VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Investigations in emissions-constrained, integrated gas-electric energy systems

To mitigate risk of climate disaster, net atmospheric release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from energy systems must decline to zero by mid-century. Electricity and natural gas are the most widely used end-use energy carriers in existing infrastructure systems that serve hundreds of millions of consumers in the United States and billions globally. Electricity and natural gas suppliers are also subject to unique regulatory oversight given their status as a public utility. While the electric power system has a reasonably clear path towards net-zero emissions, the natural gas system lacks a diverse set of low-carbon supply options. As energy utilities implement climate change mitigation policies, system planners require strategies for achieving affordable emissions reductions. Coordinated planning of electric power and natural gas delivery systems will allow synergistic investment plans to address cross-sector operational constraints, competing uses for net-zero emissions fuels, and shifts in final energy demands across energy carriers. The industrial sector accounts for a large share of natural gas demands and nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions. These energy demands can be difficult to transition to electric-powered alternatives. Methane pyrolysis could be used to produce low-carbon hydrogen for industrial processes while generating a solid carbon product that can be permanently sequestered or sold as a manufacturing feedstock. Accurate quantification and attribution of GHG emissions liabilities is essential for climate policy but challenging in the case of energy transfers across regulatory jurisdictions. Regulating emissions associated with delivered electricity is further complicated by contractual arrangements for dynamic electricity transfer that confound emissions accounting approaches rooted in the physics of grid operations. As such, the transition to net-zero emissions natural gas and electric power systems must accommodate three parallel trends: increasing integration across gas and electric energy systems, the challenge of difficult-to-decarbonize industrial energy demands, and the regulatory and accounting structures which track and assess their emissions liabilities or promote the development of low-carbon resources. Here, we present new modeling frameworks that help elucidate features of cost-effective transitions to deeply-decarbonized, integrated gas-electric energy systems. We develop and implement three model formulations that enable design and simulation of low-carbon energy systems, providing insight for the policy and economic decisions that will shape the transition

Keywords: Energy Resources Engineering.
Advisor: Brandt Adam (Adam R.)
Azevedo Inês M. L.
Benson Sally
Investigations of carbon-based materials for electrocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction

There is an urgent need for renewable and sustainable technologies to help abate the consequences of climate change originating from anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Electrochemical CO2 reduction (CO2R) can covert CO2 to useful chemicals like carbon monoxide (CO) or ethanol under ambient conditions and could be a route towards storing renewable electricity and producing carbon-based consumer products. CO2R kinetics are tied to the structure of the catalytic active site and the surrounding chemical environment but precisely describing this interface is challenging which is an impediment for future industrial applications of CO2R. This dissertation describes efforts to determine the effect of carbon-based materials on CO2R rates in two areas: 1) Ni, N co-doped carbon electrocatalysts (Ni-N-C), and 2) Imidazolium-ionomer coatings on Ag. Ni-N-C materials have been shown to have high selectivity for CO but knowledge of the catalytic active site is limited. In this dissertation, the origin of this activity was investigated by a wide variety of techniques including kinetic testing and physiochemical characterization (electron microscopy (STEM), X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and 61-Ni Mossbauer spectroscopy). By combining insights from these diverse methods, atomically dispersed, nitrogen-coordinated sites in a distorted square planar geometry were identified as likely CO2R active sites. As these sites are expected to be both thermally and electrochemically stable, the activity of Ni-N-C was extended beyond electrochemical catalysis by demonstrating that the same Ni-N-C catalyst could also selectively facilitate thermal CO2 to CO conversion. This study provides a framework for studying the same active site under very different reaction conditions and driving forces and suggested that the electrochemical environment plays a strong role in reducing transition state barriers relative to the thermal gas-phase environment. Similarly, the effect of ionomers on the intrinsic reaction rates of CO2R catalysts has been hypothesized but rarely quantitatively studied. Here, a series of imidazolium-containing ionomers with different substituents were synthesized and coated on silver foil revealing that imidazolium-ionomers promoted hydrogen evolution and left CO2R rates unchanged. This effect was found to originate from enhanced bicarbonate reduction rates which was dependent on the steric bulk of the imidazolium substituent. This dissertation demonstrates the power of multimodal characterization and kinetic modeling towards identifying atomistic information about CO2R electrocatalytic interfaces. Further work in this area is necessary to expand our understanding of CO2 reduction which can guide materials design efforts to achieve optimized catalytic activity

