VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Emotional influences on cognitive control: a missing factor in research on 'bilingual advantages'?
Keywords: bilingual advantage
bilingualism
cognitive control
executive functions
emotion

Over half of the world’s population is multilingual with globalisation and migration ensuring a steady growth. This fact has inspired several flourishing research fields within the areas of emotion, cognition and linguistics. Yet, existing research on cognitive consequences of bilingualism has not taken into account the effect of emotion on this relationship. This dissertation addresses this gap. Based on the hypothesis that bilingualism leads to adaptations in the mechanisms underlying both emotion and cognitive control, we propose a framework that integrates theoretical and empirical perspectives from emotion, cognition, and linguistics research. To validate our approach, we devise three novel studies in order to test cognition–emotion interactions across different groups of monolinguals and bilinguals.
In Study 1, 24 English monolingual and 24 German–English bilingual adults completed a flanker-go/no-go (FNG) task. The participants viewed sets of three faces side-by-side in the centre of a computer screen and were instructed to press a button if the gender of the central neutral target face corresponded to the ‘go’ gender, which occurred in 66% of trials. The task-irrelevant ‘flanker’ faces expressed either positive, negative, or neutral emotion and were furthermore either gender-congruent or -incongruent to the target. In Study 2, 28 diverse bi- and multilingual adults completed the FNG task alongside 28 monolinguals. In addition, 29 monolinguals and 29 bilinguals completed a forced-choice flanker-only (FO) variant of the task. Study 3 repeated Study 2 with 10–11 year-old monolingual and English–French/German bilingual children. 36 bilinguals and 20 monolinguals completed the FNG task, while 35 bilinguals and 23 monolinguals completed the FO task.
Differences between the monolingual and bilingual groups were observed across all studies in the FNG task, but not in the FO task. Notably, the bilingual children also made significantly fewer errors in no-go trials across all conditions than their monolingual counterparts, providing novel evidence for a bilingual advantage in response inhibition. In Study 2, the multilinguals evidenced different response strategies than the other groups, suggesting that adaptations in cognitive control can vary based on the type of multilingual experience.
We interpret these findings based on an integrative theoretical framework of cognitive control, emotion, and bilingualism, and discuss their implications for research across all three fields.
Living with Art: Repositioning the late works of Thomas Bernhard
Keywords: Austrian Literature
Comparative Literature
German Literature
Art and Society
Thomas Bernhard

This study re-evaluates and repositions the late writings of the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard (1931-89). Over thirty years after his death, Bernhard is widely considered to be a writer of international relevance. He is renowned for his bleak portrayals of modern society, his scandalous critiques of his homeland, and his infectious and much-imitated linguistic style. But there is another side to Bernhard—one which existing analyses of his domestic controversies and foreign fanbases are yet to examine fully. In this study, I argue that Bernhard’s late prose and dramatic works are centrally concerned with the relationship between art and social living. He explores forms of learning from art, and how engaging with art can affect ways of behaving towards others and oneself.
This study resituates Bernhard’s late works outside of their more conventional domestic contexts to bring these aspects of his writings more clearly into focus. Starting from a reconsideration of what it means to read Bernhard as world literature, I reposition the author alongside three Anglophone points of comparison: Angela Carter, Timberlake Wertenbaker, and J. M. Coetzee. These authors, who are yet to be compared with Bernhard in scholarship, allow me to re-evaluate his late prose and dramatic works beyond their local controversies in 1980s Austria; they help me to illuminate the humanity and self-awareness of a writer more commonly associated with unremitting negativity; and they enable me to investigate what Bernhard’s late works still have to say about art, decades on from his cultural moment. Reimagining Bernhard beyond his familiar intertexts, his existing international reception, and his own self-staging, this study will be of interest to scholars of Bernhard, late twentieth-century literature, and comparative literature more generally.
Discovering a novel therapy for disorders that feature defects of the neuromuscular junction structure
Keywords: small molecules
CMS
NMJ
gene therapy
DOK7
AAV

Background: Congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS) are a group of inherited disorders that affect signal transmission at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) and share the clinical feature of fatigable muscle weakness. Downstream of tyrosine kinase 7 (DOK7) is a cytoplasmic-adaptor protein that amplifies the signalling from the muscle-specific receptor tyrosine kinase (MuSK), which is responsible for the formation and stabilisation of the NMJ. It has recently been shown that overexpression of DOK7 protein in muscles, generates enlarged NMJs in mice, which are very efficient in signal transmission, have no reported detrimental effects and can ultimately lead to a complete recovery for disease model mice.
Aim: To study novel therapies for CMS based on DOK7 overexpression.
Results: By using an adeno-associated virus system (DOK-AAV) we generated enlarged NMJs in wild-type mice to further investigate the morphology and electrophysiology of these synapses. The DOK7-AAV gene therapy was shown to generate enlarged synapses that improved the phenotype of two animal models of CMS. In addition, 5431 small molecules from a library of muscle-specific compounds were used in screening experiments to find potential small molecules that could upregulate DOK7. Confirmatory results were performed on an assay of biological activity and revealed two potential small molecule hits. They will provide the basis for a more detailed analysis of the effects of DOK7 upregulation in cell culture biological assays and ultimately for in vivo testing.
Conclusion: These studies demonstrate that DOK7 upregulation would benefit differing CMS subtypes and could potentially improve signal transmission in other NMJ-associated disorders.
Karnatic violin techniques in collaborative practice: a violinist's perspective
Keywords: Karnatic
Culture
Creativity
Music
Violin
Interculturalim
Collaboration

