VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Statebuilding from the bottom up: foreign interveners, local governance, and stabilisation
Keywords: stabilisation
subnational governance
Statebuilding
International peacebuilding missions
Afghanistan
local governance

This thesis interrogates an increasingly prevalent narrative regarding international statebuilding interventions. A growing policy consensus, as well as an incipient body of academic literature, contends that “bottom-up statebuilding” presents a viable alternative to the international community’s traditional liberal statebuilding models, focused on top-down approaches and national-level institutions and actors. In practice, bottom-up statebuilding interventions often take the form of localised civilian “stabilisation” programmes that, it is hoped, will serve as the building blocks of effective subnational governance structures.
Yet the concept of bottom-up statebuilding remains under-theorised, and its outcomes under-examined. Further, the mechanisms through which foreign donors’ local stabilisation programmes will actually lead to durable, “better” statebuilding outcomes are largely unspecified.
This study aims to empirically examine the underlying processes and outcomes of bottom-up statebuilding interventions. Its central research question asks: Under what conditions have donor-backed civilian stabilisation programmes advanced effective and durable decentralised local governance structures in the midst of conflict, thereby successfully promoting bottom-up statebuilding?
To undertake this evaluation, this thesis conducts a structured, focused comparison of three civilian stabilisation programmes. For reasons of comparability and maturity, all were based in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2014; each explicitly aimed to improve local government functions. The evaluative framework assesses each programme upon whether it bolstered capacity, accountability, authority and autonomy at subnational levels of government, and whether these effects endured beyond the lifetime of the programme.
The emergent theory is that bottom-up statebuilding programmes in Afghanistan were more likely to achieve effective, durable local governance when, first, the programme enjoyed a strong partnership with its host government ministerial counterpart, and second, when the programme achieved “local embeddedness” within Afghan vertical and local political economy. The thesis demonstrates that bottom-up statebuilding interventions are far from the panacea sometimes imagined; yet it also contributes a fine-grained picture of how and why one bottom-up initiative did achieve modest success in the otherwise bleak Afghan context. The thesis concludes by considering broader implications for the exogenous statebuilding literature, including the primacy of national actors’ agency in affecting outcomes, and the flaws of service delivery and capacity building as two twin orthodoxies of the donor-backed statebuilding interventions.
Sleep in the intensive care unit:  limiting elements of noise in the critical care environment (SILENCE)
Keywords: AEBCD
patient involvement
ITU
intensive care
environmental monitoring
graphic design
electronic monitoring
qualitative research methods
adult teaching theory
ICU
sound levels
mixed methods

Introduction
Sound levels in the intensive care unit (ICU) are persistently higher than World Health Organisation recommendations. This can lead to poor patient experiences including limited sleep, increased risk of delirium during admission, and prolonged recovery. Staff too can be affected. High noise levels are a distractor, can reduce concentration, and impair effective delivery of care.
This thesis explores the working environment of the ICU and proposes practical interventions for reducing sound levels.
Methods
The mixed methods approach incorporates an exploratory sequential design with an embedded convergent parallel design. Findings from secondary analysis of interviews with ICU patients and relatives, staff focus group discussion, ethnography, and sound levels were amalgamated to build a rich sonic picture of the ICU.
These findings generated materials for the accelerated experience-based co-design (AEBCD) trigger film and subsequent discussion with staff and patients.
The AEBCD process facilitated a complex noise reduction intervention focussed on quantitative measures of sound, which were explained by qualitative analyses of ethnography and interviews.
Teaching materials were developed in line with adult education theory. The electronic interface (visual display of sound) was designed using agile methodology with a focus on user-centred experience.
Results
Staff were motivated to reduce sound levels but were unaware how to do this, or how to assess change. This DPhil has identified opportunities for noise reduction strategies. Experiential learning in combination with online modules increased staff knowledge of how high sound levels can affect patients in their care.
High-fidelity sound level monitoring identified elevated levels occurring at handover, and throughout the day are generated mostly close to patients’ heads.
Conclusions
It is feasible to reduce sound levels in the ICU. Maintaining long-term support for change in the clinical environment requires an understanding of the social and cultural influences that will facilitate or hinder sustained improvement, and multi-disciplinary involvement at all stages.
Suboptimality and efficiency in human decision-making
Keywords: decision making
efficient coding
gain control
suboptimality
adaptive gain

