VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Three Warfares: China's Political Warfare Doctrine

China’s growing military might and regional assertiveness have further exacerbated tensions in the Asia-Pacific. While the specter of China’s military capability is indeed worthy of concern, it is also the case that the employment of this capability to pursue strategic objectives through conventional war is extremely unlikely. Increasing its military capability has an obviously positive affect on China’s ability to negotiate for, deter, defend and secure its national interests in the region and potentially beyond. As China continues to gain international influence, it will also continue to shape the international order to its benefit. Even if the CCP, as it has in the past, uses existing institutions in the international system to compete for its advantage, the result will likely be a system more tolerant of behaviors that are counter to or degrading of the foundations underpinning the liberal international order. However, the ways and means that China will use to change the status quo, increase its international standing, and pursue the reunification of the Chinese nation are primarily political, not military.
In late 2003, the CCP Central Committee and the Central Military Commission (CMC) issued new regulations on political work in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). These guidelines updated multiple aspects of PLA party building, ideological education and liaison work. Within the updated guidelines, the General Political Department (GPD), or zǒngzhèngzhìbù (总政治部), was tasked with three new offensive aspects of wartime political work: public opinion (or media) warfare (舆论战), psychological warfare (心理战), and legal warfare (法律战). Collectively known as the “Three Warfares,” sānzhǒngzhànfǎ or simply sānzhàn (三种战法／三战), this aspect of Chinese strategy has become increasingly visible as the CCP pursues its interests in the region. Understanding what the Three Warfares are, how they have evolved with China’s military strategy, and how they are employed in the pursuit of China’s strategic interests is essential to addressing the geopolitical frictions that will arise as the CCP attempts to re-shape its strategic environment

Keywords:  Stanford Global Studies
Stanford Global Studies
East Asian Studies
Three Warfares
Political Warfare
CCP
PLA
Taiwan
Democracy
Thesis
Advisor: McFaul Michael
The Use of Designed Learning Spaces

This study has investigated the extent to which the behavior and perceptions of students and
teachers of an innovative learning space aligned with its intended functions as described the
designer and principal of the school. Additionally, the research aimed to identify which design
features appeared to be most utilized and salient to student activities associated with learning.
Qualitative observations and notes were conducted in two classrooms at an innovative high school
in Silicon Valley. Following observations, interviews were conducted with eight students, the two
teachers of the observed classrooms, the school’s principal, and the designer of the school. A
significant discrepancy between design intent and use of space was identified by both designer and
principal. Although the spaces of the school were designed for a rotating classroom model, where
teachers schedule different classrooms for use, the school currently adopts a more traditional
teacher-to-classroom model. Despite this, there was a significant alignment of institutional mission
in the behavior of teachers and students. Results suggest that the design of classrooms influenced
teacher pedagogy towards certain activities. Tools such as wheeled chairs gave students actual and
perceived mobility, which likely fostered student autonomy and sociability that traditional
classrooms do not afford. The results of this study speak to the need for adaptable learning spaces.
Ultimately, the learning space is an important tool that administrators and teachers can use to
influence student learning and experience.

Keywords: learning space
design
high school students
teachers
principal
designer
perspectives
use of space
classroom experience
field observations
Stanford Graduate School of Education
Thesis
Theory of few-photon quantum scattering in nanophotonic structures [electronic resource]

The capability to create strong photon-photon interaction at a few-photon level in integrated photonic systems is of central importance for quantum information processing. To achieve such a capability, an important approach is to confine photons in a one-dimensional waveguide coupled to a local quantum system with strong nonlinearity. At a fundamental level, photon-photon interaction in such system is described by multi-photon scattering matrix (S matrix). In this thesis, we discuss both computational and conceptual aspects of multi-photon S matrix. For the computational aspect, we provide a systematical way to compute N-photon S matrix using the input-output formalism. The main result is a general connection between the N-photon S matrix and the Green functions of the local quantum system. Such computation can be generalized straightforwardly to the case of multiple waveguide channels to study the Fano interference in the presence of photon-photon interactions. For the conceptual aspect, we discuss the general structure of two-photon S matrix without explicit computation. Using techniques that are closely related to cluster decomposition principles in quantum field theory, we provide a general constraint on the analytic properties of the two-photon S matrix. Furthermore, we present a generalized form of the cluster decomposition principle. The two-photon S matrix, when the local quantum region supports multiple ground states, has an analytic structure that differs significantly from what is commonly anticipated.

