VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Behavioural adjustments of lion (Panthera Leo) in response to risk of human-caused mortality
Keywords: Lion behavioural ecology
Landscape of coexistence
Human carnivore conflict
Ecology of fear

Fear of predation can have a major impact on the behaviour of prey species. Despite recent codifying of the concept of the ecology of fear, there has been relatively little focus on how these ideas apply to large carnivore species which, although not prey sensu stricto, may experience fear as a result of threats from humans. This thesis argues that large mammalian carnivores are subject to a Landscape of Fear similar to that described for prey species, and will respond behaviourally to fear of human-caused mortality.
The idea of a "Landscape of Coexistence" is introduced to denote the perceived risk from humans and associated behavioural responses that can be overlain on spatio-temporally heterogeneous landscapes. Literature on the ecology of fear for large mammalian carnivores and, as there is a dearth of such literature, the current theory on the ecology of fear for other guilds is reviewed, and how this might inform large carnivore behaviour in a Landscape of Coexistence is explored. Behavioural effects of human-caused mortality risk are revealed for lions living in a human dominated landscape (Laikipia County, Kenya), specifically how lions adjust their movement patterns, habitat use and foraging tactics when in proximity to humans. It is argued that these behavioural adjustments represent a trade-off between maximising fitness enhancing activities and minimising the risk of human-caused mortality, thus need to be taken into consideration along with the lethal effects of humans when explaining the density, distribution and behaviour of lions throughout much of their remaining range.
Although fear is generic, 'human-caused mortality risk' represents a distinct and very important sub-set of the ecology of fear for the carnivore guild. The existence of a Landscape of Coexistence has implications for understanding their foraging ecology, and ultimately their population dynamics and role in the ecosystem, and is therefore, important for the conservation of large carnivores throughout large parts of their remaining ranges.
Lung cancer assistant: a hybrid clinical decision support application in lung cancer treatment selection
Keywords: Bayesian Networks
Ontologies

We describe an online clinical decision support (CDS) system, Lung Cancer Assistant (LCA), which we have developed to aid the clinicians in arriving at informed treatment decisions for lung cancer patients at multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings. LCA integrates rule-based and probabilistic decision support within a single platform. To our knowledge, this is the first time this has been achieved in the context of CDS in cancer care.
Rule-based decision support is achieved by an original ontological guideline rule inference framework that operates on a domain-specific module of Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT), containing clinical concepts and guideline rule knowledge elicited from the major national and international guideline publishers. It adopts a conventional argumentation-based decision model, whereby the decision options are listed along with arguments derived by matching the patient records to the guideline rule base. As an additional feature of this framework, when a new patient is entered, LCA displays the most similar patients to the one being viewed.
Probabilistic inference is provided by a Bayesian Network (BN) whose structure and parameters have been learned based on the English Lung Cancer Database (LUCADA). This allows LCA to predict the probability of patient survival and lay out how the selection of different treatment plans would affect it.
Based on a retrospective patient subset from LUCADA, we present empirical results on the treatment recommendations provided by both functionalities of LCA and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we present preliminary work, which may allow utilising the BN to calculate survival odd ratios that could be translated into quantitative degrees of support for the guideline rule-based arguments. An online version of LCA is accessible on http://lca.eng.ox.ac.uk.
The regulation of mobile money
Keywords: Mobile money
Payments
Financial Regulation
Africa

This thesis examines the regulation of 'mobile money'. This is an electronic payment and storage service provided by phone companies ('mobile money firms' or 'MM firms'). The first mobile money service, M-Pesa, was launched in Kenya in 2007. Since then, mobile money has spread rapidly throughout the developing world, particularly across Africa. A novel feature of mobile money is its ability to serve large numbers of people who do not have bank accounts, commonly labelled 'the unbanked'.
The thesis offers a framework, based on a functional approach, to analyse the key regulatory and policy issues that arise when customers’ funds are stored and transferred within mobile money platforms. The objectives of this framework are drawn from traditional financial regulation, such as financial stability and consumer protection, and 'financial inclusion', which involves connecting the unbanked to formal, electronic payment and storage functions.
The thesis makes three main claims. First, mobile money operates as a shadow retail deposit system. Mobile money is 'shadow' because a customer contracts with a non-banking firm. It is 'retail' because the system meets the payment needs of individuals for ordinary transactions. And the service is a 'deposit' system because a mobile money account provides payment and storage functions which are functionally equivalent to a bank deposit.
Second, mobile money provides these payment and storage functions, functionally equivalent to a bank deposit, through a different legal structure to that used by a bank to provide deposit account services. This structure, which is established through private ordering, comprises a set of mechanisms by which the MM firm (the 'agent' in the service) and its associates credibly commit to safeguard the funds of the mobile money customers (the 'principals') for the purposes of providing payment and storage functions.
Collectively, these commitments require the MM firm to maintain a 1:1 relationship between cash received from customers, which is stored within the system as highly liquid assets, and 'e-money' which customers use in the mobile money service. As a result, mobile money customers face primarily operational risks, usually without the credit and liquidity risks associated with banking.
Third, public ordering can increase the efficiency of MM firms' commitments in addressing risks in mobile money platforms through adopting an 'active' approach to regulation. In this approach, the policymaker monitors a greater range of risks and more closely than what might be expected in other comparable principal-agent relationships, such as retail investors and financial intermediaries, and depositors and banks. This approach is appropriate because unbanked customers are likely to face significant information asymmetries with MM firms and coordination problems amongst themselves. This means they are unlikely to effectively monitor a range of risks to the service caused by the MM firm and its associates.
The Life of S. Pancratius of Taormina
Keywords: Pancratius
Taormina
saints

