VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The use of educational programmes to support marriage immigrants in Taiwan: a case study of an Information Communication and Technologies (ICTs) course
Keywords: ICT courses
educational programmes
marriage immigrants

There is an increasing flow of marriage migration around the world in the era of globalisation. As a result of moving to a new country, marriage immigrants typically encounter a range of difficulties due to language, cultural and environmental differences. To try to address some of these challenges a number of countries have begun to provide educational programmes for marriage immigrants.
Focusing on the case of Taiwan, which is one of several countries to acknowledge this issue, this study aims to explore what educational needs marriage immigrants have and the extent to which educational programmes can help to support these individuals. Indeed, the Taiwanese government has been making a concerted effort to support marriage immigrants’ educational needs by offering a range of learning programmes. Here, the focus is on developing ICT skills because ICTs form an important part of all aspects of daily life in Taiwan and the skills are believed to facilitate independent and continued learning.
Using a qualitative case study approach, this research investigates one ICT programme specifically targeted at 25 marriage immigrants in an urban district in Taipei and studies the value of the programme in assisting their adaptation to their new lives in Taiwan. This study draws on adult learning theories to examine the motivations of the participants, the barriers to learning that they encounter and the ways these can be overcome, as well as longer-term impacts of the programme and the use of ICTs in their lives.
The marriage immigrants were found to have strong goal-oriented motivations. These goal-oriented motivations can be further subcategorised into those associated with job, life management and parenting. As for overcoming learning barriers for them, the government’s financial support and childcare services offered proved to be important in supporting learning by decreasing both the institutional and situational barriers. Although ICTs were proved to have the capability of reducing situational barriers, they were not the participants’ main concern. There were a number of longer term impacts of the programme. Increasing confidence is one of the most significant which led to further learning motivations. This research contributes to the understandings of the marriage immigrants’ learning needs and the possible ways ICT programmes are supportive of those needs.
Emotional processing and bipolar disorder
Keywords: bipolar disorder
quetiapine
mood disorder questionnaire
circadian rhythm
emotion processing
bipolar spectrum
sleep

The aetiology of bipolar disorder remains unclear and investigation to date has focussed largely on bipolar patients. Whilst ultimately of huge value, such studies may also be confounded by current mood or experience of repeated illness episodes or current or past medication; using at-risk samples may bypass some of these problems. The current research therefore assessed the efficacy of the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) as a screening tool for vulnerability to bipolar disorder. The MDQ was used with two sets of criteria to identify two sub-groups of medication-naïve young bipolar phenotype subjects who were at risk for bipolar disorder by virtue of experience of mood elevation. Analysis of data from the Student Stress Survey was carried out to characterise the bipolar phenotype. Compared to a control group with no experience of mood elevation, the two bipolar phenotype sub-groups showed a gradient of prevalence of bipolar diagnosis and associated co-morbidity. Behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques were employed to investigate emotional processing, decision-making, and sleep and circadian rhythmicity in bipolar phenotype students. Analyses revealed that positive emotional processing biases, disrupted decision-making, and increased activity during sleep were associated with the bipolar phenotype and, therefore, may represent vulnerability markers for bipolar disorder. Finally, a psychopharmacological investigation of quetiapine, which stabilises mood, was carried out in healthy volunteers. One-week quetiapine administration resulted in biases away from both positive and negative emotional stimuli (i.e. a mood-stabilising effect), reduced discrimination between different magnitudes of gains and losses during risky decision-making (consistent with an antidepressant effect), and increased sleep duration. In sum, this research has developed our understanding of vulnerability markers associated with the bipolar phenotype and provided a first step towards uncovering the psychological mechanisms through which quetiapine’s clinical effects may be mediated.
The literature of the boarding house: female transient space in the 1930s
Keywords: women's writing
Stella Gibbons
Storm Jameson
Rosamond Lehmann
E. H. Young
Dorothy Richardson
Jean Rhys
1930s
Virginia Woolf
boarding house
Lettice Cooper
Elizabeth Bowen

