VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
What Aspects of Phonological Awareness Predict Later Reading Skills in a Shallow Orthography? The Case of Kinyarwanda

The importance of phonological awareness in understanding reading development can hardly be overstated. Phonological awareness has been seen as a key to unlocking the complex process by which children learn the relationship between spoken and written words. Findings across a wide range of studies have shown that phonological awareness and – in particular, phonemic awareness – is essential to learning to read in English. There is growing evidence, however, that linguistic and orthographic features of different languages affect the relationship between phonological awareness and children’s reading development. In this paper, I use a fixed effects approach to examine what aspects of phonological awareness are predictive of later reading skills in a shallow orthography. Employing longitudinal reading data from one district of Rwanda, my study tests the assumptions about the importance of phonemic awareness in Kinyarwanda, a highly syllabic, Bantu language. Results from my analysis suggest that syllabic awareness is a better predictor of later reading skills than phonemic awareness among Kinyarwanda-speaking children. These findings deepen our understanding of the various linguistic and orthographic aspects of reading – knowledge that can be used to improve our ability to support students on the path to becoming literate.

Keywords: phonological awareness
reading skills
orthography
Kinyarwanda
Stanford Graduate School of Education International Comparative Education
Thesis
"What I Kept Watch On": The Psychology of Heartbreak in Anne Carson's "The Glass Essay"

An honors thesis in English literature that applies psychoanalytic theory to a reading of Anne Carson's prose poem "The Glass Essay." Through analysis informed by thinkers like Freud and Winnicott, I interpret the poem as a documentation of the work of mourning, outlining the speaker's journey from acute heartbreak towards independent survival.

Keywords: melancholia
mourning
Anne Carson
psychoanalysis
poetry
Department of English
Thesis
What the HECM? Evaluating the Effect of Reverse Mortgages on Bequest and Budgetary Decision-Making in Retirement

Reverse mortgages (RM) are an increasingly attractive means for the largely cash-strapped but
house-rich Baby Boomer generation to meet basic liquidity demands in retirement. Given the
importance of bequest in life-cycle models of wealth generation, though, and the outsize role
home equity plays in most Americans’ estates, reverse mortgages’ requirement that the borrower
transfer his or her home to the lender at death could prove disruptive. I investigate the effect of
RMs on seniors’ allocations across saving and consumption in retirement, and subsequent
impacts on realized bequests. I find that the availability of RMs leads those who would get one to
bequest 71% less than they would otherwise, even when accounting for savings financed by the
new liquidity a reverse mortgage provides, and that those who would choose RM bequest 64%
less than those who would not. I find additional implications for the most financially vulnerable,
and that RM could exacerbate inequality among Millenials by singularly diminishing bequests
among middle-class Boomers. Further, I find that the hypothetical event of Social Security trust
fund insolvency would heighten each of these effects and increase RM take-up 27%.

Keywords: Reverse Mortgage
HECM
Bequest
Intergenerational Wealth Transfer
Text
Thesis
Advisor: Schneider Martin
When attempts to express gender equality backfire [electronic resource]

On the surface, it seems as if "Zebras are like horses" and "Horses are like zebras" should have the same meaning, since both express similarity between horses and zebras. Yet, adults and children consistently prefer "Zebras are like horses". This is because statements with this syntactic structure (which I will call subject-complement statements) frame the item in the subject position as the less typical, less important variant and the item in the complement position as the more typical, more important reference point. In four studies, I explore the consequences of subject-complement statements intended to express gender equality (e.g., "Girls are as good as boys at math"). I show that such statements not only reflect preexisting stereotypes about gender, but perpetuate them. The statement "Girls are as good as boys at math", for instance, subtly reinforces the stereotype that boys are naturally more talented by framing boys as the reference point for girls. To promote gender equality, then, it is not enough to express equality explicitly. We must also consider the information that we implicitly communicate in our statements.

