VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Cyrano de Bergerac: battling with narrative burlesque
Keywords: histoire comique
burlesque
seventeenth-century
libertinage
French literature
roman
querelle des lettres
novel
libertine

This thesis considers the burlesque literary forms in the work of the seventeenth-century writer, Cyrano de Bergerac. It challenges current scholarship by looking beyond libertinism to consider the importance of Cyrano's comic writing practices. While it does not deny the philosophical and scientific focus of Cyrano's oeuvre, it suggests that the burlesque is a defining characteristic. By taking into account the literary context in which Cyrano was writing – notably the querelle des Lettres and the rise of the histoire comique – as well as looking at other comic writers that could have influenced Cyrano, and through close textual readings, this thesis reveals that burlesque forms are often used in excess in Cyrano's work – forms compete against forms – producing destructive effects; burlesque forms can, in effect, be self-defeating. This project then asks whether it is possible to consider Cyrano a comic writer at all. It does demonstrate, however, that, in ridiculing everyone and everything, Cyrano too makes a mockery of the very idea of a dissimulative text. In questioning the literary gesture that Cyrano makes through his battling burlesque forms, this thesis suggests that libertinism can appear to be one of many playful masks the author assumes in his work. Is Cyrano a burlesque libertine? If so, this thesis raises the wider question of whether there are other imposters within the ranks.
The liability of internet intermediaries
Keywords: internet
anonymity
TRIPS Agreement
intermediaries
remedies
European law
English law
social networks
defamation
European Union law
internet law
internet service providers
private law
search engines
copyright

Internet intermediaries facilitate a wide range of conduct using services supplied over the layered architecture of modern communications networks. Members of this class include search engines, social networks, internet service providers, website operators, hosts, and payment gateways, which together exert a critical and growing influence upon national and global economies, governments and cultures. This research examines who should face legal responsibility when wrongdoers utilise these services tortiously to cause harm to others. It has three parts.
Part 1 seeks to understand the nature of an intermediary and how its liability differs from the liability of primary defendants. It classifies intermediaries according to a new layered, functional taxonomy and argues that many instances of secondary liability in English private law reflect shared features and underlying policies, including optimal loss-avoidance and derivative liability premised on an assumption of responsibility.
Part 2 analyses intermediaries’ monetary liability for secondary wrongdoing in two areas of English law: defamation and copyright. It traces the historical evolution of these doctrines at successive junctures in communications technology, before identifying and defending limits on that liability which derive from three main sources: (i) in-built limits contained in definitions of secondary wrongdoing; (ii) European safe harbours and general limits on remedies; and (iii) statutory defences and exceptions.
Part 3 examines intermediaries’ non-monetary liability, in particular their obligations to disclose information about alleged primary wrongdoers and to cease facilitating wrongdoing where it is necessary and proportionate to do so. It proposes a new suite of non-facilitation remedies designed to restrict access to tortious internet materials, remove such materials from search engines, and reduce the profitability of wrongdoing. It concludes with several recommendations to improve the effectiveness and proportionality of remedies by reference to considerations of architecture, anonymity, efficient procedures, and fundamental rights.
The versatile chemistry of azidoalkyl enol ethers and their equivalents
Keywords: organic chemistry

This thesis describes the synthesis and intramolecular cycloaddition products of azides tethered to olefins bearing a heteroatom in an attempt to access a proposed triazolium intermediate 77.
Chapter 1 covers the synthesis and reactivity of simple di- and trisubstituted azidoalkyl enol ethers. These substrates were found to provide isolable 1,2,3-triazoline products, but displayed a propensity to aromatise to 1,2,3-triazoles upon ionisation. Difficulties in synthesising fully-substituted azidoalkyl enol ethers have precluded a detailed study in this project, though a bias towards α-alkoxy imine formation was suggested.
Chapter 2 covers the chemistry of azidoalkyl vinyl bromides. Simple vinyl bromide substrates were found to yield 1-azadienes upon thermolysis, presumably via the dehydrobromination of an α-bromo imine intermediate in situ.
In Chapter 3, a brief diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) campaign was undertaken to demonstrate the potent reactivity of 1-azadiene substrates. 1-Azadienes were found to be versatile intermediates, and a small DOS library was built by exploiting several key reactivity modes.
In Chapter 4, two miscellaneous routes towards the desired triazolium intermediate are discussed, and finally an Appendix chapter deals with an attempted total synthesis of salinosporamide C.
Enhancing the efficacy of viral vector blood-stage malaria vaccines
Keywords: Malaria
CD8
IL-2
CD4
Plasmodium berghei
TNFa
MVA
Plasmodium yoelii
mice
IFNg
adenovirus