This thesis investigates a neglected sub-genre of women’s writing, which I have termed the literature of the boarding house. Focusing on unmarried women, this is a study of the alternative rooms ‘of one’s own’ that existed in the nineteen thirties: from the boarding house and hotel, to the bed-sitting room or single room as a paying guest in another family’s house. The 1930s is defined by the conflict between women’s emerging social and economic independence and a dominant ideology that placed increased importance on domesticity, the idea of ‘home’ and women’s place within the familial structure. My research highlights the incompatibility between the idealised images of domestic life that dominated the period and the reality for the single woman living in temporary accommodation. The boarding house existed outside conventional notions of female domestic space with its connotations of stability and family life. Women within the boarding house were not only living outside traditional domestic structures; they were placing themselves outside socially and culturally defined domestic roles. The boarding house was both a new space of modernity, symbolising women’s independence, and a continued imitation of the bourgeois home modelled on rituals of middle-class behaviour. Through an examination of novels by Elizabeth Bowen, Lettice Cooper, Stella Gibbons, Storm Jameson, Rosamond Lehmann, Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys, Virginia Woolf, and E. H. Young, this study privileges the literary as a way in which to understand the space of the boarding house. Not only does the boarding house blur the boundaries between public and private space, it also challenges the traditional conceptions of the family home as the sole location of private domestic space. I argue that by placing their characters in the in-between space of the boarding house, the authors can reflect on the liminal spaces that existed for women both socially and sexually. In the literature of the boarding house, the novel becomes a site for representing women’s experiences that were usually on the periphery of traditional narratives, as well as a literary medium for articulating the wider social and economic issues affecting the lives of unmarried women.
Partial sum process of orthogonal series as rough process
Keywords: harmonic analysis
orthogonal series
rough path theory
partial sum process

In this thesis, we investigate the pathwise regularity of partial sum process of general orthogonal series, and prove that the partial sum process is a geometric 2-rough process under the same condition as in Menshov-Rademacher Theorem. For Fourier series, the condition can be improved, and an equivalent condition on the limit function is identified.
Essays in normative macroeconomics
Keywords: dynamic taxation
time inconsistency
optimal policy
veil of ignorance

This thesis is divided into two main parts. The first provides a novel analysis of dynamic optimal taxation under the assumption that individuals in an economy have ‘hidden’ idiosyncratic productivity levels. Specifically, it shows how to derive a complete set of optimality conditions characterising the solution to a problem of this kind. The method relies on constructing perturbations to the consumption-output allocations of agents in a manner that preserves all relevant incentive compatibility restrictions. We are able to use it to generalise the ‘inverse Euler condition’ to cases in which preferences are non-separable between consumption and labour supply, and to prove a number of novel results about optimal income and savings tax wedges.
The second main part investigates a more general problem. When policymakers are constrained in their present choices by expectations of future outcomes a well-known time-inconsistency problem hinders optimal decision-making: the preferences of policymakers who exist at different points in time are not in agreement with one another, because of differences in the constraints faced by each. We present a new approach to determining policy in this setting, based on asking: What policy would be chosen by a decisionmaker who did not know the time period in which their choice was to be implemented? This is akin to designing institutions from behind a Rawlsian ‘veil of ignorance’. The theory is used to obtain qualitative policy prescriptions across a number of environments; these policies have several appealing properties that we outline.
The origins and nature of the Attic ephebeia to 200 B.C.
Keywords: Athens
Greek history
ephebeia

This thesis examines the Athenian ephebeia, from its creation to 200 B.C. The primary aim of the study is to examine the forces which led to the perception of a need for the ephebeia and which influenced its creation.
After describing the institution and then investigating the available evidence for its foundation date, I argue that the "formal ephebeia" was created in 335 B.C. and was substantially different in form from anything which had preceded it. There were, however, some antecedent aspects of the ephebeia which can be traced to earlier times.
The following two chapters examine forces in the fifth and early fourth century which contributed to the creation of the ephebeia. The first is an examination of Greek military innovation in the fourth century and of new Athenian defensive policy. The second investigates a "discourse" of educational thought which was present in the intellectual circles of Athens in the fourth century, the nature of which can be found in writings of the "Socratic" philosophers. In the fifth chapter I descrive the environment of "Lycurgan Athens" and argue that the ephebeia was a deliberately "invented tradition" which suited its ideological context. The final chapter examines all available evidence for the history of the organization from 322 to 200 B.C., charting a transformation of the institution. There are two appendices: one on the demography of late fourth century Athens and its relationship to the ephebeia, the other on the life-dates of Menander and the year of his ephebate. There are also two catalogues of inscriptions. The first provides all fourth century ephebic inscriptions since the publication of Reinmuth's collection (or changes to those). The second provides all published third century ephebic inscriptions and some from the early second century.
An integrated metamorphic and geochronological study of the south-eastern Tibetan plateau
Keywords: Lhasa terrane
zircon
garnet
Songpan-Garze terrane
Tibetan plateau
metamorphic petrology
monazite
U-Pb geochronology
phase diagram modelling