Keywords: Psychology.
Advisor: Markman Ellen M.
Clark Herbert H. advisor. Thesis advisor
Frank Michael C. (Professor of human biology) advisor. Thesis advisor
When best practices fall short [electronic resource] : gender equality initiatives in organizations

Despite the vast amount of resources organizations have devoted to achieving gender equality, inequality persists. In this dissertation, I explore the barriers to successful gender equality initiatives. More specifically, I examine how individuals within organizations conceptualize inequality and change, and I analyze how these ideologies impact successful implementation of gender equality initiatives. Existing research has revealed that an organizational commitment to diversity is a crucial component of successful initiatives, yet we lack a clear understanding of what fosters an individualistic vs. organizational orientation toward diversity efforts. I find that employees in elite, high-status industries tend to maintain an individualistic approach to organizational change, in contrast with the structural approach common among sociologists of gender. Ultimately, the potency of the individualistic mindset causes larger structural barriers to diversity to remain entrenched. On a practical level, this dissertation offers insight into ways of fostering an organizational approach to change and improving the effectiveness of diversity initiatives.

Keywords: Sociology.
Advisor: Correll Shelley Joyce primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Grusky David B. advisor. Thesis advisor
Powell Walter W. advisor. Thesis advisor
When governments lobby [electronic resource]

What happens when governments hire lobbyists? In the U.S., governments are among the most active lobbying groups. Local governments frequently lobby their state capitols, and both state and local officials lobby the federal government. But despite the ubiquity of intergovernmental lobbying, we lack systematic evidence about the conditions under which local governments lobby and the effects of this behavior on public policy. This book begins to answer these questions. Marshaling original quantitative and qualitative evidence from dozens of sources---including newly compiled longitudinal data on lobbying disclosures in all 50 states---I argue that intergovernmental lobbying allows local governments to purchase advocacy when their needs are not met through formal channels of representation. While this ability to pay for representation can help local officials communicate their needs to the state government, it also raises equity concerns. In this volume, I demonstrate that affluent municipalities are more likely to lobby and experience greater monetary returns when they do. One of the empirical puzzles in the literature on federalism is that wealthy areas often secure more funding from the central government, even when transfer systems are designed to redistribute revenue to less advantaged regions. My results suggest that one reason why states have been so ineffective at reducing local revenue inequality is because rich cities are able to translate their economic advantage into political power through lobbying.

Keywords: Political Science.
Advisor: Moe Terry M. primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Cain Bruce E. advisor. Thesis advisor
Hall Andy
Nall Clayton
When Little Makes Big: Exploring Synthesis Techniques for High-Throughput Enzymology Using Microfluidics

Enzymes are the best catalysts we know of: they not only perform all the chemical reactions required for life, but they enhance the rates of these reactions by orders of magnitude. Most of what is known about enzyme function has focused on the roles played by a small subset of active site residues. These have been shown to form “functional networks,” or groups of residues that enhance reaction rates in a highly cooperative manner. Residues outside of the active site (within the enzyme scaffold) are almost certainly connected to these functional groups. To date, however, limitations in current technologies have prevented us from mapping functional connections between scaffold residues and the active site. To address this challenge, the Fordyce lab has reengineered second-generation MITOMI (Mechanically Induced Trapping of Molecular Interactions) microfluidic devices to create a unique microfluidics assay capable of quantitatively measuring reaction rates for thousands of enzyme mutants simultaneously. Here, we explored several gene and protein synthesis techniques to make the process of preparing enzymatic DNA for the microfluidic assay both faster and cheaper. The most promising strategy explored was coupling a new yeast-based library generation and parsing technique, Recombinase Directed Indexing (REDI), followed by colony yeast PCR. These technologies will be used to conduct parallelized mutant cycles throughout the entire structure, thereby quantitatively mapping (for the first time for any enzyme) functional networks that connect distal residues to the active site to affect catalysis. This, in turn, will give us a more complete understanding of how enzymes achieve proficient catalysis, and suggest new routes to the design of novel enzymes.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
Biology
Enzymology
Biophysics
Microfluidic
Thesis
Advisor: Fordyce Polly
Cyert Martha
When Things Are Not As They Seem: Explaining the Success of Countering Violent Extremism in Los Angeles