Replication-deficient adenovirus (Ad) and modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) vectors expressing single Plasmodium falciparum antigens can induce potent T cell and antibody responses and have entered clinical testing using a heterologous prime-boost immunisation approach (Ad_MVA). This thesis describes a number of pre-clinical approaches aimed at enhancing the efficacy of these viral vectored vaccines targeting the blood-stage of malaria. First, the development of a highly efficacious malaria vaccine is likely to require a multi-antigen and/or multi-stage subunit vaccine. The utility of an Ad_MVA immunisation regime combining vaccines expressing the 42kDa C-terminus of the blood- stage antigen merozoite surface protein 1 (MSP142) and the pre-erythrocytic antigen circumsporozoite protein (CSP) in the P. yoelii mouse model was investigated. It was found that vaccine co- administration leads to maintained antibody responses and efficacy against blood-stage infection, but reduced secondary CD8+ T cell responses and efficacy against liver-stage infection. CD8+ T cell interference can be minimised by co-administering the MVA vaccines at separate sites, resulting in enhanced liver-stage efficacy. The mechanisms of CD8+ T cell interference were explored. Second, Ad_MVA regimes expressing blood-stage antigens that can protect against P. chabaudi and P. yoelii blood-stage infection were tested against P. berghei, but did not confer protection. Similarly, IgG from rabbits immunised against P. falciparum MSP1 (PfMSP1) could not protect mice from a chimeric P. berghei parasite expressing PfMSP1. Third, two molecular adjuvants, the C4bp α-chain oligomerisation domain (IMX108/313) and the Fc fragment of murine IgG2a, were tested for their ability to enhance immunogenicity of recombinant adenoviruses when fused at the C-terminus of a blood-stage antigen. IMX108/313 was found to adjuvant T cell responses of small (< 80kDa) antigens and this was associated with antigen oligomerisation. However, the Fc fragment did not adjuvant responses. Finally, it was found that using a strong early promoter to drive antigen expression enhances the immunogenicity of single administration MVA vaccines, but that this did not enhance post-boost immunogenicity in an Ad_MVA regime.
Driving towards more flexibility?: China’s environmental and climate policy in the automotive sector
Keywords: fuel economy standards
policy instruments
flexibility mechanisms
electric vehicles

This doctoral dissertation examines the mode and efficacy of environmental and climate policy in China’s automotive sector. The ascent of China’s automobile market to the largest worldwide has detrimental effects on the country’s energy security situation, worsens environmental pollution, and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental and climate policy measures to ameliorate these repercussions are the most apt tools available to the Chinese government. The objective of this dissertation is to identify the dominant mode of environmental and climate policies in China’s automotive industry and to assess the efficacy of select policy instruments. It does so by asking whether a uniform national approach to policy instrument adoption can be discerned that reflects China’s institutional and administrative history or whether modal exceptions exist. Secondly, if modal differences exist, to what extent do different instruments confirm the current understanding of the advantages and pitfalls of individual policy instrument types? And finally, how do Chinese instruments compare to those in other ambits in terms of policy mode and instrument efficacy?
The literature on policy instruments holds that, due to their alleged efficiency advantages, incentive-based instruments dominate the political agenda of industrialised countries and international organisations (environmental consensus). This favouring of flexible instruments in academic and political circles contrasts with an evident lack of incentive-based instruments in practice and an observed lack of efficiency of some of those instruments actually implemented. Moreover, the policy mode adopted in developing countries and emerging markets has not yet received sufficient academic attention despite significant differences in institutional design, enforcement capacities, resources, and development paths that may imply reason for modal deviation.
Applying a blend of qualitative and quantitative social sciences research methods, I add the case of China to the comparative literature and show that command-and-control regulation indeed forms the backbone of environmental and climate policy in China’s automotive industry. At the same time, modal differences exist between national regulation and local/ municipal incentive-based policy as well as in the electric vehicle sector, which shows a trend towards more incentive-based instruments and flexibility mechanisms in conventional regulation. Compared to other ambits, China has established a relatively flexible policy regime, at least for the case of vehicle efficiency standards. For the time being, incentive-based instruments remain comparatively ineffective and flexibility mechanisms in conventional regulation have an erosive effect on instrument stringency.
Pre-clinical development of viral vectored transmission-blocking malaria vaccines
Keywords: viral-vectors
malaria
pre-clinical
transmission-blocking
immunology
vaccines