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Fan Shanhui
Brongersma Mark L. advisor. Thesis advisor
Lev Benjamin L. advisor. Thesis advisor
Thermodynamic studies of semiflexible copolymers using field theory and molecular simulations [electronic resource]

Polymers are big molecules consisting of repeating chemical units. Polymeric self assembly is critical in many biological processes and materials applications. Biomolecules such as protein, lipid, and DNA all require structural organizations to accomplish biological functions. Performances of polymer materials also rely on their microscale structures. These microstructures form due to the interactions between the different chemical units. Most of our knowledge of macromolecular phase behavior is based on a Gaussian chain model which models polymer configurations as random walks. However, such model is challenged in many biological and experimental systems. When working with low-molecular-weight polymers, stiff polymers (such as DNA, and conjugated polymers), or random copolymers which phase segregate on monomer length scales, chain semiflexibility plays a critical role in determining the polymeric microstructures. Towards this goal, we develop theories and simulations that study the phase behavior of semiflexible copolymers. We will discuss the impact of finite chain rigidity on phase transition temperatures, domain sizes, and microstructures of diblock copolymers and random copolymers. We show that polymer semiflexibility has strong impacts on the collective equilibrium behaviors of copolymers.

Keywords: Chemical Engineering.
Advisor: Spakowitz Andrew James primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Frank C. W. advisor. Thesis advisor
Toney Michael Folsom
Threat and polarization [electronic resource] : social identity and bias among American partisans

Recent research in political communication has defined polarization in affective terms (how partisans feel toward their opponents), as opposed to ideological terms (position on a left-right spectrum). This progression has enabled researchers to demonstrate that contempt between Democrats and Republicans has increased over the past half-century, as well as to document extant levels of attitudinal and behavioral biases between party opponents. The original research in this dissertation relies on this definition to examine how the psychological mechanisms of threat and affirmation affect interparty bias. Studies 1 and 2 give evidence of self and group-threat's ability to exacerbate partisan bias, while no support was found for affirmation's hypothesized attenuating effect. Study 3 was unable to provide evidence of a threat response among Democrats following the 2016 presidential election.

Keywords: Communication.
Advisor: Iyengar Shanto primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Bailenson Jeremy advisor. Thesis advisor
Hancock Jeff advisor. Thesis advisor
McDermott Rose
Three essays in public financial economics [electronic resource]

This dissertation explores three issues of public finance. The first chapter presents evidence that the rise in house prices in California caused an expansion of local governments' debt in the early 2000s. Using a novel dataset on all local government debt in California dating back to the 1960s, the main empirical findings suggests that a percentage point rise in house prices in a given county beyond the long-term trend is associated with a 0.44 percentage point rise in debt of local governments within the county. The second chapter documents, using data of all municipal bonds issued in California and New York between 1996 and 2014, a significant decline in the benefits of using municipal bond insurance from approximately 5.1% of the overall deal value at 1996-2002 to 0.5% by 2011-2014. The main reason for the decline is associated to the decline in insurer's credit strength. The final chapter identifies a large class of cases where claiming Social Security early is a mistake regardless of any liquidity constraints, mortality concerns, bequest motives, time discount rates, or a variety of other preference related factors. The magnitude of the mistake can reach up to $250,000.

Keywords: Economics.
Advisor: Piazzesi Monika primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Shoven John B. advisor. Thesis advisor
Tonetti Christopher advisor. Thesis advisor
To Bomb or Stab? The Impact of Ideology and Territorial Control on Rebel Tactics

This thesis explores how ideology and territorial control can affect the types of violent attacks and tactics insurgent groups choose to employ. Building on existing literature regarding target selection in civil war and insurgency, I develop a model to explain when insurgent groups choose to use violent attacks that are indiscriminate (such as bombings and improvised explosive devices), as opposed to discriminate attacks (such as assassinations and abductions). The claim is tested both qualitatively and quantitatively, focusing on four case studies in the Philippines. Fine-grained data compiled from incident level field reports maintained by the Armed Forces of the Philippines across a 36-year time span provides evidence in support of this model's claim: indiscriminate attacks are more common across groups with weaker ideological commitment and less territorial control of the population. Furthermore, a qualitative examination of changes to the case studies’ ideology and/or territorial control provides support for this model’s mechanistic claims. The results of my analysis can help policymakers link ideology and territorial control – variables that can be associated with a rebel group’s objectives – to tactics used, which helps predict the type of violence expected from a group based on their stated objectives. These findings help government forces employed to combat insurgency prepare for the type of violence predicted, and can potentially aid in the understanding and anticipation of future violent attacks used by different groups.

