VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Pakistan Judiciary: Human Rights Prospects and Challenges

Natalie Longmire-Kulis dedicated her capstone project to examining the judicial system in Pakistan, specifically looking at the current status of the Pakistani judiciary and its interaction with the military and civilians. Through first-person interviews with members of the Pakistani judicial system, such as members of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Natalie studied how judicial systems and processes play a central role in either ensuring or inhibiting the ability to achieve justice and preserve fundamental human dignities. She hopes that her research paper will form the basis for further work and collaboration with judges and lawyers serving in the Pakistani judiciary and subsequently identify potential areas of reform or growth moving forward.

Keywords: World politics
Pakistan
Judicial power
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Thesis
The Political Cost of Market-Oriented Reforms: Evidence from Privatization of State-owned Enterprises in China

How do market-oriented economic reforms affect citizens’ political attitudes in authoritarian regimes? I examine this question by studying China’s large-scale privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that started in the late 1990s. I find that layoffs of SOEs and citizens in counties exposed to more privatization express less trust in the local government. The distrust persists and has been transmitted into the next generation. Further tests suggest that the distrust is likely to be driven by bureaucratic corruption and violation of socialist commitment, instead of economic self-interests or institutional deterioration. My findings can help explain why economic reforms may erode regime legitimacy in autocracies.

Keywords: Economic Reform, Privatization, Political Attitudes, Authoritarian Politics, Chinese Politics
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Thesis
Advisor: Xu Yiqing
The Political Reconstruction of Protecting National Interests: Why the United States Negotiated and Signed but Did Not Ratify the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions

The United States negotiated and signed the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions designed to significantly improve the protection of civilians during times of conflict, but later chose not to ratify the treaty. Until now, most explanations for this puzzle have focused on the role of external pressures, rather than domestic forces, to explain the fate of Protocol I. This thesis analyzes over 7,600 pages of the official negotiating record, declassified Department of State and Department of Defense reports during and following the negotiations, as well as interviews with key personnel in the Carter and Reagan administrations, to assess the relationship between U.S. national interests and U.S. foreign policy positions in the construction of the 1977 Additional Protocols. The historical record reveals that the U.S. had explicit national interests in the negotiations that drove negotiators’ approach, strategy, and ultimate success, as determined by the Carter Administration and the Joint Chiefs of Staff within the Defense Department. The U.S. delegation actively sought provisions that were militarily and politically acceptable to the U.S. and signed onto an agreement that furthered national interests, as determined by the administration, priming the U.S. for ratification. However, the ultimate decision to not submit the Protocol for Senate ratification reveals a clear shift in the analysis of the effects of the final text across the Carter and Reagan Administrations. This thesis finds that the alignment of Protocol I with the protection of U.S. national security interests was no longer interpreted as such as new personnel entered under the subsequent Reagan administration. Such an analysis reveals the political construction and re-interpretation of the protection of fundamental national interests, yielding significantly different outcomes. It also reveals the impact of nuanced individual interpretations on matters critical to national security. These findings pose serious concerns for the consistent realization of U.S. national interests, the continuity of U.S. global leadership, and the credibility of U.S. commitments internationally.

Keywords: Center for International Security and Cooperation
International law
Diplomatic negotiations in international disputes
Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflicts
Humanitarian law
Regulating military conduct
U.S. foreign policy
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Thesis
Advisor: Sagan Scott
The Regulators of Citizenship: The Labor Law Establishment and Domestic Workers in Brazil, 1922-1972

This thesis presents a history of domestic worker rights in Brazil between 1922 and 1972. Between 1922 and 1937, activists almost secured protections for household workers along with other urban laborers. Between 1937 and 1960, the Labor Ministry bureaucracy made a technocratic decision to exclude them from labor laws and Social Security. Between 1960 and 1972, a combination of activism and technocratic goodwill secures household workers with their first set of enforceable rights. Beyond household work, the thesis describes the inner workings of the Brazilian Labor Ministry bureaucracy during the mid-twentieth century.

