VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Primate archaeology: comparative models for the evolution of primate technical cognition through tool-use
Keywords: material engagement theory
primate archaeology
animal tool use
cognition

The field of Primate Archaeology is concerned with (A) understanding the origins and development of tool use in non-human primates, and (B) the implications of a general primate model for understanding human technical and cognitive development. Cross-species comparisons, however, remain distinctly anthropocentric in nature. The metaphysical commitments of Neo-Darwinist frameworks reinforce an inherent assumption that cognition is something which takes place in the head, influenced but apart from the body and environment. Assuming psychological discontinuity of this kind, comes at the expense of taking phylogenetic, bodily and environmental differences seriously – a considerable problem when we consider the diversity of primate tool using species which a comparative model must include. In an attempt to overcome issues of heterogeneity and anthropocentrism, this thesis explores the potential of the Material Engagement Theory as a means of re-conceptualizing complexity and causal cognition in Primate tool use, and as the basis of a methodological framework suitable for cross-species comparison. Case-studies of the three living lithic-using non-human primates are compiled and compared, demonstrating the emergent, processual nature of technical cognition as a fundamentally non-individualistic phenomenon co-constituted by the environment and others. General patterns are discussed with reference to theories of technical evolution. The findings of this thesis suggest current hypotheses of primate human and non-human technical evolution, as long as they maintain a separation between mind and matter, cannot accurately account for the role of tool using in cognitive development. To better integrate mind with materials, future research must shift its focus away from the brain, body, and environment, and towards the diachronically shifting, dynamic spaces between.
Observations of dry wear and the development of an improved wear law

Keywords: Tribology
Wear
In-situ experiments
X-ray CT
X-ray diffraction
Wear modelling

Unlubricated wear of metal components is a significant factor in the deterioration of various metal structures and assemblies and has been the focus of intensive research for several decades. Despite this, accurately predicting the quantity and development of wear from information about the geometry, material and loading of the wearing contact appears to be beyond the reach of engineering science at present. The development of more generally applicable, reliable wear prediction method (“wear law”) would be of great benefit in terms of industrial practice and would also close a significant gap in the current state of tribological knowledge.
The research presented in this thesis establishes both the limitations of traditional wear prediction approaches based on two-body contact mechanics and/or Archard’s wear law as well as a possible alternative in the tribological circuit approach, which was initially proposed by Berthier and then refined into a wear model for a closed contact geometry by Fillot, Iordanoff & Berthier. Through experimental research, a number of assumptions and questions put forward by these authors were examined; in particular the interaction between the debris ejection path length, surface profile and debris particle size was found to govern the ejection of wear debris and thus wear. The model was also found to predict a strongly non-linear dependence on normal force for an annular contact geometry, the same geometry in which exactly such dependence has been observed experimentally, but not yet explained. Additional experimental work revealed a tendency for the contact to eject debris along the shortest available path. With this knowledge, a mathematical expression for debris ejection in multiple directions was formulated. With it, the approach proposed by Fillot, Iordanoff & Berthier was expanded to an open contact geometry, successfully achieving a transition of a wear model between geometries. This would also indicate, that the approach studied could be a generally applicable wear model.
To aid the experimental work, a method for observing wear without disturbing it has been developed, using X-ray computed tomography. This is the first such application of X-ray CT to wearing contacts, the first instance of wear being extensively quantified entirely non-destructively (i.e. without dismantling the wearing contact for studies) and has been proven to be very successful as a tool for observing and quantifying wear. The success obtained can also serve as a powerful justification for further development of this approach and progress towards the observations of wear in-situ using penetrating radiation.
The use of reduced doses of the yellow fever vaccine in a sub-Saharan African population: safety, immunogenicity and policy
Keywords: yellow fever
vaccine policy
non-inferiority
fractional doses
clinical trial
safety
immunogenicity

