VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Image, manuscript, print: Le Roman de la rose, ca. 1481-1538
Keywords: Manuscript and Printed Book Production
Poetry
Woodcuts
Paris
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Word and Image
France
Illumination
Lyon
Image Reception
Authorship
Roman de la rose
History of Art and Visual Culture
Readership
Image Production and Circulation
Book Industries and Trade

This thesis examines the transmission and reception of images in Le Roman de la rose manuscripts and printed editions of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Through in-depth case studies, I analyse how illustrators, editors, and readers used printed imagery in Rose books ca. 1481-1538, during the period of Rose printed edition production, exploring wider cross-disciplinary issues concerning the history of the book, the relationship between word and image, and readership practices following the advent of French printing. I argue that the mobility of printed imagery, which was facilitated in part by the wider dissemination of woodcuts in workshops, influenced the form and function of images in books. In addition, I problematize the 'transition' from manuscript to print in the later Middle Ages, through an investigation of artisans' personal and professional collaborations and evidence of image sharing between hand-illustrated and printed books. Bookmakers and readers used printed imagery in fascinating ways in books, appropriating and modifying woodcuts in order to engage with certain subjects and motifs. Readers' visual responses to books are under-examined, and I assess how readers' drawings add insight into their understanding of printed editions and those editions' visual iconography. French books contain a large body of evidence pertaining to image production and reception, but printed imagery is often overlooked, despite its potential to shed light on the practices of illustrators, editors, and readers. I provide new strategies for examining patterns of printed image production, circulation, and reception in the visual presentations of manuscripts and printed editions of this period. I also deepen understanding of the Rose and its consumption in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, probing the role of images in books.
New approaches for cofactor recycling: application to chemical synthesis and electrochemical devices
Keywords: cofactor recycling
Di-hydrogen driven biocatalysis

The work in this Thesis addresses the challenges associated with using redox enzymes for chemical synthesis. The use of enzymes as catalysts in the synthesis of fine chemicals is becoming more wide spread, in part due their ability to catalyse reactions with incredible selectivity under relatively mild conditions. In particular, enzymes are useful for selective reduction of ketones to enantiomerically pure alcohols or amines, and partial oxidations of alkanes to alcohols. However, a key limitation to exploiting redox enzymes in these reaction pathways is the requirement for a specialised electron source, usually the expensive nicotinamide cofactors NADH or NADPH.
Existing cofactor regeneration methods use a second enzyme with a sacrificial substrate which is oxidised to generate a stoichiometric waste product; this complicates isolation of the desired product and prevents the environmental benefits of biocatalysis from being fully realised. In order to provide clean and efficient biocatalytic routes, improved recycling methods for these cofactors are crucial. This Thesis develops two novel methods for in situ cofactor recycling. The first is an electro-enzymatic system; an NAD+-reductase enzyme is shown to use electrons directly from an electrode for supply of NADH to a co-immobilised cofactor-dependent enzyme. The second uses a hydrogenase, NAD+ reductase and cofactor-dependent enzyme immobilised on conducting particles for H2-driven NADH regeneration. This relies on the thermodynamically favourable reduction of NAD+ by H2 when the hydrogenase and NAD+-reductase are in electronic contact, provided by the conducting particle.
The electro-enzymatic approach to NAD+ reduction is then adapted for electrochemical devices; an enzyme catalysed fuel cell and a self-powered biosensor were considered.
Defective iron homeostasis in lysosomal storage diseases
Keywords: glycosphingolipids
biomarker
metal
Lysosomal storage diseases

Niemann-Pick type C1 (NPC1) disease is a neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disorder characterized by the accumulation of multiple lipids in the late endosome/lysosomal system and reduced acidic store calcium levels. Since the lysosomal system is involved in regulating aspects of transition metal ion homeostasis and its intracellular compartmentalization, we have investigated whether there are metal ion metabolism defects and haematological abnormalities in NPC1 disease. We have identified multiple haematological changes, including decreased haematocrit, haemoglobin and mean corpuscular haemoglobin volume in Npc1-/- mice. Similar haematological changes with low normal serum iron levels as well as low normal haematocrit, haemoglobin, mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular haemoglobin were observed in NPC1 patients, suggesting that NPC1 patients are at risk of iron deficiency. Furthermore, decreased levels of serum iron, transferrin saturation, elevated levels of serum copper and ceruloplasmin and up-regulated expression of soluble transferrin receptor (s-TfR), ferritin levels in Npc1-/- mice and NPC1 patients were observed. Additionally, up-regulation of hepatic transferrin receptor, down-regulation of hepatic hepcidin and altered expression of multiple copper and zinc transporters were also found in Npc1-/- mice. These data demonstrate that systemic metal dyshomeostasis, intracellular metal compartmentalization defects and impaired erythropoiesis occur in NPC1 disease. As transition metal dyshomeostasis may be involved in the pathogenesis of NPC1 disease, we hypothesized this may represent a novel therapeutic intervention point for adjunctive therapy. To test this hypothesis, we have evaluated several metal manipulation treatments, including metal supplementation, metal chelation and metal ionophore treatments, in Npc1-/- mice. Our results revealed that (i) iron supplementation, (ii) reduced copper absorption reagent (iii) and copper/zinc ionophore therapies significantly either improved haematological abnormalities, neurological/motor functions or survival in Npc1-/- mice. These data suggest that metal-targeted therapies may be useful adjunctive therapies in NPC1 disease patients.
Becoming urban: space and mobility amongst Tibetan migrant youths in Lhasa
Keywords: Lhasa
Tibet
urbanism

