VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Investigating low cost hole transporting materials for perovskite solar cells
Keywords: Photovoltaics
Perovskite
Solar cells
Hole transporting materials

Organic-inorganic halide perovskites (CH3NH3PbI3) have attracted strong attention of photovoltaic research community since 2012, benefiting from the low cost of organolmetal halide perovskite precursors and their simple solution processability. However, the chemical instability of this material, especially in high humidity environment, restricts its photovoltaic application in industry. This thesis is focusing on employing novel hole transporting materials (HTMs) for perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Besides their main responsibility acting as a hole selective layer increasing the photovoltaic performance, HTMs can also play an additional role serving as moisture blocking layers, enhancing the stability of PSCs.
Chapter 2 presents the general background knowledge of the physics of solar cells, delving deeper into the working principle of PSCs and related researches about the HTMs and stability of the devices. In chapter 3, the device fabrication techniques and the characterization methods used are presented in details. Commencing from chapter 4, the application of two kinds of HTMs and related studies are discussed. Chapter 4 demonstrates the use of a p-type organic material, PEDOT, on 'regular' structured PSCs, achieving devices with decent power conversion efficiency (PCE) but relatively huge hysteresis and low stabilized power output (SPO). Stability analysis shows this organic material provides a better protection of the perovskite film comparing to that of doped Spiro-OMeTAD, which is the most generally used HTM. Chapter 5 presents a study about CuSCN, an inorganic p-type semiconductor, being applied in PSCs as HTM. The CuSCN based devices show comparable performance to that of Spiro-OMeTAD based devices, but an interfacial degradation mechanism is found to facilitate the perovskite degradation even in inert atmosphere. A facile sealing protocol is established to deal with this problem, leading to super stable photovoltaic devices under thermal stressing. The following chapter 6 demonstrates a CuI doping technique to improve the hole transporting effectiveness of CuSCN layer. This doping technique modifies the morphology of CuSCN film and leads to a substantial improvement in the photovoltaic performance.
Isotopes in the landscape
Keywords: Environmental archaeology
Romano-British
Domestic animals
Nitrogen--Isotopes
Archaeology
Bronze age
Carbon--Isotopes
Neolithic period
Isoscapes
Iron age
England--Thames Valley

This thesis deals with the development of farming landscapes in the Thames Valley from the Neolithic to the Roman period (4000 BCE – 410 CE). The focus is on the major domestic animal species, cattle, sheep and pig, and their roles in the agroecosystem, traced using carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios measured in collagen. The large dataset of faunal isotope values from a limited area, obtained from sites with extensive archaeological and environmental information, allowed a thorough characterisation of variability in isotope values, within and between species, sites, archaeological periods, and landscape regions.
Isotope ratios in a flock of modern sheep showed less variability than archaeological assemblages. Linear mixed models were used to analyse variation in isotope values in 1490 archaeological samples from 23 sites. The pattern of change over time differed for cattle, sheep and pig, reflecting both wide-scale environmental change and changes in animal management. δ13C values of cattle and pigs reflected the loss of primary closed-canopy woodland. Pig management changed from an emphasis on woodland resources to a closer association with settlement and consumption of anthropogenic waste. Herbivore δ15N values probably reflect variations in the intensity of pasture use and association with arable farming. Climatic cooling since the post-glacial thermal maximum cannot explain these varied trajectories of change.
Variation between sites in faunal isotope values was related to landscape regions. Faunal isotope values at individual sites were useful in site interpretation in the context of other evidence. The trend in pig and cattle δ13C values with time was widely found in the UK, as expected if it represents forest clearance. In the Neolithic, cattle management was similar to the UK at central and eastern European Neolithic sites, but pig management was different.
Patterns of faunal isotope values and their changes over time, analysed in the context of archaeological and environmental information, can contribute to the interpretation of sites, and give a unique perspective on changes in farming practice and their effects on the landscape.
French lute-song, 1529-1643
Keywords: song
lute
French
guitar
music