The Tibetan plateau is a vast, elevated region located in central Asia, which is underlain by the thickest crust known on Earth (up to 90 km). An outstanding question of importance to many fields within geology is how and why did the Tibetan plateau form? Models attribute the growth of the plateau to a consequence of the ongoing India-Asia continental collision, but differ in the details of how the crustal thickening was accommodated: was it by underplating of Indian lower crust or by homogeneous shortening? High-grade metamorphic rocks sampled from the region potentially hold the key to answering this question, as they contain a record of past tectonic events that can discriminate between the various proposed models. This record can be decoded by integrating field, thermobarometric and geochronological techniques, to elucidate a detailed thermotectonic understanding of a region. This methodology was applied to three case studies, each of which targeted rare tectonic windows into the mid-crust of the plateau. These regions comprise Danba in eastern Tibet, Basong Tso in south-eastern Tibet and the Western Nyainqentanglha in southern Tibet. Each case study documents previously unreported metamorphic events that have allowed original interpretations to be made regarding tectonic evolution: in Danba, all metamorphism is shown to be early Jurassic; in Basong Tso, two metamorphic belts are documented that reveal a late Triassic--early Jurassic orogenic event; and in the Western Nyainqengtanglha, Cretaceous--Neogene magmatism is shown to overprint late Triassic metamorphism. Integration of the results has enabled commentary on the large scale evolution of the Tibetan plateau from the Permian until the present day, and even hinted at its future. The results indicate that the closure of the Paleotethys played an important role in the construction of the Tibetan plateau, and suggest that homogeneous crustal thickening is not a viable model for the documented exposure levels.
The reception of the Categories of Aristotle, c. 80 BC to AD 220
Keywords: nicostratus
andronicus
aristotelianism
boethus
simplicius
athenodorus
peripatetics
aristotle
lucius
categories
cornutus
herminus

This thesis focuses on the ancient reception of the Categories of Aristotle, a work which served continuously, from late antiquity into the early modern period (Frede 1987), as the student’s introduction to philosophy.  There had previously been no comprehensive study of the reception of the Categories during the age of the first philosophical commentaries (c. 80 BC to AD 220). In this study, I have collected, assigned, and analyzed the relevant fragments of commentary belonging to this period, including some that were previously undocumented or inexplicit in the source texts, and sought to establish and characterize the influence of the early commentators’ activity on the subsequent Peripatetic tradition. In particular, I trace the early evolution of criticism and defense of the text through competing accounts of its aim (skopos), which would ultimately lead Stoic and Platonic philosophers to a partial acceptance of the Categories and frame its role in the later Neo-Platonic curriculum.
The impact of preterm birth on the cardiovascular system in young adulthood
Keywords: circulating biomarkers
cardiovascular function
cardiovascular disease
hypertension
preeclampsia
perinatal risk factors
prevention
vascular development
preterm birth
cardiovascular structure
cardiac remodelling
perinatal complications
neonatal risk
perinatal interventions
paediatrics
angiogenesis
aortic stiffness
capillary density
cardiac development
blood pressure

Advancements in clinical care have led to a growing cohort of preterm-born individuals now entering adulthood. Before birth, such adults were often exposed to a suboptimal intrauterine environment, and after delivery, key developmental stages that would normally occur in utero during the third trimester had to take place under ex utero physiological conditions. Through detailed cardiovascular phenotyping, this thesis investigates the cardiovascular changes in preterm-born young adults, utilising a cohort of individuals with data collection since recruitment at birth. The detailed perinatal information was first used to design nested case-control studies to investigate the effects of early lipid and glucocorticoid exposure on long-term cardiovascular physiology in individuals born preterm. It was demonstrated that intravenous lipid administration leads to an artificial elevation of total cholesterol levels in immediate postnatal life, which is associated with long-term changes in aortic and left ventricular function proportional to the degree of cholesterol elevation. Additionally, exposure to antenatal glucocorticoids relates to a regional increase in aortic arch stiffness in young adulthood, as well as changes in glucose metabolism. It was then shown that young adults born preterm have increased left ventricular mass, out of proportion to blood pressure, and a unique three-dimensional left ventricular geometry, with reduced systolic and diastolic function compared to term-born controls. Similarly, they also show distinct differences in the right ventricle, with increased right ventricular mass and a proportion having clinically impaired right ventricular systolic function. Finally, it was demonstrated that preterm-born individuals have increased circulating levels of antiangiogenic factors in young adulthood, which relate to capillary rarefaction and blood pressure elevation. These findings are of considerable public health relevance given that nearly 10% of births are now preterm. Understanding whether modification of these variations in cardiovascular structure and function prevent the development of cardiovascular disease in this growing subgroup of the population will be of future interest.
From Arma to Fama: the military record of Roman republican commanders in speech and text (219-19 BC)
Keywords: Roman History

