VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Queering the Greek television "comedy": Popular texts, dissident readings
Keywords: media
fandom
television
sexuality
feminism
queer
pop culture
Greece

This dissertation examines Greek television fiction and attempts to proffer queer readings of a wide range of texts that were made and broadcast in the 1990s and 2000s. These texts, despite their differences, fall under the general rubric of “comedy” and enjoy phenomenal popularity ever since their inaugural appearance on the small screen. There has been growing academic interest in the examination of the relatively underexplored sub-field of Greek television fiction, and this dissertation contributes to this project, using Οι Απαράδεκτοι [The Unbearables] (MEGA, 1991-1993), Στο Παρά 5 [In the Nick of Time] (MEGA, 2005-2007), Το Καφέ της Χαράς [Hara’s Café] (ANT1, 2003-2006), and Ντόλτσε Βίτα [Dolce Vita] (MEGA, 1995-1997) as its main case studies. The case studies selected in this dissertation integrate gender, (a)sexuality, family, domesticity, body, and/or age in their narratives as a vehicle to create humor, yet in ways which have divided and continue to divide how audiences understand and interpret them. Today, more than ever before, the reception of these texts has generated mixed criticism from everyday people and critics, many of whom approach them either through nostalgic or polemic lenses.
Employing feminist and queer theoretical frameworks and making use of close-reading techniques, I search for gaps, cracks, and fissures in the comedies’ narratives and conventions in order to suggest ways in which popular, heavily consumed texts can reveal cultural "knowledge" that may have remained unnoticed or intentionally suppressed.
The security of human-computer interaction by speech
Keywords: human-computer interaction
cyber security
speech interface

This thesis investigates the security issues associated with human-computer interaction by speech, focussing on the context of voice-controlled digital assistants. The security of human-computer interaction by speech has become increasingly important as use of voice control has become more widespread. The research questions addressed in the thesis are whether the speech interface presents particular vulnerabilities that are not relevant to other types of interfaces, and, if so, what these vulnerabilities are and how attacks exploiting them can be defended. Based on a critical review of prior work, it is argued that the speech interface does represent a new attack surface with specific security vulnerabilities that have not as yet been comprehensively studied. These vulnerabilities arise both in relation to the inherently open nature of the speech interface, as well in relation to unintended functionality in the technologies implemented in voice-controlled systems to imitate human speech and language processing.
The thesis makes three main contributions towards closing the gaps in knowledge on the security of human-computer interaction by speech identified in the review of prior work. The first contribution of the thesis is a novel taxonomy of the types of attacks that might be executed via a speech interface, representing a systemisation of knowledge in this area. The second contribution of the thesis is experimental work demonstrating new types of attacks via the speech interface that are foreshadowed in prior work, but have not been validated in practice. The experimental work develops systematic methodologies for executing attacks that hide malicious voice commands in nonsensical word sounds and in apparently unrelated utterances. The methodologies applied in these experiments involve testing both machine and human responses to such input to assess the potential for exploiting differences in machine and human perceptions to execute covert attacks. The third contribution of the thesis is proposals for the development of new defence mechanisms to counter attacks via the speech interface for which no effective defence mechanisms are currently available. These proposals include feasibility tests on the application of two existing technologies for security purposes in voice-controlled systems. The proposals for new defence mechanisms are grounded in a novel attack and defence modelling approach for analysing the security of human-computer interaction by speech that enables conceptualisation of the security of the speech interface in an inclusive framework, and facilitates a review of currently available defence mechanisms.
Essays on an Indian Ocean economy
Keywords: International trade
Globalisation
Market integration
Urbanisation
Colonial infrastructure
Colonialism
Economic growth
Economic integration
Industrialisation
Indian Ocean history
Great Divergence