Malaria transmission-blocking vaccine candidate antigens have been developed to induce antibodies using different delivery systems, mainly protein-in-adjuvant formulations, independently in various laboratories giving varied transmission-blocking activity (TBA). However, only one candidate antigen has been tested in clinical trials. In order to advance the most efficacious target(s) for possible clinical development, a rank order of the leading antigens based on TBA in a head-to-head comparison using a single delivery platform was made. Candidate antigens, AnAPN1, PfsHAP2, Pfs230-C, Pfs25, and Pfs48/45 (with or without N-glycosylation site substitution), were generated as recombinant viral-vectored vaccines using simian adenovirus and modified vaccinia Ankara and administered to mice in a heterologous prime-boost regimen. Vaccine-induced antibody responses were induced to all except PfsHAP2 were maintained up to ten and a half months post-boost. TBA was assessed at the peak response against Plasmodium falciparum NF54 laboratory strain and African field isolates by ex vivo membrane feeding assays in Anopheles stephensi and A. gambiae respectively. Antibodies to three antigens [Pfs230-C, Pfs25 and Pfs48/45+NGln] had TBA against P. falciparum NF54, and those against Pfs230-C and Pfs25 consistently showed efficacy regardless of the parasite exposure in both mosquito species. Further analysis of antibody responses to these two candidate antigens showed concentration-dependent efficacy against P. falciparum field isolates. In a rabbit study, responses to Pfs230-C, Pfs25 and Pfs48/45+NGln also showed IgG concentration-dependent efficacy. To assess TBA against AnAPN1, antibody responses to three fragments were tested. TBA was observed only against N-terminal 135 amino acid fragment. Pfs230-C and Pfs25 were generated as fusion vaccines using either a self-cleaving or glycine-proline linker sequence. Comparable antibody responses were induced between the two fusion strategies that had synergistic effects at inhibiting P. falciparum NF54 development in A. stephensi.
Metal modified boron doped diamond electrodes and their use in electroanalysis
Keywords: electroanalysis
boron-doped diamond
glucose
atomic force microscopy

The experimental work discussed in this thesis explores the effects of metal modification on the electroanalytical ability of boron doped diamond electrodes. Boron doped diamond (BDD) electrodes have found increased application to electroanalysis in the past two decades, yet relatively little of the literature is focused on metal, nano and microparticle modification of the substrate. In this thesis three metals have been used to modify the BDD electrode; bismuth, antimony and nickel.
Bismuth and antimony nanoparticle modified BDD electrodes were directly compared to unmodified BDD and a bulk bismuth electrodes in the determination of trace levels of cadmium and lead using anodic stripping voltammetry. In both instances, the modified electrode allowed for the simultaneous determination of each analyte that was otherwise unattainable at the unmodified BDD electrode.
The nickel modified BDD (Ni-BDD) electrode was used in the determination of organic analytes, namely glucose, methanol, ethanol and glycerol. The nickel nano and microparticle electrodes gave the characteristic Ni(OH)₂/NiOOH redox couple in alkali pH, the oxidised form of which (NiOOH) catalysed the oxidation of the organic analytes. The chapter on glucose sensing with the Ni-BDD electrode is preceded by an extensive literature review on the advances of non-enzymatic glucose sensing, and the application of catalytic metals and nanomaterials in this field.
Throughout the course of this DPhil, there has been a collaborative project between Asylum Research and myself within the Compton group to develop a commercial electrochemical atomic force microscope (EC-AFM) cell. The aim was to produce an adaptable EC-AFM cell capable of dynamic electrochemical experiments whilst simultaneously or instantaneously acquiring an AFM image of the modified surface, in-situ. This project was successful, and the EC-AFM cell has contributed to a number of chapters in this thesis, and has now been commercialised.
Phenotypic characterisation of the C. elegans latrophilin homolog, lat-1
Keywords: egg laying
C. elegans morphogenesis
adhesion-GPCRs
neurotransmission
C. elegans
cell polarity
genetics
neuromuscular junctions
cell division
polarity
latrophilin