A good decision in isolation may be a bad decision in other conditions. Existing normative theories have been used to benchmark human performance. This is a compelling feature as they provide an understanding of how our decision unfolds in an orderly and rational way. These theories often assumed that decisions are made independent of contexts. However, decisions we have to make in the real-world depends on the context in which they occur. In the past few decades, psychologists and economists notably reveal that human decisions deviate from normative principles when the decisions are made in a context, and protest against one another about whether humans are suboptimal under different considerations of suboptimality. The goal of this thesis is to take these “suboptimal” decisions as a tool to understand what contributes to these suboptimalities. In this thesis, I refine these normative models to show that under reasonable assumptions, biases by decision context can be optimal; and (ii) describe a model embodying an efficiency principle that captures these biases by context across an unusually wide range of settings. In particular, I will focus on how a system that maximises computational efficiency with respect to behavioural needs and environmental statistics can explain: i) why do humans discard useful information during summary judgements, ii) take into account irrelevant information in perceptual judgement tasks, cognitive control, and value-based judgement tasks, and lastly iii) which efficient algorithm can approximate human performance in a trinary choice task.
Pre-supernova neutrinos at Super-Kamiokande with gadolinium
Keywords: supernova
neutrino
Super-Kamiokande

Supernova detection is a major objective of the Super-Kamiokande (SK) ex- periment. In the next stage of SK (SK-Gd), gadolinium (Gd) sulfate will be added to the detector, which will improve the ability of the detector to iden- tify neutrons. A core-collapse supernova will be preceded by an increasing flux of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, from thermal and weak nuclear pro- cesses in the star, over a timescale of hours; some of which may be detected at SK-Gd. This could provide an early warning of an imminent core-collapse supernova, hours earlier than the detection of the neutrinos from core col- lapse. Electron anti-neutrino detection will rely on inverse beta decay events below the usual analysis energy threshold of SK, so Gd loading is vital to reduce backgrounds while maximising detection effciency. Assuming normal neutrino mass ordering, more than 200 events could be detected in the final 12 hours before core collapse for a 15-25 solar mass star at around 200 pc, which is representative of the nearest red supergiant to Earth, alpha Ori (Betel- geuse). At a statistical false alarm rate of 1 per century, detection could be up to 10 hours before core collapse, and a pre-supernova star could be de- tected by SK-Gd up to 600 pc away. A pre-supernova alert could be provided to the astrophysics community following gadolinium loading.
Impact of per-cycle changes in spatial and temporal pattern of dose and biokinetics in neuroblastoma patients receiving 177Lu-DOTATATE
Keywords: lutetium
personalised
dosimetry
radionuclide

Recently, there has been a growth in using post-treatment dosimetry after the first treatment cycle to plan the prescription for subsequent administrations to achieve an acceptable safe dose to kidneys and therapeutic dose to tumour. This level of personalisation recognises inter-patient variability in the uptake and clearance of 177Lu-DOTATATE by the kidneys and tumours. Increasingly, studies are showing additional variation in pharmacokinetics between cycles in an individual patient which may be particularly relevant in NETs cases in paediatric cases like NBL. The central goals for this work were to characterise variability in the spatial and temporal patterns of renal and tumour biokinetics and dose during a four cycle course of 177Lu-DOTATATE and investigate relationships between these variabilities and patient response.
To accomplish this, an open-source software platform was written to facilitate calculation of per cycle pharmacokinetics of organs at risk and lesions using published clinical protocols. Subsequently, we applied these protocols on a single pretherapy Ga68-DOTATATE PET/CT and intra-therapy longitudinal SPECT/CT image sets acquired in six children with NBL after each cycle to understand the temporal change in physical dose and effective half life over a course of treatment in two anatomical and one functional region. The kinetics of radiobiological dose in the tumour was explored using parameters derived from in-vitro experiments.
The effective half life of 177Lu-DOTATATE in the tumour showed the greatest variation between cycles. Overall, the temporal and spatial variability in renal and tumour pharmacokinetics and dose showed no clear relationship with response in this small cohort. This thesis is a significant step towards further understanding intra-cycle variability during a course of treatment which may impact dosimetry based treatment planning aimed at delivering a set dose per cycle.
Investigation of the DNA uptake machinery in naturally competent bacteria
Keywords: Bacillus subtilis
Bacteria
Membrane protein
Horizontal gene transfer
Metalloenzyme
Natural transformation
DNA transport across membranes