Under the Obama Administration, “countering violent extremism” (CVE) described efforts to prevent violent extremism by addressing root causes that lead individuals to radicalize. These efforts promoted community engagement, local prevention programs, and counter- messaging to combat extremism ideology. The local focus of American CVE also led to the creation of pilot programs in Los Angeles, Boston, and the Twin Cities. The American government viewed the Los Angeles program as widely successful and incorporated practices from the Los Angeles framework into the national CVE framework.
This thesis proposes three theories to explain Los Angeles’s success in implementing an effective CVE program. First, Los Angeles has a long history of addressing violent extremism in the form of rioting and gang violence; this allowed for the application of previous experience in law enforcement and community building to CVE efforts. Next, Los Angeles incorporated successful community-based organizations that combat systemic social issues, such as poverty reduction, into their CVE framework. Finally, there is no problem of violent extremism in Los Angeles because there is no population that is statistically vulnerable to violent extremism in the form of Sunni extremism. These findings suggest that Los Angeles appeared successful at CVE because of programs and experiences that existed before initiatives to counter violent extremism. Therefore, can these successes be replicated outside of Los Angeles and is our national CVE model – one that incorporates Los Angeles’s programs – valid?

Keywords:  Center for International Security and Cooperation
CVE
terrorism
Los Angeles
Obama Administration
Stanford University
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Thesis
Advisor: Crenshaw Martha
When Ukraine ruled Russia [electronic resource] : regionalism and nomenklatura politics after Stalin, 1944-1990

This dissertation is a study of regional elites in postwar, post-Stalin Soviet Ukraine, focusing on local bureaucracies in Kyiv, Lviv and Dnipropetrovsk, and the personal networks that shaped Soviet Ukrainian relations with the Kremlin. It is one of the first in-depth, archival monographs on the post-Stalin Soviet elite. It incorporates biography and memoir to shed light on the informal connections among elites, as well as their interactions, codes of conduct, and forms of civility within a power structure that was decidedly uncivil. I examine the issues of housing and defense in Dnipropetrovsk, illicit trading and agricultural reform in Lviv, and the Brezhnev-era culture wars in Kyiv in order to better understand the forces influencing the interactions between the party, the KGB, and the state with Soviet Ukraine's "unofficial official world" of factory directors and local powerbrokers. In Kyiv, I also focus on the transformation of Ukraine's top leadership and the efforts they made to expand the republic's political and economic autonomy within the Soviet system and internationally. In doing so, I am able to show how Ukrainian regional elites contributed to the emergent postwar socio-political order and reshaped politics and grographies of power in the Soviet Union. I also show how socialist legality reframed citizen claims for greater equity and justice during these crucial transformations.

Keywords: History.
Advisor: Naimark Norman M. primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Holloway David
Jolluck Katherine R.
Women and Work in Egypt: The Effect of the Election of the Muslim Brotherhood on Female Labor Force Participation

In this paper, I analyze how the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood,
marked by increased parliamentary power in late 2006 due to unprecedented
success in the 2005 elections, impacts female labor force participation in districts in which Muslim Brotherhood candidates won compared to those in which they did not win. I use a difference in differences estimation strategy, using both district and individual fixed effects. Using data from the 1998, 2006, and 2012 Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey and district-level voting data, I match district-level electoral outcomes to individual labor market variables. I find that compared to women in non-Muslim Brotherhood supporting districts, women in Muslim Brotherhood supporting districts show a generally insignificant change in likelihood of labor force participation following the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary success. The lack of a differential trend in female labor force participation for women in Muslim Brotherhood supporting districts holds for most subpopulations and when a Heckman correction is used. These results suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power cannot explain the decline in female labor force participation observed
in Egypt.

