VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Characterization of depleted monolithic active pixel sensors
Keywords: MALTA
pixel detector
CMOS
Investigator
monolithic

Monolithic active pixel sensors are a viable detector option for many high energy particle physics experiments, as they reduce both the production cost and the amount of material required in a detector. They are produced in CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) processes, which are ubiquitous across consumer electronics and therefore have been the focus of development for several decades. The thesis focuses on a prototype device produced in a 180 nm TowerJazz high resistivity CMOS process, which was initially designed for the ATLAS experiment. Specifically, it investigates the radiation hardness of the sensor by measuring the capacitance of the collection electrode and the depletion region before and after irradiation. There are inefficiencies found at the pixel corners after irradiation, which are also confirmed by previous test-beam campaigns.
A new chip with additional modifications designed to combat those inefficiencies was produced. A novel measurement using an X-ray test-beam was conducted to measure the effect of the new modifications. It was found that they reduce the corner inefficiencies after irradiation. Furthermore, an extrapolation technique was used to compare and contrast the results from the X-ray test-beam with conventional charged particle test-beam done on the same chip.
Single-walled carbon nanotube – polymer hybrids as hole transporting layers for organic solar cells
Keywords: Carbon nanotube
Organic solar cells
SWNT

In this thesis, new types of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT)-Polymer/single molecule nanostructures were prepared and successfully used as hole transporting layers in both conventional and inverted organic solar cells thereby pushing the carbon nanotube based organic solar cell efficiency close to 10%. The first part of the thesis focuses on investigating the binding of nanotubes to Spiro-OMeTAD. A novel dual-shell nanostructure was prepared by first wrapping SWNTs with a monolayer of semiconducting polymer (F8BT/P3HT) that forms Type-I / Type-II heterojunctions with the nanotube, and subsequently binding a large number of small molecules (Spiro-OMeTAD) onto the [Polymer-NT] nanohybrids. This strong interaction leads to a significant improvement in PL emission intensity which we associate with the debundling of the nanotube. In the second part of the thesis, the properties of a new polymer wrapped single walled carbon nanotubes (C8-SWNTs) were investigated and shown to successfully remove metallic impurities from different carbon nanotube starting materials. In addition, highly selective wrapping (~99.3%) of only one SWNT species (6,5) can be made possible by optimising the chain length of the polymer. PLE studies show that there is a ~71 fold reduction in the intensity of other SWNT species compared to the SWNT starting material. Finally, the third part of the thesis focusses on the fabrication of high efficiency organic solar cells (~9.4%) using highly semi-conducting Polymer-SWNT nanohybrids as hole transporting layers. A simple polymer exchange technique was used to produce ~99.5% pure semiconducting P3HT-SWNT nanohybrids. We used these nanoybrids as Hole Transporting Material (HTM) in the fabrication of the devices and were able to achieve high efficiencies with improved stability.
The toponomy of the Targum with special reference to the Table of the nations and the boundaries of the Land of Israel
Keywords: Bible
Pentateuch
toponomy
Aramaic
Israel
Palestinian
Targum
Land of Israel

During the past two decades there has been growing appreciation of the importance of the Palestinian Targumim of the Pentateuch for the study both of the New Testament and of Tannaitic Judaism, However, these documents cannot be fully or properly used until they have been dated, Dating in this case is a complex problem,for each of them has many dates - the date of the basic translation,the dates when additions were made, the date of the final redaction,and the dates of the manuscripts. What, in fact, is required is a history of the development of the Palestinian Targumim.
The present study aims to provide the groundwork for such a history, It will attempt to sustain the thesis that the extant Palestinian Targumim of the Pentateuch are later elaborations of a complete Targum or Targumic tradition which originated in the period of the Second Temple.
The method which I have chosen has been to examine the equivalents given by the Targumim for Biblical geographical names, I have concentrated the inquiry on two important clusters of these terms, namely, the Targumim of the Table of the Nations in Genesis 10 and of the Boundaries of the Land of Israel in Numbers 34.
Section I discusses this method. There I have stressed the need for combining an examination of the names themselves with a comprehensive analysis of the material in which they are embedded. Thereafter, the study has two main aspects: (1) the identification of the Targumic geographical names; and (2) the use of this information for the purpose of dating.
Continued in thesis ...
Elucidating the role of eIF6 in the endothelial response to shear stress
Keywords: endothelial
protein translation
mechanical forces
shear stress
blood flow
protein synthesis
mechanotransduction
signal transduction
vascular
eIF6
cytoskeleton