Yellow Fever (YF) is a potentially lethal haemorrhagic fever of significant public and global health importance. The 17-D YF vaccines have been used successfully for several decades with excellent immunogenicity and safety profile. A recent rise in outbreaks in endemic regions has been characterised by a repeated vaccine stock shortage that has led the World Health Organisation (WHO) to recommend the use of fractional doses as a dose sparing strategy. The recommendation was made with limited data from the African region.
A review of literature of the virus, epidemiology, vaccines and the current policies of use the vaccines explored the challenges with an upsurge in disease outbreak in endemic regions and the causes of the recurrent vaccine stock shortage. The literature identified the gaps in evidence on the use of fractional doses as a dose sparing strategy as recommended by the WHO.
Randomised, controlled, non-inferiority clinical trials comparing standard dose and fractional doses were conducted in Kenya and Uganda. In one study, a pragmatic fifth of the standard dose of the 17D-213 vaccine manufactured by the Institute of Poliomyelitis and Viral Encephalitidis, Russian Federation was tested against the standard in HIV-infected individuals. The second study was a dose-response study testing de-escalated doses of the 17D 204 vaccine manufactured by the Institut Pasteur de Dakar against a standard dose in a general population in Kenya and Uganda. The studies assessed safety and immunogenicity, as measured by neutralising antibody assays (PRNT). The studies found the fractional doses to be safe and sufficiently immunogenic with doses as low as 500 IU/dose immunogenically non-inferior to standard doses.
A systematised review of vaccine policy identified actors, mapped out policy processes and elements that influence the direction of vaccines when introducing new vaccine policies and changing existing vaccine policies. A stakeholder analysis with actors involved with YF vaccines explored their perceptions, positions, vaccine policy processes and factors that are vital to consider for wider use of fractional doses beyond the current recommendations by WHO.
In these policy analysis studies, I found that there are systematised processes for introducing and changing vaccine policies at the global and regional levels and that each vaccine policy is unique. There was general support for use of fractional doses of the YF vaccines. However, more evidence is needed for firmer recommendations. Additionally, vaccine policy processes are heavily political with advocacy, lobbying, actor coordination and communication playing important roles.
Jizhu xiangchou: rural nostalgia and revitalization in Xi-era
China
Keywords: ethnography
rural modernity
nostalgia
contemporary China
area studies
rural revitalization
migration
rural development
urban-rural relations
cultural studies
affect
rural China

This dissertation probes a critical “turning point” in mainland China’s development. This turning point is characterized by an observable shift in the state’s developmental priorities from the urban to the rural, and a noticeable shift in official and popular discourses surrounding the concept of ‘rurality.’ Specifically, under the Xi-administration, and especially as evidenced by the state’s Rural Revitalization Strategy, I argue that there is a renewed urgency and call to action for capital – human, financial, and cultural – to be redirected out of China’s swollen cities and (back) into its depleted countryside. Meanwhile, whereas the ‘backwards countryside’ has been viewed as the underdeveloped antithesis to the ‘modern city;’ now, it is the ‘rural idyll’ that is framed as the desired escape from the ‘urban disease.’ Following decades of urban-biased development, China is now confronting a series of anthropogenic ‘crises’ across not only its political-economic and sociocultural landscapes, but to borrow from Li Zhang’s Anxious China, there is also a rupture in people’s “inner landscapes.” Recent years have seen not only a top-down imperative to build-up rural industries, but, critically, I also observe an almost ‘nostalgic’ yearning across society to literally or figuratively ‘return’ to the countryside. Using the ancient village of Heyang, situated in Xinjian Township, Jinyun County, Zhejiang Province, this dissertation illustrates how intersecting at these nodes of political-economic necessity, ecological urgency, and sociocultural and psychological desires to “return” to the countryside is the mandarin Chinese concept of xiangchou 乡愁. In the spirit of Raymond Williams’ (1976) seminal work, Keywords, this dissertation works towards a (re)definition of xiangchou as a critical keyword within contemporary China during a pivotal developmental ‘turning point.’
Investigating the contribution of the unfolded protein response to prostate cancer bone metastasis
Keywords: Epithelial-mesenchymal transition
Bone
Prostate
Unfolded protein response