This thesis analyses the role of the Indian Ocean in contributing to a distinctly integrated maritime region, and assesses some of the implications this has for regional trade and industrialisation in the era of high imperialism between 1870 to 1914. The thesis also presents a collection of original trade data and commodity price statistics from British, French, and Dutch colonial archives, which form the basis of analysis.
First, this thesis looks at the relative factors driving market integration in the Indian Ocean. Results show that market integration was primarily driven by port city integration with other port cities across the Indian Ocean, rather than with or between cities of the colonial hinterland. It also finds that steamships connecting port cities overseas contributed more to regional integration compared to railroads connecting cities of the colonial interior over land, and that the size or political function of a port city was not as much of a factor driving regional integration as simply whether or not a city was accessible to the Indian Ocean.
Second, this thesis looks at trade costs within the Indian Ocean compared to trade from the Indian Ocean to other maritime regions either within the global periphery, or from the Indian Ocean to the global core of Europe. Findings show that trade costs were low for short--distance routes within the Indian Ocean, as well as long--distance routes from the Indian Ocean to Europe. However trade costs were the highest for trade from the Indian Ocean to other regions of the global periphery such as the Eastern Mediterranean, thus establishing that the Indian Ocean was a distinctly integrated maritime region within the global periphery. However in relation to the global core of Europe, the Indian Ocean was also highly integrated as part of a larger process of globalisation taking place during the period.
Third, considering previous analysis on regional market integration and trade costs within and between the Indian Ocean and other regions, this thesis looks at some of the implications that an integrated Indian Ocean market had on trade growth and the export of large-scale industrial manufactures from the primary entrepot cities of Bombay and Calcutta. Comparative analysis of the intensive and extensive margins of trade for both cities demonstrates that trade ties across the Indian Ocean served as a major destination for more highly differentiated, higher value manufactured goods from both cities. Additionally, even though the vast majority of exports from both cities went to Europe, this was primarily in staple commodities rather than in manufactured goods. Thus an integrated Indian Ocean market provided an important destination for emerging manufacturing industries at the region's primary entrepot cities.
Toward efficient deep learning with sparse neural networks
Keywords: data parallelism
sparse neural networks
signal propagation perspective
pruning at initialization

Despite the tremendous success that deep learning has achieved in recent years, it remains challenging to deal with the excessive computational and memory cost involved in executing deep learning based applications. To address the challenge, this thesis focuses on studying sparse neural networks, particularly around their construction, initialization, and large-scale training aspects, as an attempt to take a step toward efficient deep learning.
Firstly, this thesis addresses the problem of finding sparse neural networks by pruning. Network pruning is an effective methodology to sparsify neural networks, and yet, existing approaches often introduce hyperparameters that either need to be tuned with expert knowledge or are based on ad-hoc intuitions, and typically entails iterative training steps. Alternatively, this thesis begins with proposing an efficient pruning method that is applied to a neural network prior to training in a single shot. The obtained sparse neural network using this method, once trained, exhibit state-of-the-art performance on various image classification tasks.
Albeit efficient, it remains unclear exactly why this approach of pruning at initialization can be effective. This thesis then extends this method by developing a new perspective, from which the problem of finding trainable sparse neural networks is approached based on network initialization. Being a key to the success of finding and training sparse neural networks, this thesis proposes a sufficient initialization condition that can be easily satisfied with a simple optimization step and, once achieved, accelerates training sparse neural networks quite significantly.
While sparse neural networks can be obtained by pruning at initialization, there has been little study concerning the subsequent training of these sparse networks. This thesis lastly concentrates on studying data parallelism -- a straightforward approach to speed up neural network training by parallelizing it using a distributed computing system -- under the influence of sparsity. To this end, the effects of data parallelism and sparsity are first measured accurately based on extensive experiments which are accompanied by metaparameter search. Then, this thesis establishes theoretical results that precisely account for these effects, which have only been addressed partially and empirically and thus remained as debatable.
Structural and functional characterisation of hedgehog ligand-receptor complexes
Keywords: HHIP
Hedgehog

Members of the Hedgehog (HH) family of morphogenic signalling molecules are key mediators of many fundamental processes in embryonic development. A relatively small change in HH concentration results in the specification of distinct cell types. Such fine-tuning necessitates a range of regulatory cell-surface proteins to control the concentration of HH to which responding cells are exposed. This thesis focuses on the structural and functional characterisation of three human extracellular modulators of the HH pathway, namely the hedgehog-interacting protein HHIP, the glypican GPC3 and the Growth Arrest Specific 1 (GAS1). Cell culture robot protocols were developed to allow large-scale expression of these targets in mammalian cells (Chapter 3). In Chapter 4, the structure of the HH antagonist HHIP alone and in complex with HH ligands is described. These studies combined with functional experiments reveal a binding mode distinct from previously defined ligand interaction sites, with the HH metal-binding sites playing key roles. The structural and functional analysis of GPC3, another negative HH regulator, is described in Chapter 5. Binding studies suggest that the GPC3 core domain does not bind directly to SHH and that the GPC3-attched heparan sulphate chains play an important role in HH regulation. Chapter 6 reveals crystal structures of the GAS1 ectodomain, a HH agonist, allowing comparison to glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor receptors, the identification of an unexpected ligand and mapping of the HH binding site. In summary, this work provides insights into the extracellular modulation of HH signalling and extends our current knowledge of this fundamental signalling pathway. It also offers a model to explain how both agonists and antagonists can adopt similar mechanisms of HH binding.
Exogenous ketones as a metabolic intervention for Parkinson’s disease
Keywords: β-hydroxybutyrate
Parkinson’s disease
Ketone ester