A study of French-texted solo songs and duets with lute or guitar accompaniment notated in tablature, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Connected repertoires include the Parisian chanson, psalm, voix de ville, dialogue, and air de cour. Sources are examined in terms of their background, composers represented in them, relationship to concordant and other musical sources, repertoire, and musical conception. Foreign and manuscript sources are included. Literary references indicating the status of sixteenth-century lute-song, its importance to humanists (including its role in the Académie de Poésie et de Musique), and its position in theatrical works, are considered. Issues of notation, musical and poetic form, prosody, rhythm, ornamentation, lute pitch and tuning, relationship to polyphonic versions, to the ballet de cour, to dance forms, and to solo instrumental styles such as stile brisé are examined. Early references to continuo practice and to the theorbo are noted. Several arguments are developed, including 1. that the sixteenth-century Le Roy publications were conceived primarily as solo lute music, 2. that from the late sixteenth-century onwards lute-songs were initially conceived as melody-bass outlines, and may to an extent be regarded as continuo realisations, and 3. that rhythmic features of the air de cour commonly related to the influence of musique mesurée may also be explained with reference to earlier attempts to adapt the voix de ville to humanist goals, and also to the influence of the Italian villanella. Includes tables and bibliographies. Musical examples, facsimiles, and transcriptions are included in a separate volume.
Knowing sovereigns: forms of knowledge and the changing practice of sovereign lending
Keywords: Statistics
Gentlemanly capitalism
Bankers
Sovereign debt
International Order
International Relations Theory

This thesis examines how sovereign lending, i.e. the practice of lending capital to sovereigns, has changed since the early nineteenth century. It tackles this question by investigating how lenders have thought about sovereigns for the past two centuries, focusing on the tools they have used to know and represent them. I argue that there was a critical shift in the early twentieth century in terms of the kinds of knowledge lenders deployed to know sovereigns. This shift differentiates the old sovereign lending from the new. In the old sovereign lending, merchant banking families such as the Rothschilds knew sovereigns through intensely personal relations based on gentility, whereas in the new sovereign lending, joint stock banks, credit rating agencies and international institutions largely came to know sovereigns through statistics. Though difficult to imagine nowadays, the description of sovereigns through quantifiable facts (the original definition of ‘statistics’) was revolutionary for early twentieth century lenders. Despite constituting the origins of sovereign credit ratings, this key shift has been overlooked in all major studies about sovereign debt. The new sovereign lending rose to prominence from the interwar period to the 1970s and now defines our world.
The identification of this crucial shift is based on the development and application of the concept of forms of knowledge. Forms of knowledge refer to enduring ways of knowing and representing the constituent units of the international system used by international practitioners (e.g. diplomats, military strategists, financiers, and international lawyers). Examples of forms of knowledge include, but are not limited to, modern cartography, international treaties, statistics, gentility, and heraldry. The use of this concept is that it leads to a better understanding of how international practitioners and their practices undergo radical changes. In so doing, it provides a firmer empirical grasp on the question of how fundamental discontinuities arise in international relations.
The actively abjected: a hermenuetics of empowerment in Christian mysticism
Keywords: mystical theology
feminist theology
Arendt's action
abject
women mystics

This thesis is concerned broadly with purported mystics and how the Roman Catholic Church conceives of them theologically, and treats them in practicality. In exploring the dynamics of power at work when an individual claims to have dialogue with God, I identify a very particular process that occurs, namely active abjection, and illustrate this using examples taken from the writings of various purported mystics. I argue that there is a collection of people—the actively abjected—who occupy a very specific role within the Roman Catholic Church, and that this role has not been recognized. I go on to suggest a way in which they can be understood and respected for the role they play. To do this, I draw upon particular philosophical models of understanding from Hannah Arendt and Julia Kristeva.
I aspire to encourage a deeper and more complicated understanding of the nature of institutionalized oppression, and to offer a reconstructive model for how those who encounter potentially problematic individuals within communities might work and interact with them in a non-oppressive manner. This thesis is a work of Catholic theology in that it offers a theological and philosophical argument for the recognition of a particular role certain individuals play in maintaining the structure and definition of the Catholic Church. But it is also intended as a work of political philosophy. Both Arendt and Kristeva, whose writing I use as a lens to examine a particular phenomenon found in religious communities are theorists in the tradition of political philosophy and my intention is to expand the application of their models.
Images, objects and imperial power in the Roman and Qin-Han empires
Keywords: Rome (Empire)
Imperial studies
Qin shi huang, Emperor of China, 259 B.C.-210 B.C.
Comparative civilisation
Qin Dynasty (China)
Comparative archaeology
Terra-cotta sculpture, Chinese
Art History
Archaeology
Comparative history
Rome
China
Han Dynasty (China)

