VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Hugh Broughton (1549-1612): scholarship, controversy and the English Bible
Keywords: Bible
Intellectual History
New Testament Scholarship
Hugh Broughton
King James Bible
Biblical scholarship
English Bible
Sixteenth-century England
Early Modern History
Chronology
Biblical genealogy

This thesis provides a revisionist account of the relationship between Latin biblical criticism, vernacular religious culture and Reformed doctrines of scriptural authority in the early modern period. It achieves this by studying episodes from the career of the English Hebraist Hugh Broughton (1549-1612). Current orthodoxy holds that Broughton’s devotion to the tenets of Reformed scripturalism distinguished him from contemporary biblical humanists, whose more flexible attitudes to the Bible enabled them to produce cutting-edge scholarship. In challenging this consensus, this thesis focusses on three areas.
The first is chronology. Recent work has presented chronology as divided between technical, philological practitioners, who drew from astronomy and humanism alike in their efforts to date the past, and scripturalists, who relied on the Bible alone. Using the chronological controversy between Broughton and the Oxonian John Rainolds, this thesis complicates this picture by arguing that both approaches to the discipline were equally derived from humanistic traditions, and that confessional, rather than intellectual or methodological, factors informed the most important decisions chronologers made.
The second area is biblical criticism. There is still a broad assumption that Reformed beliefs about scripture were incompatible with the most advanced biblical scholarship. This thesis questions such assumptions by reconstructing Broughton’s research into the Hebraic contexts of the New Testament. By demonstrating that it was possible to produce innovative and influential work without challenging and indeed, while endorsing the principles of Reformed scripturalism, this thesis disputes current teleological presumptions about the development of modern, historical biblical criticism.
The third is the history of lay reading. Both chronology and biblical criticism have often been viewed as specialised pursuits, studied only by a Latin-reading elite and irrelevant to lay people. For Broughton and his followers, however, biblical scholarship and lay piety were inseparable. The thesis demonstrates this by piecing together Broughton’s radical plans for a new English Bible, including his work with John Speed on biblical genealogy, and his revisions of the Geneva New Testament. Using numerous neglected manuscript sources, it gives an account of the sixteenth-century biblical translation that foregrounds the unexpected ways in which groundbreaking neo-Latin, continental biblical scholarship expanded scholars' concepts of what vernacular translation could achieve.
Commitment issues: toward an understanding of young people's social media choices in the multi-platform era
Keywords: Technology adoption
Platform engagement
Self-presentation
Social networking
Affordances
Social media choice
Uses and gratifications

Social network sites (SNSs) have become a common part of everyday life for billions of people worldwide. Not everyone uses the same sites, nor are sites functionally equivalent in the eyes of users. Both established platforms and new upstarts may provide novel features or access to new audiences, yet users tend to remain on a few dominant platforms, especially Facebook, the world’s reigning social network site. The goal of the present study is to understand why people are committed to specific social network sites, given that no site encompasses either all of a person’s social connections or all possible gratifications available from online participation. Further, individuals do not always wish to have a single real-name identity for all online interactions, thus implying the necessary use of multiple accounts or sites. To understand SNS commitment, this study employs a mixed-methods research design by combining findings from a survey of 800 respondents with 50 semi-structured interviews. The research focuses on young adults in the UK and their use of four popular SNSs: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.
Findings indicate that network size has only a marginal effect on commitment, whereas the effect of identity performance is more pronounced, albeit in different ways on different sites. Social and informational gratifications have the strongest effect across all four SNSs, suggesting that commitment is primarily driven by repeated habit-forming experiences. To further help explain SNS commitment, this thesis employs a typology of social media users based on attitudes towards digital technology. It is evident that attitudes explain more variation in commitment than either demographic factors or personality. Qualitative analysis reinforces this finding by showing how users employ specific gratification-based repertoires to determine which sites to use and when. These findings help advance research on affordances, self-presentation and SNS use, while also making practical recommendations for social media platforms.
Management of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy in the postpartum period
Keywords: Gestational hypertension
Self-monitoring
Pre-eclampsia
Telemonitoring
Postpartum