There are three main scholarly approaches to the mechanisms by which the military record of Roman Republican commanders was disseminated in Rome: the ceremony of the triumph, the erection of monuments with their inscriptions, and finally the minting of coins. Alongside this ceremonial and material publicity this thesis investigates how and why more ephemeral media, as well as autobiographical texts, were employed to disseminate, promote and at times denigrate the Roman military record during the period of 219-19 BC. It encompasses five core chapters: introduction; oratory as praise; oratory as criticism; letters; and autobiographical prose. Chapter two argues that military achievements were orally disseminated in various contexts in Rome: it was a fundamental facet of the triumphal process; a regular part of attaining and maintaining military commands; and the military record was frequently employed in forensic defence speeches, particularly in the late Republic with the growth of the law-courts. Chapter three focuses on how and why the military record was criticised back in Rome in a variety of contexts, arguing that it was a key means by which the Roman elite regulated excessive claims of gloria. Owing in part to the increasing concerns about self-serving Roman magistrates, focusing on behaviour beyond the battlefield was a common means of undermining commanders’ military reputations. Chapter four details the heavy and regular dependence on dispatches for short-term, yet proficient, martial self-promotion. It emphasises the key role of letters in the triumphal process, including the passing of legislation aimed in part at regulating their exploitation. It also argues that private correspondence played a valuable role, particularly in the targeting of senators and other influential sections of Roman society. Chapter five investigates the role of commentaries, memoirs and historical literature in the promotion of military res gestae and how criticism alongside concerns about posterity influenced their composition. It addresses the influence of Greek biography on their composition as well as the Roman aristocratic practice of preserving correspondence and other documentation.
The role of the IL23/IL17 pathway in inflammatory bowel disease
Keywords: IL-23
Intestine
Inflammation
Inflammatory Bowel Disease

The aetiology of IBD is unknown, but available evidence suggests that an aberrant immune response towards the commensal microbial flora is responsible for intestinal inflammation in genetically susceptible individuals. Studies from animal models of intestinal inflammation have greatly advanced our understanding of the immunological basis of IBD. However, translation of results from animal research into human studies is essential in order to improve treatment options and patient quality of life. In this thesis we present the successful introduction of translational studies on human tissue in our laboratory. In particular, we evaluated the role of the IL23/IL17 pathway in the human immune response and its role in IBD. IL23-driven inflammation has been primarily linked to its activity on Th-17 cells; however, work from our laboratory has identified a novel population of IL23-responsive ILC, which are responsible for innate colitis in mice. Here we have analyzed the role of IL23-responsive innate cells in IBD. Our results show increased expression of Th-17 signature genes amongst intestinal CD3- cells in patients with IBD. Furthermore, we observed a marked and selective increase in IL17 producing CD56- ILC in the inflamed intestine of patients with CD. ILC may contribute to intestinal inflammation through secretion of cytokines, such as IL17A and IL17F, and recruitment of other inflammatory cells, representing a novel tissue-specific target for the treatment of IBD. In addition, we present here our preliminary data on the characterization of human intestinal and systemic DC populations. In particular, we aimed to evaluate if in the context of the intestinal microenvironment DC develop specific regulatory features, as observed in murine CD103+ DC. We show that human intestinal DC populations exhibit specific regulatory properties, such as expression of genes associated with TGF-β and RA activity. Furthermore, CD103+ DC are present in the human gut and are characterized by tolerogenic markers. Remarkably, patients with IBD have reduced frequencies of intestinal CD103+ DC, which display a more pro-inflammatory phenotype. Alteration in DC subset composition and functional activity may result in a distort balance between immune effector and regulatory responses, promoting the development of intestinal inflammation.