G proteins coupled receptors (GPCRs) play essential developmental roles with functions in all of the immune, olfactory sensory systems amongst other systems as well as exhibiting essential roles in the central and peripheral nervous system. GPCRs are also major targets of pharmaceutical drugs currently used to treat a vast number of conditions. Despite their clear importance, the function of many GPCRs is still obscure. Identifying the physiological role of more GPCRs provides a niche for more drugs to be developed and thus more conditions to be treated. The C.elegans lat-1 gene encodes the latrophilin vertebrate homolog; it is a member of the adhesion GPCR family and is structurally related to the flamingo/CELSR, an essential component of planar cell polarity pathway. This study aims to phenotypically characterise lat-1 mutants in C.elegans to provide insights into the physiological role of this important member of adhesion GPCRs. lat-1 mutants exhibit several morphological defects throughout development and during vulva development. Analysing the embryonic development of such mutants also identified an anterior-posterior polarity defect. The results implicate a second evolutionary conserved subfamily of adhesion GPCRs in the control of tissue polarity and morphogenesis.
The effects of volitional breathing and carbon dioxide inhalation on human local field potentials
Keywords: deep brain stimulation
carbon dioxide inhalation
neurophysiology
autonomic nervous system
mental task
voluntary respiration

Breathing is an automatic process that we hardly pay any attention to in our daily life. As a social species, we interact using body movement, speech and emotion and these actions require modification of the respiratory pattern.
While we understood how the respiratory rhythm is generated, we do not have clear evidence on how higher cortical signals modulate the respiratory pattern. The deep cortical structures in the human brain are inaccessible under normal circumstances, and deep brain stimulation electrode recordings offer an opportunity to understand the neurophysiological interactions ofdeeper brain structures.
In this thesis, I investigated deep brain stimulation recordings from implanted electrodes in chronic neuropathic pain subjects in the right and left anterior cingulate cortices, the ventral posterior lateral nucleus of the thalamus and periventricular gray region.
The objectives of this research were to elucidate the feed-forward mechanisms of volitional breathing, cortical autonomic regulation, and to investigate whether any of the investigated nuclei haveany carbon dioxide-sensitive neurons which may encode respiratory sensation.
The results show lateralisation of the cortical autonomic control whereby the left anterior cingulate exhibits increases in beta band activity (30 to 90 Hz) with cognition and vocalisation tasks. Meanwhile, right anterior cingulate activity increases with hyperoxia. Respiration using various carbon dioxide concentrations shows a constant rise in the alpha band (8 to 14 Hz) activity in the PVG which suggests a sensitive, nonspecific neuronal activity related to systemic carbon dioxide levels.
Jaguars and people: a range-wide review of human-wildlife conflict
Keywords: wildlife conservation; human-wildlife conflict; jaguar; carnivore

Conflict with livestock farmers is the most serious threat to the survival of the jaguar (Panthera onca) across its range of 19 countries of the Americas. In this thesis I examine the needs for mitigating human-jaguar conflict at a range-wide scale by: a) reviewing the state of knowledge on the topic, b) modelling the risk of conflict across the range, c) analysing a series of empirical field case studies, and d) proposing appropriate approaches for different levels of conflict. Findings from 43 published studies and 117 expert-described cases show that human-jaguar conflict occurs on large cattle ranches, mixed farms and smallholdings alike. Depletion of prey and poor livestock husbandry are reported as the key reasons for depredation, regardless of ecological, cultural or socio-economic context. Attitudes and tolerance towards jaguars are not necessarily linked to losses, so recent research has focussed on understanding the behaviours of farmers. With 65% of the remaining jaguar range outside of protected areas, effective strategies for coexistence with farmers are essential. By combining geospatial datasets with expert-based information, spatial patterns of human-jaguar conflicts were presented in a predictive model of conflict hotspots. Around 85% of the total jaguar range, 72% of the total Jaguar Conservation Units area and 90% of the Jaguar Corridor area overlap with livestock, and 15% of the jaguar range has risk of conflict. Regions in which jaguars are repeatedly persecuted may become ecological traps and decimate populations. An aggregate study of 17 case studies across seven countries exposed a very large variety of geographic, agronomic and socio-economic contexts. Both within and across case studies there are considerable differences in farmers’ experiences with livestock losses, concerns about depredation, levels of tolerance and attitudes, as well as social norms towards jaguars in each community. No situational factors could be used to predict how farmers perceive jaguars and deal with depredation. The only pattern consistent across case studies was that attitudes towards jaguars are most likely predicted by a factor of perceived loses combined with the social norms of the community. In most scenarios, correctly balanced strategies of improving husbandry combined with behaviour-influencing methods may be the best way forward. To this end, a conceptual model is proposed, which distinguishes three levels of conflict and explains the importance of addressing any underlying history of grievances or incompatibility of values as part of any human-wildlife conflict mitigation strategy.