Keywords: Center for International Security and Cooperation
Insurgency
Ideology
Territorial Control
Philippines
Tactics
Thesis
Advisor: Felter Joseph
Tools for higher-order network analysis [electronic resource]

Networks are a fundamental model of complex systems throughout the sciences, and network datasets are typically analyzed through lower-order connectivity patterns described at the level of individual nodes and edges. However, higher-order connectivity patterns captured by small subgraphs, also called network motifs, describe the fundamental structures that control and mediate the behavior of many complex systems. We develop three tools for network analysis that use higher-order connectivity patterns to gain new insights into network datasets: (1) a framework to cluster nodes into modules based on joint participation in network motifs; (2) a generalization of the clustering coefficient measurement to investigate higher-order closure patterns; and (3) a definition of network motifs for temporal networks and fast algorithms for counting them. Using these tools, we analyze data from biology, ecology, economics, neuroscience, online social networks, scientific collaborations, telecommunications, transportation, and the World Wide Web.

Advisor: Leskovec Jurij primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Gleich David F.
Ugander Johan advisor. Thesis advisor
Tools to facilitate autonomous quadrotor cinematography [electronic resource]

There is considerable interest in using orientable cameras mounted on unmanned quadrotor aircraft for cinematography. These quadrotor cameras can fly to unique vantage points and execute dynamic camera moves in 3D space. Unfortunately, traditional methods of using quadrotor cameras to capture video, inherited from methods for manually piloting remote-controlled aircraft, does not consider the needs of cinematographers and requires much skill and dexterity. In this thesis, we present an alternative approach. Our key insight is to reify concepts from traditional and virtual filmmaking into tools for cinematographers. These tools enable the user to express their cinematic intent directly, while we automate flying the quadrotor camera. First, we build a tool for designing and autonomously executing quadrotor-based camera shots. Our tool enables the user to compose shots visually using keyframes, and precisely specify shot timing using easing curves. The user can preview her resulting shot in a virtual environment before flying, and automatically capture shots in the real world with a single button click using commercially available quadrotors. Since some visual compositions of shots are more favored than others, we next present a tool that automatically computes static shots based on well-established visual composition principles and canonical shots from cinematography literature. Furthermore, our tool calculates feasible, safe, and visually pleasing transitions between shots using a novel real-time trajectory planning algorithm. Using our tool, the user can capture shots that follow cinematic conventions without spending cognitive effort on setting up individual compositions, or specifying how to move between compositions. Our quadrotor camera must know where the subjects are with sufficient accuracy to faithfully capture these canonical shots of people. To that end, we present a platform for accurately localizing multiple objects. By using RTK GPS and IMU sensors, our platform provides centimeter-accurate tracking and decimeter-accurate quadrotor control in a large-scale outdoor environment. In combination, this work enables novices and experts alike to capture high-quality video footage using quadrotors.

Advisor: Hanrahan P. M. (Patrick Matthew) primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Agrawala Maneesh advisor. Thesis advisor
Alonso Juan José
Card Stuart K.
Topics in high-dimensional asymptotics [electronic resource]

Many multivariate statistics problems of current interest involve data with a large sample size and a large dimension. In this thesis we study several problems in this area. We work in the framework of high-dimensional asymptotics, where both the sample size and the dimension grow to infinity, such that their aspect ratio converges to a constant. In this setting, we leverage and further develop results from random matrix theory for the analysis of correlated multivariate data. Our first problem develops a fundamental new computational tool to numerically find the limiting empirical eigenvalue spectrum of sample covariance matrices. Our second problem uses this to develop new tests in PCA under local alternatives. Our third problem studies the problem of PCA from linearly modulated data, arising in missing data and deconvolution problems.

Keywords: Statistics.
Advisor: Donoho David Leigh primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Johnstone Iain advisor. Thesis advisor
Owen Art B. advisor. Thesis advisor
Topics in selective inference [electronic resource]