This thesis examines how Tibetan residents of different social backgrounds use and experience the space of the city of Lhasa. I mainly concentrate on young Tibetan rural migrants and document a number of similarities and differences between their spatial practices and those of young Tibetans from urban backgrounds. This thesis shows that my rural migrant informants generally gravitate towards the old quarter of the city, where they practise at religious sites, attend informal private schools, and reside in heavily religious and traditionalist domestic spaces. These spatial practices largely distinguish them from young Tibetans from wealthier families (particularly those of government workers) and who have previously lived in inland China: most often these youths frequent sinicised parts of the city, inhabit domestic spaces lacking religious objects, and are either less interested in or banned from engaging in religious practice. Despite these different orientations, however, the ethnography ultimately shows that a clear-cut distinction between villagers and urbanites cannot be drawn. By looking at both the city of Lhasa and nearby rural villages, the thesis shows that neither the former nor the latter are univocally traditionalist or modernising. Furthermore, informants’ practices both persist and change over time and while throughout the fieldwork some young migrant informants continued in their largely traditionalist engagements within Lhasa’s space, others changed their attitudes and started paying less attention to religion and traditionalist pursuits. To do justice to the changing orientations of my informants, I apply a dynamic theoretical model drawn from practice theory whereby practices and predispositions are shown to be resilient, but not fixed. Ultimately, this thesis proposes that, despite the presence of often-distinct orientations between villagers and urbanites in contemporary Lhasa, all young Tibetans in the city share a common socio-political terrain. In Lhasa, traditionalist predispositions persist, but social mobility, government control, and urbanisation also often lead to the development of more practical, secular, and sinicised attitudes.
Signal processing methods for heart rate variability
Keywords: signal processing
Fast Fourier Transform
heart rate variability
Lomb periodogram

Heart rate variability (HRV), the changes in the beat-to-beat heart rate calculated from the electrocardiogram (ECG), is a key indicator of an individual's cardiovascular condition. Assessment of HRV has been shown to aid clinical diagnosis and intervention strategies. However, the variety of HRV estimation methods and contradictory reports in this field indicate that there is a need for a more rigorous investigation of these methods as aids to clinical evaluation. This thesis investigates the development of appropriate HRV signal processing techniques in the context of pilot studies in two fields of potential application, sleep and head-up tilting (HUT).
A novel method for characterising normality in the ECG using both timing information and morphological characteristics is presented. A neural network, used to learn the beat-to-beat variations in ECG waveform morphology, is shown to provide a highly sensitive technique for identifying normal beats.
Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) based frequency-domain HRV techniques, which require re-sampling of the inherently unevenly sampled heart beat time-series (RR tachogram) to produce an evenly sampled time series, are then explored using a new method for producing an artificial RR tachogram. Re-sampling is shown to produce a significant error in the estimation of an (entirely specified) artificial RR tachogram. The Lomb periodogram, a method which requires no re-sampling and is applicable to the unevenly sampled nature of the signal is investigated. Experiments demonstrate that the Lomb periodogram is superior to the FFT for evaluating HRV measured by the LF/HF-ratio, a ratio of the low to high frequency power in the RR tachogram within a specified band (0.04-0.4 Hz). The effect of adding artificial ectopic beats in the RR tachogram is then considered and it is shown that ectopic beats significantly alter the spectrum and therefore must be removed or replaced. Replacing ectopic beats by phantom beats is compared to the case of ectopic-realted RR interval removal for the FFT and Lomb methods for varying levels of ectopy. The Lomb periodogram is shown to provide a signficantly better estimate of the LF/HF- ratio under these conditions and is a robust method for measuring the LF/HF-ratio in the presence of (a possibly unknown number of) ectpoic beats or artefacts.
The Lomb peridogram and FFT-based techniques are applied to a database of sleep apnoeic and normal subjects. A new method of assessing HRV during sleep is proposed to minimise the confounding effects on HRV of changes due to changing mental activity. Estimation of LF/HF-ratio using the Lomb technique is shown to separate these two patient groups more effectively than with FFT-based techniques. Results are also presented for the application of these methods to controlled (HUT) studies on subjects with syncope, an autonomic nervous system problem, which indicate that the techniques developed in this thesis may provide a method for differentiating between sub-classes of syncope.
Algebras for tree algorithms
Keywords: tree algebras