The majority of deaths from prostate cancer (PCa) arise following metastasis, particularly to the skeleton. ER stress and the unfolded protein response (UPR) promote primary PCa, however, the contribution of the UPR to PCa bone metastasis remains unknown. The aim of this work was to determine the role of the UPR in PCa bone metastasis, focusing on the osteogenic potential of PCa cells, epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) and migration, and PCa-induced bone disease. Using paired androgen refractory cancer of the prostate (ARCaP) cell lines ARCaPE and ARCaPM which differ in their epithelial (E) and mesenchymal (M) characteristics, I found that components of IRE1 and ATF6 ER stress pathways are higher in ARCaPE cells than in ARCaPM and decreased upon osteogenic differentiation of ARCaPM cells. Inhibition of the IRE1 or PERK pathway increased alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity in ARCaPM cells. Inhibition of specific arms of the UPR produced a varied response in EMT markers with no effect on migration of ARCaPM cells. Increasing ER stress using tunicamycin significantly reduced the migration of ARCaPM cells. The bone disease associated with PCa bone metastases is driven by alterations in a complex signalling network, including the RANKL/OPG pathway and Wnt signalling. ER stress, induced by tunicamycin, decreased RANKL and DKK1 expression and increased OPG expression in ARCaPM cells. This response of bone-related factors to ER stress was blocked by PERK inhibition. Taken together, my research demonstrates that the UPR has multiple effects in bone metastatic PCa cells, including a reduction in migration and in osteolytic factors following UPR activation, suggesting a novel mechanism by which the UPR may modulate PCa-induced bone disease.
Climate change, sustainable power sources, and developing economies: a case study on two power companies in China
Keywords: China
clean technology
climate change

The aim of this study was to discover the attitudes and beliefs underlying China’s limited corporate environmental response to climate change. It employs as its theoretical framework the notion of attitudes and hence practices contributing to climate change as being a “wicked problem” in which multiple issues are synergistically related, and apparently resistant to linear cause and effect thinking or solution. Using a case-study approach in an interpretive paradigm, data were collected, during a nine-month internship in China, from semi-structured interviews with managers and on-site observations of two of China’s leading power companies. The purpose was to discover what they believed were barriers to the adoption of clean technology in which China has invested heavily, what incentives they felt were and could be applied to speed the process, and what stakeholder interests they thought to be involved. Relevant documentary evidence was also explored.
Findings revealed that there was significant consensus and little difference in managerial attitudes and beliefs in these two power companies. All managers expressed uncertainty about the benefits that might accrue from a switch to clean technology, with considerable adherence to path dependence, and awareness of the sunk costs involved in the generation of power through fossil fuels. Although they claimed that incentives were in place, few of these appeared to be directly related to facilitating corporate environmental response. There was some evidence of movement towards involvement of the workforce in idea-generation, yet little evidence of an infrastructure that might support radical or rapid change in beliefs or practices, or a culture that might take stakeholder positions and guidance fully into account. The environment tended to be viewed as an externality.
The uniqueness of this study is that it was conducted from the position of intern, enabling a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis through observation of and discussion with members of a workforce directly involved in implementing aspects of climate change policy in two power companies in China. The adoption of the innovative theoretical framing of the question as a “wicked problem” proved helpful in considering views on climate change and possible solutions, as it revealed a web of multiple interdependent and situated attitudes and beliefs, leading to practices that may stand in the way of the adoption of clean technology in an emergent economy like China. This framework may be usefully adopted in further research studies on this subject.
The deployment of art: the Imperial War Museum's artistic records committee 1968-1982
Keywords: civil rights
artistic records committee
contemporary art
linda kitson
counterinsurgency
ken howard
Northern Ireland
media event
modern art
colin wallace
frank kitson
Falklands/Malvinas
operation corporate
operation banner
bloody sunday
imperial war museum
militarism

Situated at the intersection of art and military history, this thesis addresses a subject about which nothing has been published to date: the Artistic Records Committee (ARC), which the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) constituted in 1972 in response to the suggestion by the General Officer in Command of Northern Ireland (GOCNI), Lieutenant General Sir Harry Tuzo, that the Museum should commission artistic records of activities involving British Armed Forces (BAF) then deployed in the North of Ireland. The ARC was modelled on the World War Two (WW2) War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC), and the artists the ARC commissioned during its first decade of existence fitted the Official War Artist (OWA) paradigm that had evolved during the two world wars. In complete contrast to these high-intensity conflicts, the British military operation in the North of Ireland known as Operation Banner (1969-2007) was initially launched in response to growing civil unrest between nationalist Catholic and loyalist Protestant communities and was officially framed as a counterinsurgency and peacekeeping operation. But when photographs and filmed footage of paratroopers murdering peaceful Catholic protestors at a civil rights march in Derry on 30 January 1972 (‘Bloody Sunday’) were seen around the world, this shattered the image of the Army as non-partisan. Through a close reading of artworks, archival research, and interviews with artists, former IWM staff, and a former British Army psychological operations (PSYOPs) expert, I show how the ARC was implicated in the ‘propaganda war’ that the British Government waged to counteract negative public perceptions of Operation Banner after ‘Bloody Sunday.’ At a time when emergent conceptual and non-object-based art practices were increasingly concerned with exposure, concealment, and photographic evidence, I demonstrate the potential operational significance of Tuzo’s idea of creating pictorial records. I advance evidence of nepotism involving the Army, the ARC commissioners and Britain’s aristocratic elite, and demonstrate the Committee’s dissociation from the internationally networked, counterculturally invested and pacifist-inclined London art world of the 1970s. Case studies of the painter Ken Howard’s ARC commissions to record Operation Banner in 1973 and 1978, and the illustrator Linda Kitson’s ARC commission to record the ‘Falklands Campaign’ (Operation Corporate) in 1982, lead me to conclude that the dominant visual representation of contemporary conflict by the mass media meant that the OWA paradigm was an anachronism that camouflaged the deployment of art for operational military purposes in the period under review.
Metapopulation models of pandemic risk and control
Keywords: pandemic risk
pandemic preparedness
vaccine strategy
metapopulation models
epidemiology
mathematical biology