How and why was imperial power made visually and physically manifest in two similar, contemporaneous megastates – the Roman Principate and Qin-Han China? Framing the Chinese and Roman material within such a question breaks it free from the web of expectations and assumptions in which conventional scholarship almost always situates it. It also builds upon the limited but promising work recently undertaken to study these two empires together in a comparative context. The purpose of this thesis is not to discover similarities and differences for their own sake; but, by discovering similarities and differences, to learn about the nature of imperial authority and prestige in each state. The comparative method compels us to appreciate the contingent – and sometimes frankly curious – nature of visual and artefactual phenomena that have traditionally been taken for granted; and both challenges and empowers us to access higher tier explanations and narratives.
Roman expressions of power in visual terms are more public, more historical- biographical, and more political, while Qin-Han images and objects related to imperial authority are generally more private, generic and ritual in their nature. The Roman material emphasizes the notional complicity of large groups of people – the imperial subjects who viewed, crafted and often commissioned these works – in maintaining and defining the emperor’s power. If the Han emperor's power was the product of complicity, it was the complicity of a small group of family members and courtiers – and of Heaven. These contrasting sets of power relationships connect to a concerted thematic focus, in the case of Rome, on the individual of the princeps; that is, the individual personage and particular achievements – especially military achievements – of the emperor. This focus is almost always taken for granted in Roman studies, but contrasts profoundly with the thematic disposition of Han artefacts of power: these reflect a concentrated disinterest in imperial personality altogether, emphasizing instead the imperial position; that is, both the office of emperor and a cosmic centrality.
While this thesis reveals some arresting contrasts, it also harnesses the dichotomous orientations of Roman and Chinese archaeology to reveal that the conventional understanding of much of this material can be misleading or problematic. Many of the differences in the ways such images are usually interpreted have as much to do with the idiosyncrasies and path dependency of two fields – in short as much to do with the modern viewer – as they do with the images themselves and the traditions that produced them.
Identifying novel substrates of salt-inducible kinase 2
Keywords: Kinase-substrate mapping
Ovarian cancer
Chemical genetics
PIK3R1
p85a
HGSOC
SIK2

Salt-inducible kinase 2 (SIK2) has previously been identified as a potential therapeutic target in high-grade serous ovarian cancer. Depletion of SIK2 sensitises ovarian cancers to paclitaxel treatment both in vitro and in xenograft models. In patients, increased tumour SIK2 expression is associated with paclitaxel resistance and correlates with increased risk of cancer progression following paclitaxel treatment. Although high-grade serous tumours are highly chemosensitive, 80 - 90% of patients with advanced stage disease eventually relapse due to recurrent chemotherapy-resistant disease, so there is a pressing need for novel therapeutic targets. Inhibition of SIK2 is a plausible strategy to augment existing chemotherapy in ovarian cancer, but signalling downstream of SIK2 has not been well studied.
Here, I present the optimisation and results of a chemical genetic screen to identify novel SIK2 substrates to facilitate its development as a therapeutic target. The screen used a SIK2 gatekeeper mutant engineered to utilise a 'bulky' A&ast;TPγS analogue to specifically label its substrates in lysates from an ovarian cancer cell line. A covalent capture approach was then used to isolate labelled peptides for identification by tandem mass spectrometry. Between four independent screen experiments, 73 putative substrate proteins were identified, 18 of which were present in multiple replicates.
SIK2 was found to phosphorylate the p85α regulatory subunit of PI3 kinase at S154, resulting in activation of the PI3K/AKT signalling pathway. Furthermore, PI3K/AKT signalling was stimulated in ovarian cancer cells upon incubation with primary adipocytes extracted from the omentum, a key site of ovarian cancer metastasis, in a SIK2 dependent manner. Finally, overexpression of wild-type SIK2, but not a kinase-inactive mutant, in ovarian cancer cell lines promoted tumour growth and metastasis in a xenograft model. Together, this evidence suggests that in addition to its role in chemotherapy resistance, SIK2 also promotes the establishment of omental metastases in ovarian cancer.
Ezra Pound's theory of language
Keywords: Linguistics
Ezra Pound
Language

This thesis examines Ezra Pound's linguistic theory in relation to literary, philosophical and academic treatments of language in the modernist period. Pound is a central figure in the history of twentieth century literature, and his poetic career marks a sustained engagement with questions of how language can register thought, how it can transmit and communicate images, and, ultimately, how language is able to mediate between artists (or, indeed, language speakers as a whole) and the world. I read Pound's statements on language against the disciplinary history of linguistics, assessing the extent to which his positions are representative of his period, or, conversely, the ways in which they form part of an idiosyncratic worldview. My approach is broadly historical. I begin with Pound's educational background, and move chronologically through his career to the concluding passages of his Cantos. I investigate the extent to which Pound’s critical writing engages with new departures taking place in linguistics in the late nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. The scope of my investigation ranges from the legacy of nineteenth century philology to the approaches taken by William Dwight Whitney, Michel Bréal, and Ferdinand de Saussure, to name but a few, in focusing linguistic scholarship on synchronic study of language as function in the early twentieth century, to Franz Boas's and Edward Sapir's studies in the relationship between language and culture between 1910 and 1939. In situating Pound in relation to the history of linguistics as a discipline, I argue that his work asks some of the period’s most apposite questions about language and culture, even if his conclusions differ from the dominant academic positions of the time.
A mixed methods study of children's social workers' decision-making relating to families headed by parents with intellectual disabilities
Keywords: mixed methods
public health
intellectual disability
parenting