Keywords:  Department of Economics
labor force
women
politics
Egypt
development
Stanford Department of Economics
Thesis
Advisor: Chandrasekhar Arun
Worthy of freedom [electronic resource] : antislavery, free labor, and indentured labor migration in the era of emancipation, 1834-1878

Worthy of Freedom explains the "normalization" of Indian indentured labor migration after the abolition of slavery in the British empire. In the immediate aftermath of abolition, indenture caused a public scandal and faced legal and economic instability. But over the course of three decades, indenture came to be accepted as a legitimate form of "free labor." It was also consolidated in a material sense, as thousands of new workers bolstered sugar production. This dissertation explains how these transformations occurred. In the process, it argues that new ideas about race and political economy displaced older modes of antislavery thought, transforming perceptions of indenture and emancipation. Linking ideological and structural change, it further argues that shifting local and global economic dynamics helped legitimize indenture. In short, the dissertation illuminates the peculiar ideological, legal, and economic conditions that shaped the category of "free labor" in the era emancipation.

Keywords: History.
Advisor: Satia Priya primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Daughton J. P. (James Patrick) advisor. Thesis advisor
Roberts Richard L.
Wrongful harm by emitting [electronic resource] : individual & collective agents in the context of climate change

In this dissertation, I argue that climate change is not a natural disaster. By contributing to climate change, certain human agents wrongfully harm other people. The central thesis of this dissertation is that at least one type of collective human agent—functioning democratic nations—can do wrongful harm by emitting greenhouse gases. Further, I argue that democratic nations that do wrongful harm by emitting ought to be held accountable for the wrongful harm that they do. In making my argument about large collectives doing wrongful harm by emitting, I rule out the possibility that individuals cause people to suffer harm by emitting greenhouse gases. This gives rise to the objection that it would be unfair to hold citizens of high emitting nations accountable, because they are not personally liable for the harms of climate change. I answer this objection by distinguishing between personal liability and the duties of citizenship.

Keywords: Philosophy.
Advisor: Satz Debra primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Bidadanure Juliana advisor. Thesis advisor
Broome John
Field Christopher B. advisor. Thesis advisor
Schapiro Tamar
X-ray studies of magnetism in the 3-d transition metals [electronic resource] : from the nanoscale to the ultrafast to the nonlinear limit

Resonant X-Ray phenomena associated with electronic core-to-valence transitions have provided a wealth of information on modern magnetic nanostructures. In this thesis, we will describe two sets of experiments, both focusing on a different measurement related to the magnetic properties of the 3d transition metals, and both showcasing different advantages of modern X-Ray sources. We will show how large polarization-dependent resonant effects allow the determination of weak element-specific static and transient magnetic moments and also offer the capability of recording movies of nanoscale magnetization dynamics with femtosecond temporal resolution. We demonstrate such effects with sensitive spectroscopic measurements of magnetism in Co/Cu alloys and of spin injection studies in Cu. In the next set of experiments, we show that when such techniques are extended to higher intensities at X-Ray free electron lasers, they also reveal completely new non-linear effects, which are especially pronounced when probing spin-dependent effects. We will demonstrate how these non-linear effects dramatically alter both magnetic diffraction and elastic transmission through a magnetically-patterned solid Co sample. Together, these studies show both the exceptional current capabilities of X-Ray in studies of 3-d magnetism, but also the potential for studying interesting nonlinear phenomena in solids as brighter X-Ray sources become available in the future.