A pandemic is a global outbreak of an infectious disease, which can increase rates of death and disability worldwide, and impact economies and civilisations more generally. Ascertaining the risk of large pandemics with high mortality is challenging, due to their rarity. We can understand pandemics better by using the methods of theoretical epidemiology. In this thesis, I explore what one of these methods—metapopulation models—can tell us about pandemic risk and control. Metapopulation models can represent the spatial spread of pathogens, and thereby capture the global nature of pandemics.
I begin by exploring the effect on pandemic risk of cross-immunity between strains of a pathogen. Cross-immunity occurs when infection and subsequent recovery with one strain confers ongoing protection against another strain. I develop a novel Markov chain method to explore the effects of cross-immunity in a metapopulation model. I find that cross-immunity could help to explain why some pandemics cause more mortality than others, and that its effects are likely to change non-linearly as global travel increases.
Using mathematical models to study pandemic risk naturally leads to questions about how to define a pandemic in quantitative terms. I find that quantitative changes in definition can lead to qualitative changes in the interpretation of model results. I use my novel Markov chain method to explore the effects of different pandemic definitions in interpreting metapopulation models, underlining the importance of precise language when discussing pandemic risk.
Metapopulation models can be used to generate recommendations for pandemic control. I evaluate spatial control strategies that could help prevent or ameliorate pandemics, comparing risk-targeting and centrality-targeting strategies for regional allocation of prophylaxis. Risk-targeting strategies use simulation to allocate prophylaxis to regions at the highest risk of epidemics. Centrality-targeting strategies use properties of the travel network to detect regions that contribute most to a pathogen's circulation. Risk-targeting strategies are more commonly discussed in the literature on spatial pathogen control, but I find that centrality-targeting strategies can reduce infections more effectively when resources for control are limited and the pathogen has the potential to spread widely.
A large quantity of data has been gathered on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in England during the COVID-19 pandemic. I use these data to parameterise a metapopulation model to evaluate prophylactic drug stockpiling for pandemic preparedness. I find that prophylactic drugs can be particularly effective at containing or slowing an outbreak when used alongside non-pharmaceutical interventions.
Storeys of emptiness: an ethnography of empty homes In London
Keywords: Mapping
Ethnographic Fiction
Estates in London
London
Council Flats in London
City
Housing
Regeneration
Heritage
Storytelling
Emptiness
Land

Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in a luxury square and a council estate in Chelsea, London, this thesis questions widespread conceptualisations of empty homes as sites of decay and decline associated with a loss of community. I combine current debates about the transformation of homes into financial assets with the latest material culture approaches to land, belonging and the home, to offer unique insights into everyday experiences of living alongside empty homes. Through rituals and practices such as gardening, visiting the nearby cemetery, drawing family trees and carol singing, the participants in my research created strong feelings of belonging and identity amidst flows of capital and the financialisation of housing. By focusing on specific creative practices that residents engage in to battle or conceal emptiness across the two sites, the thesis extends beyond the policy-oriented approach of “solving” the problem of emptiness, while allowing for a critical interrogation of which homes fall within this problematisation in the first place. I argue that the perceived emptiness is less about absence and more about neglect towards particular forms of care. By paying close attention to practices of care and the trope of the community that is evoked across both my sites, my research transcends any simplistic binary narrative of emptiness as absence or crisis and reveals instead how the concept is linked with deeply ingrained patterns of ownership, cycles of renewal and long-lasting relationships to land.