People with intellectual disabilities (ID) have faced prejudice throughout history. The evolution of human and civil rights particularly pertaining to individuals with disabilities led to dramatic revision of governmental policy. People with ID are better supported in many areas of their lives. However, as parents, they experience disproportionately high rates of child removal compared to other groups. A three-stage mixed methods approach was used to investigate decision-making by children’s social workers (CSWs) in England relating to cases concerning the children of parents with ID (PWID). The aim was to identify the components of decision-making and formulate an empirically-based theory of how safeguarding concerning the children of PWID is considered and addressed. Data was collected from 33 serious case reviews involving children of PWID, a modified factorial survey with 191 participating CSWs, and a series of focus group discussions with CSWs. Qualitative data was analysed using the Framework Method and the Constant Comparison Method, and the quantitative data was fitted into a generalised ordinal logistic regression model. The findings indicate that a range of factors contribute to decision-making. Families often presented with multiple vulnerabilities rather than ID alone and had complex support needs. Factors featuring to various degrees in decision making include availability of time, specialist resources, and professional expertise; parental engagement and their wider social and familial relationships; and children’s resilience and the presence and readiness of their own support and safeguarding structures. The pertinence of parental ID (PID) to CSW assessment appeared to be relative to the other characteristics of a child safeguarding case. In safeguarding scenarios where PID was accompanied by less risky factors, PID increased the likelihood of CSWs making an assessment of higher risk. Where PID presented alongside more overtly risky factors, it did not contribute significantly to a higher assessment of risk. The study concludes that discriminatory practice by CSWs towards PWID does not appear to be a direct factor in the removal of children.
The role of the sigma subunit of Adaptor Protein-2, AP2σ2, in the regulation of calcium homeostasis
Keywords: adaptor protein 2 sigma 2
GPCRs
familial hypocalciuric hypercalcaemia
calcium homeostasis
MAPK signalling

The calcium sensing receptor (CaSR), a G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR), and its downstream signalling pathways are essential for calcium homeostasis. Loss- or gain-of-function (LOF and GOF, respectively) mutations in components of these pathways result in disorders of calcium homeostasis including Familial hypocalciuric hypercalcaemia (FHH) and Autosomal dominant hypocalcaemia (ADH). FHH type 3 (FHH3) is due to LOF mutations in the σ2 subunit (AP2σ2) of adaptor protein-2 (AP-2). The FHH3-associated AP2σ2 mutations identified to date affect the Arg15 residue and comprise heterozygous Arg15Cys, Arg15Leu, and Arg15His mutations. AP-2 is a ubiquitously expressed heterotetrameric protein, with a central role in clathrin-mediated endocytosis of transmembrane proteins, such as GPCRs.
This thesis demonstrates that AP2σ2 mutations account for &Tilde;7% of all FHH mutations, only affect the Arg15 residue and show evidence of mutation bias, with only AP2σ2 Arg15Cys, Arg15Leu, and Arg15His mutations identified. Additionally, the study has identified de novo AP2σ2 mutations and revealed that FHH3 probands may present with a broader phenotype not seen in FHH1. The heterozygous missense AP2σ2 mutation was demonstrated to have no effect on the stability of the AP-2 complex in vivo. This thesis revealed that gain-of-function AP2σ2 mutations are unlikely to be a cause of ADH, which is due to GOF mutations in CaSR in &GT;70% of cases.
The CaSR activates its downstream signalling pathways, including the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway, through coupling with its associated G-proteins. The AP2σ2 mutations resulted in loss of activating phosphorylation events in the MAPK pathway suggesting a role for AP2σ2 in CaSR signalling. Additionally, the AP2σ2 Arg15Cys, Arg15His and Arg15Leu mutations were revealed to exert differential effects on the Gαq/11 and MAPK signalling pathways, suggesting mutation-bias signalling.
Clathrin-mediated endocytosis is crucial for embryological development. This thesis has demonstrated that mice homozygous for an Ap2s1 splice site mutation, predicted to produce a functional knock-out, were lethal before embryonic day 12.5 (E12.5), suggesting AP2σ2 is essential for cell viability in the developing embryo.
Thus, the work of this thesis has further elucidated the role of AP2σ2 in the biological pathways of CaSR signalling and clathrin-mediated endocytosis, and in the molecular pathology of disorders of calcium homeostasis.