Keywords: Chemical Engineering.
Advisor: Bao Zhenan
Jaramillo Thomas Francisco
Hahn Christopher (Scientist)
Is It Language or Is It Culture? Re-examining Cross-Cultural Similarity Judgments Using Lexical Co-Occurrence

Is “cow” more closely related to “grass” or “chicken”? Speakers of different languages judge similarity in this context differently, but why? One possibility is that cultures co-varying with these languages induce variation in conceptualizations of similarity. Specifically, East Asian cultures may promote reasoning about thematic similarity, by which cow and grass are more related whereas Western cultures may bias similarity judgments toward taxonomic relations, like cow-chicken. This difference in notions of similarity is the consensus interpretation for cross-cultural variation in this paradigm. We consider, and provide evidence for, an alternative possibility, by which notions of similarity are equivalent across contexts, but the statistics of the environment vary. On this account, similarity judgments are guided by co-occurrence in experience, and observing or hearing about cows and grass or cows and chickens more often could induce preferences for the relevant grouping and account for apparent differences in notions of similarity across contexts.

Keywords:  Symbolic Systems Program
similarity
culture
language
semantics
lexical co-occurrence
variation
Symbolic Systems Program
Language and Cognition Lab
Thesis
Advisor: Frank Michael
Carstensen Alex
Is less always more? What PISA 2015 can actually tell us about inquiry-based science teaching practices

International large-scale assessments, including the International Program for Student Assessment (PISA), influence both educational policy and practice. Studies based on results from the 2015 survey described a negative relationship the frequency of inquiry-based science instruction and student scientific literacy scores. Based on this correlation, PISA's parent organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), recommended that inquiry-based instructional practices be approached with caution. PISA's recommendation conflicts with numerous classroom-based studies, which have found that inquiry-based instruction improves student learning. Furthermore, due to PISA's influence, articles for science teachers claiming that inquiry-based instruction is ineffective now cite PISA results as supporting evidence. This dissertation uses data from PISA 2015 and student interviews to better understand the nature of this relationship. By closely examining the assumptions inherent in the primary analysis of PISA 2015 data using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, this set of studies challenges PISA's claim about inquiry-based instructional practices. The analyses indicate at least four areas in which threats to validity warrant wariness about the PISA recommendation that inquiry-based practice may not be effective. First, analyses should account for the multidimensionality of the PISA enquiry-driven instruction index. Second, linear models may not accurately describe the relationship between student-reported frequencies of inquiry-based instruction and scientific literacy scores, so other models should be explored. Third, measurement invariance for students from different SES quartiles suggests that either the items or the efficacy of inquiry-based instruction vary for students from different groups and a more nuanced perspective is needed before developing recommendations. Finally, student interpretations of the items and response space require more study if we are to use the questionnaire responses to describe the activities students have in mind and their frequencies. Together, these findings suggest that the OCED recommendations about science instructional practices should be reconsidered. Alternative interpretive models and recommendations for practice are discussed

Keywords: Education.
Advisor: Carlson Janet (Associate research professor of education)
Osborne Jonathan 
Domingue Ben
Is this Actual Self-Actualization? Edtech’s Push to Move Beyond Traditional Measurement Pitfalls When Assessing Non-Cognitive Skills in Online Environments

The increased technologization of education and the increased emphasis placed on developing and assessing non-cognitive skills has led to a need for measurement of non-cognitive skills in online environments. Questions remain about the possible benefits of these measurements, as well as the challenges to their adoption. This thesis takes a qualitative outlook, and investigates these questions from the perspectives of the people who build such education technology (edtech). I interviewed 10 technologists, including founders, CEOs, and software engineers, who are building these tools, to understand the impacts they want their tools to have, and the factors that stand in their way. In the technical realm, they identified three main perceived technical benefits: the ability to utilize more valid data sources, the ability to measure more frequently, and the ability to experiment. They also described one main contextual desire, the hope that the ability to measure would increase overall emphasis on non-cognitive skills. The technical barriers were twofold: that the technologies had difficulties extrapolating from context to context; and that technology was often the wrong solution for a problem. However, while these technical barriers were surmountable, contextual ones were harder to overcome. This is due to a Catch-22: increased emphasis on non-cognitive skills is hard to drive without accountability measures to incentivize it, and accountability measures often come with the types of high-stakes testing that are antithetical to many non-cognitive skills. Because of that, some founders are forced to use the effects that non-cognitive skills can have on cognitive skills as the basis for their adoption, rather than non-cognitive skills’ standalone value. These findings suggest that policy and contextual education factors, not just technical capabilities, must be a focus in research on edtech tools measuring and developing non-cognitive skills.