The Life of S. Pancratius of Taormina describes the mission and martyrdom of S. Pancratius, a disciple of the Apostle Peter sent to evangelize Taormina as its first bishop, and purports to have been written by S. Pancratius’ successor, Evagrius. It also records details concerning S. Marcian, who was dispatched to Syracuse at the same time. The text exists in three recensions. The editio princeps of the first recension is presented here, based on six manuscripts (Vat. Gr. 1591, Mess. S. Salv. 53, Crypt. BβV, Vat. Gr. 1985, Vind. Hist. Gr. 3 and Vat. Ottobon. Gr. 92), together with an introduction and commentary. External and internal evidence has been used to argue that it should be dated to the early eighth century and that it is of Sicilian provenance. The analysis of the sources of the text and its presentation of the apostolic era contributes to our understanding of the Byzantine attitude to the past and of the novelistic approach to hagiography. The Life is a product of an important, but obscure period of Sicilian history, and it provides some evidence from a local perspective concerning matters such as ecclesiastical arrangements and attitudes in Sicily, views about religious images, practices in church decoration, liturgical rites, book production, the development of legends concerning the apostles, especially S. Peter, civil and military administration, the Sicilian language question, the topography of Sicily and Calabria and contacts with Lombardy, as well as curious references to Slavs and Avars in Sicily. The Commentary is concerned with these questions and in general with the exegesis of the text. A summary of the use made of the Life of S. Pancratius by later writers contributes to our understanding of the iconoclastic controversy. An edition of the Encomium of S. Pancratius by Gregory the Pagurite, probably written in the early ninth century, has been included in an Appendix.
The politics of counterinsurgency and statemaking in modern India
Keywords: state-society relations
counterinsurgency
India
development
Maoism
the state

This thesis undertakes a study of the modern state in India in the context of counterinsurgency. Through a combination of ethnographic and historical methods, it explores the processes and practices of state formation and legitimacy-building in an erstwhile Maoist guerrilla zone of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. The colonial and postcolonial histories of this forested region, known popularly as the Jungle Mahals, are punctuated by moments of violent conflict and regime-change. These moments of rupture have tended to periodically reorder the relationships between the modern state and its ordinary subjects. Accordingly, the thesis reconstructs a trajectory of state-society relations in the Jungle Mahals from the early colonial era, when East India Company officials created a modern state apparatus to deal with rural rebellions, to the present, when the Indian government has pursued a 'development' agenda to wean ordinary people away from Maoist rebels. I show that periods of insurgency and counterinsurgency ought to be recognised as critical junctures in the history of the modern state in frontier regions such as the Jungle Mahals.
The modern state is made and remade in the course of counterinsurgency as both state and rural society are reordered in tandem from above and below. Hence, I make a case for studying the state, understood as both an idea and a set of material practices, from 'within', that is, as emerging through the mediation of actors who represent the state and ordinary villagers in my fieldsites. Furthermore, through an exploration of ordinary villagers’ responses to counterinsurgency in the Jungle Mahals, this thesis argues that popular responses to counterinsurgency cannot be explained through the binaries of resistance and complicity. In other words, it is necessary to examine the complex textures of people's lives and subjectivities vis-à-vis the state during and after counterinsurgencies in order to appreciate how statemaking in such circumstances, far from being a top-down imposition on hapless subjects, emerges from below as well.
Measurements of the K-shell Opacity in Solid-density Plasmas heated by an X-ray Free Electron Laser
Keywords: Hot Dense Matter
Atomic Physics
Plasma Physics
X-ray spectroscopy
X-ray Free Electron Lasers