Haemodynamic forces generated by blood flow are critical determinants of vascular function in health and disease. Fluid shear stress (FSS) is defined as a force per unit area and is generated by blood flowing parallel to the vessel wall. FSS highly influences the endothelial cell (EC) phenotype. ECs lining straight vessel regions are exposed to steady laminar FSS which induces cytoskeletal alignment and this promotes a protective, anti-inflammatory EC phenotype. Conversely, ECs situated at vascular branch points or curvatures are exposed to complex flow patterns, such as flow reversal, oscillations, low flow and turbulence, which promotes inflammatory gene expression, high proliferation rates and a lack of cytoskeletal alignment. Given the dynamic mechanical environment that ECs are exposed to, remodelling of their cytoskeleton represents an important central cellular function, yet the mechanisms involved remain to be fully elucidated. Recent evidence has shown that components of the protein translation machinery such as ribosomes and eukaryotic initiation factors (eIFs) are closely associated with the cell cytoskeleton. However, the importance of this interaction in regulating the EC phenotype and the relationship between haemodynamics and translational control are largely unexplored. The aim of my thesis project therefore was to investigate the differential effects of laminar and disturbed FSS on protein translation signalling and cytoskeletal remodelling and how one initiation factor, eIF6, mediates these processes. Previous work from the lab has shown that eIF6 co-localises along the Z-disks in cardiomyocytes but its role and potential function in EC biology has not been elucidated. The key findings from this work indicate an important novel role for eIF6 in mediating the EC response to shear stress including regulation of cytoskeletal alignment, focal adhesion dynamics and cell proliferation. Further, my results show that eIF6 itself is flow regulated and plays a differential role in EC protein translation mechanisms under laminar and disturbed FSS. The work outlined in this thesis provides a better understanding of how translational components like eIF6 regulate EC cellular processes which are relevant for vascular health and disease.
Variation of innovation: a review of income maintenance programmes available to the self-employed in nine European countries during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic
Keywords: Covid
Pandemic
Income support
Coronavirus
Self-employees
Covid-19
Self-employed
Income subsidy scheme
Income maintenance

The pandemic and resulting deteriorating business and macroeconomic situation reinforced existing divisions as atypical workers like the self-employed experienced higher levels of shock exposure (Avlijaš, 2020; OECD, 2020a). The income maintenance schemes made available to the self-employed in response marked a historic moment of welfare state expansion, but provision varied widely. A Fuzzy-set Ideal Type Analysis of provision in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and the UK reveals empirical support for three theoretical models of income maintenance schemes though model memberships differ to the Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism typology. The findings highlight the unique nature of the emergency provision but also of the self-employed and reinforces a need for more theoretical focus on this growing group of diverse, and often precarious, workers. Barriers to accessing these schemes underscores the need for more flexible social protection systems to accommodate non-standard forms of labour. This is an imperative if self-employment continues to increase as countries promote flexible labour markets as part of an economic recovery strategy.
Investigation of the Plasmodium falciparum RH5-Interacting Protein (PfRIPR) as a blood-stage malaria vaccine target
Keywords: Vaccine
Malaria

Malaria is an ancient disease that still affects millions of people in endemic regions. Despite ongoing global efforts to produce a vaccine against the malaria parasite, chiefly Plasmodium falciparum, an effective vaccine is not yet available. In recent years, new highly conserved blood-stage vaccine candidates have emerged including PfRH5, now being investigated in clinical trials. PfRH5 forms the ‘RCR’ complex with two other proteins, PfRIPR and PfCyRPA; this essential and highly conserved complex is critical for merozoite invasion of erythrocytes. Here, PfRIPR is investigated as a potential new blood-stage vaccine candidate. PfRIPR is a large and complex protein containing of 10 EGF-like domains. Antibodies raised against full-length PfRIPR are effective at blocking merozoite invasion of erythrocytes in vitro, however, beyond this our knowledge is sorely lacking. My work shows that the epitopes of neutralising antibodies fall exclusively within a small region of PfRIPR corresponding to EGF-like domains 5-8. I demonstrate that immunisation with PfRIPR EGF (5-8) protein yields a four-fold improvement in antigen-specific IgG quality compared with full-length PfRIPR. In addition, I show that monoclonal antibodies raised against PfRIPR EGF (5-8) can block merozoite invasion of erythrocytes whereas antibodies that bind outside this region do not. Co-immunisation of PfRIPR with either PfRH5, PfCyRPA, or all three proteins has revealed a complex relationship between the antigens. PfRIPR is the most immunodominant of the three antigens but yields the least potent IgG. These experiments also strongly suggest that co-immunisation leads to inter-antigen synergy which improves the potency of the IgG response. This work provides a platform for second-generation PfRIPR vaccines based on PfRIPR EGF (5-8) to be developed and tested in conjunction with PfRH5 and PfCyRPA.
Regulation and heterogeneity of human mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells in blood and liver
Keywords: T cell receptor
T cells
RNA-sequencing
MAIT cells
single-cell RNA-sequencing
ATAC-sequencing
cytokines

Mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells are an abundant population of innate-like, effector memory T cells, that secrete proinflammatory cytokines and exhibit direct cytotoxic activity. Given their semi-invariant T cell receptor (TCR) and characteristic phenotype, MAIT cells appear as a homogeneous population. However, recent studies report some heterogeneity in surface marker expression, response to stimulation and cytokine production, as well as tissue-specific functionality. Whether such diversity reflects variable activation states, or alternatively indicates the presence of multiple transcriptionally and functionally distinct MAIT cell subsets, is currently unknown. Moreover, while the semi-invariant TCR of MAIT cells is well defined, how TCR usage varies between tissues and individuals is yet to be defined. In this thesis, I have used bulk and single-cell genomic technologies to investigate the regulation and heterogeneity of human blood and liver MAIT cells, and to explore the transcriptional response of blood MAIT cells to TCR and cytokine stimulation. In the blood, CD8+ MAIT cells exhibited a distinct transcriptional and chromatin accessibility landscape relative to CD8+ conventional memory T cells, as well as altered regulation by known and novel TFs. Single-cell RNA-sequencing indicated that human MAIT cells essentially comprise a single subset. Previously reported phenotypic heterogeneity appears to reflect differences in activation state that depend in part on both clonal origin and tissue localisation. Following TCR or cytokine stimulation, MAIT cells responded as a single population, with observed differences in functionality between cells reflecting their relative degree of activation. Lastly, I have provided an in-depth characterisation of the MAIT cell TCR repertoire and demonstrated that TCR usage is highly shared between blood and liver, but essentially unique to each individual. Overall, this study has provided fundamental insights into human MAIT cell biology and will serve as a useful foundation for studies investigating the role of MAIT cells in health and disease.
Internationalising sea power: ideas of world order and the maintenance of peace, 1890-1919
Keywords: Freedom of the Seas
First World War
World Order
Sea Power
League of Nations

Between 1890 and 1919, loosely-grouped communities of policymakers, strategic thinkers, and naval elites in Britain, France, and the United States of America developed visions of a new world order, in which peace would be enforced by sea power. Their designs culminated in the creation of the League of Nations at the end of the First World War. Existing studies of the League project have focused on legal-internationalism, the outbreak of the war, and the role of President Woodrow Wilson. This thesis uses an array of sources from archives in Europe and North America, along with contemporary publications, to present a new interpretation. It argues that debates over imperial defence and grand strategy prior to and during the war, especially in Britain, shaped the design of the League. These conceptions centred on multinational naval co-operation, ‘internationalising’ sea power through the League. Its leading members, Britain, France, and the United States, would wage economic warfare at sea to punish recalcitrant states and uphold the new liberal international order.
This thesis makes three major contributions to the literature. Firstly, it recovers the role of strategic thought and ideas of ‘liberal militarism’ in the origins and creation of the League of Nations. Visions of global strategic alignments underpinned by sea power were pioneered by strategic theorists including Halford Mackinder and Julian Corbett throughout this period. Secondly, it reconsiders perceptions of the utility of sea power during the war. Contemporaries believed that it was the great strategic tool. In turn, discussions over ‘freedom of the seas’ led to plans for an ‘internationalised’ sea power for enforcing peace. Lastly, in doing so it frames a new understanding of sea power both in the international system of this period, and the systemised forms of international thought which pre-dated the emergence of ‘International Relations’ as an academic discipline.
Infrastructure for sustainable development
Keywords: Performance indicators
Renewable energy
Environmental policy
SDGs
Systems modelling
Sustainable infrastructure