This thesis examines the study and incorporation of Karnatic (South Indian) violin techniques in contemporary music projects in London. The violin provides a lens for viewing the social and psychological interactions between musicians, instruments and cultures in practice. A series of six case studies document my experiences as a violinist ranging from lessons with Karnatic violinists through to creative projects where the influence of these lessons is present by virtue of incorporating Karnatic violin techniques as part of a toolbox of extended technique. I consider questions surrounding the ways in which knowledge is disseminated from teacher to student and then mediated between musicians, led by my own experiences working with Karnatic violin teachers, including the Mysore Brothers, as well as composers and performers in London. In this way, my research opens up broader questions about the creative potential and complexities surrounding cultural exchange in twenty-first century London. I examine the close relationship between culture and knowledge and the ways that the use of Karnatic violin techniques in collaborative practice can shift the creative emphasis of working relationships between musicians.
Following the trend over the last decade to move away from a disembodied approach to music (Clarke and Davidson 1998: 74), this research aims to draw out the embodied experiences of incorporating Karnatic violin techniques in collaborative practice. An autoethnographic methodology is employed to investigate a mode of collaborative and professional practice in contemporary music, questioning:
(1) How is the knowledge of the violin and Karnatic violin playing disseminated and mediated between musicians?
(2) What can the use of Karnatic violin techniques with musicians in London reveal about the processes of creative collaboration and cultural exchange?
On a practical level, extending the physical and cognitive means of the musical body can bring about new possibilities for contemporary violinists incorporating body and mind within cultural, social and psychological interactions. I will highlight the fact that while creative collaboration has become a prominent topic in recent research, collaborations involving cultural exchange are still relatively unexplored.
Development of absorbent materials in ammonia synthesis
Keywords: ammonia
energy storage
absorption
Brønsted acidity
zeolites
Lewis acidity
layered materials
SXRD
adsorption

Ammonia sorbents are important for both the synthesis and transport of so-called green ammonia. Though MgCl2 is currently the most commonly used absorbent for ammonia it has a number of deficiencies and so new materials are needed targeting fast sorption and desorption speed and high temperature and cycling stability.
13X zeolites underwent ion exchange and were studied for ammonia adsorption. The sodium ions in the 13X structure were replaced by protons, magnesium or lanthanum ions. In each case, the ammonia capacity was increased by the ion exchange, most significantly for magnesium, with fast, stable adsorption. Protons generated strong Brønsted acid sites which gave ammonia that was stable at high temperatures, lanthanum generated Lewis acid sites which gave weakly bound ammonia stable only at low temperatures and magnesium generated a combination of strong Brønsted acid and weak Lewis acid sites giving low and high temperature ammonia. In each material the locations of the ammonia binding sites were identified using SXRD, supported by modelling.
Lanthanum ion exchange was shown to cause structural disruption due to the size of the lanthanum ions. This disruption was shown to be related to lanthanum content but detrimental to capacity. The acidity of the lanthanum zeolites could be tuned using varying lanthanum content.
A variety of layered materials, including MgCl2, were studied in greater detail. Treatment of MgCl2 using acetone was found to significantly improve the absorption rate at detriment to the ammonia capacity; this was proposed to be due to reordering of exfoliated MgCl2 layers or nanopore generation. This treatment was found to be unstable with both time and cycling and attempted alternative methods of stable layer disruption were unsuccessful. Instead, layers were exfoliated and supported on zeolite which gave fast, stable sorption even at high temperatures and low pressures.
Theoretical and experimental investigation of magnetic layer coupling in spin-valves and magnetic tunnel junctions
Keywords: likelihood ratio test
magnetic tunnel junctions
XFMR
MTJ
spin pumping
spin-valve
MgO
a-Sn
Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert-Slonczewski
topological insulator