The advances achieved using X-ray Free Electron Lasers such as the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), have revolutionised the routine production of uniform solid-density plasmas. Pulses of X-rays above 1 keV and with durations shorter than 100 fs attaining intensities on target of around 1017 Wcm-2 are now routinely created. Through simple single-photon photoionization events with atoms in ambient solid conditions, it is possible to create uniform samples that are simultaneously hot, dense, and highly ionized which may be easily modelled.
This thesis describes measurements of the spectrally-resolved X-rays emitted from solid-density magnesium targets of varying sub-μm thicknesses isochorically heated by an X-ray laser. The data exhibit a thickness-independent source function, allowing the extraction of a measure of the opacity to K-shell X-rays within well-defined regimes of electron density and temperature, extremely close to Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium conditions by fitting to the simple 1D slab solution of the equation of radiative transfer. The deduced opacities at the peak of the K-α transitions of the ions are consistent with those predicted by detailed atomic-kinetics calculations.
The extracted opacities transpire to be robust to a plethora of variations in X-ray drive conditions, including the shape, pulse-length, and energy content. Furthermore the approximations in using the 1D slab solution are examined in detail and found to be good.
A full three-dimensional model of the plasma is advanced which includes attenuation, line-of-sight effects, full longitudinal and transverse gradients, and photon time-of-flight effects. The results from this model are found to also agree with the simpler 1D slab solution.
This novel method of elucidating opacities may complement other methods based on absorption and could be important for further benchmarking of opacities in solar-interior relevant conditions.
Phase-change materials for photonic memories and optoelectronic applications
Keywords: Phase-change photonics
Phase-change chalcogenide photonics
Non-volatile memories
Phase-change nanodisplay
Photonic memories

The content of this thesis encompasses the fundamentals, modelling, chip design, nanofabrication process, measurement setup, and experimental results of devices exploiting the optical properties of phase-change chalcogenide materials. Special attention is paid to integrated Si3N4 nanophotonic circuits for optical switching and memory applications, as well as to multilayer stacks for colour modulation.
Herein, the implementation of the first robust, non-volatile, phase-change photonic memory is presented. By utilising optical near-field effects for Read, Write and Erase operations, bit storage of up to eight transmission levels is demonstrated in a single device employing Ge2Sb2Te5 as the active material. These on-chip memory cells feature single-shot read-out of the transmission state and switching energies as low as 13.4pJ at speeds approaching 1GHz. The capability to readily switch between intermediate states is also demonstrated, a feature that requires complex iteration-based algorithms in electronic phase-change memories. This photonic memory is not only the first truly non-volatile memory---a long-term elusive goal in integrated photonics---but could also potentially represent the first multi-level memory, including electronic counterparts, that requires no computational post-processing or drift correction. These findings provide a pathway towards solving the throughput limitations of current computer architectures by eliminating the so-called von-Neumann bottleneck and portend a new paradigm in all-photonic memory, non-conventional computing, and tunable photonic devices.
Finally, novel capabilities in electro-optic colour modulation using phase-change materials are demonstrated. In particular, this thesis offers the first implementation of Ag3In4Sb76Te17-based optical cavities for colour modulation on low-dimensional multilayer stacks. Moreover, "gray-scale" image writing is demonstrated by establishing intermediate levels of crystallisation via voltage modulation. This finding, in turn, corresponds to the first demonstration of nonvolatile colour-depth modulation in the emerging phase-change materials nanodisplay technology, featuring resolutions down to 50nm. Furthermore, a comprehensive comparison is carried out for two types of materials: growth- (Ag3In4Sb76Te17) and nucleation-dominated (Ge2Sb2Te5) alloys in terms of colour, energy efficiency, and resolution. These results provide new tools for the new generation of bistable and ultra-high-resolution displays and smart glasses while allowing for other potential applications in photonics and optoelectronics.
Commercial diplomacy and investment protection: American diplomatic interventions to protect US assets overseas since 1990
Keywords: Commercial Diplomacy
Depoliticization