This thesis addresses problems of inference and estimation after using the data to select a reasonable statistical model. In particular, it uses the conditional approach espoused in selective inference. This approach allows us to compute exact level-$\alpha$ tests and 1-$\alpha$ confidence intervals through the study of the conditional distributions that conditions on the selection event. Chapter 2 -- based on Tian and Taylor [2015b] -- introduces the concept of randomized selection. The selectively valid tests after randomized selection are more powerful. It allows consistent estimation and weak convergence of selective inference procedures, which extends selective inference to nonparametric settings. Finally, we propose a framework of inference after combining multiple randomized selection procedures, providing the framework for adaptive data analysis. Chapter 3 -- based on Tian et al. [2016a, b] -- proposes a novel approach of computing the selective tests through MCMC sampling. The novelty lies in the reparametrization of the conditional distribution, which makes sampling feasible for selection after solving a general penalized regression problem. This, together with the result in Tian and Taylor [2015b] allows selective inference with arbitrary data generating distribution and general model selection through penalized regression. Applications include LASSO, forward stepwise, stagewise algorithms, marginal screening and generalized LASSO, where selective tests are hard to compute otherwise. Chapter 4 -- based on Tian [2016] -- takes a different perspective at the impact of model selection. In addition to statistical inference, the effect of model selection is also manifested in the estimation of prediction error. Although the prediction error of a linear estimator can be computed through the Cp formula, it is not valid when variables used to construct it are also selected using the data. In this work, I propose a method for estimating prediction error of linear estimators after arbitrary model selection procedures. Direct applications include, estimating degrees of freedom of arbitrary selection procedures and heritability estimation in genetics.

Keywords: Statistics.
Advisor: Taylor Jonathan
Hastie Trevor advisor. Thesis advisor
Tibshirani Robert advisor. Thesis advisor
Topics in systems reliability [electronic resource] : storage, execution, and security

The past decade has seen a rapid acceleration in the development of new and transformative applications in many areas including transportation, medicine, finance, and communication. Most of these applications are made possible by the increasing diversity and scale of hardware and software systems. While this brings unprecedented opportunity, it also increases the probability of failures and the difficulty of diagnosing them. Increased scale and transience has also made management increasingly challenging. Devices can come and go for a variety of reasons including mobility, failure and recovery, and scaling capacity to meet demand. This thesis presents several systems that I built to address the resulting challenges to reliability, management, and security. Ori is a reliable distributed file system for devices at the network edge. Ori automates many of the tasks of storage reliability and recovery through replication, taking advantage of fast LANs and low cost local storage in edge networks. Castor is a record/replay system for multi-core applications with predictable and consistently low overheads. This makes it practical to leave record/replay on in production systems, to reproduce difficult bugs when they occur, and to support recovering from hardware failures through fault tolerance. Cryptographic CFI (CCFI) is a dynamic approach to control flow integrity. Unlike previous CFI systems that rely purely on static analysis, CCFI can classify pointers based on dynamic and runtime characteristics. This limits the attacks to only actively used code paths, resulting in a substantially smaller attack surface.

Advisor: Mazières David (David Folkman)
Boneh Dan
Rosenblum Mendel advisor. Thesis advisor
Topological aspects of gapless phases [electronic resource]

The development of topological phases of matter has greatly expanded our understanding of what a phase of matter could be. Topological phases have highly robust features; this robustness is typically protected by an energy gap. However, with the recent discovery of Weyl and Dirac semimetals, it has been realized that not only can gapless systems be topologically nontrivial, often with gaplessness itself being topologically protected. This thesis is a theoretical exploration of gapless topological phases from several perspectives. First, we propose that Hg_{1-x-y}Cd_xMn_yTe can be a time-reversal-broken WSM. This proposal has several benefits, including that the single-dopant (x=0 or y=0) cases are already very well-studied, the Weyl points are tunable using magnetic field, and the Hall conductivity behaves highly nontrivially as a function both of temperature and of magnetic field angle. Next, we investigate WSM and DSM thin films, looking for quantum oscillations that involve the Fermi arcs. We extend known results in the weak-field limit, and propose a new experiment with a strong in-plane component in the field which has highly unusual dependence of the quantum oscillations on field angle. Inspired by the ensuing theoretical understanding of a 3D metal in a strong magnetic field, we then investigate the effect of interactions on metallic wires subject to the orbital effects of a strong magnetic field. Using an analogy between fermions in the zeroth Landau level and truly 1D fermions with a (potentially large) pseudospin, we are able to apply powerful 1D tools like bosonization to find a plethora of interesting phases. This includes phases where the correlation functions of either charge density wave order or superconducting order obey magnetic field-tuned power laws, as well as a phase with power law correlations of both pseudospin-triplet superconductivity and pseudospin-density wave order. Finally, we construct a framework for unifying the topological response properties of both gapped and gapless free fermion systems by mapping a d-dimensional system in real space (gapped or gapless) to a gapped 2d-dimensional quantum Hall system in phase space. This allows us to construct a phase space response theory for any free fermion system and to demonstrate that the generic topological feature of a gapless system is a quantized anomaly related to the edge anomaly of the phase space quantum Hall system.

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Qi Xiaoliang primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Goldhaber-Gordon David
Kivelson Steven advisor. Thesis advisor