Natural transformation is a mode of horizontal gene transfer in bacteria which involves uptake of naked DNA from the environment. The acquired DNA can be incorporated into the bacterial genome and confer useful traits, such as antibiotic resistance and increased virulence. The mechanistic details of how specialised transport proteins allow passage of DNA trough the cell envelope remain elusive.
The membrane protein ComEC forms a channel for DNA transport into the cytoplasm but the molecular details of its structure and function are unknown. An extensive expression screen identified ComEC from Moorella thermoacetica as a candidate for structural and biochemical analysis. Low resolution structural data suggest that the two extramembranous domains of ComEC are located on the same side of the membrane and that they interact.
Biophysical and biochemical studies of the C-terminal soluble domain of ComEC showed that it has manganese(II)-dependent nuclease activity. It was shown that the nuclease activity of the C-terminal domain is required for efficient transformation in B. subtilis. It is likely that the C-terminal domain degrades the non-transforming strand during DNA uptake.
Attempts at isolating DNA uptake complexes for biochemical and structural analysis from competent Bacillus subtilis cells revealed that the competence machinery components are present at very low levels. No native DNA uptake complexes could be isolated.
ComFA is a cytoplasmic membrane-associated ATPase which is thought to power DNA uptake through the ComEC channel. A thermophilic homologue of ComFA was expressed, purified and shown to bind both single- and double-stranded DNA. ComFA was also shown to have ATPase activity. A unique N-terminal extension domain was identified in the thermophilic ComFA, but its function remains unknown.
Together these data contribute to our understanding of DNA uptake across the cytoplasmic membrane.
Ecology of palm populations and communities in a fragmented tropical landscape
Keywords: tropics
plant-animal interactions
palms
fragmentation

Dramatic declines in the global forested area in recent decades have been particularly severe in tropical areas. Tropical forests have been heavily impacted by a range of human activities including conversion to agriculture, hunting, and timber extraction. Deforestation has led to extensive habitat fragmentation, and most tropical forests are now embedded in human-modified landscapes comprising a mosaic of land-cover types. The consequences of these changes for biodiversity and species interactions are an area of active research interest.
In this thesis, I assess whether remnants of rainforest conserve species and interactions within a fragmented tropical landscape in tropical Mexico, and compare data from fragments with data from nearby protected and continuous rainforests. I focus on palms (Arecaceae), an ecologically and economically important plant family of tropical and subtropical regions, and investigate responses to fragmentation at the population and community level, as well as interactions with mutualists (pollinators) and antagonists (pathogens and herbivores).
I found evidence that management practices within fragments affects palm populations: palm abundances were lower in unprotected forest fragments than in those protected from human activities such as wood and timber extraction, extraction of plants and hunting and poaching. Community composition did not differ significantly between these protected and unprotected fragments. Edge effects were also apparent in forest fragments: changes in palm abundances and palm diversity were most pronounced within 100 m of the forest edge, and these edge effects were similar in both protected and unprotected fragments.
For one focal palm species, Geonoma interrupta, pollination and fruit production, and the likely consequences for demography, were investigated in detail. Reproductive success was significantly lower in fragments than in continuous forest. Native bees were the most frequent visitors and likely pollen vectors. Experimental exclusion of natural enemies in a field significantly increased seedling survival of two palm species. However, the effect of excluding enemies did not differ significantly between the forest edge and interior of a fragmented forest.
The results presented in this thesis should be valuable in informing conservation and management strategies to conserve viable populations of rainforest palms. They show that the full effects of habitat fragmentation on palm distributions, diversity and abundance are best understood by taking into account biotic interactions and human management practices.
On dynamics of fluidic jet switching and shear layer instabilities
Keywords: Active flow control
Free shear layer
Fluidics
Flow instabilities

Active flow control systems pave the way for increased cycle efficiency and reduced operational costs of next-generation jet engines. An active fluidic switching device is here proposed as the technological building block required for such a system. A novel switching mechanism based on acoustic excitation of natural flow instabilities is developed for that purpose and, what's more, investigated experimentally, numerically and analytically. The novel actuation mechanism outperforms the current state of the art and thus offers great potential to be used in future aerospace applications. Unlike conventional actuators, acoustic excitation is shown to achieve the balancing act between high bandwidth, sufficient control authority and cost effectiveness.
A proof of concept study using low-frequency excitation and low subsonic flow velocities reveals that the excitation and amplification of the natural shear layer instability results in detachment, switching and reattachment of the flow in a Coanda based fluidic device. The switching mechanism is explained by an enhanced roll-up of vortical structures on the unattached side of the jet causing an asymmetry in entrainment that ultimately leads to a pressure drop sufficient to counteract the attachment force. The detailed analysis of the switching mechanism then allows the development of a second device that operates up to sonic conditions using ultrasound. However, the switching mechanism of the second device is found to rely on the excitation of a different flow instability; namely, the jet preferred mode as well as the first subharmonic of the natural shear layer instability. This can be attributed to a change in the shear layer characteristics as the Reynolds number increases.
In addition, ambiguous data obtained from both Large-Eddy Simulation and Particle Image Velocimetry suggest a fundamental different relationship between the natural shear layer instability and the jet preferred mode with respect to the currently accepted point of view. This is investigated separately by means of the downstream development of the shear layer characteristics of an excited round jet subject to different initial conditions.
Phonological competition during spoken-word recognition in infants and adults
Keywords: visual world paradigm
eye tracking
spoken-word recognition
language development
growth curve analysis
phonology
infants