Neurodegenerative and neurological diseases are metabolic diseases that invite metabolic treatments. Nutritional interventions that induce a state of ketosis, or “ketogenics,” are one class of metabolic treatment that have the potential to address the root pathologies of such diseases. Presented first in this thesis are three clinical studies that investigated the effects of a ketone ester (KE) drink in patients with Parkinson’s disease. The first study was a randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover trial in 14 participants that demonstrated a significant improvement in endurance exercise performance following a KE drink. Participants sustained a therapeutic cycling cadence of 80 rpm for 24% longer after ingesting KE as compared to performance following a placebo (carbohydrate) drink. The second study utilized 31P magnetic resonance spectroscopy in 11 participants and demonstrated that exogenous KE did not alter brain energetics one hour following a drink. The third study was a randomized, placebo-controlled 28-day intervention in which 20 participants were to ingest either KE or placebo drinks four times daily for one month, while motor and non-motor symptoms were monitored. Four participants completed the protocol before the COVID-19 pandemic stopped Oxford clinical studies. Thus, the completed work is included herein as a validation of methods and feasibility study. This thesis also includes intellectual contributions in the form of recent peer-reviewed publications, most of which are literature reviews and theoretical papers, although one is a case report and another is a technological innovation: a tracking tool that has potential to open new avenues in nutrition research. Although the contents of this thesis may appear disparate, they are woven around the narrative that brain disorders are caused by disturbances in metabolism, and that the development of disease-modifying therapies, including ketogenics, will likely require addressing the core metabolic dysfunction that underlies each disease.
Exploring access to primary health care among diabetic patients In Oman
Keywords: universal health coverage
diabetes
geographical access
affordability
primary healthcare
cultural acceptability
glaciated haemoglobin
quality of life
accessibility

Access is an essential and yet only vaguely understood component of Universal Health Coverage. In this thesis, my aim is to measure patients’ experiences of access to healthcare in Oman and to understand how this access is associated with disease outcome and quality of life.
Initially, I carried out a concept analysis of access to primary healthcare, in which I identified the attributes, antecedents and consequences of access, and then utilised these attributes to map items for a patient experience questionnaire, using existing tools. This questionnaire, which I named Access-31, was subsequently tested for face and content validity through focus groups and individual interviews before it was utilised to conduct a survey of diabetes-2 patients attending primary healthcare services in Oman. The survey involved the use of Access-31, a quality of life measure, glycated haemoglobin data (HbA1c) and socio-economic indicators for study participants.
The domains of access are as follows: geographical access, access to information, organisational access, affordability, cultural acceptability and availability of services and medicines. The cross-sectional survey showed that 28.3% of the respondents reported having had at least one problem related to geographical access, while 83.2%, 61.2%, 4.9%, 35.7% and 47.8% respectively experienced at least one problem with access to information, organisational access, affordability, cultural acceptability and availability of services and medicines. The composite access score indicated that 6.0% of the participants reported no problems with access, 38.4% 1-3 problems, 39.6% 4-6 problems, and 15.9% more than six problems. Geographical access, organisational access, cultural acceptability and overall access were associated with self-reported quality of life (P-value<0.01), and the odds ratio for the relationship between availability of services and medicines and HbA1c was 3.02 (P-value<0.01), while for access overall this figure was 2.56 (P-value=0.01).
Access-31 is a promising tool that would appear to reward further testing as regards the measurement of accessibility in healthcare. Poor access to healthcare is associated with poor health outcomes, and policymakers in Oman are advised to investigate variations among governorates and to take appropriate action.
Fault characterisation in the Pre-Zechstein succession of the Anglo-Dutch and East Pennine basins
Keywords: Faults
Pre-Zechstein
3D Seismic Data
Southern North Sea
Anglo-Dutch Basin
Carboniferous
Fault reactivation