Keywords: Brazil
Household employees
Household employees > Labor unions
Household employees > Legal status, laws, etc.
Household employees > Religious life
Household employees > Social conditions
Women household employees
History
Labor laws and legislation
Labor laws and legislation, International
Bureaucracy > Decision making
Vargas, Getúlio, 1883-1954
Brazil. Ministério do Trabalho e Previdência Social
Brazil. Ministério do Trabalho, Indústria e Comércio
Instituto Nacional de Previdência Social
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Thesis
The role of DNA endoreduplication in ABA's regulation of root growth in Arabidopsis thaliana

Climate change is expected to bring shifts in global precipitation, and in areas where water availability is limiting, adaptations to water-deficit stress are essential. Roots play an essential role in acquiring nutrients and water necessary for plant plant growth, and recent research has shown that root growth patterns during periods of water stress can be highly variable within taxonomic groups. Abscisic acid (ABA) is a stress-response hormone that has been demonstrated to be an important regulator of root growth, and there is evidence that increasing ploidy in root cells, a process called endoreduplication, may increase root extension by enlarging root cell size. However, the pathway through which ABA regulates root endoreduplication processes is still unclear. The purpose of this study is to investigate the divergence of the endoreduplication pathway in regulating root growth response to stress in the Brassicaceae family. For this project, DAPI staining and confocal fluorescence microscopy protocols were developed for quantification of nuclear area. Transgenic mutants were then used to identify the ABA-driven response of genes regulating endoreduplication in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana. Identifying the role of ABA in root developmental processes provides a better understanding of changes in root growth in response to environmental factors such as water stress. Furthermore, this research has the potential to inform new methods of plant genetic modification that support the goal of establishing new plant varieties better suited to the changing conditions of the anthropocene

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Water stress
Biology
Abscisic acid
Roots (Botany) > Growth
Arabidopsis thaliana
Endoreduplication
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Thesis
Advisor: Dinneny José
Fukami Tadashi
The Role of the Circadian Clock in Myelin-Forming Cells in Health and Disease

Myelin is integral to neural circuit function. Nearly half of the human brain is composed of white matter tracts, all of which are created by oligodendrocytes. Oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs), the precursor cell population that gives rise to myelinating oligodendrocytes, are critical in maintaining oligodendrocyte homeostasis. OPCs are the most robustly cycling cell in the brain, yet the mechanisms maintaining this stability remain incompletely understood. One mechanism closely interconnected with cell cycle regulation is the circadian clock. At the cellular level, circadian rhythms are generated ubiquitously throughout the brain and body by a transcriptional/translational feedback loop driven by the transcription factor BMAL1. This thesis elevates the current biological understanding of myelin processes through novel convergence with circadian biology. Specifically, the role of circadian regulation in developmental myelination is investigated by genetic knockout of Bmal1 specifically in OPCs during developmental myelination. OPC and mature oligodendrocyte density is reduced by ~40% in OPC-specific Bmal1 knockout (Bmal1 KO) mice compared to circadian intact OPCs in wild type (Bmal1 WT) mice at postnatal day 21 (P21). Bmal1 KO mice exhibit an ~7% decrease in myelin sheath thickness and ~40% decrease in myelin basic protein (MBP) content, a protein integral to the formation of compact myelin. These deficits in OPC lineage dynamics and myelin are associated with a significant dysregulation of motor and cognitive function exemplified by decrements in limb swing speed and stride length at P35 and deficits in cognition at P63 as assessed using a modified novel object recognition test. Taken together, these data suggest a significant role for the circadian clock protein BMAL1 in the regulation of myelination and a novel avenue by which to evaluate neurological disease..

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Kim, Samuel
circadian rhythm
oligodendrocyte
myelin
neurological disease
Stanford Department of Biology
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Thesis
Advisor: Kopito Ron
Gibson Erin
The Role of Transcription Factor FOXP2 in Tadpole Social Communication

Communication of hunger during infancy is our first social interaction, laying the foundation for a healthy life by acquiring nutrition and establishing strong social bonds with caregivers. However, the neural basis of neonate social communication is not well understood. Forkhead Box P2 (FOXP2) protein has been implicated in several human communication disorders, including deficits in language through abnormal development of motor neural circuits. This protein has also been linked to communication in songbirds, honeybees, and rodents. I studied the neural basis of neonate communication of nutritional need in Mimic poison frog (Ranitomeya imitator) tadpoles. In this species, mothers feed tadpoles unfertilized eggs after the tadpole performs a begging display characterized by vigorously dancing back and forth. Preliminary data suggested that FOXP2-positive neurons are active during these tadpole begging displays. In this study, tadpoles were placed individually in an arena for 30 minutes with either an adult female frog or a novel object as a non-social control. After quantifying the begging behavior displayed by the tadpoles, the tadpole heads were isolated and immunohistochemistry was used to visualize a marker of neural activation (pS6) and FOXP2 in the brain. FOXP2 was widely distributed, with FOXP2-positive cells present in the striatum, hypothalamus, and spinal cord, among other brain regions and the eye. In particular, FOXP2 colocalized with a marker of neural activation predominantly in the cerebellum, indicating that cerebellar FOXP2 may play a role in coordinating begging behavior. Overall, this work suggests a potential conserved role for FOXP2 in social communication and provides important insights into how infants convey hunger.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
biology
neuroscience
FOXP2
begging
communication
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Thesis
Advisor: O'Connell Lauren
Chen Xiaoke
The role of translation equivalents in bilingual word learning