Keywords: Physics.
Advisor: Stöhr Joachim primary advisor. Thesis advisor
Bucksbaum Philip H. advisor. Thesis advisor
Fisher Ian
7SK RNA regulates gene expression by scaffolding multiple protein complexes

Noncoding RNAs can orchestrate eukaryotic gene expression programs through diverse yet only partially understood mechanisms. One noncoding RNA in particular, 7SK, is known to repress mRNA transcription by blocking RNA polymerase II activity at gene promoters. Recent studies suggest that 7SK may be physically associated with chromatin, the target of RNA polymerase II, but the functional significance of this association has not been explored. Here we discover novel roles for 7SK at distinct genomic loci and find that it coordinates the functions of multiple protein complexes. 7SK binds both promoters and enhancers across the genome. At enhancers, mass spectrometry and co-immunoprecipitation reveal a direct, previously unknown interaction between 7SK and a major eukaryotic chromatin remodeling complex called BAF. Depletion of 7SK disrupts the BAF complex, causing aberrant transcription as well as increased DNA damage signaling at thousands of enhancers. These results suggest that 7SK has a multifaceted role in controlling gene regulation. By scaffolding at least two separate nuclear protein complexes at distinct genomic elements, 7SK provides a conceptual framework for how noncoding RNAs may operate as versatile regulators of information flow through the nucleus.

Keywords:  Department of Biology
noncoding RNA
transcription
enhancers
chromatin loops
7SK
gene expression
chromatin remodeling
epigenetics
Biology
Thesis
Advisor: Gozani Or
Chang Howard
A Ba'athist Insurgency? The Role of Saddam's Elites in Iraq's Civil Conflict

Since the start of the Iraqi insurgency, journalists, scholars, and politicians have argued that former Ba’ath Party officials are to blame for the Sunni insurgency. Proponents of this perspective argue that de-Ba’athification –or the exclusion of former Ba’ath Party members from government service or political office – motivated former officials to fight against the US-led coalition and, eventually, Iraqi government forces. Because the inner circle of Saddam Hussein’s regime was made up primarily of Sunni Arabs, the exclusion of Ba’athists was simultaneously the exclusion of Sunnis, explaining why the insurgency became an ethno-sectarian war, as well. Yet, there has been little scholarship examining the extent to which the exclusion of Ba’athists from the post-2003 Iraqi government can actually explain the Iraqi civil conflict. In this thesis, I examine the connections between Saddam’s regime and the insurgency at the leadership level. I find the link is not as strong as the conventional wisdom suggests; insurgents are less tribal in origin, and less likely to come from central Iraq. Insurgents are also more likely to be foreign and more likely to come from western Iraq than the Ba’athist elites. These findings suggest that a narrative focused on the unintended consequences of de-Ba’athification cannot easily explain the post-2003 insurgency. From a policy perspective, stemming the insurgency first requires expelling foreign fighters from Iraq and then on creating a more equitable distribution of political power between Sunnis and Shias.

Keywords: Center for International Security and Cooperation
Iraq war
civil conflict
Ba'athist regime
Saddam Hussein
Thesis
Advisor: Blaydes Lisa
A Comparative Analysis of Augmented Reality Technologies and Their Marketability in the Consumer Electronics Segment

In this paper, we analyze past approaches in designing and marketing Augmented Reality apps or devices, and we discover key issues that prevented their mainstream adoption. We offer insights into novel approaches to marketing consumer technology products; in particular Augmented Reality devices. We analyze marketing strategies in order to understand which have been successful and which problems should be avoided in future campaigns. Although other papers have discussed some of these topics, none of them has discussed them with an interdisciplinary lens. We also attempt to understand how recent Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality devices have been perceived in society and reported by media. This research includes human-computer interaction expert interviews, historical evolution models for consumer technology, and socio-cultural and political analyzes.

Keywords: Winograd, Terry
augmented reality
marketing
computer vision
artificial intelligence
computer interfaces
projections
media campaigns
magic leap
meta
google glass
stanford
microsoft hololens
military interfaces
marketability
oculus rift
pokemon go
Thesis
Advisor: Shrager Jeff
Sato Kyoko