Keywords: edtech
non-cognitive skills
measurement
accountability
technologists
founders
self-efficacy
Graduate School of Education
Thesis
Islamic identity and politics in Muslim-minority contexts

Islamic identity has undergone profound changes over the twentieth century with the emergence of fundamentalist Islam. The rise of conservative Islam worldwide has generated unique challenges for different regions. Across three papers, this dissertation examines this change in Islamic identity and its implications for politics in the Muslim-minority contexts of sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. My work on sub-Saharan Africa examines the origins of Islamic conservatism on the continent while the work on Europe explores the institutional and societal responses to changing Islamic identity. In the first paper, "Arab Missionary Roots of Africa's Islamic Fundamentalism", I explore the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa. I leverage cross-national and subnational evidence to link the rise of fundamentalism in Africa to repatriated graduates from Islamic universities in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The second and third paper explore Islamic identity and politics in Europe. In the second paper, "Perceived Discrimination and Adolescent Muslim Integration", my co-author Vasiliki Fouka and I examine the impact of social stigmatization of Muslims in the UK, Germany, and Sweden. We use high frequency hate crime data alongside a longitudinal survey of immigrant adolescents to show that in months with greater anti-Muslim violence, Muslim adolescents report greater association with the majority identity, lower religiosity, and increased pro-integration attitudes. The final paper, "Political Secularism and Muslim Integration in the West", co-authored with Vasiliki Fouka, examines institutional efforts to curb Muslims' religious behavior. We study the landmark French law banning headscarves in schools. We find that the law reduced Muslim women's educational attainment with negative downstream effects on employment as well as intensified their identification with French and religious communities

Keywords: Political Science.
Advisor: Scheve Kenneth F.
Weinstein Jeremy M.
Blaydes Lisa
Gulzar Saad
Isogeny graphs, zero-cycles, and modular forms : computations over algebraic curves and surfaces

In the study of algebraic varieties over number fields or finite fields, there are many properties of these varieties that can be difficult to compute. This thesis discusses variants of the following three computational problems: (a) to compute an isogeny between two given supersingular elliptic curves; (b) to determine whether a zero-cycle on a product of elliptic curves is rationally equivalent to zero, and if so, to compute a rational equivalence; (c) to compute the space of cuspidal modular forms over a function field of genus greater than one. For each of these problems, we present algorithms that allow the problem to be solved in certain special cases, and prove results about these cases

Keywords: Mathematics.
Advisor: Vakil Ravi
Venkatesh Akshay
Boneh Dan
Japan’s Economic Partnership Agreement Healthcare Worker Programs as a Tool for “Soft Diplomacy”

Japan is facing rapid depopulation and population ageing. With a shrinking domestic workforce and a growing share of elderly population in the country, Japan is expecting a huge shortage of manpower, especially in the expanding care sector. Prior to 2008, the Japanese healthcare labor market has been closed to immigrant workers. However, beginning in 2008, Japan started to accept Southeast Asian nurses and care workers under Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) with three countries: Vietnam, Philippines, and Indonesia. Logically, one may suppose that this is a gesture of Japan opening its care market to foreign professionals. The scale of the acceptance of Southeast Asian nurses and care workers under EPA -- only a few hundred people per year -- is too small to have any measurable impact on the labor shortage of care workers” The minuscule scale of the EPA program has not expanded over a decade, and the fact that most foreign healthcare workers return to their home countries after participating in the program means that the EPA program is clearly not intended as a solution to the labor shortage. Moreover, although the program was implemented as an “Economic Partnership Agreement,” and despite the Japanese government insisting that acceptance of foreign nurses and care workers under EPA is designed to promote international economic cooperation, the program per se does not deliver substantial economic gains to any party involved. The thesis therefore attempts to answer the question: “why does Japan continue to accept Southeast Asian nurses and care workers under EPA?” Inspired by the patterns of Japan’s soft power foreign diplomacy in the latter half of the 20th century, the thesis finds a potential explanation for the continuation of the program: soft diplomacy, i.e. activities that help foster positive feelings among foreign citizens towards the country (Japan).