Bilingual environments present an interesting context for word learning, notably due to the existence of translation equivalents (TEs)—words in different languages that share very similar meanings. Understanding how these TEs are learnt may give us insight into mechanisms underlying word learning in young children. In Study 1, we investigated this by conducting a systematic literature review and meta-analysis of TEs in children's vocabularies, finding significant variability with age as a moderator. In Study 2, we then conducted an analysis of Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) data from bilingual children, finding that older children and children with more balanced language exposure had a higher proportion of TE pairs in their vocabularies. However, both of these approaches were susceptible to the baseline problem—the potential confound of overall vocabulary growth (which would lead to a greater set of opportunities for learning TEs). Hence, in Study 3, we moved to an item-level analysis, finding that knowing a word's TE increased the likelihood of knowing that word itself for younger children, and for TEs that are more similar phonologically. Thus, TEs provide an alternative source of information for younger children, thereby allowing bilingual children to bootstrap their word learning in one language using their knowledge of the other language.

Keywords: Bilingualism in children
Learning
Language acquisition
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Thesis
Advisor: Frank Michael C.
Marchman Virginia A.
The Woman Writer’s Baedeker: Mina Loy as Feminist Modernist Guide and Artist-Philosopher

The work I examine closely in this thesis is Lunar Baedecker [sic], a 1923 collection of poems written by British-born modernist poet Mina Loy. Though several of the poems that constitute Lunar Baedecker have been explored extensively as anthology entries and epigraphs, scholars have largely neglected to analyze the 1923 poetry collection as an intentionally curated whole. This gap in Loy scholarship may exist in part because the collection appeared in print only once. Still, Lunar Baedecker is the only compilation of Loy’s poems we know she exercised organizational control over, and therefore it holds rich critical potential. I propose that Lunar Baedecker is a figurative map of Loy’s journey as a female artist, from her early veneration of her male contemporaries to her eventual severance from them, and thereby offers a gynocentric alternative to the historically dominant, androcentric narratives around literary genius. I’ve based my interpretation of Lunar Baedecker on the structure and content of the collection and contextualized my interpretation of her poetry alongside her prose essays on modernism and feminism, including “Feminist Manifesto” (1914) and “The Metaphysical Pattern in Aesthetics” (n.d.).

Keywords: Feminism
Modernism (Literature)
Poetry, Modern
Genius in literature
Women in literature
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Advisor: Staveley Alice
Bronstein Michaela
The world of Ito Junji: Social criticisms and the reflections of horror within Japanese society

*CONTENT WARNING* Depictions of death, gore, and suicide
This thesis explores the works of horror manga artist Ito Junji and analyzes the ways in which Ito criticizes certain institutions and individuals within Japanese society. His criticisms bring to light the fact that many social institutions that were meant to benefit individuals have changed in their function and instead work to harm those it was set up to help. It also delves into Ito’s portrayal of children in horror and how they are granted agency in a genre that often treats them as objects.

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Ito Junji; Japan; Horror; manga; social criticism; children; institutions; agency; East Asia
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Thesis
Advisor: Reichert James
Theoretical and computational tools for predicting colloidal gelation and arrest phenomena