This thesis examines how phonological information mediates visual attention in adults and 2-year-olds. It makes use of the Visual World Paradigm during which participants see images on a screen and hear phonologically related or unrelated words in order to investigate the time course of processing of phonological information. It further examines how the amount of time observers are given to look at the images before hearing the spoken word (pre-naming time) and the concept of implicit naming (silent labelling of the images) modulate observers' processing strategies. Findings from Experiments 1-4 reveal that adults employ continuous processing strategies whereby different lexical entries compete with each other in parallel until the most relevant entry is selected. In contrast to previous findings (Huettig & McQueen, 2007), results from Experiments 1 and 2 show that adults' visual attention is mediated by phonological information even with a very short pre-naming time of 200ms suggesting that silent labeling of the images before hearing the auditory input is not required for this modulation. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrate that when given a pre-naming phase, adults make use of processing strategies focusing on the first phoneme of words whereas without any pre-naming time, they rely more on processing strategies taking into account the overall similarity of words. Experiment 6 shows that while infants' visual attention does not seem to be mediated by phonological information when using real words - possibly due to the activation of lexical information - 2-year-olds seem to place greater importance on the overall similarity between words rather than on the onset of spoken words when presented with pseudowords. Continuous and incremental models of spoken-word recognition are contrasted and the role of implicit naming and the length of the pre-naming time is discussed in relation to these models. Finally, it is discussed how assumptions made by the Featurally-Underspecified Lexicon account (Lahiri & Reetz, 2010) might feed into the extension of continuous processing models such as the TRACE model (McClelland & Elman, 1986) (Experiment 7).
The effect of EEG on assessment of cerebral autoregulation
Keywords: Assessment of Autoregulation
Autoregulation
Cerebral Autoregulation

Cerebral blood flow (CBF) is determined by vascular resistance, mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) and intracranial pressure. The energy requirement of brain cells means CBF has to be maintained constant despite changes in pressures. Cerebral autoregulation is the mechanism which keeps the CBF constant for a range of variations in pressure. Autoregulation can be impaired after stroke, trauma or anaesthesia. Following the impairment of autoregulation, such as under intensive care conditions, previous studies have found that Electroencephalography (EEG) signals also change in their frequency content in a manner that corresponds to decreases in CBF. These studies have suggested that decreasing levels of blood flow change the metabolic and electrical activity of cortical neurons. Assessment of autoregulation status is essential to help to reduce or to prevent any further damage or cell death. With the availability of techniques to continuously monitor and to record physiological variables such as blood pressure, blood flow rate, it is possible to make continuous assessments of autoregulation. There are many methods to assess autoregulation and the most commonly used methods include transfer function analysis (TFA) and the autoregulation index (ARI) method. As EEG has the advantage that it can be recorded in real time, it offers the promise of potentially providing an additional non-invasive real time autoregulation assessment, given that we have some understanding of interpreting how exactly changes in EEG reflect the status of blood flow. Though there is strong clinical evidence of the relationship between EEG frequency change and CBF changes there are no model based investigations or methods that could explain the mechanism of how both are coupled. In order to attempt a study of this link between EEG and CBF, we devised an artificial reduction in CBF levels, by increasing the resistance of large arteries in steps, using an existing haemodynamic model, which is capable of handling simultaneous changes in ABP, CO2 and neural input (EEG). We generated CBF using our haemodynamic model, by feeding in experimental data for ABP, CO2 and synthetic EEG, for every step reduction in large artery resistance. Using the autoregulation assessment methods TFA and ARI, we studied how the EEG behaviour affects the assessment of autoregulation. Results show that EEG input appears to make autoregulation ’better’ by a small fraction under the circumstances of the model and data we have used. There is, however, high variability between different subject data. The implication from this study is that, on average EEG input increases the measure of autoregulation slightly, but the variability between subjects means that more, controlled, data are required to validate fully this study’s observations.