This thesis aimed to explore whether self-management techniques, effective in essential hypertension, could be applied to women with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy postpartum (HDP). HDP affect one in ten pregnancies, remain a leading cause of maternal death worldwide and are associated with elevated long-term maternal cardiovascular risk. Hypertension often persists postpartum and complications can occur. During the puerperium, multiple stresses on new mothers and their healthcare professionals can distract from good quality blood pressure (BP) management. Transfer of responsibility, from secondary to primary care, increases scope for uncertainty. The primary objective was to develop and test the feasibility of a novel self-management intervention for postnatal antihypertensive treatment.
A systematic literature review (39 studies), local audit (n=20) and regional survey (n=101) were conducted to evaluate existing evidence and clinical practice. A pilot randomised controlled trial compared self-management of postnatal antihypertensive medication with usual care (n=91). Taking patients' views of self-management into account is essential to successful implementation and these were captured through qualitative interviews (n=68). A sub-study to assess markers of vascular risk (n=16) was conducted to further evaluate the relationship between postnatal BP and elevated long-term cardiovascular risk.
There is a lack of good quality evidence underpinning hypertension management postpartum and widespread inconsistencies in approaches to care. The pilot trial suggested that expanding the study would be feasible, and that self-management may be more effective than usual care in terms of BP control. Strikingly, the 4-5mmHg reduction in diastolic BP observed with self-management persisted to six months, despite the majority of women being off treatment by this stage, reinforcing the idea that BP control during the puerperium may influence cardiovascular remodelling. However, no differences were demonstrated in markers of cardiovascular risk between sub-study groups. Participants commonly preferred self-management to usual care, and reported feeling more in control through this approach.
Improving cardiovascular risk prediction through more accurate and alternative  methods of blood pressure measurement
Keywords: blood pressure
cardiovascular disease
risk

Background
Cardiovascular risk scores are used to estimate absolute risk of disease and identify patients who will benefit most from treatments to lower risk. As a key risk factor for cardiovascular disease, blood pressure is accounted for in many risk scores, but is inherently variable and may be influenced by both biological and measurement factors. This thesis aims to determine how routinely collected blood pressure measurements should best be used for accurate estimation of cardiovascular risk.
Methods
This thesis describes four main studies. A patient survey and prospective study establish the current practice of blood pressure measurement. Secondary analyses of data from blood pressure monitoring trials determine how risk estimates may be affected by the use of different summary measures of blood pressure. A systematic review evaluates the evidence of an association between blood pressure variability and cardiovascular risk. Finally, a cohort study in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink determines if inclusion of blood pressure variability in cardiovascular risk scores may improve risk estimation.
Results
Current practice of blood pressure measurement may differ from that in risk score derivation studies. However, these differences have limited effects on cardiovascular risk estimates with few patients reclassified across risk thresholds. Increased long-term variability in blood pressure is in itself a risk factor for cardiovascular disease over and above mean blood pressure but its inclusion in a cardiovascular risk score does not materially improve the accuracy of risk estimates.
Conclusions
Healthcare professionals should continue to estimate risk for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease using the blood pressure measurements available to them, whether measured at home or in the clinic. There is also no additional benefit of considering measures of long-term blood pressure variability in risk estimation.
Alveolarization in Hong Kong Cantonese: a sociophonetic study of neogrammarian and lexical diffusion models of sound change
Keywords: Sociophonetics

This thesis is a quantitative study of sociophonetic variation which focuses on the Hong Kong Cantonese velar coda consonants -η and -k. These codas have, under certain linguistic contexts, become increasingly realized as alveolar nasal and oral stop consonants, [-n] and [-t], respectively. For the purpose of this thesis, the phenomenon of sound shift from -η and -k, to [-n] and [-t] respectively will be termed 'alveolarization'. Insofar as the language of a speech community is a shared vehicle for communication and sound changes are constrained by the need for mutual intelligibility, the central aim of this thesis is to uncover the factors which contribute the most to driving this sound change. In describing the variation in these consonants, I examine the concomitant social and linguistic factors which might help explain it. While this study focuses on one specific set of linguistic variables, it aims to analyse a broad set of factors to obtain a picture of the complexity of this sound change.
The sound change is of theoretical interest as it provides an opportunity to evaluate the neogrammarian regularity hypothesis and the lexical diffusion model of sound change. The neogrammarian regularity hypothesis states that sound changes are regular and admit no exceptions—they are purely driven by phonological context and show no lexical variation. On the other hand, the lexical diffusion model predicts that sound changes progress through the lexicon in a gradual manner. By examining the effects of neighbouring phonological environment on the velar codas, and by analyzing which lexemes might be leading the change, as well as whether there are any lexical frequency effects, this thesis sets out to test both models of sound change.
A critical edition of Contra valor no hay desdicha by Lope de Vega
Keywords: Critical Edition
Lope de Vega