This thesis presents an investigation into the properties of various algebras of trees. In particular, we study the influence that the structure of a tree algebra has on the solution of algorithmic problems about trees in that algebra. The investigation is conducted within the framework provided by the Bird-Meertens formalism, a calculus for the construction of programs by equational reasoning from their specifications.
We present three different tree algebras: two kinds of binary tree and a kind of general tree. One of the binary tree algebras, called "hip trees", is new. Instead of being built with a single ternary operator, hip trees are built with two binary operators which respectively add left and right children to trees which do not already have them; these operators enjoy a kind of associativity property.
Each of these algebras brings with it with a class of "structure-respecting" functions called catamorphisms; the definition of a catamorphism and a number of its properties come for free from the definition of the algebra, because the algebra is chosen to be initial in a class of algebras induced by a (cocontinuous) functor. Each algebra also brings with it, but not for free, classes of "structure-preserving" functions called accumulations. An accumulation is a function that preserves the shape of a structured object such as a tree, but replaces each element of that object with some catamorphism applied to some of the other elements. The two classes of accumulation that we study are the "upwards" and "downwards" accumulations, which pass information from the leaves of a tree towards the root and from the root towards the leaves, respectively.
Upwards and downwards accumulations turn out to be the key to the solution of many problems about trees. We derive accumulation-based algorithms for a number of problems; these include the parallel prefix algorithm for the prefix sums problem, algorithms for bracket matching and for drawing binary and general trees, and evaluators for decorating parse trees according to an attribute grammar.
Ultrasound-triggered drug release from liposomes using nanoscale cavitation nuclei
Keywords: HIFU
Nanotechnology
Chemotherapeutic
Ultrasound
Cancer
Liposomes
Nanoparticles

Side effects of current chemotherapeutics limit their use in cancer therapy. Although many current drugs are highly toxic and potent, the effects they have on non-cancerous tissue are unbearable for patients. Targeting these drugs may provide a means to restrict their toxic effects to only cancer tissue while leaving healthy tissue unaffected. This approach requires that the drug is only available in cancer tissue, which has been achieved here by encapsulating drugs into liposomal nano-capsules which are capable of passively accumulating in cancerous tissue via the enhanced permeability and retention effect (EPR). In addition to localisation, a threshold dose must be achieved to deliver the desired toxic effect to the target tumour tissue. Previous strategies have relied on passive 'leaching' of the drug from liposomes, however this 'leaching' does not necessarily achieve the threshold dose required. In the present work, a new generation of liposomes has been developed whereby release is solely achieved in the presence of ultrasound triggered cavitation.
Instigation of such cavitation events would normally require the target tissue be exposed to high and possibly damaging ultrasound pressures. To remove the need for these high pressures, cavitation nuclei have been developed to lower the cavitation threshold of surrounding media. To allow for improved co-localisation and treatment deeper into cancer tissue, cavitation nuclei were developed to be in the nanoscale size range. Two types of novel cavitation nuclei were produced, a rough surfaced carbon nanoparticle (CNP, ~180 nm) and smooth shaped polymeric nano-cup particle (NC, ~150, 470, or 770 nm). Both types of particle are solid nanoparticles with gas entrapped on their surface which was capable of cavitating in response to ultrasound without greatly affecting the particle itself. These particles are classified as cavicatalytic nanoparticles due to their ability to reduce the cavitation threshold of their surrounding media without being destroyed themselves. Finally, an entirely nanoscale release system was developed and tested in vitro and in vivo. The drug carrier (the liposome) and effector agent (the cavicatalytic nanoparticle) were used to demonstrate ultrasound triggered drug release, specifically in response to the generation of cavitation events. These cavitation events could be non-invasively monitored and characterised, adding to the potential clinical utility of the technologies developed and described here.
Solid acid zeolite catalysts for benzene/ ethylene alkylation reactions
Keywords: ethylbenzene
alkylation
zeolite