There has been a recent revolution in the recognition of and production from low permeability ‘tight’ gas reservoirs. The distribution of faults within a unit of rock, as well as the origin and timing of these faults is of key importance in the evaluation of prospective ‘unconventional’ formations. This project explores the origin, characteristics and distribution of the faults within the Pre-Zechstein succession of the onshore and offshore Carboniferous basins of the eastern United Kingdom.
The datasets utilised in the project include new 3D seismic data from the offshore southern North Sea, vintage 2D seismic data from the onshore Stainmore Trough and western Cleveland Basin, coalmine plan maps from the East Midlands region of the Pennine Basin and surface geological observations of the stratigraphically equivalent succession in North East England. The methods used to characterise the faults include (1) the detailed analysis of 3D seismic attributes, sampled at various Carboniferous intervals offshore; (2) fault throw mapping performed on areas in which good reflection correlations could be mapped, and (3) the sampling of fault frequency and spacings using the 1D scanline method, so that it can be applied to different data types. Through these methods, the fault geometries, spatial distribution, kinematics and possible formation and reactivation mechanisms have been addressed.
The detailed fault patterns across the East Pennine and Anglo-Dutch Basins therefore exhibit a complex formation and reactivation history that cannot be explained only by rotations of the regional stress field and the alternation of periods of tectonic extension and compression alone. There is a clear relationship between three profoundly different structural style types. A primary faulting mechanism resulting from regional tectonic stresses (throughgoing), and two secondary faulting processes that are in response to the tectonic fault formation and the accompanying deformation (superficial and detachment).
The key controlling factors on the timing, frequency, sense and magnitude of reactivations occurring on Pre-Zechstein faults are fault size and therefore coupling with basement stresses, proximity/relationship to throughgoing faults and the mechanical stratigraphy of the Pre-Zechstein succession. This explains why the throughgoing faults are active more frequently through time in nearly all senses. The secondary meso-scale (superficial and detachment) faults are therefore suspected to have formed in response to (superficial) or as a consequence of (detachment) movement on the larger structures and therefore are a consequence of regional tectonic strain. The superficial faults are reactivated on fewer occasions due to the stress shielding effect by the larger extensional throughgoing faults.
Iteration and Preservation
Keywords: Preservation
belief revision
KK
Iteration
Epistemic Logic

According to epistemic iteration principles, epistemic states such as knowledge, belief, or certainty iterate. The KK principle, for example, states that whenever one knows something, one knows that one knows it.
According to epistemic preservation principles, epistemic states such knowledge, belief, or certainty are preserved under certain kinds of revisions. Knowledge preservation, for example, says that if one knows p and does not know that not q, then one knows p after revising one’s knowledge with q.
My thesis explores connections between epistemic iteration and preservation principles. The big picture is that iteration and preservation principles are more closely tied together than is generally acknowledged. Denying iteration principles gives us surprising reasons to deny preservation principles. Conversely, accepting preservation principles may give us surprising reasons to accept iteration principles. And some standard arguments for and against iteration principles generalise to arguments for and against preservation principles.
The experience and memory of youth in England c.1960-c.1969
Keywords: 1960s
youth
cultural history
oral history
social history
gender
British history
memory

This thesis offers the first lived experience study of youth in 1960s England. Previous histories of post-war youth have tended to focus on representations of young people rather than their daily lives. This thesis therefore uses contemporary social surveys, Mass Observation directives and oral history interviews to examine the experiences, memories and meanings of youth for working- and lower middle-class young adults, born between approximately 1940 and 1955, across England. It analyses young adults’ experiences in work, leisure and personal relationships. Popular memories of the ‘swinging sixties’ tend to present young adults in the period as hedonistic, permissive, promiscuous, subcultural rebels in constant generational conflict with their parents. However, this thesis shows that young adults’ lived experiences were more ‘mundane’ or ‘ordinary’ than these images suggest – most did not experience a ‘swinging sixties’. This thesis argues that age, gender, class, family, location and economics fractured and shaped the experiences of youth, meaning that there was no singular or homogenous youth culture. Young adults did have enough experiences in common, however, to be united by a shared sense of being part of a distinct generation at a distinct historical moment. Indeed, the socio-economic and cultural landscape of the 1960s necessarily shaped young adults’ lives and what it meant to be a young adult in the 1960s. The thesis also examines the relationship between popular memories of the ‘swinging sixties’ and personal memories of life in the period to demonstrate that both act together to influence people’s selfhoods and what it meant to be a young adult in 1960s England. Ultimately, this thesis shows that youth was as much about identity and a sense of belonging as it was about a set of common experiences.