The purpose of this thesis work is to develop a new set of theoretical and computational tools that will accurately predict lines of gelation in a colloidal phase diagram for suspensions of hard spheres of arbitrary size polydispersity, as a general model for gelation behavior in more complex colloidal materials. Although our algorithmic approach, results, and toolkit is generally valid for a wide range of colloidal systems, framework was constructed, tested, and validated for a specific laboratory material developed by the Helgeson Laboratory at the University of California - Santa Barbara. We demonstrated a powerful coupling between theory, simulation and experiment that can be utilized to construct a computational model that faithfully represents the particle-scale interactions and resulting macroscopic phase behavior of a real laboratory material. This thesis is divided into three parts. First, we present a novel computational technique for extracting the detailed interactive potential between individual colloids from experimental data (Chapter 3). The result of this effort is construction of an analytical potential that accurately responds to temperature to produce gelation that matches the experimental system. Next, in Chapter 4, we use our method to expand the phase diagram, identifying lines of percolation and vitrification for a range of system potentials. Finally, we demonstrate a new algorithm to reverse-engineer a gel into a computational model (Chapter 5). The algorithm uses microscopy data from experiments to construct a detailed map of the gel, with the crucial step of representing interconnected void networks. This model is the first to accurately obtain the interconnected void structure key to modeling porous structure such as in additively manufactured or biological materials. Overall, these results establish a theoretical and computational toolset for predicting colloidal gelation that matches laboratory experiments. We envision use of these tools to exploit repeated quenching and annealing to achieve exotic new microstructures that improve performance of colloidal solids and discover novel materials

Keywords: Chemical Engineering.
Advisor: Zia Roseanna
DeSimone Joseph M.
Shaqfeh Eric S. G. (Eric Stefan Garrido)
A theoretical and experimental investigation of plasma photonic crystals and devices

This thesis investigates the use of gaseous plasmas in photonic crystal devices through theoretical approaches and laboratory experiments. A theoretical and analytical framework for one- and two-dimensional plasma photonic crystals is presented in detail, as well as the design and characterization of various experimental photonic devices. The first part of this thesis is focused on understanding the theoretical behavior of plasma photonic crystals, with a characterization of one dimensional and two-dimensional plasma photonic crystals through theoretical approaches. The second half of this thesis focuses on experimentally exploring plasma photonic crystal devices, including the design and construction of a photonic crystal with embedded plasma elements, a full 2D plasma photonic crystal, a full 3D plasma photonic crystal, a hybrid 3D plasma photonic crystal as a platform for optical computing, and microstrip photonic crystal devices with plasma elements. Applications of these devices to microwave circuits, tunable filters, optical computing systems, and artificial neural networks are discussed

Keywords: Mechanical Engineering.
Advisor: Cappelli Mark A. (Mark Antony)
Asheghi Mehdi
Hara Ken
Theoretical insights on generalization in supervised and self-supervised deep learning

Deep learning has been extremely impactful empirically, but theoretical understanding lags behind. Neural networks are much more complex than more classical machine learning models in terms of both architecture and training algorithms, so traditional theoretical intuitions may not apply. This thesis seeks to gain a better theoretical understanding of generalization in deep learning. First, we study factors influencing generalization in supervised settings where all data are labeled, obtaining improved generalization bounds for neural networks by considering additional data-dependent properties of the model. Second, we study generalization in a setting with unlabeled data. In the vision setting, we present a theoretical framework for understanding recent self-training and self-supervised contrastive learning algorithms by leveraging a realistic assumption on the data. In the NLP setting, we analyze why pretraining can help with downstream tasks in the setting where data is generated according to an underlying latent variable model

Advisor: Ma Tengyu
Hashimoto Tatsunori
Liang Percy
Theory and algorithms for efficient deployment of machine learning systems

In this work, we explore theory and algorithms that improve the efficiency of various aspects of machine learning systems. First, we investigate algorithmic principles that enable efficient machine unlearning in machine learning. We propose two unsupervised learning algorithms which achieve over 100 times improvement in online data deletion, while producing clusters of comparable statistical quality to a canonical k-means++ baseline. Second, we explore mixed dimension embeddings, an embedding layer architecture in which a particular embedding vector's dimension scales with its query frequency. Through theoretical analysis and systematic experiments, we demonstrate that using mixed dimensions can drastically reduce the memory usage, while maintaining and even improving predictive performance. Mixed dimension layers improve accuracy by 0.1% using half as many parameters or maintain it using 16 times fewer parameters for click-through rate prediction on the Criteo Kaggle dataset. They also train over 2 times faster on a GPU. Finally, we propose a novel approach, MLDemon, for ML Deployment monitoring. MLDemon integrates both unlabeled data and a small amount of on-demand labels to produce a real-time estimate of a deployed model's current accuracy on a given data stream. Subject to budget constraints, MLDemon decides when to acquire additional, potentially costly, expert supervised labels to verify the model. MLDemon compares favorably to prior methods on benchmarks. We also provide theoretical analysis to show that MLDemon is minimax rate optimal for a broad class of distribution drifts

Keywords: Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Zou James
Özgür Ayfer
Valiant Gregory