Alkylation of benzene with ethylene to ethylbenzene is widely used in the petrochemical industry. Ethylbenzene is an important raw material in the petrochemical industry. It is used as feedstock for the production of styrene, an important material for plastic and rubber production.
The conventional catalyst for this alkylation process is AlCl₃, which accounted for 24% of the worldwide ethylbenzene production in 2009.
As utilization of this catalyst involves problems with separation, handling, safety and corrosion, immense efforts have been devoted to the development of new catalysts for ethylbenzene production.
Compared with AlCl₃, zeolites possess advantages in easy separation, low corrosion, high surface area as well as uniform microporous structure coupled to shape selectivity, and thus they are better acidic catalysts when applied in petrochemical industry.
In this thesis, zeolite catalysts based on Y, ZSM-5 and HBeta were prepared and characterized by several techniques (XRD, MAS NMR, BET and SEM). The catalytic performance of these zeolite catalysts has been studied in the benzene/ethylene alkylation reaction in the gas phase using a fixed bed reactor at reaction temperature of 250ºC and a 5 bar pressure with a 0.5 h-1 ethylene space velocity (WHSV) and different benzene to ethylene feed ratios. The products were identified by GC/MS and quantified by gas chromatography.
These studies highlight the importance of ion-exchange with rare earth cations as a powerful method to control the local structural and catalytic properties of zeolites, and also to enhance the acid properties upon rare earth exchange.
Most notable is the significant enhancement in product selectivity – viz. ethylbenzene selectivity- for La and Ce ion-exchanged HZSM-5 zeolite catalysts, showing a 30% + increase in selectivity for the alkylation reaction after rare-earth ion exchange.
This work done at KACST-Oxford Petrochemical Research Center (KOPRC) in the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, Oxford University.
Four Middle English Charlemagne romances: a revaluation of the non-cyclic verse texts and the holograph Sir Ferumbras
Keywords: The Sege of Melayne
English Charlemagne romances
Song of Roland
The Taill of Rauf Coilyear
Sir Firumbras
Middle English
poems

Four Middle English Charlemagne Romances are examined with the intention of disproving conventional claims that English romances of the 'Matter of France' are typically undistinguished.
The manuscript of the Ashmole Sir Ferumbras is a holograph; preserved with it, on sheets which originally formed the binding, is a portion of the poem's rough draft. Comparison of the draft with the fair copy reveals something of the romancer's translational and compositional method, and illustrates well his enthusiasm for, and ability occasionally to improve upon, his French source.
The fragment of The Song of Roland displays some sensitivity to the heroic essence of its famous French model. The poem also displays, however, a free, sensitive, sometimes eloquent and technically complex, adaptation of notable features of that model.
The Sege of Melayne has been recognized for its energy; but extensive studies of the poem appear to have been prevented by an inability to account for the poem's lack of known sources and its use of extraordinary episodes and unusual narrative techniques. Analogues and possible influences do, however, exist; and most reveal the poem's remarkable affinity with propagandistic crusading literature. This affinity goes some way toward explaining, and allowing us to appreciate, the poem's unusual features.
Rauf Coilyear is unusually described as a competent and straightforwardly humorous tale similar in spirit to its analogues. A closer look, however, shows the humour to be complicated by the seriousness of a social critique; at times the hero's experiences is far from laughable. There is, in fact, some similarity, both of incident and theme, with the best poems of the 'Gawain-group'. That a comparison with such poems (and, indeed, with 'serious' elements in the other Charlemagne romances) can convincingly be made suggests that our expectations of the poem's literary significance should be revised accordingly.
Behaviour of footings for offshore structures under combined loads
Keywords: offshore
foundation
clay
jack-up

The lack of knowledge about the behaviour of footings for jack-up rigs under storm loads poses a design problem which can be tackled by model testing. The areas of prime concern are the ultimate loads on footings under combined loading, which affects the safety of the rig, and the rotational stiffness, which affects the interaction between the foundation and the structure. A programme of loading tests was performed on model footings on clay, and was divided into two stages: monotonic loading and cyclic loading. The clay samples were obtained by consolidating Speswhite kaolin slurry in cylindrical tanks 450mm in diameter. The strength and compressibility characteristics of the samples were verified by means of standard laboratory tests. The model footings were 50mm and 100mm in diameter and several shapes were tested: circular flat plate, cones of various angles and model spud-cans. Loads and displacements were monitored using appropriate instrumentation and a data logger. A series of central vertical loading tests provided data for comparison with existing bearing capacity theories. Combined loading tests were performed applying a displacement controlled horizontal load at a fixed height above the footing which was also subjected to a fixed vertical load. The main series of tests involved a parametric study of the relevant variables. Special tests allowed the assessment of the effect of embedment of the footing and the interaction of a flexible leg with the foundation. Cyclic loading tests were carried out using a load controlled system which applied a sinusoidal load simulating wave action. Effects of currents were investigated by introducing an offset to the loading cycle. The influence of amplitude and period of loading as well as the influence of vertical load were also investigated. Special tests were carried out to cover some peculiarities of real loading conditions. Fitting of a three-parameter hyperbola to the test results provided a systematic and accurate method of analysis of monotonic loading tests, leading to valuable information involving stiffness and ultimate loads. Analysis of cyclic loading tests yielded useful qualitative information regarding the progress of settlement and the variation of rotational stiffness and damping ratio with the number of cycles.