Heterostructures composed of ferromagnetic layers that are mutually interacting through a nonmagnetic spacer are at the core of magnetic sensor and memory devices. In the present study, layer-resolved ferromagnetic resonance was used to investigate the coupling between the magnetic layers of a Co/MgO/Permalloy magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) and Co/Sn/Py spin valves.
Elemental tin in the a-phase is an intriguing member of the family of topological quantum materials. In thin films, with decreasing thickness, a-Sn transforms from a 3D topological Dirac semimetal to a 2D topological insulator (TI). Getting access to, and making use of its topological surface states is challenging and requires interfacing to a magnetically ordered material.
For both types of samples two magnetic resonance peaks were observed for both magnetic layers, as probed at the Co and Ni L3 x-ray absorption edges, showing a strong interlayer interaction through the insulating MgO barrier. A theoretical model based on the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert-Slonczewski equation was developed, including exchange coupling and spin pumping between the magnetic layers. Fits to the experimental data were carried out, both with and without a spin pumping term, and the goodness of the fit was compared using a likelihood ratio test.
Evidence of two types of magnetic layer coupling were found for the studied MgO MTJ. A Likelihood ratio test performed between competing models showed that a model with only exchange coupling is insufficient, and the correct description of the experimental data requires inclusion of spin pumping coupling between magnetic layers. The values characterising both the EC and the spin pumping were estimated. A recipe has been developed for spin-vale fabrication incorporating a a-Sn TI spacer layer. Up to 2nm thick a-Sn layers were deposited onto a Co surface. The X-ray detected ferromagnetic resonance (XFMR) study of the a-Sn system has shown a strong exchange coupling interaction between the magnetic layers with no clear evidence for spin pumping.
The methods developed in this work can be used to interpret XFMR data, not only in the discussed cases, but potentially for all types of measurements in general. The explored idea of incorporating the TI a-Sn into a spin-valve has shown promising results, and will serves as a solid basis for further research.
Investing the role of FGF signaling in left-right determination
Keywords: development
asymmetry
mouse
patterning
FGF
embryo
cilia

Left-right patterning is set up early in development, at embryonic day 8.5 in the mouse. Cilia are present on the cells of a transient structure, termed the node, the location where L/R symmetry is broken. In this pit-like structure, motile cilia generate a leftwards flow of extracellular fluid, which is translated into a left-specific signal by immotile cilia on crown cells at the edge of the node. How exactly this flow is translated remains unknown, with one hypothesis proposing that nodal vesicular parcels (NVPs) within the node transport signalling molecules to the left side. FGF signalling was first implicated in L/R patterning when an Fgf8 mutant mouse was shown to exhibit situs defects. The precise role of FGFs in L/R patterning is unclear, but they have been proposed to regulate NVP release. Other hypotheses include them functioning in the regulation of node cilia length, and in the formation and maintenance of the node structure. These hypotheses are explored in this thesis, through the re-assessment of the Fgf8 mouse mutant and through the use of FGF signalling receptor inhibitors in embryo culture. My findings confirm a role for FGF signalling in L/R determination, and support a role for FGF signalling in specifying, maintaining and/or patterning the cells that make up the embryonic node. My data also casts doubt on the evidence previously used to argue for the existence of NVPs. Analysis of the location of FGFRs in the embryo and within cells shows the presence of FGFR2 in the node cilia, but whether ciliary localisation of FGFRs is important in L/R patterning remains unclear. I present evidence that the major mechanism by which FGF signalling affects L/R determination is through the formation/patterning of the node. However, I also present evidence for a lesser role FGFs may play in controlling mammalian cilia length. Intriguingly, my data also indicates a strong influence of genetic background on the Fgf8 mutants.
Operator splitting methods for large convex conic programs
Keywords: chordal decomposition
ADMM
clique merging
conic programming
semidefinite programming
Anderson acceleration

Convex optimisation is used to solve many problems of interest in optimal control, signal processing, finance, operations research, and machine learning.
While medium-size problems can be solved efficiently by interior-point methods, modern applications often yield problems with very large dimensions. Compared to interior-point methods, operator splitting methods are computationally inexpensive, which allows them to solve much larger problems. However, they tend to converge slowly to high accuracy solutions and their performance is sensitive to algorithm parameters and problem scaling.
This thesis investigates different acceleration and scaling techniques to both improve the convergence of operator splitting methods to achieve higher accuracy solutions and to reduce the per-iteration computation time of the methods. We consider general convex conic problems and focus especially on the subset of semidefinite programs (SDPs), for which finding a solution is particularly challenging at large dimensions. The first part of the thesis introduces COSMO, a novel general purpose solver for convex conic programs based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). We demonstrate that our splitting, which combines a quadratic objective function with convex conic constraints, leads to competitive performance both for problems in the conventional conic problem form but also for quadratic programs and SDPs with norm constraints. We further show how the user can use custom convex constraints to allow more natural problem formulations.
The complexity of solving SDPs can be greatly reduced if the coefficient matrices that constrain the matrix variable are sparse. Chordal decomposition techniques then allow an equivalent problem formulation with multiple constraints only on the nonzero blocks of the matrix variable which often leads to orders of magnitude speed-up. In the second part of the thesis we develop a novel clique merging algorithm that combines some of the blocks after the initial decomposition to speed up the projection step of ADMM. We demonstrate that the method leads to significant performance improvements and avoids disadvantageous decompositions.
In the third part we demonstrate how to use repeated restarts and safeguarding checks to globalize Anderson acceleration for an ADMM solver. Comprehensive benchmark results show a significant reduction in both iterations and solve time to higher accuracy solution and a more robust algorithm.
The development of low-cost and non-invasive methods of preimplantation genetic testing
Keywords: transcriptomics
cell-free DNA
preimplantation genetic testing
preimplantation genetic diagnosis
spent culture media
preimplantation genetic testing of monogenic disease
non-invasive preimplantation genetic testing
next-generation sequencing
PGT
twistdx
embryo
nanopore