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
EPA
Text
Thesis
Advisor: Dasher Richard
Kant and Rawls on the moral and political development of persons

My dissertation examines Kant's and Rawls's theories of the moral development of individuals within structured political communities. I reconstruct Kant's under-studied account of the emergence of reason I show how this account fits with his broader view of humankind's rational progress and the moral development of an individual. Next, I argue that Kant's anthropological and pedagogical writings influenced Rawls's early views on moral development explicated in his A Theory of Justice. In contrast to other commentators who have located Kant's influence on Rawls in his emphasis on the free and equal nature of human beings, my dissertation shows that Kant's anthropological theory of moral development is also at the core of Rawls's Kantian project. I also argue that the moral-psychological account Rawls develops in Part III of Theory sheds light on crucial aspects of Kant's practical philosophy, notably on Kant's emphasis on the need for one generation to provide the moral education of subsequent generations in order for stable moral development of humanity

Keywords: Philosophy.
Advisor: Bidadanure Juliana
Estlund David M.
Hills David James
Wenar Leif
Wood Allen
K-Healthcare?: Medical Tourism and the Hallyu-ification of Korea’s National Healthcare System

The term “Hallyu” has collectively been defined as Korean popular culture. It is widely seen as a phenomenon with studies assessing the impact of South Korean culture on politics, international relations, and global media consumption. However, the continued efforts of the Korean government to utilize the “wave” in other economic industries outside cultural exports suggest that Hallyu is less a local product and has become a political and economic framework in which to expand South Korea’s “middle power” profile. The objective of this thesis is to provide grounds for studying medical tourism through geopolitical lenses as 1) country perception is a significant factor in choosing a medical destination and 2) the explicit aspirations of the Korean government to utilize the industry to build diplomatic relations, as seen in the successes of Hallyu, demand whether the medical tourism industry is a worthwhile investment.

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Medical tourism
Nation-Branding
Korea (South)
Hallyu
Stanford Global Studies
East Asian Studies
Text
Thesis
Advisor: Shin Gi-Wook
Kinetic insights into the mechanism of influenza A virus membrane fusion

Host lipid composition influences many stages of the influenza A virus (IAV) entry process, including: initial binding of IAV to sialylated glycans, fusion between the viral envelope and the host membrane, and the formation of a fusion pore through which the viral genome is transferred into a target cell. In particular, target membrane cholesterol has been shown to preferentially associate with virus receptors and alter physical properties of the membrane like fluidity and curvature. These properties affect both IAV binding and fusion, which makes it difficult to isolate the role of cholesterol in IAV fusion from receptor binding effects. Here, I develop a new fusion assay that uses synthetic DNA-lipid conjugates as surrogate viral receptors to tether virions to target vesicles. To avoid the possibly perturbative effect of adding self-quenched concentrations of dye-labeled lipids or dye to the viral membrane and viral contents, I tether virions to lipid- or content-labeled target vesicles, and use fluorescence microscopy to detect individual, pH-triggered IAV membrane fusion events. Through this approach, I find that cholesterol in the target membrane enhances the efficiency of IAV lipid and content mixing, while the rate of both processes is independent of cholesterol composition. I also find that the single virus kinetics of IAV lipid mixing to target membranes with different cholesterol compositions is independent of receptor binding, suggesting that cholesterol-mediated spatial clustering of viral receptors within the target membrane does not significantly affect IAV hemifusion. Finally, I show that cholesterol decreases the fraction of content mixing events that result in content loss, which provides direct experimental evidence to support the hypothesis that the negative spontaneous curvature of cholesterol stabilizes pore formation in IAV entry and limits leakage following pore formation. This approach is a promising strategy for studying the single-virus lipid and content mixing kinetics of other enveloped viruses

Keywords: Chemistry.
Advisor: Boxer Steven G. (Steven George)
Cegelski Lynette
Cui Bianxiao
Lagrangian cobordisms between enriched knot diagrams

In this dissertation, we present certain obstructions to the existence of Lagrangian cobordisms in $\R^4$ which depend only on the data of enriched diagrams of the boundaries. The goal is to explore the applications of holomorphic curve techniques to undercutting relations between enriched diagrams, which are dictated by the existence of Lagrangian cobordisms. We provide example applications such as the growing and shrinking of boundary knots of Lagrangians depending on the signs of crossings

Keywords: Mathematics.
Advisor: Eliashberg Y.
Ionel Eleny
Manolescu Ciprian