In recent decades international economic disputes have become ever more legalized, which in principle allows states to compartmentalize individual disputes from broader diplomatic relations. Nowhere is this more true than in the international investment regime, where private investors have been empowered to directly sue host states in international arbitration, rather than relying on their home states for diplomatic support.
I challenge the standard narrative that investment protection has become "depoliticized", and reveal the persistent importance of informal commercial diplomacy in the settlement of investment disputes. I show that the US government continues to intervene diplomatically in disputes between American investors and developing country governments, despite the availability of institutional alternatives. Moreover, I argue such interventions are not primarily driven by pressure from private companies, but by government bureaucracies strategically pursuing their own interests, including advocating for investment climate reforms and demonstrating the value of commercial diplomacy to domestic constituencies.
The empirical support for these claims proceeds in three stages. First, I use zero-inflated negative binomial regressions to demonstrate that American investors are more likely to file formal arbitration claims when they are less able to rely on diplomatic support, namely when the position of ambassador to the host state is temporarily vacant. Second, I provide a behind-the-scenes look at American investment protection policy using an original dataset of US diplomatic interventions in 256 investment disputes discussed in internal State Department cables released via WikiLeaks. Third, I use structured, focused comparisons in seven case studies of investment disputes to probe the particular drivers of US intervention, and show that diplomatic engagement is most likely in cases where the state itself has strong interests in intervening, rather than when private pressure compels it to do so.
This thesis makes important and original contributions both to the literature on the international investment regime – which to date has broadly ignored the role of commercial diplomacy in contemporary dispute settlement – and to broader debates on the legalization of international economic disputes and the strategies firms use to shield themselves from political risks.
Support is the new service: gendered political obligation, the military, and collective subject formation in international relations
Keywords: Gender
Military
Troops
Citizenship
Obligation
Democracy
Civil-Military Relations

Military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq highlighted a key characteristic of contemporary Western civil- military relations. Today, a small group of volunteers fights a distant conflict while popular familiarity with military service and war declines. There is a disconnect between this way of war and enduring cultural understandings of the appropriate normative relationship between gender (particularly masculinity), military service, and citizenship. This study examines "support the troops" (StT) discourses in the United States and United Kingdom during the "global war on terror" (2001-2010) as a representation of this on-going transformation in gendered/ing civil-military relations. Methodologically, the study employs structured discourse analysis to map an original data set of previously unexamined documents produced by UK and US state and military officials, pro-military non-governmental organizations, peace and anti-war movements, and media. It is the first systematic social scientific study of the "support the troops" phenomenon. The patterns inductively generated within the mapping are interpreted using a poststructural (re)conceptualisation of the military as a discursive structural effect, as well a formal institution and social relation. The study argues that StT is a means of addressing the gendered civilian anxiety that accompanies non-service in wartime. It finds that StT is a political contestation over the appropriate normative structure of gendered civil-military relations. Through the articulation of three ideal-typical, intertwined logics of gendered political obligation, StT discourse reconstitutes military support, rather than military service, as the sine qua non of contemporary normative citizenship. Via a series of gendered associations and contrasts with "the troops", support is further produced as a means of military participation. Correspondingly, ostensibly separate "civil" society is (re)masculinised. Together, the underlying logics of gendered political obligation work to discursively instantiate and (re)produce an idealised vision of the political community, extending and legitimating the transnational liberal social order.
Genetic susceptibility to invasive nontyphoidal Salmonella disease in African children
Keywords: africa
children
infection
salmonella
genome-wide association studies
human genetics

Nontyphoidal Salmonella (NTS) causes invasive, and frequently fatal, disease in African children. The burden of disease secondary to NTS reflects inadequacy of Salmonella-control strategies in Africa, with expanding antibiotic resistance, and no licensed anti-NTS vaccine. The delivery of improved interventions to prevent, diagnose, and treat invasive NTS (iNTS) infection, will be facilitated by an improved understanding of the biological determinants of susceptibility to iNTS, including host genetic factors.
To identify host genetic determinants of iNTS disease, we performed a GWAS and replication analysis of NTS bacteraemia in African children. This analysis identified and validated a common genetic variant in STAT4 associated with increased iNTS risk.
To characterise the function of the NTS-associated STAT4 variant, we utilised a genotype-selectable bioresource of healthy European adults and samples from African children with iNTS disease. In these experiments, the risk genotype at STAT4 is associated with reduced STAT4 RNA expression in stimulated leukocytes, and reduced IFNγ production in both ex vivo stimulated natural killer cells and in the serum of African children with acute NTS bacteraemia.
To validate genetic variation suggestively associated with NTS bacteraemia in the GWAS, NTS-associated loci with evidence of regulatory function were prioritised for functional characterisation. Using in vitro models of intracellular Salmonella infection and RNA interference, I characterise the role of a candidate NTS-susceptibility determinant, EVI5L, in Salmonella infections.
Finally, applying a pathway enrichment analysis to the NTS bacteraemia GWAS demonstrated that NTS-associated genetic variation in African children is enriched for methionine salvage enzymes. I further investigate the potential for host-pathogen interaction in this pathway, generating and characterising Salmonella mutants deficient in methionine metabolism.
Taken together, these data represent the first unbiased assessment of genetic susceptibility to iNTS disease in unselected populations. These results have important implications for the design of Salmonella-control strategies for use in Africa.