Contra valor no hay desdicha was first published in 1638 by María de Quiñones, and appeared in Parte XXIII of the comedias of Lope de Vega.
As no modern edition of the play exists, my work has been to produce a scholarly study of it that encompasses the elements necessary for a modern critical edition. These include: a synopsis of the play; a study of its historical sources; an exploration of its characterization, imagery and themes; a discussion of its original and contemporary staging; analysis of its versification; and an in-depth examination of previous printed editions of the play and the date of its composition (including an investigation into its authenticity).
In terms of the text itself, the version settled upon in this edition is the result of consideration and comparison of all seven previous printings of Contra valor (two from the seventeenth, three from the eighteenth and two from the nineteenth centuries). I have also identified and corrected some errors in the text that have crept in through transmission and are present in the most widely-used edition, that of Menéndez y Pelayo (RAE, 1896). Footnotes and endnotes have been added to the text, and a list of textual variants is included.
Through this undertaking, I have been able to identify key themes within Contra valor - in particular that of kingship - which place it comfortably alongside recent scholarship on Lope's drama. In addition, my analysis of the play's versification and linguistic data, in addition to its thematic content, show it to be almost certainly the work of Lope de Vega. This conclusion is significant given Morley and Bruerton’s previous classification of Contra valor as a play of 'doubtful authenticity' (due in part to the lack of a manuscript copy).
Contextualising the contrafacta of trouvere song
Keywords: contrafacture
vernacular song
medieval song
courtly song
medieval music

Scholarship on medieval contrafacture has long been engaged in the Kontrafakturjagd, the hunt for songs whose textual and structural similarities suggest they might also share melodies. By making melodies freely exchangeable, this practice has tended to treat the music of medieval song as if it were an empty vessel, overlooking the ways in which contrafacta might construct musical meaning to serve various political, devotional, or aesthetic ends. Rather than making a case for contrafacture among songs whose shared melodies are questionable, this dissertation provides a context rich perspective on certain groups of 'close contrafacta'—songs whose status as contrafacta is already known and supported by strong musical, textual, and contextual evidence. In five case studies, all of which take at least one song from the trouvère repertory, and which represent the most common contrafact genres—political serventois, Marian song, and crusade song—I consider the ways in which their melodies could signify. More specifically, I examine the interrelated layers of the melody's performed sound structures, its cuing of previous texts on the listener, and its integration of old and new contexts.
The case studies reveal a culture that cared about melodic association and used it in sophisticated ways. In the first two chapters, which address political contrafacture, the music's textual associations form a background against which the contrafact text reacts ironically, while its melodic origins evoke precise geopolitical loyalties or antagonisms. The third and fourth chapters on Marian song, conversely, point toward efforts to intensify and develop a song's meaning through contrafacture, while the fifth chapter's contrafact text cites its own affective reason for melodic re-use. In all case studies, not only does the music cue text and context synoptically; its performed structures also intensify and subvert textual meanings, showing how music can enrich literary interpretations of medieval song.
Incorporating psychological theory into the model of diffusion of innovations in healthcare
Keywords: Behavioural science
Implementation science
Diffusion of innovations
Health professionals
Healthcare

Evidence-based medicine calls for the use of current best evidence (together with individual clinical expertise). Guidelines aim to distil such evidence, yet clinical practice often fails to follow guidelines, for multiple reasons that are still not well understood. One under-researched aspect of the gap between guidelines and practice is psychology. My literature review found that the application of psychology to implementation research has been limited, and such research is not well integrated into wider implementation research. In this study, I sought to a) systematically apply psychological theory to understand the different psychological processes in the stages of adoption described in the diffusion of innovations model; b) collect and analyse data to explore and test this new, psychologically-enhanced model of guideline adoption; and c) improve and extend my model in the light of my empirical data.
Having populated my proposed framework with potentially relevant psychological theories based on my literature review, I undertook a first assessment of the validity and added value of this proposed theoretical framework through a case study of the implementation of guidance on universal offering of HIV testing in hospitals serving populations meeting the criteria for high HIV prevalence in the catchment population, interviewing 20 healthcare professionals across two sites. My findings broadly supported my proposed theoretical approach, and illustrated relevant psychological theories for different stages of adoption.
My findings support two provisional conclusions. First, that there is potential to improve the effectiveness of efforts to implement guidelines by augmenting the widely-used innovation adoption model with specific psychological theories. Second, that policymakers would do well to shift from viewing the health system as a complicated entity that policy can control and direct is misconceived; I recommend shifting to a perspective of the health system as a complex system, and rethinking the role of policy from that perspective.
Optical properties of semiconductors at finite temperatures from first principles
Keywords: Band gap