Over the past thirty years, numerous methods have been developed to assess genetic abnormalities in preimplantation embryos during IVF relevant to embryo health and viability, or that cause severe inherited disease (preimplantation genetic testing of aneuploidy; PGT-A or monogenic disease; PGT-M, respectively); however, these are often expensive, restricting patient access. Accordingly, this thesis aimed to develop low-cost methods of PGT. By applying long-read nanopore sequencing to parental gDNA samples, a novel low-cost means of identifying and phasing informative SNPs during the pre-clinical work-up phase of PGT-M was developed. Approaches based on long-range PCR amplicon sequencing and CRISPR- Cas9 enrichment are validated, with the potential to enhance patient access and improve test accuracy. Strategies based on the analysis of DNA within spent embryo culture media (SCM) during IVF (non-invasive PGT; niPGT) were also explored, with the potential to reduce costs and improve safety compared to traditional expensive and invasive embryo biopsy techniques. Specifically, a multiplex PCR-NGS protocol was developed for the non- invasive diagnosis of β-thalassaemia and sickle-cell anaemia, providing promising results during the optimisations. Moreover, niPGT-M assays for recessive X-linked disorders and sickle-cell anaemia were optimised, adopting an inexpensive recombinase polymerase amplification and lateral flow assay approach: although initial validations were promising, further optimisations are necessary to avoid misdiagnosis. To assess the potential for niPGT-A, a novel pipeline was developed utilising a whole genome amplification and next-generation sequencing approach. To date, the optimal method of amplifying DNA in SCM, which is of low quantity and likely somewhat degraded, has been unclear. After applying multiple methods to SCM, SurePlex achieved the highest levels of amplification and diagnostic concordance with paired trophectoderm biopsy specimens; however, rates were too low for clinical application. Therefore, analysis of the cumulus cell transcriptome was investigated as an alternative minimally-invasive and low-cost means of identifying oocyte-derived chromosomal abnormalities in the embryo. Transcriptome sequencing and qPCR analysis identified multiple novel candidate biomarkers, and most convincingly cytoskeletal protein PTSPIP1, with altered expression in cumulus cells associated with aneuploid embryos.
Learning and interpreting deep representations from multi-modal data
Keywords: multi-modal learning
deep representations
interpretability
video understanding
self-supervised learning
clustering
explainable AI
machine learning
representation learning

Deep learning has resulted in ground-breaking progress in a variety of domains, from core machine learning tasks such as image, language, and video understanding, to real-world industries such as medicine, autonomous driving, and agriculture. Its success has been driven by providing neural networks with manual supervision from large-scale labelled datasets such as ImageNet to automatically learn hierarchical data representations. However, obtaining large-scale labelled data is often a very time-consuming and expensive process. To address this challenge, we push the limits of self-supervision from multi-modal video data. Video data usually contain multiple modalities such as images, audio, transcribed speech and textual captions freely available. These modalities often share redundant semantic information and therefore can serve as pseudo-labels to supervise each other for representation learning without necessitating the use of manual human labels. Without the reliance on labelled data, we are able to train these deep representations on very large-scale video data of millions of video clips collected from the Internet. We show the scalability benefits of multi-modal self supervision by establishing a new state-of-the-art performance in a variety of domains: video action recognition, text-to-video retrieval, text-to-image retrieval and audio classification. We also introduce other technical innovations in terms of data transformations, model architecture and loss functions to further improve learning these deep video representations using multi-modal self-supervision. A secondary contribution of this thesis is new tools to improve the interpretability of deep representations, given that it is notoriously difficult to decipher the key features encoded in these deep representations. For images, we show how perturbation analysis can be used to analyze the intermediate representations of a network. For videos, we propose a novel clustering method using the Sinkhorn-Knopp algorithm to map deep video representations to human interpretable semantic pseudo-labels. The contributions in this thesis are steps to unlocking both the scalability and interpretability of deep video representation learning.