The long-term planning of infrastructure systems will be crucial in the quest for sustainable global development given the role it can play in achieving a wide range of social, economic, and environmental outcomes. While there is an increasing body of research addressing the need for global investment in infrastructure, there remains a gap in aligning the infrastructure planning process with performance outcomes defined by the global development agendas: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
This thesis develops an interdependent modelling approach for national infrastructure that links specific investments and policies to progress toward development and climate targets. As part of this approach, a robust indicator set aligned with the SDGs is developed. In addition, a systematic process to define infrastructure portfolios – or ‘strategies’ – to meet desired outcomes, is outlined. Two country case studies are used to demonstrate and apply these methods in the context of addressing key development challenges. In the first, a 28 percent decline in average SDG achievement across infrastructure-linked targets by 2030 is estimated in the absence of interventions in the energy, water, wastewater, and solid waste sectors. In the second, a feasible path to achieve SDG and Paris targets is demonstrated using a portfolio of strategic interventions in these four sectors, arrived at through an interdependent planning process drawing on participatory methods.
Furthermore, at the global scale, a means of aligning mitigation action in infrastructure and land use sectors – defined by each country’s Nationally-Determined Contributions – with a range of development outcomes defined by the SDGs is developed, illustrating the contextual approach required for national infrastructure planning. This is particularly relevant given the lack of quantified ambition in the current commitments of the 195 signatories to the agreement: 23 percent of countries report no quantified sectoral targets across the energy, transport, waste, agriculture, and forestry sectors, and a further 16 percent define only qualitative targets.
The studies contained in this thesis contain important insights for infrastructure researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers in national governments as we mark ten years, or the ‘decade of delivery’ in which extensive progress toward sustainable development outcomes must be achieved.
Sex and the spirit: embodiment and sexual difference in a global deliverance movement
Keywords: feminist theology
exorcism
Evangelical Christianity
embodiment
witchcraft
Nigeria
spirit possession
Pentecostalism
sexual difference
deliverance
African Christianity
gender and sexuality
Demonology

This thesis offers a critical analysis of sexual difference and the status of the body in deliverance Christianity. It aims to contribute to a new anthropological approach which attends to the role that theological beliefs play in the formation of religious subjectivities. It does this by demonstrating that attention to theology – done by both ordinary people and academics – deepens and enriches our understanding of religious communities.
The striking visibility of women in the Pentecostal churches has led some to celebrate the movement as an example of grassroots female empowerment. Others have pointed to women’s ongoing exclusion from the highest echelons of Pentecostal institutions, owing to a rhetoric that characterises ‘submission’ as a female virtue. This tension, captured in the phrase, ‘the Pentecostal Gender paradox’, continues to serve as the central problematic within anthropological studies of gender dynamics in Pentecostal communities. Taking this discussion as its starting point, this thesis proposes that the tendency to cast women as either empowered or disempowered is reductive in its treatment of the intricate and complex matter of how bodily subjects imagine and experience sexual differences. Rather than looking at examples of women enjoying positions of authority, or embodying modes of resistance, the thesis interrogates more closely the theology that shapes perspectives and experiences of the body, gender and sexuality, in the first place. It offers a nuanced construction and analysis of the theological way that these Christians think about and, in turn, feel in their bodies, which are fundamental to the way gender dynamics unfold on the ground. To that end, this thesis presents a theologically engaged ethnography of a particular international deliverance church with Nigerian origins, across three central fieldwork sites in Nigeria, the UK and the US.
The impact of outsourcing on state school systems: the case of the academies programme in England
Keywords: Schools
Spending
Academies
Director Networks
Workforce
Outsourcing
Privatization
School System

This thesis investigates the consequences of outsourcing the running of state schools to private providers, focusing on the Academies programme in England. The aim of the Academies programme has been to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of state school system by making schools more autonomous of the state. Nevertheless, sociologists of education have feared that Academization is accelerating the commercialization of state education and will have adverse consequences for the workforce, expenditure, and organization of the state school system. However, scholarly understanding of these issues remains limited. This is, in part, because researchers have yet to adequately exploit nationally comprehensive data sources made available by the Department for Education, except in the analysis of pupil performance. In this thesis, analyses of this data reveal that, despite the concerns of critics, Academy leaders have not prioritized the restructuring of their workforces. Academies have not substantially contributed towards the substitution of teachers by cheaper, less qualified colleagues, or the deeper penetration of managerial hierarchies. Moreover, analyses of expenditure patterns fail to find significant relationships between the extent of Academies’ commercial connections and their spending on consultancy or frontline education. Contrary to the fears of critics, corporate connections to Academy Trusts have substantially declined under Conservative-led governments, from 2010, relative to the earlier New Labour era. However, Academy-level autonomy has also declined as governments have encouraged the growth of Multi-Academy Trusts to facilitate the administration of thousands of outsourced schools. Overall, these findings challenge the empirical assumptions and theoretical expectations of both proponents and critics of the Academies programme. In so doing, this thesis makes a significant contribution to the sociology of work and education while providing an in-depth case study of outsourcing reforms of public services at a time when these policies are becoming increasingly popular in state education systems around the world.