failure mechanisms proposed for shallow earthquakes. Understanding the mechanisms by which they occur would contribute greatly to understanding the hazards they pose, which are non-trivial given the existence of historically large and damaging events at these depths. Traditionally, the mechanisms favored to explain intermediate-depth earthquakes have fallen into two camps: dehydration embrittlement, a brittle mechanism, and thermal shear runaway, a ductile mechanism. However, wide variability in the source properties of intermediate-depth earthquakes worldwide suggest that the mechanisms causing these events may be complex and furthermore, may vary depending on geographic setting. In this thesis, I examine intermediate-depth earthquakes from Japan, where intermediate-depth earthquakes occur within two subducting slabs, one of which is warmer and younger than the other. This setting offers a way to directly compare the source properties of intermediate-depth earthquakes in differential slab settings. I approach the data through source parameter scaling arguments, seismicity pattern analysis, and finally I use a simple model to examine the dynamics of a single large event occurring within the colder slab. My findings suggest a spectrum of mechanisms may be at work in generating intermediate-depth earthquakes, and that brittle and viscous processes may both be present in varying degrees, in some ways dependent on the properties such as age and temperature of the slab, in generating intermediate-depth earthquakes. This thesis is thus unique in directly comparing properties of two populations of intermediate-depth earthquakes, and in approaching previously little-examined aspects of intermediate-depth earthquakes, such as their aftershock productivity and dynamic rupture properties

Keywords: Geophysics.
Advisor: Beroza Gregory C. (Gregory Christian)
Dunham Eric
Ellsworth William L.
Self-supervised scene representation learning

Unsupervised learning with generative models has the potential of discovering rich representations of 3D scenes. Such Neural Scene Representations may subsequently support a wide variety of downstream tasks, ranging from robotics to computer graphics to medical imaging. However, existing methods ignore one of the most fundamental properties of scenes: their three-dimensional structure. In this work, we make the case for equipping Neural Scene Representations with an inductive bias for 3D structure. We demonstrate how this inductive bias enables the unsupervised discovery of geometry and appearance, given only posed 2D images. By learning a distribution over a set of such 3D-structure aware neural representations, we can perform joint reconstruction of 3D shape and appearance given only a single 2D observation. We show that the features learned in this process enable 3D semantic segmentation of a whole class of objects, trained with as few as 30 labeled examples, demonstrating a strong link between 3D shape, appearance, and semantic segmentation. Finally, we reflect on the nature and potential role of scene representation learning in computer vision itself, and discuss promising avenues for future work

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Wetzstein Gordon 
Guibas Leonidas J.
Wandell Brian A.
Semantic Adaptation in Quantifier Use in Preschool Aged Children

How flexible are children’s semantic representations? It is unknown whether they understand that others may have semantic boundaries that are different from their own. Adults update their expectations about how a speaker uses quantifiers after exposure to the speaker (Yildirim, Degen, Tanenhaus, & Jaeger, 2016). Here, we explore whether this ability is present in, preschool-aged children. In Experiment 1, we show that preschoolers have adult-like expectations about how a generic speaker would use the quantifiers some (< 50%) and many (>50%). In Experiment 2, forty 4 and 5-year-olds (mean = 4.6) were exposed to a speaker who was biased to either prefer using some or many in a situation with a proportion of 50%. After exposure, participants updated their expectations about the use of some and many, such that they aligned better with the exposure speaker’s usage, suggesting that preschoolers are able to engage in semantic adaptation. This suggests that preschoolers can use their prior exposure to a speaker’s utterances in order to predict their future speech patterns, which demonstrates that children are attentive to their conversational partners even at a very subtle level. Further research could explore whether children are able to adapt to multiple speakers at the same time.

Keywords:  Symbolic Systems Program
Semantic Adaptation
Pragmatic Reasoning
Cognitive Development
Symbolic Systems Program
Thesis
Advisor: Frank Michael C.
Degen Judith