In this thesis we develop a new first-principles method for the calculation of optical absorption spectra and band structures in semiconductors and insulators at finite tem- peratures. The theoretical framework of our methodology originates back to 1950s in two pivotal research papers by F. Williams and M. Lax. Here, we expand the scope of the pioneering works by Williams and Lax, and we present a new theory of phonon- assisted optical absorption and temperature-dependent band structures. We demon- strate that our technique is highly efficient and simple to the point that a single calcu- lation is sufficient to capture temperature-dependent absorption coefficients including the effect of quantum zero-point motion. We report calculations of optical absorption spectra and of direct and indirect band gaps of Si, C, GaAs and MAPbI3 . We obtain good agreement with experiment and with previous calculations. The approach pro- posed in this thesis is highly versatile, and can straightforwardly be combined with improved descriptions of the dielectric function by including electron-hole effects via the Bethe-Salpeter and GW equations. In this thesis we also investigate the underly- ing mechanisms leading to the "inverse Varshni effect" in materials that belong to the family of metal halide perovskites. We show, using the example of MAPbI 3 , that the vibrational modes with metal-halide-metal bending or rocking character are the major cause of the band gap opening with increasing temperature. To this aim we present an approach for elucidating the physics underpinning the changes of the band gap with vibrational motion. Our methodologies developed in this thesis are simple to imple- ment in any electronic structure package as a post-processing step, having the potential to find broad applications in the ab-initio community. We anticipate that our work will open the way to predictive calculations, as well as will contribute to the better under- standing of the optoelectronic properties of solids at finite temperatures.
Mobilizing bodies: unsettling sustainable mobility through cycling in Los Angeles
Keywords: the body
flesh
mobilities
cycling
Los Angeles
feminist theory
queer theory

The figure of the human body and notions of its sustenance, wellbeing and need for change are central, if often latent, within discussions of contemporary eco-social 'crises'. This dissertation considers cycling practices in Los Angeles as a 'case' to ask how conceptions of human bodies - the intertwined ideas and materials that constitute them –need reconsidering. Cycling, particularly when replacing car journeys, is increasingly promoted as a solution for some of these 'crises': Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, traffic congestion and alleviating health concerns associated with sedentary lifestyles and mental health. Much cycling advocacy and research is focused on improving the cycling experience and enhancing rates of cycling in cities, yet rests on dominant ontological presumptions around human bodies, their categories of identity and their normativity - both what is considered 'normal' as well as aspirations of 'good' in terms of health and sustainability.
In this dissertation, I work through a methodology of 'riding theory' by bringing together (material) feminist, queer and critical race theories with multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork on cycling practices, focusing mainly on Los Angeles, California. Rather than building on automatic assumptions of cycling as a 'solution', I ask in what ways cycling practices manifest through relations of power. This rests on an ontology of 'flesh' and 'enfleshment' – indebted to the work of corporeal and black feminist theorists - whereby cycling is understood not as modulated by relations of power, but becoming-as and through these relations in highly uneven ways.
Through cycling in Los Angeles, intertwined techniques of power are discussed as: categorization (the naming and reproduction of identities and bodily difference); configuration of matter and meanings through spacetime (the configuration and affordances of cycling lungs, exposures, taking up spacetimes, speeds and locomotion) and valuation (the enrolment of cycling subjectivities and energies within the reproduction and circulation of value). As opposed to cycling futures reconfigured to fulfil alternative criteria of valuation, I consider what a cycling ethic of response-ability might do: An ethic that arises from the ontologies of enfleshment and that requires a working-with the affordances of cycling. Thinking through these ontologies and/as ethics, I argue, forces emergent reconsideration of how cycling subjectivities and responsibilities, justice, health and sustainability are understood.